White Fragility Chapter 1

Yesterday I started blogging through the book, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Today I review chapter 1: "The Challenges of Talking to White People about Racism."

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Introduction

Chapter 1: The Challenges of Talking to White People about Racism
1. As I read chapter 1, I could hear some of the critiques I have seen of this book. But I am not reading this book looking to tear it apart, as so many. I am reading it with an open heart and a critical mind. I will have a critique, but what is the spirit of this chapter?

I believe the spirit of the chapter is to help. I will start with the end of the chapter where she tries to head off at the pass the defensive reaction she is calling "white fragility." She is not defining racism the way we tend to define it in ordinary language. In ordinary language, "racists are mean people who intentionally dislike others because of their race" (13). Racism consists of "intentional acts of racial discrimination committed by immoral individuals" (9). This is not the definition she will give in the next chapter.

"Now breathe." That is what a person trying to be objective will do. Of course she rejects objectivity in the chapter. More on that in a moment.

"I am not using this definition of racism, and I am not saying you are immoral. If you can remain open as I lay out my argument, it should soon begin to make sense" (13-14). I will do so, because the topic is important and I insist on self-reflectivity as part of my personal code. She may call that a part of my white culture. I hope not, not least because such reflection seems intrinsic to what she is telling me to do in this book.

I will do so because "we will not move forward in race relations if we remain comfortable" (14).

2. Herein we hit one of the main tensions of this book and one matter on which her criticizers have pounced. Her book has the feel of presenting objective truth, and yet it rejects objectivity as a dimension of white culture. This is not just her problem. This is a central problem of contemporary philosophy in general. No one is perfectly objective, yet we make truth claims all the time. How can we proceed with a concept of truth at all?

Yet as someone who strives for objectivity, knowing I can never fully attain it, I will take her challenge to "remain open." I never expect a book to be perfect, nor an author. I wonder if there is not a little sexism in the white men like Tucker Carlson who have tried to rip this book a new one. Is there lingering beneath the critique of him and many others the sentiment, "stupid woman"?

I will learn from this book. Because I strive for objectivity, I will take her challenge to be self-reflective and not "blame the messenger" (14), which is exactly what Ed Stetzer's Twitter feed and others I have read do. They are simply proving that her primary claim of "white fragility" applies to a large number of people.

3. The way she seems to go about generalizing is a little troubling to me. From what I can tell, she might say this is indicative of my whiteness. Another central critique of this book is that she sets up a circular reasoning that is non-falsifiable. To make a critique is to reveal my white culture, she might respond. How does she know that--how can she demonstrate that? To ask that question might be another indication of my white culture.

Yet she is a sociologist. Does not sociology proceed according to some sort of scientific method? She gives anecdotes. Isn't that a form of argument? I'm typing on a lap top and occasionally glancing at my cell phone. Let me just say that the success of the scientific method is so thoroughly beyond question that it would be deeply problematic to suggest it is somehow exclusively white!

OK. Does that mean I can throw out this chapter, like so many coming to the text wanting to find a reason to throw it out? Their lack of objectivity is showing, I would argue.

No. I believe if we moderate what she is saying, we will see very accurate and helpful critique here. I am taking a deep breath and proceeding with an open heart and a critical mind.

4. Is there such a thing as white framing and white culture? I believe we can generalize about American white culture from a sociological point of view just as we can generalize about German culture or Sierra Leonean culture. Is it true of me as a white man that "I was not taught to see myself in racial terms"? Absolutely that is true.

Of course culture is something that few of us realize is around us. Why, in some families, do we know that you don't leave dishes sitting in the sink? Because, in some families, our parents were quite insistent that we do the dishes before we left the dinner area. These sorts of things are water in which we swim and they are norms we can at least recognize are different in other cultures and sub-cultures.

Now I am adopting a universal perspective to say this. Some would say to adopt such a perspective is white. I can imagine there are other ways to get to the same point, however. Perhaps another culture would simply give a proverb without explanation. "The fish does not know it is swimming in water." I would say the true proverb does not negate my meta-language. In this instance, my culture affects the form of my presentation but not the underlying truth to which it points.

So is there such a thing as white culture? I believe we can find generalizations about people in America who identify themselves as white people over and against generalizations about various people groups of color. Is it dangerous to make such generalizations? It is if you belong to the KKK, because then your goal is to argue that those characteristics are superior and, indeed, you will skew them in your direction.

Self-critique moves in a different direction.

5. She is correct to identify individualism and objectivity as two values of Anglo-Saxon culture (she doesn't use this expression, but I will). I would say she is also correct that these values have been overplayed. I am thinking of a particular conversation I had surrounding the course on Race at Houghton College that, in my view, easily showed a lack of self-awareness of this dimension to white culture.

Dominant American culture ("white culture") is likely unhealthy in its over-emphasis on individualism. It sometimes has an overemphasis on personal freedom, for example. And DiAngelo does seem quite correct to suggest that we are far more a product of our culture than we realize.

And in the world of people, truth is not merely this static collection of ideas. In society, truth is "vectored." My truth claims have real effects on people. "Objective" Anglo-Saxon culture can idealize the cold, dispassionate honesty of the person who simply says what is true. Spock. Some of those who have most criticized DiAngelo may strike us as men who are not particularly "feeling."

I would argue that their approach to truth among people is static rather than dynamic. It is like doing arithmetic in a calculus world. A vector in math is not only a quantity, but a direction as well. Our truth claims, when people are involved, have a direction. Two people can make the same exact truth claim, and yet be moving in different directions. Their position may technically be the same, but the meaning of their position is different.

So I would say that she is right to identify individualism and objectivity as emphases of Anglo-Saxon American culture, white culture. However, I would also argue that there are universal benefits to these concepts if they are played out well in dialog with more collectivist approaches. To play them out well will require us to move beyond stereotypically "white" approaches to them.

6. Another feature that I believe is missing from her book so far is a sense of where a person is in the process of engagement on this topic. If I might borrow very generally the concept of a dialectic, her book--and diversity training in general, I suspect--is primarily in conversation with those who have almost no self-awareness in this area.

What I am saying is that her book functions best as an antithesis to the thesis of a person who has not engaged the topic of race at all. That person is likely to manifest what she calls white fragility. However, I'm very interested to see if the book moves us toward a synthesis, toward a "second naivete."

7. Having said all that, I believe the overall thrust of this chapter is helpful and correct.

• White people in America are not raised to think they have a culture.
• White culture tends to be excessively individualistic.
• White culture in the past has mistakenly thought of itself as objective without even knowing its inherent biases.

My vector framework is important, I think, when we come to the claim that she is being racist to say that "all white people are racist." On the one hand, I'm not sure I find this statement very helpful, but I will read on with an open heart and a critical mind. In any case, the vector of a comment like this one is different than a blanket statement about some other race or ethnicity.

The vector attached to whiteness is a dominant vector. To critique the powerful or the bully does not have the same meaning as when the dominator maligns or the bully oppresses. To push-back on the dominant simply has a different meaning than for the dominant to push on the marginalized.

A lot of thoughts for a short chapter. I welcome critique.