Re-visiting White Fragility
A study in how CT can go wrong
About 4 years ago a friend asked me to read “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo. He was being required to read it at his work. Bear in mind this person is an out gay man, Catholic, and a “ceremony” person - think of the movie, “A Man Called Horse” with the sun-ceremony around a pole where you have bits of bone tied to lengthy leather straps the other end of which are tied to the pole. You lean back until the bone pulls out through your skin. So, Intersection much?
Why did he want me to read this book? He was angry. He wanted my opinion. I told him I would read and blog about it.
Why do I want to talk about it again, 4 or 5 years after I read the book?
The pendulum seems to have reached its zenith on the far left “woke” side, and is beginning the swing back. I fear a backlash which some may feel is warranted. However, I ask us to consider the following from Sun Tzu, in the “Art of War”, chapter 31:
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral."
This has a different feel than, “To the victor go the spoils”, right?
I think we need to engage with the ideas that frankly have been bent out of shape, reassess the theories behind the ideas and the reasons for their bending, and understand that poor or wrong-headed implementation of even good ideas has long term negative repercussions.
For me, “White Fragility” is a clear and obvious example of taking a theory with a lofty goal, commonly called Critical Theory (CT), and having it bent into a tool for goals beyond it’s original stated purpose. Note I said “stated” purpose. It can be argued that it has been used exactly as planned, but I don’t know how to support or refute that, so I choose to engage with the stated purpose. Regardless, the offspring, and in the case of this book the primary offspring, is Critical Race Theory. I think a revisit of how CRT was suffused with an “Oppressor/Oppressed” dynamic may prove useful. And we should understand how this paradigm may have helped create the environment for an anti-woke backlash.
The pace of this will be one article per week, starting now:
White Fragility
Was this another Y2K book?
A friend of mine was required to read “White Fragility” where he works. He was struggling with coming up with any kind of charitable response. Ok, he was angry. He asked me to read it and let me know if he was off base or justified in being angry.
I went on Amazon to order the book, and read the reviews. I also dug around and found the following article on the Huffington Post. It’s an interesting article in that I don’t really think I understand the point the author was making. Which happens to me a lot at that website. It did point me to a quote from Robin DiAngelo, the person who coined the phrase “white fragility” and wrote the book:
White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. (Emphasis mine) These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. This paper explicates the dynamics of White Fragility.
The part about the inability to tolerate racial stress is interesting, because as far as I can see from comments and reviews about this book, racial stress only happens to white people when they are confronted with the fact of their racism. It’s an interesting take on a complex topic. Except, what again, exactly, is racial stress?
Whatever it is, it would appear the only appropriate emotional response when called a racist is calm acceptance and agreement. The only proper behavior is… is — well, I’m not sure. You can’t argue to support your position, you can’t be silent, you can’t leave.
The reason why this is the case is simple. If you are white, you are racist, you just didn’t know it, and shame on you.
I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do with that. I can’t even talk about what racism means, because that is whitesplaining.
But here I go:
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.
Now my response to that, speaking only for me, is that I know that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits, but that those traits are primarily cultural. Meaning that white people in the coal mines of Arkansas have different behavioral traits than white people in San Diego. This is demonstrable in dialect, clothing, nutrition, music, etc. When I was a manager in a Wendy’s hamburger joint (at night I was the only white person in the place, including the customers), I learned a new dialect, and became familiar with a completely different style of music. Based on all this, I know and believe that there are differences between groups of people. I also know and believe that discrimination against a group due to perceptions of superiority based on cultural differences is wrong.
But I also know it happens. And now I’ve just whitesplained and nothing I said has any value because Fragility.
My take at the moment is that Robin has pulled off the perfect illusion, she has created a situation where she can accuse me of racism or fragility, and any, and I mean any, response to that accusation is simply proof that the accusation is correct. But then, since I am a racist, I just proved her point.
I also found this interesting quote in an article in the Washington Post:
Even as it introduces a memorable concept, “White Fragility” presents oversimplified arguments that are self-fulfilling, even self-serving. The book flattens people of any ancestry into two-dimensional beings fitting predetermined narratives. And reading DiAngelo offers little insight into how a national reckoning such as the one we’re experiencing today could have come about. In a “White Fragility” world, nothing ever changes, because change would violate its premise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/18/white-fragility-is-real-white-fragility-is-flawed/
What am I supposed to do with all this? The Huffington Post article offers the helpful hint that I need to put in some work. “Do the work.” So, I’ll start with reading the book. But then what?
Meanwhile, back in 1999, if you wanted a quick publish and easy money, you just wrote about the coming inevitable apocalypse known as Y2K. Everyone knew that come the stroke of midnight, water would stop running, planes would fall from the sky, all your money would disappear in a puff of electronic blue smoke as the world was thrown into a new Dark Age. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Y2K book.
“White Fragility” feels like a Y2K book to me. But, I haven’t read it, so I will.
Over the next series of articles, I’ll be tackling what White Fragility claims, why it seems to provoke such strong reactions, and what it says about race and privilege in modern society. Along the way, I’ll give space for both those who defend DiAngelo’s work and those who are critical of the book. If you’re looking for nuanced exploration and maybe a little bit of sparring with the ideas, you’ve come to the right place.
Over the course of working on this project, I’ve come to realize that much of White Fragility’s claims are rooted in Critical Race Theory (CRT), which itself evolved out of Critical Theory (CT). Both frameworks center on analyzing societal power dynamics, often through the lens of an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. This perspective profoundly shapes the book’s approach to race and privilege, framing them as inextricable from structures of power and historical inequities. Whether one agrees or disagrees with this foundation, understanding its influence is essential to engaging with DiAngelo’s arguments critically. I will add that in her case, being white seems to be a de facto structure of power.
So, let’s get to it. Whether you’ve already read White Fragility and have an opinion locked and loaded, or you’re like me, just figuring out where you stand, I invite you to join me as we unpack this cultural lightning rod together.
Haven't read it, and not super excited about reading it either. Something to add about racial tensions between blacks and whites in the U.S. is our history together before, during, and after the Civil War when whites enslaved blacks. That obviously happened and will forever create racial tension in our country. There are white people whose ancestors were never a part of that like me, with mine in Greece and Germany at that point, but at the same time I do benefit from economic progress in U.S. history due to slaves doing our hard work against their will regardless. 40 acres and a mule isn't much of an apology in the end, and so I will always have that tension to deal with. Anyway, interesting series- will read on!