ICYMI: Professor Criticizes Book, ‘White Fragility,’ As Dehumanizing To Black People

2020/07/24 Leave a comment

Valid criticism regarding over simplification and categorization:

Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility, published in 2018, has shot up bestseller lists after protests over the death of George Floyd reignited discussions about racism in America.

DiAngelo is white and regards racism as “the foundation of the society we are in.” She says white people become defensive and exhibit “fragility” when challenged on their underlying and, often unconscious, racism.

White people will never be rid of their biases, DiAngelo has told NPR, saying their necessary work “will be lifelong: really thinking deeply about what it means to be white, how your race shapes your life.”

But as DiAngelo’s corporate lecture requests and book sales have grown, so too has criticism of her work.

The Washington Post‘s Carlos Lozada said the book employs “circular logic.” Lozada writes that White Fragility views people of color as “almost entirely powerless, and the few with influence do not wield it in the service of racial justice.”

Columbia University professor and linguist John McWhorter, who is Black, echoes that criticism, writing in The Atlantic that the book “openly infantilized Black people” and “simply dehumanized us.”

He argues that for “DiAngelo, the whole point is the suffering” of white people, who are “taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good.”

McWhorter spoke with Morning Edition‘s Steve Inskeep about his criticism of the book and what he thinks is needed to change racist institutions.

Here are excerpts of the interview:

What are some examples of the way that she talks in the book and also talks in her seminars that you think miss the mark?

Well, I understand where she’s coming from. I don’t think she’s a hustler. I know that she’s sincere. But my question is, is it necessary for every good white person to walk around feeling uncomfortable about themselves as abstractly complicit in a racist system before we see political change?

And so a white person is supposed to learn that there are all sorts of things that they can’t say. You can’t say, “I marched in the civil rights movement,” because that would make you too comfortable. You can’t say, “I don’t see race,” because you almost certainly do. You can’t say, “it’s about class,” because it’s about race.

And she’s got about 25 proscriptions that make it so that any good white person is essentially muzzled. You just have to be quiet.

If you think about human history, there have been great and wrenching changes not only in this country, but in a great many others, but especially in this one, — say, a few things that happened about 50 years ago — without there needing to be this rather Orwellian indoctrination program. So the question is, why do we need this now?

She’s trying to, you argue, fix white people’s souls when in reality the place that people should look is at institutions. What are the rules for police? What are the rules for fair housing? That sort of thing.

You have said exactly what I believe. I think that what Robin DiAngelo is doing is well-intentioned, but I think ultimately, it’s idle. Ultimately, the result of what she would create is a certain educated class of white person feeling better about themselves. And frankly, that’s antithetical to her goal, because no matter how she wants it to go, people are going to think that they’ve done some kind of work. It’s going to be hard to get people to truly feel as endlessly culpable as she’s seeking.

And in the meantime, what’s the connection between that and forging change? You can say that all of this is a prelude to changing structures. But the question will always be, why don’t you just go out and change the structures? And why do you think that you couldn’t until doing this?

You say this book that is dedicated to eliminating racism in white people is racist. Why do you say it’s racist?

It is racist, and I don’t mean that Robin DiAngelo is a racist. I’m not calling her that. But I’m saying that if you write a book that teaches that Black people’s feelings must be stepped around to an exquisitely sensitive degree that hasn’t been required of any human beings, you’re condescending to Black people. In supposing that Black people have no resilience, you are saying that Black people are unusually weak. You’re saying that we are lesser. You’re saying that we, because of the circumstances of American social history, cannot be treated as adults. And in the technical sense, that’s discriminatory.

I also want people to know that you’re a linguist. And here we are using this word racist. What is a proper definition of racist?

Well, racism is a very confusing word these days. But when I say that White Fragility is a racist book, what I mean is it does not allow Black people to be full human beings, because full human beings deal with the imperfections of life.

This is important: by the imperfections of life, I do not mean somebody stepping on your neck until you’re dead. I’m not talking about actual abuse. I’m talking about the more abstract sorts of things that we’re familiar with, especially over the past several decades as part of our racial landscape, where I think that the solutions are going to be more subtle than the kind of mental and spiritual straitjacketing that DiAngelo seems to think are necessary. It’s an interesting proposal, but it’s by no means as self-evidently wise as she implies, and that many people tragically seem to be agreeing with her about.

Source: Professor Criticizes Book, ‘White Fragility,’ As Dehumanizing To Black People

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Whiteness is a racial construct. It’s time to take it apart: Denise Balkissoon

2016/10/12 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on “whiteness:”

Being white in Canada means a lower chance of developing cancer, hypertension and asthma. It also means being less likely to live in poverty. That doesn’t mean that every white person is healthy, wealthy or the prime minister (though every PM we have had has been white).

It does mean that as cards are dealt in the hand of life, white is a good one to get. But unearned benefits based on an unchosen identity are uncomfortable to grapple with – and that’s why people prefer not to say “white.”

“As a social concept, ‘white’ is profound in its meaning,” Robin DiAngelo, an educator and consultant in California, told me. “It means people who either come from or appear to come from Europe, but it’s necessarily a construct of oppression.”

Dr. DiAngelo, who is white, has dedicated her professional life to examining what it means to be white, what she calls “the missing piece” of studies of race and racism. She spent years as a professor and now leads workshops and seminars about racism for mainly all-white audiences, which include sharing language that helps to deconstruct whiteness.

Because, as with every other race, white is a construct. Racialization, or using ethnicity as an excuse to disenfranchise individuals and groups, can happen to people with light skin, too. In 2016, Ukrainians and Italians in Canada are pretty much white, but both were interned as enemy aliens in the past.

Italian-Canadians are an interesting case: Greeted with prejudice when they first arrived, they’ve since persuaded us to adopt their patio culture (after receiving tickets for eating outdoors in mid-20th century Toronto) and have been elected to every level of government. They now enjoy the benefits of whiteness, but many say that they’ll never be mangia-cakes.Yes, race is complicated.

Dr. DiAngelo tries to teach people not to be afraid of terms such as “white privilege” – daily, unspoken advantages due to skin colour – or “white supremacy,” the entrenchment of whiteness as the sun around which other, inferior cultures revolve.

That fear is a problem. Toronto Mayor John Tory, at an election campaign event two years ago, demurred on whether white privilege existed, while Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson recently called those who accused him of white supremacy as being “vulgar and rude.” What’s actually vulgar is that being white increases access to power and privilege, and that by not engaging with that truth, politicians can help to maintain that inequality.

Dr. DiAngelo has a term for that avoidance, too. “White fragility,” she says, is the inability to cope with conversations about race that don’t protect individual white people’s sense of innocence. Western society maintains that racism is an act that individuals do, not a system that all of us exist in.

Thus, she says, it teaches us that “being a good person and being complicit with racism are mutually exclusive.” To hear an accusation of racism is to believe one’s basic morality is in question, which stirs up guilt and defensiveness, leading to anger and avoidance.

White people experience obvious physical relief, Dr. DiAngelo says, when she tells them it isn’t a personal failing to ascribe to white supremacy. It’s what we’ve all been taught from birth. The conversations don’t necessarily get easier from there, she says, but her audiences’ ability to listen, and to cope with unpleasantness, gradually improves.

The solution to white fragility, she says, is to build up stamina; just as with exercise, that involves doing the painful task over and over again until you get better. So try it. Say “white.” Say it to white people.

Source: Whiteness is a racial construct. It’s time to take it apart – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,