Good And Bad Racists
Chapter 5 of "White Fragility"
CARROLLTON, TEXAS – (GLOB)—I’ve been overlong in picking up bit and byte before continuing this book review. As I read things and tried to comprehend and understand the concepts, I have followed many a thread and learned many things. But such learning will never end, so I return to the task. Also, my effort to review two chapters at a time has failed in this case. There is just too much…
In Lather, Rinse, Repeat, I covered chapters 3 and 4. In chapter 3, DiAngelo expressed that after the Civil Rights movement, racism simply adapted and now successfully perpetuates the outcomes of a formerly openly racist society via means that are not so overtly racist. In chapter 4, she expressed the various underpinnings of white fragility, those things that come from being white that many (most? all?) white people are blissfully unaware of. It’s worth rereading the summary; there’s still more to learn and understand.
I will also ask you to be aware that DiAngelo is ‘framing the debate’—a term I learned from a very successful debate coach. We will return to this concept when this whole series wraps up. In the meantime, on to Chapter 5.
Chapter 5: The Good/Bad Binary
This chapter starts with an interesting assertion:
Prior to the civil rights movement, it was socially acceptable for white people to openly proclaim their belief in their racial superiority. (p. 71)
After white Northerners saw images of violence perpetrated on people of color, they were given an out. Those aren’t her exact words, but the gist is that Northern white people could salve their consciences by noting that they did not participate in this type of abhorrent behavior. Essentially, DiAngelo says, “…racism first needed to be reduced to simple, isolated, and extreme acts of prejudice.” (p. 71) This allowed the idea to flourish that racists are those white people in the South. She provides this table on Pg 72:
| RACIST = BAD | NOT RACIST = GOOD |
|------------------|-------------------|
| Ignorant | Progressive |
| Bigoted | Educated |
| Prejudiced | Open-minded |
| Mean-spirited | Well-intentioned |
| Old | Young |
| Southern | Northern |
I leave it to the reader as to whether this rings true in your experience. However, her point is that people who think they are good think they are not racist, even though they are. To be clear, all those people in the “NOT RACIST” side of the table? They’re all racists. They just don’t think they are.
And if you are just joining in, she has redefined racism: according to Dr. DiAngelo, racism is a system—not an event—that functions to reinforce aspects of the social construct of race. And as a reminder, if you are white, you simply are part of that system. Oh, and rather abstractly, she has bestowed on racism agency, meaning that racism in some manner deliberately perpetuates itself, weaving and dodging and evolving in response to the changing environment. OK, she does not say that, but it is heavily implied that racism has a life of its own.
In this chapter, DiAngelo argues that people have “…a definition of racism as conscious intolerance (italics hers): a racist is someone who presumably cannot tolerate even the sight of a person of color.” (p. 78)
Now, I don’t know anyone who believes sitting at a football game where Black people were present, without clutching their pearls or wallets, or leaving at half-time because of the scary black people, proves they’re not racist. But DiAngelo bases the rest of this chapter on the invalidity of this exact idea. In other words, remaining at the game is a demonstration of white fragility.
By the way, this is called “framing the debate” and in this particular framing she is building the frame of a scare crow (straw man).
She then runs through all the claims people make that prove they are not racist, and then works to invalidate these claims:
I was taught to treat everyone the same
DiAngelo says this is simply impossible. “As explained above, no one can be taught to treat people equitably…” (p. 81) This is an amazing claim.
I marched in the sixties
DiAngelo says this rests on a definition of racism as conscious intolerance. (p. 82) Does it?
I was the minority at my school so I was the one who experienced racism
DiAngelo says, “…the individual was experiencing race prejudice and discrimination, not racism.” (Italics hers, p. 82) Here is a concrete example of how she has redefined racism. Not the implicit claim that race prejudice and discrimination are not racism.
My parents were not racist, and they taught me not to be racist
DiAngelo says no they didn’t, “…your parents could not have taught you not to be racist, and your parents could not have been free of racism themselves.” (p. 82) Again, a bold claim.
Children today are so much more open
DiAngelo says no, they are not—that “…children showed they did not become less racially biased with age, but that they had learned to hide their racism in front of adults.” (p. 85)
She does provide some support for this. I suspect the data is cherry-picked to fit a narrative. There’s a massive difference between:
A 6-year-old avoiding racial slurs because they know they’re taboo,
andA 6-year-old harboring deep-seated racial animus and hiding it like a tiny Klansman.
DiAngelo collapses that distinction without argument.
My bigger concern (and we need to be aware of this tendency as well) is that she uses empirical studies to front an ideology. “Well, yeah, of course,” you might say. But that’s precisely the problem: ideologies are notoriously fact-proof. Evidence should inform and refine a worldview, not be retrofitted to validate one.
Race has nothing to do with it
DiAngelo starts this section with, “How often have we heard someone preface a story about race with the statement, 'Race had nothing to do with this but…'” Her argument continues that saying that is a demonstration of racism. (p. 85) Read that sentence again. This is a rhetorical trap dressed as an observational insight. What’s the trap? It is a self-sealing premise. If you say race did matter, you are complicitly racist. If you say it did not matter, you are in denial of your racism, if you mention race to say it didn’t matter, you just proved it did.
Focusing on race is what divides us
DiAngelo says that this “…is rooted in the concept that race doesn’t matter; thus, to talk about it is to give it undeserved weight.” (p. 86)
Now, all of the above rests on two points:
1) a definition of racism that most people don’t share, and
2) the assumption that racism can be divided neatly into a Good/Bad binary.
She wants to take away this Good/Bad binary so that people can learn her definition of racism. For her book to be valid, one has to accept her definition of racism. One has to accept her framework.
She ends with a conclusion that I am not sure follows from this whole chapter, but a conclusion with which I agree. Interesting to me is that it echoes an understanding of Evil derived from Augustine1. She sees everyone on a continuum of racism. She proposes the question, “Am I actively seeking to interrupt racism?…” Good question.
That’s a question worth holding onto as we move into Chapter 6, where DiAngelo narrows the focus and takes aim at something more specific and more volatile: anti-Blackness.
Augustine sees evil as a privation of the good. Think of a thermometer. (This is my analogy, not Augustine’s, so if you find it helpful, cool; if not, blame me, not Augustine.) Terms like “hot” and “cold” are points on the thermometer where we somewhat arbitrarily denote 30 degrees F as cold, 100 degrees F as hot, and 75 degrees as wonderful. However, all points on the thermometer are simply a falling away from heat. On the Good Thermometer, God is at the highest possible temperature—i.e., perfection. Everything else is a falling away from that. So, some people are hot, some are lukewarm, and some are cold. Satan would be near or at Absolute Zero. Us humans are probably fluctuating between somewhere below freezing and somewhere above 100. So we call some people good and some bad. But we are all at a lower temp than God and can never get to that heat. (Side note: the Seraphim, highest order angel listed in the Bible, are ‘the burning ones.’) Anyway, DiAngelo’s idea that we are all on a continuum of her definition of racism seems to align with Augustine’s notion of being on a continuum of less than good.