White Fragility: unhelpful, with a side of condescension
Robin DiAngelo's book simply gives corporate America what it wants: a damper on conflict, a moral high horse, and most importantly - a reaffirmation of its own legitimacy and power
There are many articles about the problematic nature of Robin DiAngelo’s 2018 book, White Fragility. It assumes that people of color have the emotional and operational capacity of children. It employs a troubling amount of emotional manipulation.1 For a book subtitled “Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism”, the one thing that it does very well is is making that conversation harder.2
If you insult people, they tend to get mad
The antagonism starts with the title:
For many white people, the mere title of this book will cause resistance because I am breaking a cardinal rule of individualism—I am generalizing. I am proceeding as if I could know anything about someone just because the person is white. (p. 11)
Let’s call a spade a spade: the title of this book causes resistance because it is an insult. DiAngelo is well-versed in the forces of socialization, and she knows full well that “fragile” is anything but an emotionally neutral term. We live in a society that values strength, capability, and resilience. The word “fragile” is loaded with shame: you’re weak, you’re cowardly, you’re being a baby, your feelings are not reasonable. I’m all for free speech, so I think insults are perfectly legal - but I’ve yet to see a person become more open and empathetic after receiving one.3
You can’t just slap a “defensiveness” sticker on every disagreement
Right now you may be thinking of all the ways that you are different from other white people and that if I just knew how you had come to this country, or were close to these people, grew up in this neighborhood, endured this struggle, or had this experience, then I would know that you were different—that you were not racist…
For now, try to let go of your individual narrative and grapple with the collective messages we all receive as members of a larger shared culture. Work to see how these messages have shaped your life, rather than use some aspect of your story to excuse yourself from their impact.
It’s silly to have to state it, but rejecting someone’s incorrect generalization of you is not the same as excusing yourself from a problem. The fact that DiAngelo murkily equates the two renders the conversation intractable. Painting the broad brushstroke of “defensiveness” over every response that isn’t empathetic and deferential agreement is a hefty act of rhetorical jiujitsu, especially when performed within the emotional minefield of race. But that does not make it valid. If you’ve already decided that any opposition to your argument is evidence of your argument, then you’re not looking for a good-faith dialogue. You’re looking for a soapbox.
Nobody actually thinks that race isn’t a thing
I am breaking a cardinal rule of individualism—I am generalizing. I am proceeding as if I could know anything about someone just because the person is white.
…
Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are irrelevant to our opportunities.
This is a strawman definition of individualism, and I’d challenge anyone to find a single reasonable person who actually believes this. Group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are powerful social forces which shape outcomes. So does individual action. It’s unclear which one matters more; hence why we argue about it.
Individualism does not claim that all group memberships are irrelevant. Instances can and do differ from what generalizations may suggest. Individualism is the belief that the specific nature of an instance can differ from the general, and that this specific nature should be taken seriously as a feature of reality. Equating this with “I don’t see race” is just sloppy thinking.
Stop telling me how my world works
I was mentally up in arms when I read the following passages:
The direction of power between white people and people of colour is historic, traditional, and normalized in ideology.
…
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 colour. People of color do not have this power and privilege over white people. (p. 22)
Get out! For somebody who claims to want to eradicate racism from society, DiAngelo sure seems bent on convincing people of color that they hold no power or privilege. Fortunately, I’m quite sure she’s wrong: the direction of power between me and other people is whatever the fuck it turns out to be after we’re done tussling with each other.4
Who made her the sheriff?
This screaming hypocrisy is illustrated clearly in the following passage:
When another police shooting of an unarmed black man occurred, my workplace called for an informal lunch gathering of people who wanted to connect and find support. Just before the gathering, a woman of color pulled me aside and told me that she wanted to attend but she was “in no mood for white women’s tears today.” I assured her that I would handle it.
As the meeting started, I told my fellow white participants that if they felt moved to tears, they should please leave the room. I would go with them for support, but I asked that they not cry in the mixed group. After the discussion, I spent the next hour explaining to a very outraged white woman why she was asked not to cry in the presence of the people of color.
White women’s tears in cross-racial interactions are problematic for several reasons connected to how they impact others. For example, there is a long historical backdrop of black men being tortured and murdered because of a white woman’s distress, and we white women bring these histories with us. Our tears trigger the terrorism of this history, particularly for African Americans. A cogent and devastating example is Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy who reportedly flirted with a white woman—Carolyn Bryant—in a grocery store in Mississippi in 1955. She reported this alleged flirtation to her husband, Roy Bryant, and a few days later, Roy and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, lynched Till, abducting him from his greatuncle’s home. They beat him to death, mutilated his body, and sank him in the Tallahatchie River. An all-white jury acquitted the men, who later admitted to the murder. On her deathbed, in 2017, Carolyn Bryant recanted this story and admitted that she had lied.
Mixed into this horrific historical context is an assertion by DiAngelo, slipped in with such subtlety that it’s easy to miss entirely. It is an assertion that needs to be questioned and, in my opinion, rejected. The most powerful party in this scenario is neither the woman of color, nor the white lady in tears. The most powerful person in this scenario is her.
With zero justification, DiAngelo has declared herself the moral compass of this discussion group. The woman of color expressed a preference to DiAngelo, and she, in her enlightened allyship, deemed the preference to be valid. She then granted it institutional backing by policing the group’s behaviour. Presumably what would then result is the white woman’s compliance, and the colored lady’s gratitude.
Her ideal resolution is not one where the two women directly confront each other. It is not one that allows for the possibility of unpleasant, explosive, or destabilizing conflict - nor the possibility of productive conversation.5 It is not one that exposes people to each other’s stupidity and ignorance, and then holds them accountable for recognizing and righting their wrongs.
The book’s underlying assumption is that people will behave “correctly” only when policed by institutions. It assumes that people of color will bring their grievances to an institution that has “arrived”, and will trust them to “handle” it, instead of doing…well, whatever the hell they want. (Never mind that this institution is still going to be overwhelmingly white, by her own statistics.) It is one that forbids “white” folk from questioning institutional demands, by framing any and all resistance as inherently problematic.6 Everyone is calm, and everyone is quiet. In other words, it takes the latest in porous logic from the DEI-politik-academia-thoughtspace, and somehow wrangles it into a form that is palatable to corporate America.7
What DiAngelo does get right is this: it is difficult to empathize with someone when their experience of the world is very different from yours. A person’s life is more likely to be different from yours if you are culturally, socially, and financially distant from them. When empathy runs scarce, it is far easier than most of us realize to say and do things that cause pain and suffering to others. Heightened awareness of this possibility will make us less likely to do so, and we have a moral imperative to try.
My agreement ends there. For all her tut-tutting against the powerful (and, by her own emphasis, mostly white) institutions of America, the worldview that she champions would do remarkably little to shake them up. The most cynical way to interpret this is that she cannot bite the hand that feeds her: DiAngelo makes a living from selling her training to corporate America, and the product has to be a pill that they can swallow.
The most generous way to interpret this is to use DiAngelo’s own argument: we’re all oblivious to the blind spots of our own socialization. We’re all guilty of thinking ourselves unique, and enlightened8, and not like those bad racist people over there. So why would this book be any different?
#130
“Now breathe. I am not using this definition of racism, and I am not saying that you are immoral. If you can remain open as I lay out my argument, it should soon begin to make sense.” (p. 13)
“As I have tried to show throughout this book, white people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions.” (p. 129)
Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion. In recognition of this, I try to follow these guidelines:
1. How, where, and when you give me feedback is irrelevant—it is the feedback I want and need. Understanding that it is hard to give, I will take it any way I can get it. From my position of social, cultural, and institutional white power and privilege, I am perfectly safe and I can handle it. If I cannot handle it, it’s on me to build my racial stamina.
2. Thank you.
(p. 125)
“I’m not saying you’re a bad person. I’m just saying that your inherent existence makes you incapable of being anything but a white supremacist, and you should respond to this assertion with gratitude” is a world-class act of academic gaslighting.
If you’re wondering why I even picked the book up at all: I saw it on a friend’s shelf, and they told me that their therapist, of all people, had recommended it. Throwing this ideological, shame-soaked polemic into a supposedly non-judgmental space for honest expression is not just counterproductive, but borderline unethical. I am adding one more voice to the many, many articles which have explained why the ideas in this book are very much not ok.
I’ve spent far longer nail-biting about every single sentence in this essay than I’ve probably spent on all of my writing in the past week alone, out of anxiety that something I say might be misconstrued and cause some kind of personal holy war. I don’t think this anxiety is a good or productive thing - and books like this aren’t calming anybody down.
What’s crazy is that the author knows exactly why it is counterproductive to make character attacks, and then proceeds to do it anyway!
Within this paradigm, to suggest that I am racist is to deliver a deep moral blow—a kind of character assassination. Having received this blow, I must defend my character, and that is where all my energy will go—to deflecting the charge, rather than reflecting on my behavior. (p. 72)
Sorry - I’ve tried to stay polite over the course of this essay, but I have a “outraged POC” card and you bet your ass I’m going to play it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that DiAngelo is basically saying this: “people of colour do not have power and privilege over us white folk.”
To which there is only one correct response, and it’s haha we’ll just see about that
For all her talk about “racial stamina”, DiAngelo seems remarkably unwilling to subject “white” folk to the discomfort of direct racial conflict.
I’m really not sure what is worse - her dim view of POC folks, or her dim view of white people:
If you believe that you are being told you are a bad person, all your energy is likely to go toward denying this possibility and invalidating the messenger rather than trying to understand why what you’ve said or done is hurtful. You will probably respond with white fragility. But unfortunately, white fragility can only protect the problematic behavior you feel so defensive about; it does not demonstrate that you are an open person who has no problematic racial behavior.
If it wasn’t so bloody counterproductive, it would almost be an impressive act of intellectual gymnastics.
“And white people’s opinions on racism tend to be strong. Yet race relations are profoundly complex. We must be willing to consider that unless we have devoted intentional and ongoing study, our opinions are necessarily uninformed, even ignorant.” (p. 8)
Ah, yes - because the assumption that university tenure and years of academic rumination on a subject must necessarily make you an informed expert on the matter is definitely not an example of traditional Western intellectual bullshit.
“Ah, yes - because the assumption that university tenure and years of academic rumination on a subject must necessarily make you an informed expert on the matter is definitely not an example of traditional Western intellectual bullshit.” 👏👏👏