“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” –Eric Hoffer
In 2018, the “whiteness educator” Robin DiAngelo published a bestselling book called White Fragility. This book is intended to teach white people about their own racism. More than that, White Fragility teaches white people about the ways they resist learning about and challenging their own racism because of something DiAngelo calls their “white fragility.” White fragility is characterized by DiAngelo as a kind of inability to face the “racial stress” of being accused of “racism” and “white supremacy,” leading them to act out emotionally or to refuse to accept the accusation.
White fragility, she says, is inherent to white people and prevents them from “doing the work” to challenge racism. She says that the goal of her project is to make white people, including herself, “less white.” What many people don’t understand is that the concept of white fragility is a scam, both intellectually and in practice.
To be very clear up front about the deceit hidden in this intellectual game, DiAngelo explains very clearly that what she means by “racism” and “white supremacy” are not what people think they are. In fact, she explains very clearly that what she means by these terms has very little to do with real racism or the white supremacy of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. They are, instead, vaguely defined “systems” that can have little or nothing to do with individuals and their behaviors at all.
By “white supremacy,” DiAngelo means that white people (and others) “accept” the idea that white people are the dominant group in society, where this acceptance is defined as everything—or, everything short of taking on her full “antiracism” program (which she teaches in expensive seminars). This “antiracism” program is not just about understanding racism better and being against it, though. That is not enough. DiAngelo says you have to be “actively antiracist,” because being non-racist or passively antiracist isn’t possible, making both subtle forms of “racism.” DiAngelo describes “active antiracism” in very religious terms as a “lifelong commitment” to an “ongoing process” of self-reflection, self-criticism, and antiracist social activism (which she will conveniently teach you how to do in those expensive seminars).
By “racism,” she means a situation in which white people occupy a “dominant” social position in society. You can know a system is racist by a very simple test—too simple, in fact. If anything happens differently such that races in dominant social positions have any better outcomes than those in “oppressed” ones—say white children having higher math test scores on average than black ones, even though they are less than those of Asian children—the whole system must be “systemically racist” for that to be possible. This understanding cannot work in reverse, by definition (dominant social positions cannot be oppressed), and it can be the case even if the society in question contains zero genuinely racist people.
All white people are automatically “racists” in such systems because of another bizarre academic idea: “white complicity,” which comes from another “whiteness scholar” named Barbara Applebaum. Their argument is simple, and it is bad: all white people are complicit in “racism” because they automatically benefit from it, whether they want to or not. DiAngelo’s prescription for this is also simple, and bad: all white people need to be “less white.” (DiAngelo devotes an entire section to telling her readers that there is no possibility of constructing a “positive white identity” at all, so becoming a “good white” person is not possible and is, in fact, a kind of “racism.”)
Thus, DiAngelo’s idea of “racism” separates all white people into just two categories: racists who admit it and racists who won’t admit it. “Racists” and “racists.” This second group, she diagnoses, suffers from “white fragility” and is the target of her book.
By the way, this “systemic” idea of racism also extends to all people of other races who support or participate in “white culture,” which even includes science, especially people who are neither white nor black. Black people who participate in “white culture” are accused of “acting white” or being “race traitors.” Other non-white races are accused of being “white adjacent,” which means more white than not. Thus, these people can also be complicit in the “system of racism” called “whiteness” and can exhibit “white fragility” if they refuse to acknowledge it, even though they aren’t white.
This is the theoretical ground upon which White Fragility rests. You’re not wrong for suspecting something might be badly wrong here. It is.
In fact, make no mistake. DiAngelo knows you think “racism” and “white supremacy” mean something different and far worse than this. She knows you think they mean the usual awful stuff and associate those words with those awful ideas that very few people support. And you can know she knows because she devotes most of a chapter to telling her readers so. She explains it all very clearly early in the book, telling her readers to “breathe” as they encounter these ideas. She means something different than most people naturally understand about “racism,” but you’d never know this by the way the ideas are used when put into action or, in fact, how they are used throughout the rest of her book.
Bear in mind that she also presumably knows, being an intelligent woman, that people’s moral reactions precede their intellectual ones. That means she understands that the emotional sting of these accusations will remain in full force for most readers even though she means something different by these words. She must also know that when these ideas are put into practice, her long, somewhat complicated disclaimer will almost never go with it. While she seems to think this explanation portrays her as being honest, then, it also makes the deception hiding in her ideas seem somewhat deliberate.
Worse, the intellectual fraudulence of “white fragility” only begins by using highly charged terms like “racism” and “white supremacy” like a kind of Trojan Horse that sneaks past people’s defenses, letting them manipulate their feelings and actions. The real problem with “white fragility” isn’t the ground it stands on; it’s how the idea works.
Put bluntly, white fragility makes it, by design, impossible to deny any accusations of racism, white supremacy, or even white fragility. In that sense, “white fragility” is a kind of moral and emotional shakedown meant to make white people vulnerable and to turn them into activists for her own program (which, remember, she sells in expensive seminars). To see how this manipulation works, let’s look closer. DiAngelo says that when confronted with accusations of racism, white fragility, or white supremacy, white and white-adjacent people (meaning almost everybody) will act in a few predictable ways. Let’s consider their options.
They could admit to it, though few would (DiAngelo counts herself among that elect few). If they do, then they are admitting that they’re “racist” and complicit in “white supremacy.” Admitting it isn’t so simple, though. It’s only the first step. Then, they have to sign up for DiAngelo’s full “antiracism” program, or else the admission wasn’t authentic. They aren’t really engaging with their “racism.” Instead, they are still resisting, which would be positive proof of their white fragility.
DiAngelo rightly observes that most people deny the accusation. Or they argue. Or they stay silent. Or they just go away. Some, she explains, will become upset or even cry. These are the other options DiAngelo offers besides a full confession and lifetime of service in her program (seminars exceed $10,000 a piece), and every one of them is described as hard evidence of having “white fragility.” Not of caring. Not of thinking you might have hurt someone else’s feelings. Not of knowing it’s a lie or a manipulation. Every other possible reaction or response is, under the guidance of White Fragility, positive proof of that person’s white fragility, which means it is proof that they are “racist.”
Before going on, you should know that DiAngelo devotes an entire chapter to arguing that when white women cry, their tears are political acts and are being used to center attention on themselves and maintain their own “white supremacy.” The accused is only allowed to stay present, remain unemotional, and positively assent to their racism (which means they’re racist). They then must sign on to the lifelong antiracism program DiAngelo is selling to them, or they are privileged racists who are proving it by exhibiting… white fragility. This is genuinely sadistic.
Again, this proves that DiAngelo’s idea of “white fragility” separates all white people, most not-black people of other races, and some black people into just two categories: “racists” who admit it by signing on to her full program, for life, and “racists” who refuse to admit it because their privilege has made them too emotionally and morally weak. (She says white fragility arises from lacking the “racial stamina” and “racial humility” needed to do genuine “antiracism” work.) This is obviously manipulative baloney. It is a racial shakedown that is used to sell expensive seminars in which Robin DiAngelo comes to organizations to tell all the white people there how racist they are. It is not in any way an evidenced, scholarly approach to solving real problems of racism.
Postscript:
For what it’s worth, Robin DiAngelo developed the concept of “white fragility” many years before she wrote White Fragility in 2018. She says it came from her extensive work as a racial workshop coordinator, observing small groups of white people who she accused of being racists. She then observed how they reacted to the resulting “racial stress.” Nothing in White Fragility is the result of careful and rigorous academic study or scientific research into racism. It’s the result of DiAngelo projecting her own feelings about her own complicity in racism onto some case studies in situations she engineered and then interpreted in a particular way. Those feelings do not have to be guessed at because they are clearly expressed in the book in a number of scenes that she uses as self-reflective examples. One stands out especially: it is a scene in which she describes going to a work-related party at the park and seeing two groups there, one of which was all black, and feeling paralyzed with fear that she’d have to enter the all-black group. It is not my place to judge Robin DiAngelo here, and I will leave it for the reader to decide what this implies about what lies at the bottom of her “theory.” If the reader finds this situation strange or telling, however, I would urge them to think twice before applying the idea that came from it to their own lives, where it very likely doesn’t fit.
Read the Spanish translation of this article here.
33 comments
I confess I skipped through the article, though it was not hard to get the gist. I quite agree.
What caught my eye though was the opening quote by Erik Hoffer, and I cannot entirely agree with the opening words.
Having being involved with many organisations and associations over many years I would not say all movements, nor would I only refer to great movements. Rather, I would observe that any movement is eventually in danger of degenerating.
My second observation is that this is almost always caused by people. Mostly within the movement and usually the only partially committed who may have another background agenda. Such persons can be present from the start, but very likely will come in later. Their motivation is , yeah lovely idea, but my way can make it better.
I believe this whole work of “White Fragility” could be described by the story of the Procrustean Bed.
I just looked this book up as my social worker wife, who specializes in helping disenfranchised and at risk youth, just purchased it for me to educate myself about my own inherent racism. I like to think I’m educated enough, while also being able to think critically about what that privileged (gasp) education tried to teach me, that I can smell the bullshit when someone tries to smear me with it.
Being a patriot, I rail against identity politics as it it is anathema to individual liberty and the freedom to forge/follow your own path in life. I’m not running anyone else’s race but my own. And whenever I’m told I need to be running the race they think is best for me, I recoil that the shoes don’t fit and smell like someone else’s sweat. Gross.
So, am I a racist by the definition posited by the author? I’ll tell you after I read the book -which I’ve promised to do out of deference to her years of self described education and expertise. But I already know the answer will be yes. Where does that leave me except for feeling bad about myself and second guessing any practice of the Golden Rule I was raised to strive for in order to lead a good and decent life?
A very good question has been raised by others, and it resonated in me in the same way anyone who listens to their heart can tell what the truth is without needing to back it up with proofs or scientific studies to support it: if we’re all racist and can’t escape it no matter what we do, or how good and kind a life we work to live, isn’t it infantilizing to black people to assume that they are unable to stand and claim their own destinies, to be proud of their own works and successes without the requirement that everyone else (White and White adjacent) should wring their hands and self deprecate at the power we unwittingly hold over them by our privilege?
I am so going to love reading this book. I just don’t know if its going to have the intended effect.
I suppose you and your wife have some difficult conversations ahead. 😥
@ConceptualJames
This is pretty funny. Black man who is British not African-British or Caribbean-British
Calls Herself Racist. Becomes Millionaire | White Fragility Review
https://youtu.be/jU0fwYr_gME
Is White Fragility a museum – filled with interesting, invigorating artefacts wall to wall? Or is it a sausage? (Good enough on the outside, but filled with a contents you’d rather not know about)
Come along with me, your certified Person of Colour™, as we analyse, critique and review this text together.
very spot-on hip analysis even without the details you provide
I AM FOREVER SUSPENEDED BY TWITTER BOTS and the humans there are ignoring me
I was ignored at “BOTS.”
Earlier this year Twitter was found to have thousands of blue checkmark accounts of bots.
Many dating sites are made up of 40%+bots.
If Twitter isn’t real life as a certainty while being referenced as truth but news outlets, how to apply correction?
Mike, I disagree with your conclusion. Her methods are too clumsy to help anyone. If someone were concerned with their residual own-group preference to the extent that they believe it is the key component of their identity (which seems to be the position held by Ms. DiAngelo), they would be far better served by a good clinical psychologist. A psychologist could both help them to manage their own-group preference, at at the same time help them expand their identity to something more helpful and realistic (son, mother, friend, employee, football enthusiast, economic conservative, social liberal etc.) The statement “she’s saying that if you’re a *little* racist, then you’re still racist” is the heart of the con (and a con it most certainly is.) She’s using emotional manipulation to get people to make own-group preference central to their identity. She further sets up a kafka trap, where if you claim that you have your own-group preference adequately managed, she asserts that as evidence that you in fact don’t. Frankly, this is just emotional abuse. While many people have survived abuse, and some of them have been made stronger for it, the best approach is to not abuse people, just on general principle. That some segment of the population volunteers for this abuse is sad, but cannot be prevented in a society based on free speech. The best thing we can do is call out this abuse for what it is. I thank James and the gang for allowing this trash into their psyches to analyse it for the rest of us, but I will not submit to it myself.
Just as an observation, this comment section is likely the best investment of my time any comment section has ever been. Very well thought out responses and refreshingly accurate. Thank you all.
kind of nice to participate in comment sections that bring significant educational background, insight, reasoned and reasonable responses, while also being critical yet tolerant (mostly). I know I always learn something in the comment sections on this site. After reading a post, I’m always interested to see what discussion is unfolding below.
In summary, it’s a kakfkatrap: A sophistical rhetorical & logically fallacious device in which any denial by the accused serves as evidence of guilt.
Example: If a totalitarian government were purging its political opponents and someone denied being an opponent of the government but the government decided that since an opponent of the government would deny being one, that person must be an enemy of the government.
An a “panchreston”: A proposed explanation intended to address a complex problem by trying to account for all possible contingencies but typically proving to be too broadly conceived and therefore oversimplified to be of any practical use. An argument from which anything can be deduced because it is not falsifiable.
Fortunately, I haven’t read the book. But isn’t it possible that there are degrees of racism, and that perhaps we aren’t agreeing on its definition (each time), and therefore assuming and exaggerating each other’s definitions, creating a straw man that we can dismantle and ridicule?
If we agree that a racist believes one race is more dominant than another (which I believe is the most basic definition in deconstructing the word), then yea, I think most of us are racists. At least anyone that has studied history with any sort of lucidity.
Black people and their struggles have been historically marginalized. If one were to be comfortable and complacent in that continued marginalization, it is probably because they are on the dominant or unaffected side of the marginalization. That complacency does seem to be more racist than just acknowledging that some races have it better than others—almost as if it is a silent support of the marginalization. Note that this is still miles away from wanting all black people to be removed from the Earth.
I think DiAngelo means to deny that (or even to deny the historically unjust treatment of marginalized races) is to deny your own (albeit probably mild) racism. It doesn’t sound like she’s saying that you’re a full-blown racist if you deny your privilege as a white person—more that she’s saying that if you’re a *little* racist, then you’re still racist.
Of course, as I hinted above, defining racism as it’s most basic definition…we’re all probably on the spectrum. And no, we don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to “better our standing” on (or [rather impossibly] remove ourselves entirely from) the spectrum. But it sounds like she could offer certain people some valuable insight as to where exactly they are on the spectrum, potentially affecting people positively through this introspection alone.
DiAngelo maintains that all white people are racist, by her (woke) definition, which has nothing to do with how you treat people or how you think of them. Further, she insists that its impossible for a white person not to be racist – you must do nothing in life but the ‘work’ of ‘anti-racism’ without ever reaching a state of non-racism. It’s the original sin of being white that demands eternal expiation.
Racism would have to do with some kind of malice or prejudice based on race. “Dominance” probably requires more unpacking, and is vulnerable to more DeAngeline word games than is good for a base-line definition.
Of “marginalized” struggles (I’ll assume this means people make other’s struggles more important), I’d definitely say black struggles get massive press and attention.
I don’t know how much taboo keeps people from addressing issues that would actually be of help. There are multiple American black cultures; and some of them have grievious problems. Some share a similar redneck culture with white “cracker” neighbors who have similar problems.
All modern cultures has a problem with fatherlessness. Across races that means worse performance in school, more and earlier criminality, more teenages pregnancy, more mental illness, even earlier menarch for girls (but that might be associated with general trauma). Kids seem to do better when there’s a dad in the neighborhood. It’s frightening that they had enough neighborhoods like that to study it. With some African American cultures, three out of four or more children don’t live with their dad. It’s not a legacy of slavery. 60-70 years ago, the African American family was more consistently intact than white families. Nevermind the issue of kids in some black cultures bullying their smart fellows and accusing them of “acting white”.
Is all that too taboo to actually try to help? (Figure out what kids need when they don’t have a dad at home; rally popular figures to shame that kind of bullying; rally black pastors and cultural leaders to work on the fatherless problem.)
So…how much did you spend on the plan, Morgan?
I’m not be his biggest fan in many respects, but Friedrich Nietzsche saw this new secular religion coming almost 140 years ago in “The Parable of the Madman”.
“The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? …
How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us — for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”
“White Fragility” would seem a glowing example of these atonement rituals Nietzsche predicts.
For the whole piece.
Wow. It’s amazing how absolutely “objective” this is. So thankful we have people out there writing objective book reviews that are not absolutely laced with defensiveness. Thank you, “American-born” white man for teaching us about how you’re not fragile at all.
Thank you for proving James right.
What GRA Said.
Thank you Morgan for showing us that you probably don’t know what “objective” actually means.
Don’t let this display of reason and logic upset you. Reason and logic are, after all, tools of white supremacy aren’t they? Just focus on how guilty and terrible you are, have a good cry and you’ll feel better. Actually you’ll never feel better in that cult you’ve joined, and that’s the whole point.
Triggered!
To Morgan. You’re right. He fails to see the potential here. We should seek Fragility franchises with protected territory. First stop: Korea. Over there Koreans dominate all sectors of life. Their history glorifies Koreans, Korean culture, institutions and arts assume Korean-ness. A country of full-blown racists ripe for the picking. We need to adapt DiAngelo’s seminars. It’s a slam dunk. They can’t escape that blot of the new Scarlet Letter: they possess the unearned privilege Korean-ness brings them in Korea .
Four hundred bucks a pop for one seminar, $5,000 for on-going Korean awareness training. If anyone resists we can use your approach, “Thank you Korean-born Korean for teaching us about how you’re not fragile after all.”
Then we move on. Imagine the potential. 1.3 billion Chinese, 1.2 billion Indians, 1.2 billion Africans in their respective countries/continent. Each one of them dripping with unearned privilege (which IS racism, right?) by dint of their DNA that they can never escape from.
I get goosebumps thinking about the potential in the expansion of the Anti-racism Industrial Complex.
You’re right…there is vast untapped potential here. I suggest we start with making the Turkish people feel guilty about the atrocities of the Ottoman empire and the subconscious ‘complicity’ in perpetuating its abuses. They have no clue about critical race theory over there so they won’t suspect a thing!
I think they pulled something similar in China; but the grifters were selling subjection.
Calls Herself Racist. Becomes Millionaire | White Fragility Review
https://youtu.be/jU0fwYr_gME
Is White Fragility a museum – filled with interesting, invigorating artefacts wall to wall? Or is it a sausage? (Good enough on the outside, but filled with a contents you’d rather not know about)
Come along with me, your certified Person of Colour™, as we analyse, critique and review this text together.
DiAngelo seems to be using every guilt-manipulative and emotionally-blackmailing trick in the book.
She also appears to be committing gender fraud by calling herself by a man’s name.
Emotion should never be in the driving seat clearly
I’m an optimist. We will be laughing about this 20 years hence and wonder “what were we thinking?”
I also suspect that DiAngelo and the others are peddling to white progressives a cost free get-out-of-guilt free card. Just need to confess your privilege, do a little groveling and self flagellation, and you can feel alright about elevated economic status in relation to blacks. After all, if white supremacy is so all encompassing, how were these scholars(?) able to rise above it and lecture the unwashed? Maybe they really haven’t. Is white critical theory really just another device, once removed, for maintaining white dominance? (not that I buy the idea of white supremacy anyway)
As a psychologist, I’m also curious about their motivations. Guessing splitting and projection are big players. If you can project all you bad stuff out onto others, you get to fight with it out there and not inside where the battle should be fought.
Laugh? I’m not anticipating much mirth. Woke more frightening than funny.
I’m with you. The first time I saw DiAngelo mention that she asked to touch a black woman’s hair, I was shocked that she would even think that’s okay. Clearly this woman was not raised well.
Also, I couldn’t even get through one page of the woman’s article she references in her book from the 1980’s, the writing was horrible let alone the ideas.
The logic of White Fragility reminds me of nothing so much as Scientology. Very briefly (I promise): Scientology teaches that our physical bodies are controlled by incorporeal spirits called “thetans”. Essentially, you/me/everyone “really are” thetans. Think of a driver and a car – the driver is the thetan, the car is the body.
A problem, according to Scientology, is that disembodied thetans attach themselves to our bodies, sort of “gumming up the works”. Like in an action movie, when all the bad guys pile onto the good guy’s car as he’s trying to make a getaway.
The only way – and this is a real shocker – to rid oneself of all of these parasitic thetans is to go through an extensive (and expensive) ecclesiastically-sanctioned “auditing” process with no clearly defined end date. How do you know you’re purged of thetans? Your auditor will tell you.
Both White Fragility and Scientology, therefore, begin with an assumption of default “contamination” – parasitic “thetans” in one case, “unconscious racism” in the other. Both are invisible, both are defiling, and removal is greatly facilitated by “expert help”. And removal, in both cases, shares four key similarities:
1. No guarantee that the cure will work, or a time frame in which it will work. The efficacy of the cure totally depends on the cure-seeker’s “cooperativeness” and “willingness to do better”.
2. The person seeking the cure can only measure failure, never success. At every step of the purification process – even after – there’s always potential for recidivism and backsliding. Just as disembodied thetans can always attach themselves to a freshly liberated body, so can subconscious racism creep back into the mind of the declared “antiracist”.
3. Any and all failures are automatically the fault of the cure-seeker and never the fault the “whiteness educator” or “instructor” (or, in the case of Scientology, the “auditor”).
4. Expensive!
And I think it’s important to make a distinction between religions such as Wokism/Scientology and mainstream religions such as, Catholicism (for instance).
Catholicism has its share of problems, which I’m sure don’t need elaboration, but at least in the Catholic worldview the means of salvation is absolutely clear and assured. In the case of Wokeism and Scientology, the penitent believer is left in a permanent state of uncertainty and terror, a kind of induced paranoia from which there is no escape.
It’s a decent analogy, but Robin DiAngelo’s shakedown is even worse than that of Scientology – according to her and her fellow travellers, there is no cure. It’s impossible for a white person to not be racist.
The ‘treatment’ is eternal.
Leftists always project. It’s Africans-in-America who chimp out whenever anyone calls them on their BS, double standards, and lies. I suppose this is just par for the course in Clown World.
Likewise, “racism” is a meaningless, empty, made-up word that is used to silence working-class Whites who dare to speak truth to power. “Racist?” Yes. Yes, I am. Whatcha gonna do about it?
“…white fragility makes it, by design, impossible to deny any accusations of racism, white supremacy, or even white fragility…”
The kafkatrap.
You have to hand it to people like DiAngelo… she understands game theory in a sense and attempts to produce airtight, self-sealing arguments.