[Peace-discuss] On “White Fragility”

Wed Jul 1 13:43:55 UTC 2020

Wow. The woketards have jumped the shark.

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 12:37 PM David Green via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> On “White Fragility”A few thoughts on America’s smash-hit #1 guide to
> egghead racialism
> Matt Taibbi <https://taibbi.substack.com/people/263053-matt-taibbi> 18 hr
> 695 466 <https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility/comments>
>
> <https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa3e3e65c-ce5a-4332-94a2-cfcccbd4721a_2121x1414.jpeg>
>
> *This is part of a larger piece that will be made available to subscribers
> later this week:*
>
> A core principle of the academic movement that shot through elite schools
> in America since the early nineties was the view that individual rights,
> humanism, and the democratic process are all just stalking-horses for white
> supremacy. The concept, as articulated in books like former corporate
> consultant Robin DiAngelo’s *White Fragility* (Amazon’s #1 seller
> <https://www.amazon.com/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism/dp/0807047414>!)
> reduces everything, even the smallest and most innocent human interactions,
> to racial power contests.
>
> It’s been mind-boggling to watch *White Fragility *celebrated in recent
> weeks. When it surged past a *Hunger Games *book on bestseller lists, *USA
> Today *cheered
> <https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/06/10/anti-racist-books-dominate-best-seller-list-white-fragility-how-to-be-an-antiracist-ta-nehisi-coates/5331188002/>,
> “American readers are more interested in combatting racism than in literary
> escapism.” When DiAngelo appeared on *The Tonight Show, *Jimmy Fallon
> gushed
> <https://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/video/dr-robin-diangelo-wants-white-people-to-stop-saying-theyre-not-racist/4186081>,
> “I know… everyone wants to talk to you right now!” *White Fragility* has
> been pitched as an uncontroversial road-map for fighting racism, at a time
> when after the murder of George Floyd Americans are suddenly (and
> appropriately) interested in doing just that. Except this isn’t a
> straightforward book about examining one’s own prejudices. Have the people
> hyping this impressively crazy book actually read it?
>
> DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up
> pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the
> first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. *White Fragility *has a
> simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and
> we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but
> only by our racial category.
>
> If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from
> your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to
> our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”),
> which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.”
>
> DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to
> be less white.” To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak
> away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as
> “leaving the stress-inducing situation” – is to affirm her conception of
> white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the “ordeal by water” (if
> you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.
>
> DiAngelo’s writing style is pure pain. The lexicon favored by
> intersectional theorists of this type is built around the same principles
> as Orwell’s *Newspeak*: it banishes ambiguity, nuance, and feeling and
> structures itself around sterile word pairs, like *racist *and *antiracist,
> platform *and *deplatform*, *center *and *silence, *that reduce all
> thinking to a series of binary choices*. *Ironically, Donald Trump does
> something similar, only with words like “AMAZING
> <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1214345971947180032>!” and “
> SAD <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1125932243325726720>!”
> that are simultaneously more childish and livelier.
>
> Writers like DiAngelo like to make ugly verbs out of ugly nouns and ugly
> nouns out of ugly verbs (there are countless permutations on *centering*
>  and *privileging *alone). In a world where only a few ideas are
> considered important, redundancy is encouraged, e.g. “To be less white is
> to break with white silence and white solidarity, to stop privileging the
> comfort of white people,” or “Ruth Frankenberg, a premier white scholar in
> the field of whiteness, describes whiteness as multidimensional…”
>
> DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for
> speaking clearly. “When there is disequilibrium in the habitus — when
> social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they challenge our capital — we use
> strategies to regain our balance,” she says (“People taken out of their
> comfort zones find ways to deal,” according to Google Translate). Ideas
> that go through the English-DiAngelo translator usually end up
> significantly altered, as in this key part of the book when she addresses
> Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” speech:
>
> *One line of King’s speech in particular—that one day he might be judged
> by the content of his character and not the color of his skin—was seized
> upon by the white public because the words were seen to provide a simple
> and immediate solution to racial tensions: pretend that we don’t see race,
> and racism will end. Color blindness was now promoted as the remedy for
> racism, with white people insisting that they didn’t see race or, if they
> did, that it had no meaning to them.*
>
> That this speech was held up as the framework for American race relations
> for more than half a century precisely because people of all races
> understood King to be referring to a difficult and beautiful long-term goal
> worth pursuing is discounted, of course. *White Fragility *is based upon
> the idea that human beings are incapable of judging each other by the
> content of their character, and if people of different races think they are
> getting along or even loving one another, they probably need immediate
> antiracism training. This is an important passage because rejection of
> King’s “dream” of racial harmony — not even as a description of the
> obviously flawed present, but as the aspirational goal of a better future —
> has become a central tenet of this brand of antiracist doctrine mainstream
> press outlets are rushing to embrace.
>
> The book’s most amazing passage concerns the story of Jackie Robinson:
>
> *The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness
> obscures racism by rendering whites, white privilege, and racist
> institutions invisible. Robinson is often celebrated as the first African
> American to break the color line…*
>
> *While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line
> depicts him as racially special, a black man who broke the color line
> himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with
> whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at
> that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: “Jackie
> Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league
> baseball.”*
>
> There is not a single baseball fan anywhere – literally not one, except
> perhaps Robin DiAngelo, I guess – who believes Jackie Robinson broke the
> color barrier because he “finally had what it took to play with whites.”
> Everyone familiar with this story understands that Robinson had to be
> exceptional, both as a player and as a human being, to confront the racist
> institution known as Major League Baseball. His story has always been
> understood as a complex, long-developing political tale about overcoming
> violent systemic oppression. For DiAngelo to suggest history should re-cast
> Robinson as “the first black man whites allowed to play major league
> baseball” is grotesque and profoundly belittling.
>
> Robinson’s story moreover did not render “whites, white privilege, and
> racist institutions invisible.” It did the opposite. Robinson uncovered a
> generation of job inflation for mediocre white ballplayers in a dramatic
> example of “privilege” that was keenly understood by baseball fans of all
> races fifty years before *White Fragility. *Baseball statistics nerds
> have long been arguing about whether to put asterisks
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/opinion/with-an-asterisk-866229.html> next
> to the records of white stars who never had to pitch to Josh Gibson, or hit
> against prime Satchel Paige or Webster McDonald. Robinson’s story, on every
> level, exposed and evangelized the truth about the very forces DiAngelo
> argues it rendered “invisible.”
>
> It takes a special kind of ignorant for an author to choose an example
> that illustrates the mathematical opposite of one’s intended point, but
> this isn’t uncommon in *White Fragility, *which may be the dumbest book
> ever written. It makes *The Art of the Deal *read like *Anna Karenina.*
>
> Yet these ideas are taking America by storm. The movement that calls
> itself “antiracism” – I think it deserves that name a lot less than
> “pro-lifers” deserve theirs and am amazed journalists parrot it without
> question – is complete in its pessimism about race relations. It sees the
> human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed
> groups, allies, and white oppressors.
>
> Where we reside on the spectrum of righteousness is, they say, almost
> entirely determined by birth, a view probably shared by a lot of *4chan* readers.
> With a full commitment to the program of psychological ablutions outlined
> in the book, one may strive for a “less white identity,” but again,
> DiAngelo explicitly rejects the Kingian goal of just trying to love one
> another as impossible, for two people born with different skin colors.
>
> This dingbat racialist cult, which has no art, music, literature, and
> certainly no comedy, is the vision of “progress” institutional America has
> chosen to endorse in the Trump era. Why? Maybe because it fits. It won’t
> hurt the business model of the news media, which for decades now has been
> monetizing division and has known how to profit from moral panics and witch
> hunts since before Fleet street discovered the Mod/Rocker wars.
>
> Democratic Party leaders, pioneers of the costless gesture, have already
> embraced this performative race politics as a useful tool for disciplining
> apostates like Bernie Sanders. Bernie took off in presidential politics as
> a hard-charging crusader against a Wall Street-fattened political
> establishment, and exited four years later a self-flagellating, defeated
> old white man who seemed to regret not apologizing more for his third
> house. Clad in kente cloth scarves, the Democrats who crushed him will burn
> up CSPAN with homilies on privilege even as they reassure donors they’ll
> stay away from Medicare for All or the carried interest tax break.
>
> For corporate America the calculation is simple. What’s easier, giving up
> business models based on war, slave labor, and regulatory arbitrage, or
> benching Aunt Jemima? There’s a deal to be made here, greased by the fact
> that the “antiracism” prophets promoted in books like *White Fragility* share
> corporate Americas instinctive hostility to privacy, individual rights,
> freedom of speech, etc.
>
> Corporate America doubtless views the current protest movement as
> something that can be addressed as an H.R. matter, among other things by
> hiring thousands of DiAngelos to institute codes for the proper mode of
> Black-white workplace interaction.
>
> If you’re wondering what that might look like, here’s DiAngelo explaining
> how she handled the fallout from making a bad joke while she was
> “facilitating antiracism training” at the office of one of her clients.
>
> When one employee responds negatively to the training, DiAngelo quips the
> person must have been put off by one of her Black female team members: “The
> white people,” she says, “were scared by Deborah’s hair.” (White priests of
> antiracism like DiAngelo seem universally to be more awkward and clueless
> around minorities than your average Trump-supporting construction worker).
>
> DiAngelo doesn’t grasp the joke flopped and has to be told two days later
> that one of her web developer clients was offended. In despair, she writes,
> “I seek out a friend who is white and has a solid understanding of
> cross-racial dynamics.”
>
> After DiAngelo confesses her feelings of embarrassment, shame and guilt to
> the enlightened white cross-racial dynamics expert (everyone should have
> such a person on speed-dial), she approaches the offended web developer.
> She asks, “Would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the
> racism I perpetrated toward you in that meeting?” At which point the web
> developer agrees, leading to a conversation establishing the parameters of
> problematic joke resolution.
>
> This dialogue straight out of
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQoLBWLLRJ8>*South Park
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQoLBWLLRJ8> – *“Is it okay if I touch
> your penis? No, you may not touch my penis at this time!” – has a good shot
> of becoming standard at every transnational corporation, law firm,
> university, newsroom, etc.
>
> Of course the upside such consultants can offer is an important one. Under
> pressure from people like this, companies might address long-overdue
> inequities in boardroom diversity.
>
> The downside, which we’re already seeing, is that organizations everywhere
> will embrace powerful new tools for solving professional disputes, through
> a never-ending purge. One of the central tenets of DiAngelo’s book (and
> others like it) is that racism cannot be eradicated and can only be managed
> through constant, “lifelong” vigilance, much like the battle with
> addiction
> <https://www.npr.org/2019/08/15/751070344/theres-no-such-thing-as-not-racist-in-ibram-x-kendis-how-to-be-an-anitracist>.
> A useful theory, if your business is selling teams of high-priced
> toxicity-hunters to corporations as next-generation versions of efficiency
> experts — in the fight against this disease, companies will need the help
> forever and ever.
>
> Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that
> will be familiar to students of Russian history, accusers are beginning to
> appear alongside the accused. Three years ago a popular Canadian writer
> named Hal Niedzviecki <https://quillette.com/author/hal-niedzviecki/> was
> denounced
> <https://quillette.com/2020/06/27/the-mob-that-came-after-me-is-turning-on-itself-when-will-this-end-who-does-this-help/> for
> expressing the opinion that “anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to
> imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." He reportedly was
> forced out of the Writer’s Union of Canada for the crime of “cultural
> appropriation,” and denounced as a racist by many, including a poet named
> Gwen Benaway. The latter said Niedzviecki “doesn’t see the humanity of
> indigenous peoples.” Last week, Benaway herself was denounced on Twitter
> <https://twitter.com/GB20209/status/1272608805034000385> for failing to
> provide proof that she was Indigenous.
>
> Michael Korenberg, the chair of the board at the University of British
> Columbia, was forced to resign
> <https://twitter.com/GB20209/status/1272608805034000385> for liking
> tweets by Dinesh D’Souza and Donald Trump, which you might think is fine –
> but what about Latino electrical worker Emmanuel Cafferty, fired
> <https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/1276869119598637056> after a
> white activist took a photo of him making an OK symbol (it was described
> online as a “white power” sign)? How about Sue Schafer, the heretofore
> unknown graphic designer the *Washington Post
> <https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/why-did-the-washington-post-get-this-woman-fired.html>*decided
> to out
> <https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/why-did-the-washington-post-get-this-woman-fired.html> in
> a 3000-word article for attending a Halloween party two years ago in
> blackface (a failed parody of a *different* blackface incident involving
> Megyn Kelly)? She was fired, of course. How was this news? Why was ruining
> this person’s life necessary?
>
> People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates,
> parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The *New York Times* wrote a
> salutary piece
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/style/blm-accounts-social-media-high-school.html> about
> high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of
> “anti-black racism” to make public, because what can go wrong with
> encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other’s careers before
> they’ve even finished growing?
>
> “People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I
> don’t want people like that to keep getting jobs,” one 16 year-old said.
> “Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin
> their lives… I love twitter,” wrote
> <https://twitter.com/pipibongstockin/status/1268964930226540544> a
> different person, adding cheery emojis.
>
> A bizarre echo of North Korea’s “three generations of punishment
> <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/north-korea/galleries/what-you-didn-t-know-about-north-korea/there-s-a-three-generations-of-punishment-rule/>”
> doctrine could be seen in the boycotts of Holy Land grocery
> <https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/05/holy-land-grocery-ceo-fires-daughter-over-racist-social-media-posts>,
> a well-known hummus maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks it’s been
> abandoned by clients and seen its lease pulled
> <https://www.startribune.com/midtown-global-market-halts-holy-land-s-lease-over-racist-comments-on-social-media/571045542/> because
> of racist tweets made by the CEO’s 14 year-old daughter *eight years ago.*
>
> Parents calling out their kids is also in vogue. In *Slate, *“Making a
> Mountain Out of a Molehill” wrote to advice columnist Michelle Herman in a
> letter headlined, “I think I’ve screwed up the way my kids think about
> race
> <https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/colorblind-parenting-race-care-and-feeding.html>.”
> The problem, the aggrieved parent noted, was that his/her sons had gone to
> a diverse school, and their “closest friends are still a mix of black,
> Hispanic, and white kids,” which to them was natural. The parent worried
> when one son was asked to fill out an application for a potential college
> roommate and expressed annoyance at having to specify race, because “I
> don’t care about race.”
>
> Clearly, a situation needing fixing! The parent asked if someone who
> didn’t care about race was “just as racist as someone who only has white
> friends” and asked if it was “too late” to do anything. No fear, Herman
> wrote: it’s never too late for kids like yours to educate themselves. To
> help, she linked to a program of materials designed for just that purpose,
> a “Lesson Plan for Being An Ally
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H-Vxs6jEUByXylMS2BjGH1kQ7mEuZnHpPSs1Bpaqmw0/mobilebasic>,”
> that included a month of readings of… *White Fragility. *Hopefully that
> kid with the Black and Hispanic friends can be cured!
>
> This notion that color-blindness is itself racist, one of the main themes
> of *White Fragility*, could have amazing consequences. In researching *I
> Can’t Breathe, *I met civil rights activists who recounted decades of
> struggle to remove race from the law. I heard stories of lawyers who were
> physically threatened for years in places like rural Arkansas just for
> trying to end explicit hiring and housing discrimination and other remnants
> of Jim Crow. Last week, an Oregon County casually exempted
> <https://www.co.lincoln.or.us/hhs/page/face-covering-directive> “people
> of color who have heightened concerns about racial profiling” from a
> Covid-19 related mask order. Who thinks creating different laws for
> different racial categories is going to end well? When has it ever?
>
> At a time of catastrophe and national despair, when conservative
> nationalism is on the rise and violent confrontation on the streets is
> becoming commonplace, it’s extremely suspicious that the books politicians,
> the press, university administrators, and corporate consultants alike are
> asking us to read are urging us to put race even more at the center of our
> identities, and fetishize the unbridgeable nature of our differences.
> Meanwhile books like *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn *and *To Kill a
> Mockingbird, *which are both beautiful and actually anti-racist, have
> been banned, for containing the “N-word
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/02/07/a-school-district-drops-to-kill-a-mockingbird-and-huckleberry-finn-over-use-of-the-n-word/>.”
> (*White Fragility *contains it too, by the way). It’s almost like someone
> thinks there’s a benefit to keeping people divided.
>
>
> https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility
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