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mark monday's Reviews > White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
by
by
This is a sometimes interesting yet essentially broken vessel for the author's frustration in dealing with the ignorant and often prejudiced white people who have participated in her diversity seminars. The book trolls those participants while purporting to be a learning tool itself.
To a limited extent, it is that tool. Its chapter on white privilege provides a superb overview. Likewise its chapter on the essentially racist character of much U.S. history. These lessons can also be found elsewhere, including Google. Unfortunately, its flaws far outweigh its virtues. Who is this book for? The audience is clearly liberal whites, and masochistic ones at that. Why masochistic? Because this book offers no way forward. It simply and repeatedly instructs its white readers on why they are racist and will always be racist. To "learn" this lesson is to parrot back what the author has told them, while backing it up with facts about American history and white privilege. Dialogue and emotional responses from trainees are not just disdained, they are seen as pervasive symptoms of racism. A person can read this polemic and gain an understanding of white culpability today and throughout history. But it provides no impetus to move forward, to create actual change. The book is a dead end.
Lessons learned should provide meaningful paths to the future. Better paths. Paths to protest, to repair, to dialogue, to activism, to legislation. But White Fragility exists in a vacuum, it ignores such potentialities. It only scolds. If you acknowledge your apparently inherent racism as a white person, it has done its job. Congratulations, racist. Now just shut up, there is nothing more for you to do.
As a trainer who trains people of all races to provide peer support to other people of all races; as an individual who identifies variously as mixed-race, Filipino, and white; and as a professional in a leadership position at my agency who wants to encourage openness and reflection from my nervous white colleagues on the topics of racial equity and anti-racism... this book was utterly useless to me. This is a reductive book in all ways.
1.5 stars, rounded down.
PROGRESS NOTES
(quotes from the book are in italics)
> Well I like the forward, maybe because I'm mixed-race and she seems to be bending over backwards to understand me: Multiracial people, because they challenge racial constructs and boundaries, face unique challenges in a society in which racial categories have profound meaning.
But anyway, on to reading some white-bashing written by a white person! That always amuses me.
STOP, MARK. You want to get something from this, you need to adjust your bad attitude! Keep an open mind, Mark!
> LOL: I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.
- Um, no.
Liberals & progressives (like myself) are used to being bashed by conservatives, Republicans, the deplorables, but I've always found the most skilled bashers of liberals & progressives to be other liberals & progressives. Such a masochistic breed! People with empathy know the softest spots, and where to hit the hardest. The ignorance of that comment about white progressives sorta took my breath away. Not a great start.
> This part is true, and I'm seeing this now as I've seen it before, in discussions we're currently having at my very progressive agency: Being seen racially is a common trigger of white fragility, and thus, to build our stamina, white people must face the first challenge: naming our race.
- DiAngelo's definition of "Individualism" is remarkably self-serving. Particularly in how she posits it as an ideology that props up racism. I think I get where she's coming from: she wants white people to focus on one particular trait - whiteness - and not on how all people are individuals because they are the intersection of many different identities. And there's truth to the idea that whites are afforded an individuality that POC are often unable to attain in group settings and in representations in the media. But I'm not loving how she refuses to see complexity of identity as a valid way to understand how different people engage with the world, and how she would rather look at all whites as simply white. Although I understand that not wanting to look at the complexity of individuals means your message will be very easy to package and sell! In general, DiAngelo is quite comfortable with generalizing - she's a sociologist after all. But doesn't she realize that she's doing the exact same thing to white people that POC have complained about being done to us/them for approximately forever? And how has that worked out?
> This feels true: If we “look white,” we are treated as white in society at large. For example, people of southern European heritage, such as Spanish or Portuguese, or from the former Soviet Union ... are likely to have a stronger sense of ethnic identity than will someone of the same ethnicity whose ancestors have been here for generations. Yet although their internal identity may be different, if they “pass” as white, they will still have a white experience externally. If they look white, the default assumption will be that they are white and thus they will be responded to as white.
- I do have a challenge with this idea of a "white experience" because class and other factors are not being taken into consideration. Is there a monolithic "white experience"? I should ask some white people! As a mixed-race person, this sort of tribalism is hard for me to understand. But as a half-white person, perhaps I should just examine my own experiences. How often have I "passed"? And how would I even know, absent overt displays of racism towards me?
> This is ye olde collegiate definition of racism that I actually agree with: When I say that only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United States, only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over people of color. People of color do not have this power and privilege over white people.
- Earlier she mentioned that POC can be prejudiced just like whites, so that combined with her definition of racism makes sense to me. While anyone can "pre-judge" others, and discriminate against them, "racism" can only be exhibited by the race that holds the most power. But I wonder how she will link this definition to her basic idea that all whites are racist.
> Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm.
- I've railed against this in various reviews of modern genre novels, this white norm that occurs in settings where that doesn't make sense. In the novel Sand most explicitly. And still I persist in wondering: if the majority of the population in a given place is a certain race, wouldn't that race always be considered the norm? There's something true and also something so obvious, so meaningless about her definition of whiteness.
- She makes an interesting case for "white supremacy" to be seen as a political system, a system that includes everything from government to entertainment. If only by her use of stats to illustrate percentages of whites in positions of leadership. I can then compare those percentages to the actual percentage of white people in the US, which ends up being @ 87% whites in those positions vs. 73% of whites in the US population. Food for thought.
- I'm not in love with her example of a white mother shushing a child saying "Mommy, his skin is black!" as upholding the idea that black is a disability or less than white. Couldn't it be because Mommy doesn't want her kid to be othering another person?
- I was on-board with her definition of "aversive racism" as the kind of racism - although I would actually call it prejudice - practiced by people, consciously or unconsciously, when using coded language to describe black spaces. But I'm not so on-board with the example of a friend talking about a dangerous neighborhood meaning that that friend had a "horror of black spaces". I think there is clearly a potential racial corollary there, but at the same time this is too simplistic. To insist that the description of a neighborhood as "dangerous" is only about its blackness seems to be a self-serving way to turn what is a loaded statement - i.e. potentially prejudiced but also possibly about class systems - into a genuinely racist statement. So yeah, more generalizations.
> DiAngelo equates Being careful not to use racial terms or labels when people of color are present with Mimicking “black mannerisms and speech” and with actions like Avoiding contact (e.g., crossing a street or not going to a particular bar or club), Using code words to talk negatively about people of color, Occasional violence directed at people of color..
- These seem to me to be very different sorts of behavior, some being examples of prejudice or racism while others being a lot more complex. But hell, why not call them all "examples of racially conscious behavior" because that's the book I'm reading.
- The chapter HOW DOES RACE SHAPE THE LIVES OF WHITE PEOPLE? is the most sustained exploration of how white privilege is lived unconsciously that I've read so far in the book. Of course the last page diminishes all that came before by engaging in DiAngelo's typically lazy generalizations, but for the most part, this is really effective. I also love the idea of "white innocence". This all could be useful for me as a trainer - except I am almost always training people who identify as leftist, and they are usually already fully aware of how they (if they are white) benefit from being white. And so they appreciate my discussion of privilege more as a series of handy tips and reminders on how to be a better volunteer & person rather than as a launching point for cultural self-exploration. Because they've already done all that self-exploration, usually in college, and that's why they moved to the Bay Area in the first place. Well, that and those Big Tech greenbacks, of course. Gotta make that money if you wanna be a true coastal elite, amiright?
> If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I place myself on the “not racist” side, what further action is required of me? No action is required, because I am not a racist. Therefore, racism is not my problem; it doesn’t concern me and there is nothing further I need to do. This worldview guarantees that I will not build my skills in thinking critically about racism or use my position to challenge racial inequality.
- I question this cause & effect. Especially in light of the recent protests, but also in general. It seems to be admonishing binary thinking while actually engaging in it. If someone does not consider themselves racist, why then does this automatically mean they will not engage in anti-racism?
- Very interesting point about how "color-blind claims" (e.g. "I don't see race") and "color-celebrate claims" (e.g. "I have people of color in my family") both function as ways to exempt people from engaging in conversations about racism.
> No person of color whom I’ve met has said that racism isn’t at play in his or her friendships with white people.
- This was a somewhat shocking thing for me to read because this hasn't been my experience at all as a POC. Of course I've experienced racism, numerous times, but not from the words or deeds of actual friends. What makes me different from all the POC that DiAngelo has met? Is it because I'm mixed race? Am I just lucky, just ignorant, just benefiting from my mixed-race status, or is DiAngelo just stacking the deck? I honestly don't know.
- It's interesting to me that the author has so far (to page 112) only provided examples (during her experiences as a diversity trainer) of people who defiantly oppose what she is teaching them. Will there be any examples of her getting through to people, how she got through to them, how they improved, how workplaces became safer spaces for POC, etc? Or are all of these examples meant to say that white people will always fail at understanding their racist behavior, no matter what or how she tries to teach them? It's a curious use of her real life experiences. Is this a purposeful indictment of all white people or an inadvertent indictment of her own methods and ideologies as a diversity trainer? Or maybe she's just shy of talking about her accomplishments! Yes, let's say that, it's a better look.
- Ok, page 114 did make me smile with its mordantly amusing story of a young white woman whose co-workers were afraid she was having an actual heart attack after being criticized for making certain comments. But I still really wish there was a part 2 to that story, describing how DiAngelo ended up engaging this melodramatic young woman successfully. Did that part 2 ever happen? It would have been useful for me as a trainer and as a colleague interested in proactive dialogue with my white colleagues. But I suppose that's not the point of this book, which is apparently to just repeatedly provide examples of white fragility. *Sigh*
> Sweet Jesus, now DiAngelo has taken it upon herself to denounce the basic guidelines for building trust in a training as accommodations made to coddle white fragility:
• Don’t judge
• Don’t make assumptions
• Speak your truth
• Respect
- I dunno what to even say. It's like she perfectly understands white privilege but has no actual comprehension about how to reach people. Does she not understand that gathering people in a room and telling them all how wrong they are, and will always be, is not an effective mechanism for genuine change or understanding? Or that these guidelines have helped POC in trainings to also feel safe enough to express opinions and share experiences? Ugh!
- Ok I was prepared to hate this chapter entitled WHITE WOMEN’S TEARS. I've heard about DiAngelo's thoughts on this. But it does make some solid points: tears and other emotional displays can be a form of manipulation and they can shift focus away from the important topic at hand. That said, DiAngelo barely acknowledges the most frequent reason women (AND MEN) cry in these settings: because they are experiencing sorrow or pain over something they have learned about themselves, or are reacting to a story they are hearing that illustrates a terrible injustice or a painful experience. It is like the author does not really want to acknowledge the importance and necessity of empathy as a key to bridging divides.
- Last chapter finally features the book's sole example of a breakthrough from a white person who acknowledges their problematic behavior and gracefully accepts feedback, promising to learn from the experience. This white person is... Robin DiAngelo! I assume DiAngelo could think of no other examples to provide. LMAO
To a limited extent, it is that tool. Its chapter on white privilege provides a superb overview. Likewise its chapter on the essentially racist character of much U.S. history. These lessons can also be found elsewhere, including Google. Unfortunately, its flaws far outweigh its virtues. Who is this book for? The audience is clearly liberal whites, and masochistic ones at that. Why masochistic? Because this book offers no way forward. It simply and repeatedly instructs its white readers on why they are racist and will always be racist. To "learn" this lesson is to parrot back what the author has told them, while backing it up with facts about American history and white privilege. Dialogue and emotional responses from trainees are not just disdained, they are seen as pervasive symptoms of racism. A person can read this polemic and gain an understanding of white culpability today and throughout history. But it provides no impetus to move forward, to create actual change. The book is a dead end.
Lessons learned should provide meaningful paths to the future. Better paths. Paths to protest, to repair, to dialogue, to activism, to legislation. But White Fragility exists in a vacuum, it ignores such potentialities. It only scolds. If you acknowledge your apparently inherent racism as a white person, it has done its job. Congratulations, racist. Now just shut up, there is nothing more for you to do.
As a trainer who trains people of all races to provide peer support to other people of all races; as an individual who identifies variously as mixed-race, Filipino, and white; and as a professional in a leadership position at my agency who wants to encourage openness and reflection from my nervous white colleagues on the topics of racial equity and anti-racism... this book was utterly useless to me. This is a reductive book in all ways.
1.5 stars, rounded down.
PROGRESS NOTES
(quotes from the book are in italics)
> Well I like the forward, maybe because I'm mixed-race and she seems to be bending over backwards to understand me: Multiracial people, because they challenge racial constructs and boundaries, face unique challenges in a society in which racial categories have profound meaning.
But anyway, on to reading some white-bashing written by a white person! That always amuses me.
STOP, MARK. You want to get something from this, you need to adjust your bad attitude! Keep an open mind, Mark!
> LOL: I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.
- Um, no.
Liberals & progressives (like myself) are used to being bashed by conservatives, Republicans, the deplorables, but I've always found the most skilled bashers of liberals & progressives to be other liberals & progressives. Such a masochistic breed! People with empathy know the softest spots, and where to hit the hardest. The ignorance of that comment about white progressives sorta took my breath away. Not a great start.
> This part is true, and I'm seeing this now as I've seen it before, in discussions we're currently having at my very progressive agency: Being seen racially is a common trigger of white fragility, and thus, to build our stamina, white people must face the first challenge: naming our race.
- DiAngelo's definition of "Individualism" is remarkably self-serving. Particularly in how she posits it as an ideology that props up racism. I think I get where she's coming from: she wants white people to focus on one particular trait - whiteness - and not on how all people are individuals because they are the intersection of many different identities. And there's truth to the idea that whites are afforded an individuality that POC are often unable to attain in group settings and in representations in the media. But I'm not loving how she refuses to see complexity of identity as a valid way to understand how different people engage with the world, and how she would rather look at all whites as simply white. Although I understand that not wanting to look at the complexity of individuals means your message will be very easy to package and sell! In general, DiAngelo is quite comfortable with generalizing - she's a sociologist after all. But doesn't she realize that she's doing the exact same thing to white people that POC have complained about being done to us/them for approximately forever? And how has that worked out?
> This feels true: If we “look white,” we are treated as white in society at large. For example, people of southern European heritage, such as Spanish or Portuguese, or from the former Soviet Union ... are likely to have a stronger sense of ethnic identity than will someone of the same ethnicity whose ancestors have been here for generations. Yet although their internal identity may be different, if they “pass” as white, they will still have a white experience externally. If they look white, the default assumption will be that they are white and thus they will be responded to as white.
- I do have a challenge with this idea of a "white experience" because class and other factors are not being taken into consideration. Is there a monolithic "white experience"? I should ask some white people! As a mixed-race person, this sort of tribalism is hard for me to understand. But as a half-white person, perhaps I should just examine my own experiences. How often have I "passed"? And how would I even know, absent overt displays of racism towards me?
> This is ye olde collegiate definition of racism that I actually agree with: When I say that only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United States, only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over people of color. People of color do not have this power and privilege over white people.
- Earlier she mentioned that POC can be prejudiced just like whites, so that combined with her definition of racism makes sense to me. While anyone can "pre-judge" others, and discriminate against them, "racism" can only be exhibited by the race that holds the most power. But I wonder how she will link this definition to her basic idea that all whites are racist.
> Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm.
- I've railed against this in various reviews of modern genre novels, this white norm that occurs in settings where that doesn't make sense. In the novel Sand most explicitly. And still I persist in wondering: if the majority of the population in a given place is a certain race, wouldn't that race always be considered the norm? There's something true and also something so obvious, so meaningless about her definition of whiteness.
- She makes an interesting case for "white supremacy" to be seen as a political system, a system that includes everything from government to entertainment. If only by her use of stats to illustrate percentages of whites in positions of leadership. I can then compare those percentages to the actual percentage of white people in the US, which ends up being @ 87% whites in those positions vs. 73% of whites in the US population. Food for thought.
- I'm not in love with her example of a white mother shushing a child saying "Mommy, his skin is black!" as upholding the idea that black is a disability or less than white. Couldn't it be because Mommy doesn't want her kid to be othering another person?
- I was on-board with her definition of "aversive racism" as the kind of racism - although I would actually call it prejudice - practiced by people, consciously or unconsciously, when using coded language to describe black spaces. But I'm not so on-board with the example of a friend talking about a dangerous neighborhood meaning that that friend had a "horror of black spaces". I think there is clearly a potential racial corollary there, but at the same time this is too simplistic. To insist that the description of a neighborhood as "dangerous" is only about its blackness seems to be a self-serving way to turn what is a loaded statement - i.e. potentially prejudiced but also possibly about class systems - into a genuinely racist statement. So yeah, more generalizations.
> DiAngelo equates Being careful not to use racial terms or labels when people of color are present with Mimicking “black mannerisms and speech” and with actions like Avoiding contact (e.g., crossing a street or not going to a particular bar or club), Using code words to talk negatively about people of color, Occasional violence directed at people of color..
- These seem to me to be very different sorts of behavior, some being examples of prejudice or racism while others being a lot more complex. But hell, why not call them all "examples of racially conscious behavior" because that's the book I'm reading.
- The chapter HOW DOES RACE SHAPE THE LIVES OF WHITE PEOPLE? is the most sustained exploration of how white privilege is lived unconsciously that I've read so far in the book. Of course the last page diminishes all that came before by engaging in DiAngelo's typically lazy generalizations, but for the most part, this is really effective. I also love the idea of "white innocence". This all could be useful for me as a trainer - except I am almost always training people who identify as leftist, and they are usually already fully aware of how they (if they are white) benefit from being white. And so they appreciate my discussion of privilege more as a series of handy tips and reminders on how to be a better volunteer & person rather than as a launching point for cultural self-exploration. Because they've already done all that self-exploration, usually in college, and that's why they moved to the Bay Area in the first place. Well, that and those Big Tech greenbacks, of course. Gotta make that money if you wanna be a true coastal elite, amiright?
> If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I place myself on the “not racist” side, what further action is required of me? No action is required, because I am not a racist. Therefore, racism is not my problem; it doesn’t concern me and there is nothing further I need to do. This worldview guarantees that I will not build my skills in thinking critically about racism or use my position to challenge racial inequality.
- I question this cause & effect. Especially in light of the recent protests, but also in general. It seems to be admonishing binary thinking while actually engaging in it. If someone does not consider themselves racist, why then does this automatically mean they will not engage in anti-racism?
- Very interesting point about how "color-blind claims" (e.g. "I don't see race") and "color-celebrate claims" (e.g. "I have people of color in my family") both function as ways to exempt people from engaging in conversations about racism.
> No person of color whom I’ve met has said that racism isn’t at play in his or her friendships with white people.
- This was a somewhat shocking thing for me to read because this hasn't been my experience at all as a POC. Of course I've experienced racism, numerous times, but not from the words or deeds of actual friends. What makes me different from all the POC that DiAngelo has met? Is it because I'm mixed race? Am I just lucky, just ignorant, just benefiting from my mixed-race status, or is DiAngelo just stacking the deck? I honestly don't know.
- It's interesting to me that the author has so far (to page 112) only provided examples (during her experiences as a diversity trainer) of people who defiantly oppose what she is teaching them. Will there be any examples of her getting through to people, how she got through to them, how they improved, how workplaces became safer spaces for POC, etc? Or are all of these examples meant to say that white people will always fail at understanding their racist behavior, no matter what or how she tries to teach them? It's a curious use of her real life experiences. Is this a purposeful indictment of all white people or an inadvertent indictment of her own methods and ideologies as a diversity trainer? Or maybe she's just shy of talking about her accomplishments! Yes, let's say that, it's a better look.
- Ok, page 114 did make me smile with its mordantly amusing story of a young white woman whose co-workers were afraid she was having an actual heart attack after being criticized for making certain comments. But I still really wish there was a part 2 to that story, describing how DiAngelo ended up engaging this melodramatic young woman successfully. Did that part 2 ever happen? It would have been useful for me as a trainer and as a colleague interested in proactive dialogue with my white colleagues. But I suppose that's not the point of this book, which is apparently to just repeatedly provide examples of white fragility. *Sigh*
> Sweet Jesus, now DiAngelo has taken it upon herself to denounce the basic guidelines for building trust in a training as accommodations made to coddle white fragility:
• Don’t judge
• Don’t make assumptions
• Speak your truth
• Respect
- I dunno what to even say. It's like she perfectly understands white privilege but has no actual comprehension about how to reach people. Does she not understand that gathering people in a room and telling them all how wrong they are, and will always be, is not an effective mechanism for genuine change or understanding? Or that these guidelines have helped POC in trainings to also feel safe enough to express opinions and share experiences? Ugh!
- Ok I was prepared to hate this chapter entitled WHITE WOMEN’S TEARS. I've heard about DiAngelo's thoughts on this. But it does make some solid points: tears and other emotional displays can be a form of manipulation and they can shift focus away from the important topic at hand. That said, DiAngelo barely acknowledges the most frequent reason women (AND MEN) cry in these settings: because they are experiencing sorrow or pain over something they have learned about themselves, or are reacting to a story they are hearing that illustrates a terrible injustice or a painful experience. It is like the author does not really want to acknowledge the importance and necessity of empathy as a key to bridging divides.
- Last chapter finally features the book's sole example of a breakthrough from a white person who acknowledges their problematic behavior and gracefully accepts feedback, promising to learn from the experience. This white person is... Robin DiAngelo! I assume DiAngelo could think of no other examples to provide. LMAO
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Reading Progress
June 23, 2020
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Started Reading
June 23, 2020
– Shelved
June 24, 2020
– Shelved as:
guidebooks
June 24, 2020
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Finished Reading
August 26, 2021
– Shelved as:
sociopolitical
Comments Showing 1-50 of 112 (112 new)
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Jess
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Jun 24, 2020 05:45AM
Awesome review!
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Great analysis. :) And since I've read it, I keep running into the same problems with it as you have. All that proving a negative and self-hate extremism is rather self-defeating. In the end, I'm chalking this up to a "Oh, my, now isn't that interesting," book. It's not that she's wrong in many points, but how she skews it, is.
What book would you recommend for those topics?
I'm a white male and I found the book highly enlightening. I grew up in a lily white suburb about 10 minutes from Stanford. I don't even recall any Asian people in our town. My parents were highly conservative Roman Catholic Republicans. We liked William F. Buckley, watched Firing Line and read National Review. (If you haven't seen the debate between James Baldwin and Buckley online, check it out). So I grew up in a white bubble, with zero comprehension of what a black person might be dealing with. I went to the first racially integrated high school in the Bay Area. There was lots of conflict, but I did not have the means to understand what was behind it.
This book is not about guilt, but in trying to see beyond the end of one's nose. I drew upon some counseling background to figure out how to do that.
This is how it all started in America and I have not seen much improvement in my years of living here.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defco...
i loved this book, though i find too many reviewers are critiquing it based on a premise (or premises) that the book was not intending, or trying, to cover/analyze/investigate. it has a very limited scope and does what it set out to do quite well, in my opinion, which is only one of many.
Carmen wrote: "Great review!"Bradley wrote: "Great analysis. :) And since I've read it, I keep running into the same problems with it as you have. All that proving a negative and self-hate extremism is rather self-defeating...."
Jessi wrote: "Awesome review!"
Thank you Carmen, Bradley, and Jessi. Although so far at least, these are more notes than review - I want to mull over it more before writing a summary reaction. Not that my overall reaction will change: this is a 1 or 2 star book for me.
Maša wrote: "What book would you recommend for those topics?"I really wish I could tell you. This is far from my usual genre, so I'm no expert. I only chose this book because I had a physical copy from a giveaway, I thought it would be relevant to my work (it's not), and a number of my white & POC friends irl are reading it or have read it, and spoke highly of it.
The only modern writers I've read or listened to extensively on this topic are Chloé Valdary and Coleman Dowell. Just naming those two thinkers possibly betrays the libertarian streak I have in my progressivism. And although I connect with much of what they say, I am uncomfortable with Valdary's stance on Israel (which I find to be strangely uncritical) and Dowell's apparent opposition to affirmative action.
Both are young black writers who consider themselves progressives - despite what their critics may say - and who are saying things that fall outside of current racial discourse trends, so I'm happy to recommend them.
Michael wrote: "I'm a white male and I found the book highly enlightening. I grew up in a lily white suburb about 10 minutes from Stanford. I don't even recall any Asian people in our town. My parents were highly ..."Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your perspective. I also like your link - I have always found value in Zinn's writings.
I definitely agree that this book is not about guilt! Indeed it excoriates white guilt. (While of course banking on it, to provide that necessary white tears money.) I also have a distaste for white guilt.
I would be interested in hearing how you've applied DiAngelo's teachings in your real life.
Jim wrote: "i loved this book, though i find too many reviewers are critiquing it based on a premise (or premises) that the book was not intending, or trying, to cover/analyze/investigate. it has a very limited scope..."I agree that it has a very limited scope! I also agree with the last point you make in your own review, that this book would be of value to white people who think people of color are oppressing them. This book would certainly help them to rid themselves of that hilarious fallacy, if they came to it with an open mind.
I have mixed feelings about her historical perspective. I feel similarly about Ta-Nehisi Coates, although I admire his passion and anger (I was positively reminded of James Baldwin when reading some of his writings). I think that perspective is important, of course. History should be understood if the future is to be changed, an obvious point that many consciously overlook. However I also feel like their use of this country's horrific history of racism acts as a cudgel, as well as a crutch, rather than as a tool for how we as a country can realistically move forward. This is not to say that I disagree with their respective assessments of this country's repulsive past. Can't argue with facts!
I do have to acknowledge that I am not the intended audience, and that perhaps I approached the book hoping for guidance in my work, when there was no intention from the author to provide that guidance.
And all that said, if it helps even one white person to strive to be less racist (although DiAngelo herself would take issue with the idea that any white person could ever be "less racist")... then more power to the book! Certainly white people reading this book will not become more dangerous to POC.
Appreciate the intelligent response. I was worried I might seem like a jerk, but am happy you could parse my intent. Racism is fucked up, and white people made it so. I LOVE your point about Coates, equivocations aside, he is amazing. Reparations, anyone? Cheers to you, Mark!
Jim wrote: "Appreciate the intelligent response. I was worried I might seem like a jerk, but am happy you could parse my intent. ...Reparations, anyone?":) 'Tis my pleasure! I enjoy considering differing viewpoints, and also commonalities.
"Reparations" is such a scary word for people, and I think mainly because they don't understand how complex that idea actually is, and all the different things it could actually mean, and its potential for positive things and a proactive approach to change. It's like many are overlooking the base definition of the word - "repair" -which of course is something this country is sorely in need of.
Cheers!
Mark: Something of inestimable value to everyone in the U.S, whether they admit it or not, is our racial and ethnic diversity. The fact that Trump is trying to destroy that in the fictitious name of "the good old days of white America" is incredibly heinous.
We have not done justice toward those who suffered under slavery. It seems as if every time there's any step forward there's some hateful entity, including some versions of the SCOTUS, who want to reverse it. The Tulsa tragedy was, as much as anything, an attack on prosperous black people. The fact that black people could succeed in a way these white losers couldn't was seen as an outrage.
Another book I read, around the time I read White Fragility, is White Rage, which I highly recommend....
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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A few years ago, my wife and I took a trip to Japan. It turned out, in part, to be a lesson in what the U.S. would become if stopped immigration. There's a shortage of human staff in many fields and a country that is shrinking itself out of existence.
http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/es...
Michael wrote: "Something of inestimable value to everyone in the U.S, whether they admit it or not, is our racial and ethnic diversity. The fact that Trump is trying to destroy that in the fictitious name of..."In a way, I wish you had stated things that I had mixed feelings about, because then this reply would be longer! But I agree 100% with all of your points made in your post.
I will check out the GR page for White Rage (sounds familiar, but I don't think I've looked into it).
I am especially looking forward to reading your second link. Japan is a country that fascinates me for many reasons, including my love of Japanese entertainment and my past time living there as a child, due to growing up in a military family.
Well, I wasn't going to read it anyway, but now I can cite intellectually valid reasons for my dereliction of White Guilt. TYVM
Always a pleasure to be of service!
Certainly white people reading this book will not become more dangerous to POC.I'm afraid they can, if they take up the "soft bigotry of low expectations" and/or the "white savior complex".
One example: if you teach minority children that everything is stacked against them and only an appeal to the mercy of white people to make room for them will give them a chance to succeed in life - that takes away their individual agency and teaches a mindset which is actively harmful to these kids.
Wow, awesome review, thanks for taking the time to post this one!
This review popped up in my thread and while I'm not sure I'm the target audience for this entirely (White Aussie living in Japan), you summed up one of my biggest concerns about books like this.It's one thing to zero in and analyse a problem, but if no potential solutions are offered going forward, then to me, stuff like this just seems like misery-porn for angry people.
Lauren Michele Jackson, a lit professor in Chicago, has made some very compelling cases against the book and its lack of utility or foundational validity. I attended an "anti-racism" workshop held by my congregation last year that I did find valuable, but also grated against the notion of "white fragility" as a governing concept when it was presented, without entirely being able to articulate why it didn't sit well with me. If it helps somebody break through basic discomfort discussing or mentioning race I won't discourage them of that, but such people often seem to have a fairly insufferable few years ahead of them during which they uncritically adopt the language and theoretical underpinnings of exactly one source that takes any question regarding it as proof of its unalterable truth and therefore necessity to further devote themselves to recursively immersing in that book's teachings and self-flagellation.That being said, if this is what it looks like when the pendulum swings out away from apathy and outright denial of racism in the US, I can live with that.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019...
https://mobile.twitter.com/proseb4bro...
Maya wrote: "Certainly white people reading this book will not become more dangerous to POC."I'm afraid they can, if they take up the "soft bigotry of low expectations" and/or the "white savior complex". ..."
You make an interesting point, thank you.
I had to give your examples some thought - well specifically the first, as I wasn't sure what was meant by your phrase "low expectations". I do feel that the idea of having lower expectations for communities of color is easily conflated with reparative measures that have the goal of increasing racial equity, e.g. what affirmative action tried (and failed) to correct. Or conflated with hiring practices like my agency's, that seek to create diversity in staff in order to better reflect our surrounding communities and our client base (i.e. more staff of color are needed). Many critics have conflated the two. But in the end, I reject that conflation and I don't think that's what you intended to mean nor do I think that's what that phrase means. The idea of lowered expectations for POC is of course an idea rooted in condescension, colonialism, paternalism, and infantilization - all things that are easy for me to reject - rather than in increasing diversity. Just took me a minute to get there!
The second example is of course straight up easy to see as toxic, rooted as it is, but even more transparently, in all of the things I just mentioned. In this book's very slight defense (I do not want to be put in the position of defending a book I gave 1 star!), DiAngelo's teachings do not encourage that. In fact she teaches the opposite: do nothing except realize and reflect upon your racism. Both are equally reprehensible to me.
And so one of the shocking gaps in this book is that it does not even bother to suggest to its ostensibly white audience what they should be doing with their new-found "understanding" to improve or even dismantle the systems around them. Other than to accept criticism about their racist mindset as they continue gazing into their various navels. The book encourages a passivity which I find to be highly objectionable. I wonder what the author would think about the mixed race protests that have rocked this nation recently.
Paula wrote: "Wow, awesome review, thanks for taking the time to post this one!"thanks!
Steven wrote: "It's one thing to zero in and analyse a problem, but if no potential solutions are offered going forward, then to me, stuff like this just seems like misery-porn for angry people...."Indeed. This may be of some use to white communities who think that people of color oppress them, as was well-said by a previous commenter in this thread. That was clearly the majority of DiAngelo's trainees within her diversity workshops, at least based on all of her examples. However she is not aiming this book at them, she is overtly aiming it at the white progressives who she laughably posits do the most daily damage to POC. It's a curious decision: she receives strong push-back from her stubborn past trainees who rejected what she was trying to teach (which is itself a comment on her teaching methodology) and then she turns around and tries to sell the same lesson plan to an entirely different white demographic (one that will more easily accept her lessons, because it is the nature of the true progressive to always be in learning mode). Because DiAngelo considers all whites to be the same, any lesson she could have learned from her pre-book experience is now SWOOSH lost entirely due to the success of this book and the willingness of its liberal audience to turn it into a bestseller.
And so it becomes, as you say, misery porn for white progressives. However I do think that is a marginally better result than what occurred during her apparently ineffective diversity seminars for less-progressive whites (I say that because she presents no "success stories"). If only because I've read a number of glowing reviews - including by Goodreads friends who have my full respect - that mentioned how transformative this book was in that it opened their eyes to ideas of privilege and to the racism embedded deeply within American history.
Now it rests upon them to use that knowledge proactively and actually do something with it. DiAngelo is not interested in that. Readers who admire this book will have to move past the silent stasis that the book implicitly encourages.
Sarah wrote: "Lauren Michele Jackson, a lit professor in Chicago, has made some very compelling cases against the book and its lack of utility or foundational validity. I attended an "anti-racism" workshop held..."Thank you for the links and for referencing a person who I'm not familiar with. I will look into Lauren Michele Jackson.
One of the more infuriating things about this book is that it is basically a big Kafkatrap. Racist if you agree, even more racist if you don't agree. Understanding is important. Action is even more important. I would actually prefer action without complete understanding, if it comes down to it.
I definitely share your frustrations about that strangely entitled anti-entitlement and tunnel vision of many of this book's supporters. This is a snapshot of my Facebook feed. Drives me up the wall.
This insufferable rhetoric is also present in POC adherents to the book, including some of my colleagues. But that's between me and my POC peeps to discuss! I'll say no more on that.
That being said, if this is what it looks like when the pendulum swings out away from apathy and outright denial of racism in the US, I can live with that.
I must regretfully agree. I just have hopes for better. I am confident it can be better than that. Unfortunately, this book is of no use in making it better than that.
mark wrote: "Steven wrote: "It's one thing to zero in and analyse a problem, but if no potential solutions are offered going forward, then to me, stuff like this just seems like misery-porn for angry people......."That's fair. I guess it just concerns me, because if you metaphorically kick someone into the dirt and don't offer them a hand up, they might grow to resent you and fail to learn from you. Instead, the next hand-up they might take might be from someone like - to use a hyperbole - Richard Spencer.
Steven wrote: "That's fair. I guess it just concerns me, because if you metaphorically kick someone into the dirt and don't offer them a hand up, they might grow to resent you and fail to learn from you. Instead, the next hand-up they might take might be from someone like - to use a hyperbole - Richard Spencer."Oh I agree completely. However those individuals and communities are not the target audience for this book. By that I means those white individuals and communities in which systemic class inequities and capitalism and lack of empathy towards their struggles encourage nothing except anger and resentment and apathy. (I realize I generalize; even the most well-off suburban teen could embrace Richard Spencer, and they have. But they are not the base of that section of American society.) Similarly, those individuals and communities who are anti-diversity efforts in general are definitely not the target of this book either. Neither kind of person or community are likely to embrace let alone attempt a connection with this book's ideas in the first place. (And for an example of the latter, see the top-rated 1 star review of this book.)
In some ways, I get it: approaching white communities and individuals who do not identify as liberal or progressive - who have not invited her into their workplaces or have bought her book or who shell out cash for her seminars - would require a skill set (and an interest) that the author clearly does not have. That's fine, we all have our things. Although it does grate on me that the audience that she has chosen is also the audience most likely to be able to afford her lessons and is the audience most open to self-flagellation, while also being the audience that should ostensibly be the most interested in systemic change. She shoots duck in a barrel.
Mark, I enjoy your nuanced takes a lot, both in the review and the comments. I basically agree with the differentiation you laid out. What I was trying to get at is a lot more complicated than what I can type up right now, but I’m seeing more minorities getting tired of being forced into the role of the “noble victim”, so that other people – who seem to be actually well off richer people – can use them either for empty virtue signaling to feel better about themselves without doing anything helpful, or, worse, engage in well-meaning but counter-productive actions which unintentionally make the situation for minorities worse (arguably affirmative action could be given as an example here). Here’s a recent article on the subject and Jason Riley wrote a whole book on this btw. Since you know Chloe and Coleman, I assume you’re familiar with John McWhorter and Glenn Loury as well. If not, I recommend their weekly(?) podcast. They fairly regularly talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.
The idea of lowered expectations for POC is of course an idea rooted in condescension, colonialism, paternalism, and infantilization
In the case of the left-wing people, it would be the latter two and I do think most are well-intentioned and don’t actually realize that they might be treating minorities as helpless children rather than true equals. And obviously, not everybody does this either.
I do not want to be put in the position of defending a book I gave 1 star!
Sorry xD The fact that you can do it speaks in your favor though.
that strangely entitled anti-entitlement
Oh that’s a good phrasing. From what I see, they are just so completely convinced that they got it right. I’m always skeptic of people who think they know the truth and become unable to question their own assumptions. With this current subgroup of the left, some have a rather arrogant way of lecturing or outright dismissing minorities who disagree with them, which has made me wary of the whole movement.
they might grow to resent you and fail to learn from you. Instead, the next hand-up they might take might be from someone like - to use a hyperbole - Richard Spencer
It may not be hyperbole at all. Spencer has said that he’s waiting for the white progressives to flip. The worldviews of the “intersectional left” and the “identitarian right” are aligned insofar that it’s “white people vs the rest of the world” and “white people are dominant”. They differ fundamentally in whether “being dominant” is “good” or “bad”, but they reinforce each other and Thomas Chatterton Williams has warned of this for some time now.
Maya wrote: "Mark, I enjoy your nuanced takes a lot, both in the review and the comments. I basically agree with the differentiation you laid out. What I was trying to get at is a lot more complicated than what..."Well what do you know? I might be onto something :/
And Jesus, that article is chilling.
Based on your review I can entirely see why this book is so popular with white people: It makes them feel mildly bad about themselves (I'm assuming a large number of white people come from backgrounds where feeling bad about one's self is on some level regarded as penitential) while at the same time letting them congratulate themselves for having read it, and doesn't demand that they take any action.
Maya wrote: "Mark, I enjoy your nuanced takes a lot, both in the review and the comments...."Thank you! I feel the same way about you and others who have posted on this thread. I love dialogue and as much as I love connecting with people, I equally love sharing differences of opinion. Plus so far no trolls on this thread! We'll see how long that lasts. I'm used to getting trolls from both the right and the left on certain of my reviews, so hopes aren't particularly high.
I’m seeing more minorities getting tired of being forced into the role of the “noble victim”
Yep, same here. Always have. There's such a balancing act in ensuring racial justice & equity while not falling into a trap of holding up any group (POC, women, LGBTQ) as infallible. There's not only condescension there when it happens, it creates another falsely monolithic culture, much as what DiAngelo is doing with whites in her book.
Although I mention she doesn't encourage white messiah complex, in a way she encourages what you've mentioned: the idea that a POC is the only person who should be having dynamic thoughts on race, because POC are the only ones capable of true understanding, whatever that even means. This is objectionable to me because it will inevitably result in saintly caricatures (The Green Mile etc). It is objectionable to me because it assumes that POC all have one opinion, perspective, experiences. It is also objectionable to me because it forces whites to be passive recipients of information rather than active parties in dialogue and action.
I'm reminded of a recent John McWhorter quote where he says that to disagree with a black person's perspective on race should not automatically be considered racist, or something along those lines. I've been saying a version of this for years, but regarding all POC (and also regarding gender & sexuality). Unfortunately have had some blowback from time to time, mainly from other mixed-race individuals like myself - but that's what happens when any paradigm is challenged, and one-size-fits-all ideas are dismissed.
(arguably affirmative action could be given as an example here). Here’s a recent article on the subject and Jason Riley wrote a whole book on this btw.
I enjoyed that article, thank you. I agreed with much but definitely not all of it. As far as Jason Riley goes... not sure he's up my alley. I shouldn't judge until I read him, but my impression has been conservatism disguised as idealism. I come from a different place. Despite having a strong libertarian streak on the one hand, and espousing moderate values in the workplace to counter divisively radical ideas (mainly around who my nonprofit should accept money from) on the other hand... I primarily consider myself an old school progressive. Which appears, at first glance at least, to mean that I will be exceedingly annoyed by Riley!
Affirmative action is an interesting idea for me on a personal level, both as someone who could have been a recipient back in the day, and as a person whose feelings have dramatically shifted over time. When I was younger (from high school on to my early 30s), I was very much opposed. For many of the reasons that have been mentioned by you and by me in our posts. I purposely left my race out of college applications so as not to be a beneficiary, and I had a lot of angst about being seen as someone who benefited throughout college. Possibly this feeling started because I was a POC in an Orange County high school that was overwhelmingly white, which for me meant that I often highlighted my Filipino side as a show of pride while also highlighting the fact that since I was clearly so much smarter than most of the people around me, my being half-POC should not even be taken into consideration for college admission, my grades and superior writing ability should be the sole determinants (my ego was a thing of wonder back then).
Since then, I've shifted left on the topic. This shift came at some point after I left corporate work to work in social services. Not sure what actually caused the shift, but probably because I was now working directly with low-income individuals of color in the areas that they lived in (Bayview/Hunter's Point, TL, Portrero Hill housing, if you are familiar with SF). Eventually I realized, with many sighs, that I was fine with being less rigorous about these sorts of things as long as demographic equity was achieved, or at the very least made a centralized goal.
So if there is x-percentage of blacks or browns in CA, I want to see that percentage reflected in work places and in the college system, etc. I don't think such workers or students should be held to lower standards, I just want to see them there, to be represented and to be given the same opportunities. If that means that additional time & money must be spent to support those individuals in succeeding in these settings, so be it. Also happy if that happens with whites who come from impoverished backgrounds as well, but my focus is on POC, being the literal minority (at least for now).
I think due to being a biracial person, I feel particularly strongly about the need for diverse voices and cultures in places of work and education. My experience is that diversity leads to greater intellectual rigor because having different experiences and perspectives are normalized (rather than assimilated) and so processes and outcomes are challenged at every step. Flexibility and open-mindedness to new ideas are also normalized.
Of course, all this is now only theoretical to me now, since affirmative action no longer has a place in CA! Sad lol.
Since you know Chloe and Coleman, I assume you’re familiar with John McWhorter and Glenn Loury as well. If not, I recommend their weekly(?) podcast. They fairly regularly talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Ah yes. I admire them both, although I often disagree with Loury's ideas (particularly on affirmative action!) and feel a greater connection with both Chloe and Coleman. But I love Glenn Loury because I love all square pegs. I feel an affinity with him despite often disagreeing with him.
With Chloe, I find a stronger connection because her value system mirrors mine in how to design a training that speaks to all participants of all races while centralizing the individual and the individual experience. With Coleman, it is harder to say. I just feel that he says a lot of things that I've been saying and thinking for years, except he says them more eloquently and his thought process is so wonderfully logical.
Of course McWhorter is incredible, but it is perhaps due to his chosen field, linguistics, that I haven't read more of him. I try to be interested in that topic because I like words and I like writing, but I can't summon interest that's not there. That said, he's great and I especially love his sneaky sense of humor. I am going to watch that youtube video today, because after listening to the first few minutes, I already see that he mirrors my feelings on police brutality issues going beyond race into what should be seen as an issue for all races. Although I think that starting with police treatment of blacks is a perfectly fine starting point - whatever gets people to the conversation works for me.
This actually circles back to what I liked about the article you linked to: the variable use of calling out looters and rioters as mainly being white or mainly being black, depending on the goal of the person speaking. This has annoyed me to no end recently. Any person who watched a range of live feeds across the country should be able to see that looters and rioters literally came in all colors, as did protesters. It is so transparent what people are doing when they focus on protesters, rioters, and looters as mainly being of one color.
Also have to say that I appreciated the article because she uses a statistic about suicide rates & white people that I also use in my trainings. I guess it's all about me and my trainings!
It's good talking to you, Maya. Cheers!
There is A LOT of heavy lifting you did in this review! Excellent work!! I feel like I can pick up your frustration with this book and her style of delivery that must drive so many away. Thank you for keeping your voice clear and steady while exposing the flaws. :)
Jennie wrote: "There is A LOT of heavy lifting you did in this review! Excellent work!! I feel like I can pick up your frustration with this book and her style of delivery that must drive so many away. Thank you ..."And thank you, Jennie!
Mir wrote: "Based on your review I can entirely see why this book is so popular with white people: It makes them feel mildly bad about themselves (I'm assuming a large number of white people come from backgrounds where feeling bad about one's self is on some level regarded as penitential) while at the same time letting them congratulate themselves for having read it, and doesn't demand that they take any action."
I think this is completely true. Your word "penitential" really describes it all.
However, I do want to say in defense of my Goodreads friends who truly learned from this book, there are those two chapters that provide an extraordinary amount of interesting information, and I suppose there are handy tips throughout the book. It feels wrong, in a way, giving this book 1 star because of those value-adds. I fear that my perspective may also be due to the liberal bubble I am in, and the progressive people I have surrounded myself with, so that much of what was valuable to others felt rote and obvious to me. And that said, it would also feel more wrong to give this book anything but 1 star, because the book is literally aimed at my liberal bubble. And of course my overwhelming feeling towards it is repulsion, because of everything I've mentioned in the review and this thread.
Coleman Hughes explains far more succinctly than I did why exactly White Fragility is a trash book:https://youtu.be/tEfDwbprIWM?t=633
Lmao props for having the patience and eloquence to break down why it sucked 🤙
Juan, your terse review is perfect.
"The book is a dead end."could not have said this any better. i love your review as well, mark, because you're hitting the nail on the head. and your progress notes are incredibly detailed & damn funny to read.
the last one killed me. i hadn't even realized that robin diangelo shows only herself as The Good White Person :')
DiAngelo's special snowflake game is on-point!
I agree! I googled her and found this article that actually provides some suggestions in how to take steps to change, which is much more informative than just reading/listening to the same thing over and over again - white people are all racist no matter what situation they’re in. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873375...
Good review, Mark. My parents were somewhat racist but I have never been since childhood. No one agrees with me about almost anything in American life, which I find interesting and not the least bit troublesome. Racism never occurred to me because souls have no skin. These are young souls working out their frustrations and places in the world and racism is just another side effect of the human condition-- which is foremost that of profound stupidity. But they need to experience it in order to grow.
Steven wrote: "Well what do you know? I might be onto something :/"If it's any comfort, at least your instincts are good? ^^; Also, the fact that there are people like the author of that article who are pushing back makes me hopeful. And maybe more and more people will start listening.
Mark, well said with the different objections you spell out … I could just put my signature under your comment, since I basically agree. So, instead, I’ll focus on the parts where we may differ or where I’m unsure, because that’s maybe more interesting?
There's not only condescension there when it happens, it creates another falsely monolithic culture, much as what DiAngelo is doing with whites in her book. (…) It is objectionable to me because it assumes that POC all have one opinion, perspective, experiences.
Right. Imho the whole conflict that is unfolding throughout the west currently is at its core not so much about left vs right, but about collectivism vs individualism. I’m not sure whether she is sincere or not (she makes a lot of money from this), but listening to DiAngelo talk about the “white collective” like it’s some kind of spiritual entity floating about and speaking through the mouths of “white people” is actually creepy. And the idea that only white people value the individual is preposterous.
As far as Jason Riley goes (...) my impression has been conservatism disguised as idealism.
I actually only know Riley from the moderation of this event, and the book title stuck with me because … it’s so mean ;) Haven’t looked into his work beyond that, but my impression is that he is in fact a conservative?
Despite having a strong libertarian streak (…) I primarily consider myself an old school progressive. Which appears, at first glance at least, to mean that I will be exceedingly annoyed by Riley!
Heh, something to keep in mind for the next critical read then? ;)
Affirmative action (…)
Personally I don’t have a strong opinion. In general, I’m not opposed to policies intended to lift up marginalized groups, but doing it in the form of quotas feels wrong to me insofar that I wouldn’t want to benefit from such a mechanism myself, for all the reasons you laid from your younger self ;) I understand it comes from a good place, but still feels condescending. Well, it doesn’t exist in any of the countries I frequent anyway, so my interest is mostly theoretical. Coleman formulates a a good critique as far as I can tell. He talks about the case of California as well.
my ego was a thing of wonder back then
Haha, it’s better to have too much of an ego than too little though. especially if you’re a minority.
Eventually I realized, with many sighs, that I was fine with being less rigorous about these sorts of things as long as demographic equity was achieved, or at the very least made a centralized goal.
Yes, I understand the sentiment and i probably even agree with your more detailed take on it. But, in this case, if we consider a real world situation, I’m curious as to how you feel about “achieving demographic equity” conflicting with the interests of asian-americans? Considering their demographic percentage, they are overrepresented in higher education, STEM and silicon valley. From what I understand asian-americans are currently in direct conflict with the left-wing local governments of NY and california over such issues. I’ve not looked into the details and the most in depth info I have is from Glenn Loury’s discussion with Wesley Yang. It seems like a very complicated situation overall and it does basically come down to the ever-present question of how you reconcile the different interests of all groups involved in your society. so I’m just wondering what you make of it, if you have a take. Sorry if it’s too off topic though.
With Chloe, I find a stronger connection because her value system mirrors mine in how to design a training that speaks to all participants of all races while centralizing the individual and the individual experience.
Chloe is great because she is committed to defending humanism and individualism and not dehumanizing people of any group. America very much needs people like her right now. Coleman on the other hand, he’s too smart and thoughtful for a 24-year-old, it’s almost annoying.
Although I think that starting with police treatment of blacks is a perfectly fine starting point - whatever gets people to the conversation works for me.
It is definitely getting people to the conversation, but then the conversation needs to be allowed to happen. “defund the police” is not a conversation xD I think you’ll enjoy also John Wood’s work on this, if you don’t know him already. “Starting conversations” is his thing.
This Twitter thread may interest you as it seems to have similar criticisms of this book and suggests others that might fit more what you're looking for: https://twitter.com/RheaBoydMD/status...
Connie wrote: "I agree! I googled her and found this article that actually provides some suggestions in how to take steps to change, which is much more informative than just reading/listening to the same thing over and over again - white people are all racist no matter what situation they’re in...."I did find some things of value in that article. I think in particular her advice that to attempt to understand other voices & perspectives, one should read and listen to those voices & perspectives. That should be a central point that she repeats again and again. Otherwise this book becomes, potentially, the beginning and the end of the discussion. DiAngelo should have made this point more thoroughly in her book. But at least she is clearly saying it now.
This is also interesting:
It's inevitable that I will have blind spots. ... And so I'm going to focus my energy on how I've been shaped by the system, but not if.
But also problematic in that it speaks to the primary issue I had with this book, as a progressive. Namely, this is not where energy should be focused. Understanding that we've been shaped by many things (including but not only "the system") is but recognizing the door. Recognizing the shape of a closed door is not expending energy. Reading White Fragility in a book club or because your workplace has now mandated it as a part of your training is also not expending energy. One still has to open the door and walk through it. That progression requires actual energy.
Unfortunately, just as I was beginning to have some slight hope for DiAngelo, she turned my (slight) smile upside down with her response to the questions "How do I talk to other white people about racism?" and "What do I do?"
To the first question, she defaults to one of her most useless arguments, one that is ever-present in the book: the questioner shouldn't even be asking that question because it's not about "other" it's about "us". Okay fine, it's about us. But that is not answering the goddamn question, it's encouraging more of that navel-gazing stasis. She makes a detestable assumption that the questioner doesn't already understand that it's about "us". If a white person wants advice about how to talk about racism to other white people - from a person who purports to be an expert on this topic - then they should receive actual suggestions. They should not be receiving a condescending trap based upon semantics in return. And this is what she does throughout her blasted book.
Her response to the second question - "What can I do?" - is even more objectionable and infuriating because it is basically that impatient response that a person gives because they feel they don't want to spend the time giving actual answers due to the resources out there. Basically, she says "Google it, dumbass".
This is ridiculous. People pay for her to come and teach them. She has positioned herself as an authority of some sort. I have an expectation of people whose services I've paid for and who deem themselves an authority to tell me basic next steps about the topic that they are being paid to present on and that they supposedly have expertise on.
She says the information is out there, but it actually is not, at least not widely. The information that is out there is mainly that... information. Information about statistics that we should know. Information about history, about privilege. Information about how people who are not white experience life and how history and systems have impacted them. But information about what an individual can specifically do, about what an agency can specifically do, what a community can do - actual action steps - is not so widely disseminated. It is like she refuses to see the difference between process and outcome.
As I mention in my review, DiAngelo refuses to provide any paths forward. She does not weigh in on protest or activism, on dialogue and empathy, on changing standards and repairing broken systems and enacting legislation. It is clear to me that she does not provide those paths because she hasn't thought about them. I can't help but to then take that next logical step and think that the reason she is not providing potential next steps is because she doesn't actually care about those next steps.
I'm hot about this because I am experiencing a lighter version of this stasis in my talks with colleagues. All many of them want to do is listen, if they're white, or talk, if they're POC. I get the impression they think I'm rushing them if I get impatient with silence or circular monologues and want to talk about action steps. Also, a big part of this for me on a personal/professional level, is that there are tangible next steps that can be discussed. But actual action is scary and also feels too real when people still want to stay in process mode. It's also safer there. It's always safer to contemplate than it is to do. When does process mode end and when do people summon up the nerve to actually try to make change happen?
She is what is known as a Process Queen. Terminally so. And she inspires this behavior in others.
Jonathan wrote: "Good review, Mark. My parents were somewhat racist but I have never been since childhood. No one agrees with me about almost anything in American life, which I find interesting..."Thanks for your post, Jonathan.
It made me realize that I actually did not respond to DiAngelo's central ideas about white racism and privilege in my review. I'd adjust my review but I am pretty much at the max character count for reviews - I only have 1 character left!
My personal opinion is that NO, not every white person is automatically racist. The idea is laughable to me. Do white people often benefit from systemic or institutional racism? Of course. Although I would position it as less that they benefit and more that POC suffer from such things. I also think that all races are not encouraged to grow due to such things. And so systemic & institutional racism impacts all races, but of course most drastically POC. And not all POC equally, either.
I think to call all white people automatically racist is lamentable because it does not encourage dialogue or potential change. But much more importantly to me, it reduces the actual power of the word "racist". I will reserve that word for people who actively take advantage of systemic or institutional racism and I will reserve that word for people who actively maintain and promote the idea of certain races being less than other races. Maybe this is old-fashioned of me. But if on the one hand I call all white people racist and on the other I call the alt-right & Vox Day & Richard Spencer racist, then this powerful word is diluted. I am throwing a pillow, not a punch, at the actual instigators and practitioners of physically harmful behaviors. What should I then be calling people who actively encourage inequality and who physically attack people due to their race? Physical Racists? Big Mouth Racists? Super-Racists? Extra Extra Extra Racists?
I do think that all white people are prejudiced. I also think that all POC are prejudiced. This is a part of the human condition. Everyone "pre-judges" people for many reasons, and we should strive against that. But what should be understood by Americans at least is that POC who are prejudiced are still living in a system where they are in the minority and where it is statistically proven that they occupy less positions of authority & power than non-POC. Their prejudice literally has less automatic power and authority over others than the prejudices of a white person.
I do believe there is such a thing as "white privilege". I also think that "privilege" does not equal "white privilege". I've been seeing some sloppy conflating of the two ideas. There are many kinds of privilege and every person has some sort of privilege. I am privileged right now in my ability to spend time talking at my leisure about racism. In my time as a trainer, I've found that the most successful way to reach people unfamiliar with the idea of "white privilege" is to talk about the ways that all people have some sort of privilege.
Jonathan, I don't want you to think I'm arguing against you on these topics. I am literally just using this space to name my own thoughts and feelings. But I do want to respond to one of the things you've said:
Racism never occurred to me because souls have no skin.
I think this means you are both open-minded and very lucky! Other people, including myself, have not been so lucky, because the color of my skin and the knowledge that I am half-Filipino caused people to look at my skin rather than my soul. That is unfortunately the reality for many people of color. Which is of course frustrating because why should amount of melanin be the sole determinant of who a person is?
I think one of the dangers of actively feeling as if one has never been prejudiced is that it causes people to think they are "colorblind" when it comes to race. Which is a patently false and even dangerous idea. Of course one can see color, and so one can see if a person is lighter or darker skinned. And that's how it should be. Amount of melanin should never be the sole determinant of who a person is. But it is a factor, a part of their identity. Color of skin is often related to culture and to how an individual has experienced the world, and those things are important and central to identity. Being "colorblind" is actually making everyone the same, when the world is full of differences that should be embraced. I want people to see my color and to know that that color has meaning for me. Most importantly, when someone says "I don't see race" then how would they ever be able to see racism?
Anyway, all that said, I appreciate where you are coming from. It sounds like a place of openness, despite what you dealt with growing up.
I have more responses to other comments on this thread, but I think I need to take a break and get back to my Sunday pleasure reading. Man I'm long-winded!
I think everyone will read this book (and any book for that matter) in their own way, remember, impact > intention. Although you may not have learned from this book what you hoped for, it may help others in their journey of education. Thanks for the insight though Mark!
Lisa wrote: "Damn! That's one hell of a review! Excellent."Thanks Lisa!
Kasia wrote: "I think everyone will read this book (and any book for that matter) in their own way..."
I certainly can't argue with that! Cheers, Kasia
Cassandra wrote: "Thank you for sharing your notes as well as review. I bought the audio book thinking it was something else. I will review the chapters you suggest but prioritize different books on discussion..."'Tis my pleasure!
I am mainly talking about the first 6 sections in Chapter 4: How Does Race Shape the Life of White People. These parts can function as an interesting experiential exercise for those unfamiliar with the concept of white privilege. The rest of the chapter is more problematic. I do think the section on White Innocence is fascinating, but also deeply flawed. And I think her bullet point summary at the end of the chapter are basically easy generalizations lacking any nuance, and so for me they lack any value as well.
I am also specifically talking about a paragraph in the section "The Perception of Race" in Chapter 2. I will just quote it:
When slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, whiteness remained profoundly important as legalized racist exclusion and violence against African Americans continued in new forms. To have citizenship—and the rights citizenship imbued—you had to be legally classified as white. People with nonwhite racial classifications began to petition the courts to be reclassified. Now the courts were in the position to decide who was white and who was not. For example, Armenians won their case to be reclassified as white with the help of a scientific witness who claimed they were scientifically “Caucasian.” In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that the Japanese could not be legally white, because they were scientifically classified as “Mongoloid.” A year later, the court stated that Asian Indians were not legally white, even though they were also scientifically classified as “Caucasian.” To justify these contradictory rulings, the court stated that being white was based on the common understanding of the white man. In other words, people already seen as white got to decide who was white.
Except for that last sentence, I think she is essentially summing up an article from the Yale Law Journal. Still, this is important historical information of which many are not aware.
Racheal wrote: "This Twitter thread may interest you as it seems to have similar criticisms of this book and suggests others that might fit more what you're looking for: https://twitter.com/RheaBoydMD/status......"
Thank you Racheal! This is super useful and I appreciate you posting it. Also, RheaBoydMD is pretty fabulous, I enjoyed checking out her Twitter feed.
I will repost the books she mentioned:
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe L. Moraga
One of my staff used quotes and examples from Medical Apartheid during his cultural awareness section of our training, to powerful effect.
Maya wrote: "Mark, well said with the different objections you spell out …..."Your post and questions fascinated & challenged me, in all the good ways, and gave me much food for thought! But I am going to take a race break and come back to responding tomorrow, hopefully.
Of course, DiAngelo would posit that it is impossible for me to ever take a break from considering race and that even wanting such a break is incontrovertible proof of my innate racism. Alas! :(
Good Review!The Racist assumption that only one Race can be Racist is probably the most damaging myth in America and the West today. And yet one that is easily refuted by the most basic of critique. Yet another word whose definition is changed to divide (and probably conquer) us in the end game. The easly refuted 'Racism is Power plus Prejudice' Lie was pushed as a narrative when a Black Man was in Fact the Most Powerful Man in the United States(Therefore the World). Not only is that a Direct Contradiction to this, but all one has to do is look around and see Black People in Power, making decisions that affect and help dictate America. Oprah is like Bill O'Really(intentionally misspelled) X 100.(and that is probably low balling) While there are easily 100 million white americans who have no power and are Utterly voiceless(In a age where Identity Politics is King)
White Privilege is much the same(Everything You were Taught about Race is Wrong) For instance why in a White Privilege Nation are Whites taught that Pride in ones Race is Bad(but they are considerede Bad if they do not accept that Other Races should have Pride) This is again a Direct Contradiction. And a Very easily acknowledged one.
And stating whites are afforded the right to not be Monolithic is stated in a dishonest way as well. Whites are more diverse but only because because it(was) accepted that there are two sides (Broken down as left and Right Politics) The problem is that the MSM System is attacking the side that isn't for Anti-White Identity Politics. (This is why a middle Party needs to be firmly established). But Blacks are afforded the same opportunity, only it is well established that the system will attack one as a Race Traitor(Uncle Tom) if you choose the Wrong Side.
All this destroys actual Liberalism and the Fundamental Believe in the Individual. You can Play along, As long as you Agree with Group Think, otherwise the Group will Condemn You.
If one actually states the group that is by far the biggest victim of Said Police Abuse should have their Group Represented and that their Lives Matter (rather you view the victims as Angels or Demons) than you would be looked at sternly. Which is a Direct Contradiction of stating they are actually against something but more likely they are just viewing what they can thru their own color biased lens.
Just Mentioning 'Diveristy of Thought' will also get you looked at funny(by people who state they Rejoice in Diversity)
This is why Hypocrisy is the Great Disease of the West today. And why the Whole Truth and the Bigger Picture matter more today than maybe it ever has.
Good Luck!!!
mark wrote: "Of course, DiAngelo would posit that it is impossible for me to ever take a break from considering race and that even wanting such a break is incontrovertible proof of my innate racism. Alas! :("Your Asian Privilege is showing, is what she'd say xD
No worries though. I'm enjoying all the other comments as well. Your review clearly touched a nerve, seeing how much engagement it's generating.
mark wrote: "Coleman Hughes explains far more succinctly than I did why exactly White Fragility is a trash book: https://youtu.be/tEfDwbprIWM?t=633"
I had heard him talk about it elsewhere so I knew his overall take ... still ended up listening to the whole thing again. It's just so nice when somebody can formulate his complex thoughts so clearly. Annoyingly eloquent and well-read for his age.
Thomas Chatterton Williams has also posted 2 lists of "race reading recommendations" here and here. For everybody who hasn't yet overdosed on the topic - they look really interesting (on twitter in case of paywall).
