Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

Victim role and defense mechanisms prevent an emancipated and enlightened reappraisal of past and present grievances, culminating in worsening of system immanent problems, backlashes, and indirect and unconscious promotion of racial divide. Building mental suppression reflexes, fortifications against unwanted truth, is a sign of an immature and romantic idealization of one´s ego for the price of being part of the problem.

The term aversive racism is well chosen, it´s exactly the subconscious mechanism many are unwilling to accept as part of their socialization and conditioning, an epigenetic factor expanding in those trying to be against prejudices, but unwillingly promoting them in a way they don´t even see. It´s the misuse of altruism by indirectly enforcing stereotypes, belittling minorities and other ethnicities, and downplaying the own bias and agenda one deems positive.

Look at who built Western society, what inhuman ideologies they had, and think about what that means about the foundations of any system and how much of it is still there under the surface. If one isn´t willing to accept it and wants to keep living the illusions while having a privileged life, try this one:
Contrast the reality with a fictional culture built by women for women, an ecotopia by environmentalists, a techno utopia by futurists, etc. In none of these cases someone would deny that key elements of the main ideas can be seen in all elements of the culture, but in reality, of course, no, thank you, inappropriate idea, we are over that, everything is fine.

Ignoring own problems worsens them and the older we get the more passive aggressive indirect racist mindsets, that are often indirectly expressed in economic and political contexts, come to mind. Whenever a person is insecure about not possibly promoting ideologies that have integrated exploitative and evil elements, one can easily find cozy reassurance of the righteousness of one's behavior thanks to echo chambers and media exponentiating the hypnotizing sound of all these decent people who can´t all be wrong.

And then, bam, someone dares to tell the truth about such self deception mechanisms that don´t just include individual blinders, but many other, good willing people with the same opinion, friends, family,… that of course also don´t deem themselves part of the problem and the natural reaction is, of course, extreme outrage, pure white fragility. „I, an activist for years, decades, having so many friends of all ethnicities, etc. yada, should be a bigoted, opportunistic enforcer of racist ideas? You, harbinger, are wrong and should be ashamed for making me feel bad about your fake history news! And I am activating my being offended mode because now I just feel and can´t think anymore.“

It´s exactly what I´ve experienced with many other problems privileged, white people don´t have to deal with and build illusions, ivory towers, and excuses for their inactions and stubborn behavior around them.instead. In Europe, precisely Austria, it´s done with refugees, the economic system, nazi past, sexism, conservatism, etc that way. People have their unbalanced, strange, implemented opinions they mainly built on news media, friends, and family instead of book and science and repeat bias, mantras, and illogical and bad explanations. As soon as someone points the finger on the hard, real facts, they react this way, get aggressive, change topic, do as if they didn´t mean it that way, behave like expected by good extremists and fanatics. The refuge of pseudointellectual wanna be experts that keep repeating whatever their social media feed drips in their mind, even infecting people that should know better.

Even well meaning people who are active in charity organizations, NGOs,… are prone to this blind spots, some strange examples I´ve tried out: Try talking to environmentalist about positive aspects of NGOs, to human rights activists about dehumanizing elements of our whole system and how it indirectly promotes circles of violence instead of just helping whistleblowers and journalists, to hard working people who invest much of their money in destructive, useless consumerism, to green party members…or to anti racism and equal rights groups about this. Forget it, they will act like kids, immediate defiant phase activation, lalala, don´t want to hear. Honestly, part of my misanthropy is that I´ve lost interest in and respecting of many people who are so blind to how they have been instrumentalized to greenwash corporate responsibility PR camouflaged as real activism without even recognizing, and absorb the propaganda as part of their identity, thinking we have reached the end of history, attacking anything questioning their distorted and self aggrandizing world view.

They are lost, stranded in a mixture of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogniti...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
salted with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
fueled by the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica...
that legitimates their disturbing views with fringe science. Their whole personality is built on nothing more than the soft washed, trivialized, indirect fallout of anachronistic ideals still secretly metastasizing and growing with any descendant of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. At a moment in history where anyone could build an objective opinion by using the amazing possibilities of wikis, apps, independent media, and progressive nonfiction authors instead of reading the same, repetitive, everything is fine fairy tale unicorn rainbow BS. Instead, they keep being used by forces they don´t want to be real, whose main interest is to divide and rule by fueling any kind of conflict between social groups to keep their status.

It made me hyper sceptical regarding many humanities and soft sciences they use as arguments too. It also took me some time over the last decade to go chronologically through the feelings of disbelief, anger, something close to hate (one of the rare emotions I feel next to flow, hungry, the other ry (not sorry), and sleepy), motivation to try to change people, I am still laughing about this one, repeating of the first circle, to end up with cold, cynic apathy for, disinterest in, and avoidance of the overwhelming majority of the population. But it luckily fueled my belief in the youth and the next generation instead.

Power resetting people´s mindsets is very difficult and if it´s not combined with an extreme ideology (and even then it´s close to impossible to make people accept that they´ve been wrong over years or decades), but with thinking of themselves as progressive founding mothers and fathers of a better future, it gets close to impossible. They´ve invested time, heart blood, belief, studying, debating,… in becoming the person and identify they are and I don´t believe many of them will change, because it includes many other aspects of their agenda and ideology, they would have to reevaluate and revise key elements, something too brutal and hard. See what I just did, I indirectly defended white fragility, it´s truly a hellish circle.

And an extremely ridiculous one in the eyes of discriminated groups and minorities, it´s a kind of black comedy mentally instable person gag where the wealthy, carefree, lucky ones do as if changing the inhuman system that made them rich, and some of their opinions, is something unfair, painful, and gruesome to them.

A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrim...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultura...