Social Justice Usage
Source: DiAngelo, Robin J. White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018, p. 112.
White equilibrium is a cocoon of racial comfort, centrality, superiority, entitlement, racial apathy, and obliviousness, all rooted in an identity of being good people free of racism. Challenging this cocoon throws off our racial balance. Because being racially off balance is so rare, we have not had to build the capacity to sustain the discomfort. Thus, whites find these challenges unbearable and want them to stop.
New Discourses Commentary
Social Justice doesn’t have a kind, charitable, or generous view of white people or the property that Theoretically binds them together, whiteness. More fairly, they don’t have such a view of dominant positions with respect to systemic power dynamics in society or the privilege that belonging to a group in possession of those “unearned advantages.” More accurately, however, they’ve used critical race Theory to ensure that what is meant by “dominant group” is, possibly eternally, “white people.”
According to Theory, occupying a position of privilege allows a person to avoid having to deal with or even understand the experiences of oppression and marginalization (see also, epistemic oppression, epistemic injustice, and hermeneutical injustice), or indeed of bigotries like racism or even of the concept of race itself (see also, white innocence). This, itself, is a further privilege. Furthermore, all privilege always works to protect, maintain, and justify itself by a variety of means (see also, internalized dominance, interest convergence, interest divergence, hegemony, individualism, universalism, meritocracy, human nature, colorblind; good white, active ignorance, mask; code; aversive racism; colortalk, pernicious ignorance, privilege-preserving epistemic pushback, racial contract, complicity, white fragility, white ignorance, white silence, white solidarity, white supremacy, willful ignorance, and false consciousness).
The idea of white equilibrium is that the allegedly comfortable state for white people conferred by this privilege is perceived as the (racial) equilibrium state, free of racial stress, which would be caused by engaging race, racism, whiteness, and so on authentically (that is, as Theory dictates) in an effort to do antiracism work (see also, epistemic friction). As critical race educator Robin DiAngelo tells us (elsewhere), because whites are comfortable with the racial status quo, anything that maintains white comfort is suspect, but because they have become “fragile” as a result of this comfort, resistance to antiracism work and Social Justice ideas is to be expected.
The purpose of the concept of white equilibrium is to insist that living with white privilege has rendered the range of racial awareness or “racial stress” that white people can endure very narrow (see also, racial stamina). Thus, it is reasonable to expect that white people will not take it well when Social Justice and antiracism concepts are (unjustly) applied to them, but not because of the injustice but because of the privilege they were socialized into and don’t know how to live without. As a result, white equilibrium is something that white people work together to maintain for themselves as an identity group (see also, white solidarity and racial contract).
Related Terms
Active racism; Antiracism; Authentic; Aversive racism; Code; Colorblind; Complicity; Critical race Theory; Epistemic friction; Epistemic injustice; Epistemic oppression; False consciousness; Good white; Hegemony; Hermeneutical injustice; Human nature; Individualism; Interest convergence; Interest divergence; Internalized dominance; Marginalization; Mask; Meritocracy; Oppression; Pernicious ignorance; Position; Privilege; Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback; Race; Racial contract; Racial stamina; Racial stress; Racism (systemic); Social Justice; Socialization; Status quo; Systemic power; Theory; Universalism; White; White comfort; White fragility; White ignorance; White innocence; White silence; White solidarity; White supremacy; Whiteness; Willful ignorance
Revision date: 1/31/20
6 comments
It’s all about numbers. The US is a majority white nation. Robin DiAngelo is just another leftist con artist getting rich. Her nonsense book could apply to any country with a majority of one group and a minority of another.
DiAngelo is the best example of someone who really figured out how to take advantage of racial animus and build it into a high paying $$$$ career doing public speaking engagements, tours, book deals and so on. I would be shocked if she doesn’t end up as a high level university professor, in a role as Diversity Specialist or something.
What is really going on here then? white people are a majority in the US, thats all. Any significant majority will have an outsized cultural impact, just on pure numbers. Black people have been about 10 % to 12% of the population for a long time, competing NOT JUST WITH WHITES but with newer arrivals like hispanics & asians. That means they have a lesser cultural impact (though still significant… the arts, sports, music, food, etc.).
There is no possible cure for the white (so called) racism that DiAngelo espouses, because there is no simple way (outside of genocide) to GET RID OF most white people. Even if white numbers dropped to under 50% (as predicted by some sources)… it would not increase black percentage, but simply mean way more hispanics and asians. And you know what? Hispanics and asians have more animosity towards blacks than white people do! Prejudice and bigotry are not the sole preserves of the white race.
Yes, and that is a pretty sweet argument, isn’t it? right next to HAVE YOU STOPPED BEATING YOUR WIFE. It is a circulate argument that you cannot win… if you admit you are racist, then you are obviously a SELF PROCLAIMED RACIST… if you deny you are racist, it means you are racist anyways because denying racism is proof of racism.
Also see: WITCH DROWNING (if you drown a witch, she floats. If the individual sinks, they were innocent and not a witch, but of course are also dead.)
Indeed with their jaundiced eye they have deconstructed some of the features of every culture and presumed white people are uniquely guilty. They have failed to deconsrruct any positive aspect, or to spot that every culture has these aspects.
In effect she says, “If you disagree with me, that proves that I’m right.”
To Robin Di Angelo and her ilk, “and Your Point Is?” Because the same can be said about just about any homogenous group of People living anywhere in the world. Skin Colour does NOT come into it. It is just the author and those like her projecting their own unconscious biases on to the rest of us.
The book should have been called ” How to make a Mint from Psychological Projection!”