A Whiter Shade of Frail
Just finished reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers last June, 2018’s White Fragility shot to the top of best-seller lists across the nation. Together with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and Ibram Kendi’s How to Be An AntiRacist, Professor DiAngelo’s White Fragility has become the centerpiece of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) training across the corporate, academic and governmental worlds.
These three works comprise a sort of trilogy of tribulation – a compendium of the sins of American racism, and the consequences that ensue. White Fragility is written by a white author for a white audience, with DiAngelo serving as a self-appointed broker across the racial divide.
White Fragility’s core premise is flawlessly circular:
- All white people are racists.
- If a white person denies this, such denial is proof of his/her racism.
In other words, when it comes to racism, there is no such thing as a good white person or a bad white person. The only distinction to be made is the degree to which a white person transcends her fragility-driven denial...and then seeks to make amends.
There is no off-ramp from this Mobius strip, no higher principle to which a white person can aspire. If a white person advocates a color-blind society, she is discounting racism and is therefore racist. If she says that the real divide in America is class, then she is discounting racism and is therefore racist. If she says something respectful about black people, she is generalizing and is therefore racist. If she says she lives in an “urban” or “sketchy” neighborhood, she is using code words for black and is therefore racist.
White Fragility makes it very clear: every action, every statement by every white person is grounded in racism. This racism reinforces (and is reinforced by) a white supremacy that permeates every walk of life, and can never be transcended. It is the social equivalent of a law of physics, as inviolable as the speed of light.
Here, Professor DiAngelo surpasses Torquemada himself. Even with the grotesque excesses of the Inquisition, he at least believed that redemption was possible for every soul, no matter how afflicted. Not so for Miss Robin. When it comes to racism, all white people are utterly beyond salvation – the best we can do is metaphorically rend our garments in shame.
It’s hard to gauge what’s most off-putting about this book. Perhaps it’s the turgid academese, reflecting DiAngelo’s Education School background. Or it may be the Powerpoint-like chapters, substituting bullets for narratives. Or the factual errors, such as her claim that white people know Jackie Robinson as the first black man “good enough” to play in the Majors. Or the repeated substitute of anecdote for data, where specific accounts of prejudice are extrapolated as proof of national trends – without any underlying evidence.
And then there’s the relentless condescension towards African-Americans. For all of Professor DiAngelo’s intimations of fragility as a white characteristic, it is the black community that she treats as delicate flowers. Every social interaction between whites and blacks is fraught with peril, where the slightest misstep by the white participant will trigger a painful and emotional reaction by the black participant. She instructs white women not to cry in the presence of black men, lest their tears remind the men of white women’s racist history of false rape accusations. Again, her evidence to support this thesis is based upon anecdote, not methodologically-sound surveys and data.
Writing in The Atlantic, Columbia Professor John McWhorter describes DiAngelo’s treatment of blacks as “dehumanizing”, reinforcing the very stereotypes she seeks to refute. His excellent essay can be found here: How 'White Fragility' Talks Down to Black People.
We probably need to note that Professor McWhorter is black, granting him the authenticity required by the woke to opine on DiAngelo’s work.
McWhorter’s conclusion is as powerful as it is pithy:
The sad truth is that anyone falling under the sway of this blinkered, self-satisfied, punitive stunt of a primer has been taught, by a well-intentioned but tragically misguided pastor, how to be racist in a whole new way.
White Fragility is crafted to evoke a dual set of emotions: justified frustration on the part of blacks, and shameful guilt on the part of whites. But the emotion I took away was one of despair. Under Professor DiAngelo’s model, there is no escape, no relief for anyone. We are all trapped in our respective roles: blacks as victims, whites as oppressors – all of us forever doomed to repeat the cycle of pain.
In fact, Professor DiAngelo cautions against solutions, writing:
Wanting to jump over the hard, personal work and get to ‘solutions’…is a foundation of white fragility.
Professor DiAngelo further confesses that she herself remains racist to this day. And if a soul as enlightened as hers cannot move past racism, what hope is there for the rest of us?
I imagine, though, that the pain of Ms. DiAngelo’s guilt is assuaged by the remarkable renumerations she commands as a racial-grievance broker. White Fragility has earned her $2M in sales, and she averages $20K for 60 minutes of speaking.
Of course, this can lead to some…um…disparities:
White Anti-Racism Author Robin DiAngelo Paid More Than Black Woman To Speak At Same Diversity Forum.
As an ardent champion of free markets, I can’t begrudge DiAngelo making a buck, however disaffecting her work may be. I just wish she weren’t taking so many HR departments along for the ride.