Chapter 6, White Fragility Anti-Blackness

Chapter 5 today of White Fragility.

Previous Posts
Introduction
Chapter 1: Challenges of Talking Race
Chapter 2: Definitions--Racism and White Supremacy
Chapter 3: Racism after the Civil Rights Movement
Chapter 4: How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?
Chapter 5: The Good/Bad Binary

Now Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness
1. This chapter expands on the thesis that deep anti-black feelings are inculcated in white people at the societal level from childhood (90). She is addressing the societal level but is also arguing that this anti-black sentiment lurks in white individuals in various ways. She recognizes that talking about whites as a group is jarring (89). She considers it important because our culture wants us to think of ourselves only as individuals, which is how we exempt ourselves from the problems of racism.

I don't take her approach here as racist for a couple reasons. First there is the matter of definition. If racism has to do with a dominant group exerting power over a minority group, then conversations critiquing the dominant group are not racist. They can be prejudiced, but not racist. Second, we are trying to address problems with the goal of alleviating them. The motive is not slander or oppression but critique. It just plays out differently when it goes the other direction.

2. She points out that whiteness came into existence as a counter to blackness (91). I've already indicated that I agree. She raises a good question. To what extent does my identity as a white person remain a counter-point today? For example, I think of myself more as an American than as a white person (of course here we get into some of the "color-blind" territory).

Because of discussions of race, I have also begun to racially disaggregate myself, courtesy of ancestry.com. I am something like 85% British and otherwise mostly German. So the term "Anglo-Saxon" fits me quite extensively, with some Scots-Irish thrown in. Thinking of myself in this way re-centers this aspect of my identity on my ethnic background rather than my race.

She mentions a claim by some scholars that "whites split off from themselves and projected onto blackness the aspects that we don't want to own in ourselves" (91). Slave-owners depicted those who worked endlessly for them as lazy and childlike. Whites, who have been far more dangerous, picture black individuals as dangerous. "I am speaking here of the collective white consciousness. An individual white person may not be explicitly aware of these feelings."

3. She discusses misconceptions about affirmative action. Affirmative action is not about quotas. It is not about hiring unqualified people of color. It's not about preferential treatment.

"Affirmative action is a tool to ensure that qualified minority applicants are given the same employment opportunities as white people" (92). Meanwhile, "African-Americans continue to be the most underrepresented group at the organizational leadership level."

I have been involved in searches when a person of color was hired. In every case, that person was the best candidate without question. I was once applying somewhere for a teaching job in which the other candidate was female. The institution did not have any women faculty at that time in that department. I was asked (somewhat inappropriately, but I was not offended) that if there were a situation where two roughly equal qualified candidates were interviewed but one was a woman and the other a man, applying for a department that had no women, who would I hire.

Cheeky, but I said I would hire the other person. They did, but found a way to hire me too, thankfully for me. :-)

One never hires an unqualified person because of their color or gender. I will give my opinion additionally that bringing diversity can be a strength that one candidate contributes, just like being gifted at administration can be a contribution.

4. There is part of the chapter that cites studies that indicate that whites still do not want to integrate with blacks. "White flight has been triggered when a formerly white neighborhood reaches 7 percent black" (92). "A majority of whites, in both the expression of their beliefs and the practice of their lives, do not want to integrate with blacks" (93).

"Anti-blackness is rooted in misinformation, fables, perversions, projections, and lies" (94). "There is a curious satisfaction in the punishment of black people" (94). "We have a particular hatred for 'uppity' blacks, those who dare to step out of their place and look us in the eye as equals" (95). P.S. This is also true of women, which is a factor in the backlash against DiAngelo, was a factor in the hatred of Hillary Clinton, and no doubt will now begin to rear its ugly head in relation to Kamala Harris.

In the Reagan era, we heard messaging about "welfare cheats" and "welfare queens" (95). We see it in reactions to Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. Former Congressman Joe Walsh called Stevie Wonder "another ungrateful black multimillionaire" (95). While it is denied by those who say such things, these attitudes all express an underlying anti-black sentiment that remains very strong still in American culture.

5. The last part of the chapter looks at the movie, The Blind Side. Ironically, this movie is thoroughly racist while thinking itself anti-racist. For many white people it is a feel good movie of love conquering over racism, and the main character does move from a kind of blatant racism to what you might call a patronizing racism. It's an improvement, for sure. But consider how racist the person in this stage remains:

• The movie implies that white people are the saviors of black people. It is a racism of "benevolence"--let's help those poor (inferior) black people.
• There are no black characters in the movie that do not reinforce negative racial stereotypes (gang members, welfare queens with multiple children, drug addiction, abject poverty, incompetence, mental inferiority, animal instinct).
• "Black neighborhoods are inherently dangerous and criminal" (98).
• "Virtually all blacks are poor, incompetent, and unqualified for their jobs."

The good/bad binary is also enforced. Either you're good like the saintly hero of the movie (which isn't the main black character) or you're an evil racist.

6. I visited Memphis a couple years ago around the fiftieth anniversary of MLK's assassination. I knew very little about the story of the civil rights movement at the time, to my shame. I am a perfect example of how white people can completely ignore the past struggles of African-Americans in the United States.

It was on that visit that I realized that the private high school movement in the US largely rose in the south in response to desegregation. The voucher movement today is not too dissimilar--an attempt to get away from (substantially black) public schools. It is never expressed in those terms, mind you, but it seems to have been a major element in the equation in the late twentieth century.

I made some comments on Facebook in this regard in 2018 and mentioned the movie Blind Side as I began to see this "white savior" type of racism. The response was predictable, everything that DiAngelo is arguing with regard to white fragility and being seen as a traitor to white solidarity. It is deeply dis-equilibrating to be confronted with the possibility that elements of yourself that you thought made you a saint and savior were actually hiding sin in your heart.