White Identity a Function of Black Identity
Chapter 6 of “White Fragility”: Anti-Blackness
(CARROLLTON, TEXAS – Cradle of Civilization) – This chapter is much more difficult to review than Chapter 5. It is about how horribly White treats Black, and how the racial systemic guilt all white people feel for their abhorrent treatment of black people causes them to continue their abhorrent treatment of black people.
Feel free to re-read that. Yeah, you read it right. And that is not an overstatement of her circular logic as you will see below. I read a book once where the last sentence was the first sentence. That’s what this chapter feels like.1
I believe the underlying purpose of this chapter is to support the concept of white fragility. I don’t know why she took this approach at this point in the book. While my intent was to simply report the content of each chapter, this chapter is difficult to summarize or review. So this is more of a criticism than the previous chapter reviews.
DiAngelo brings up that different groups experience racism differently, but that she is going to focus on White and Black people exclusively. Why? Note this quote:
However, I believe that in the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial ‘other,’ and we must grapple with this relationship, for it is a foundational aspect of the racial socialization underlying white fragility.”
p. 90
She thinks this idea of the racial “other” supports the very concept of white fragility.
And she thinks whites would not identify as “white people” if there were only Yellow and Brown people. This is a conclusion from Chapter 2, “Racism and White Supremacy” where it was pointed out that in earlier times people didn’t identify as white or black, they simply were, and the whole white/black thing became necessary to justify slavery. See p 16, wherein she says that Jefferson asked scientists to find the difference between races so that their inferiority could be used to justify slavery.
I disagree with this notion on two counts. First, people of all skin colors have been enslaved throughout human history, and enslaved by people of their own skin color as well as others. “To the victor go the spoils” is the only justification that would have been used by enslavers. And I think that the enslaved would have responded, “yeah, and if we had won, you would be our slaves.”
Second, regarding the notion that no one noticed skin color prior to the advent of slavery in the new world, well that’s demonstrably untrue. Skin color was noted in Europe in the 13th century, long before anyone knew the New World existed. Ancient Greeks were aware of Ethiopians and found them exotic primarily because of their skin color. There is also evidence of “pigmentocracy” in Africa, Asia, and South America.
Nevertheless, as noted above, DiAngelo believes that “…in the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial ‘other,’ and… it is a foundational aspect… underlying white fragility.
The rest of the chapter catalogs all the wrongs perpetrated on Blacks by Whites over the centuries and concludes,
“Our need to deny the bewildering manifestations of anti-blackness that reside so close to the surface makes us irrational, and that irrationality is at the heart of white fragility and the pain it causes people of color.”
p 98
Please note what she said here: white people’s need to deny their mistreatment of black people causes them to be irrational, which is what causes them to be fragile, which is what causes them to mistreat people.
She concludes the chapter with this statement:
To put it bluntly, I believe that the white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: that we are capable and guilty of perpetrating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others.
p 95
In other words, the entire white collective suffers from self-loathing due to our treatment of “the other.” And this self-loathing serves to reinforce our poor behavior because, because, well, white fragility. It seems the entire white race needs psychotherapy so that we can stop hating ourselves so that we can stop hating “the other.”
Now, without offering any support of slavery in general, I think DiAngelo would have been far better served trying to make her point by comparing the treatment of slaves in America with the treatment of slaves in ancient Rome. In Rome a slave could become a valued member of the family and even be freed and have status and social standing with his or her former owner. I think this could have been very fruitful in her discussion. I even think she could have made a point about white fragility that had some oomph.
But no. As has often been the case when finishing a chapter of this book, I am left scratching my head and wondering, “What am I supposed to do with that?” Well, apparently I am supposed to learn about racial triggers for white people, which is the title of the next chapter.
The logic of Chapter 6 recalls the structure of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany; a novel famous for beginning mid-sentence and ending in a way that loops directly back to its beginning. The difference? Delany’s recursion was intentional. Call it what you will, but for me, he deliberately wrote a pile of manure. As an experiment.
I don’t believe DiAngelo’s pile of manure was intentional. I think she feels this is a valid argument: We mistreat Black people because we’re fragile, and we’re fragile because we deny mistreating them, and that denial itself is a form of mistreatment. Round and round it goes, swirling down the toilet.