White Fragility Chapter 2

My review of White Fragility continues.

Previous Posts
Introduction
Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Racism and White Supremacy
This is the chapter we read for the Race and American Christianity class. It provides the basic definitions that DiAngelo uses in her treatment of racism.

1. The first part of the chapter goes in a little more detail on race as a social construction. On the one hand, there is no significant biological distinction that correlates with skin tone. "Under the skin, there is no true biological race" (15). "The differences we see with our eyes... emerged as adaptations to geography." "The external characteristics that we use to define race are unreliable indicators of genetic variation between any two people." Or as I have read elsewhere, there is greater genetic variation within groups of similar skin tone than there is between such groups.

Accordingly, there was no basis for Thomas Jefferson to believe there were natural differences between races. Rather, "the idea of racial inferiority was created to justify unequal treatment" (16). "Exploitation came first, and then the ideology of unequal races to justify the exploitation followed."

"Race is an evolving social idea that was created to legitimize racial inequality and protect white advantage. The term 'white' first appeared in colonial law in the late 1600s" (17). Meanwhile, "who is included in the category of white changes over time... European ethnic groups such as the Irish, Italian, and Polish were excluded in the past" (18).

There is a trail of literature to explain these dynamics. For example, the slaves brought to America were initially more like the British indentured servants working alongside them. After Bacon's 1676 Rebellion, the colonial elites used newly developing concepts of race to divide the "superior" "white" servant from the permanently "inferior" "black" slave.

2. As seen in the previous chapter, it is important do know how DiAngelo is defining race in order to understand what she is arguing in this book.

• prejudice -- "pre-judgment about another person based on the social groups to which that person belongs" (19)
• discrimination -- "action based on prejudice"
• racism --"when a racial group's prejudice is backed by legal authority and institutional control" (21).

These definitions are important if we are to hear what she is actually saying. First, I'm not sure anyone will have too much problem with the definition of prejudice. However, perhaps in common language the words prejudice and racism are often used more or less interchangeably. Perhaps in ordinary speech, racism is prejudice with an attitude. Or, as she gives the popular use in the previous chapter, "intentional acts of racial discrimination committed by immoral individuals" (9).

However, the popular definition is not the one used by sociologists. One key difference is that the popular sense of the word involves intentionality. Sociologists are trying to get at something deeper, something that may not only be subconscious but something that goes beyond the individual to the way society itself is structured. However we may define words, it is this deeper level of discussion that will take us to the next level as a society.

Making pre-judgments about others is inevitable. "All humans have prejudice; we cannot avoid it... People who claim not to be prejudiced are demonstrating a profound lack of self-awareness" (19). I might have worded this a little differently, but it is true that human knowing (as Piaget long ago suggested) operates by categorizing things. We save a lot of time by not treating each individual thing on its own terms but by classifying things. Then we differentiate by details thereafter.

Discrimination then acts on prejudice. We may act differently around others based on our pre-judgment. "When the prejudice causes me to act differently--I am less relaxed around you or I avoid interacting with you--I am now discriminating" (20).  Often, "our unease comes from living separate from a group of people while simultaneously absorbing incomplete or erroneous information about them."

If someone has followed me for very long, they will know that Wesleyans make a sharp moral distinction between intentional sin and unintentional and corporate sin. I would argue that this distinction is rooted in the Bible and thus is not "white" in itself although I do believe there is a "white" or "Anglo-Saxon" version of this basic concept.

Therefore, theologically, I believe that God's evaluation of our moral character focuses on our intentional acts. However, corporate sin and unintentional sin are also in Scripture--particularly in the Old Testament--and are important moral concepts on a societal level. I would agree that it is difficult for "white" culture to see this dimension of sin. And, indeed, the history of twentieth century American Protestantism involved a strong bias in some quarters against seeing sin on a social level (e.g., reaction against a "social gospel" and current reaction in some quarters against "social justice").

3. It is with her definition of racism that we enter these corporate and societal level waters. "When a racial group's collective prejudice is backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control, it is transformed into racism, a far-reaching system that functions independently from the intentions or self-images of individual actors" (20). "Racism is a structure, not an event." "Racism is a system" (21).

While we can quibble over definitions, we do need a name for this dynamic. Here again we get into a power differential. Take the following statement: "People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual" (22).

Accordingly, when racism is defined in this way, given the way social power is structured in the United States, minority groups cannot be racist. They can be prejudiced. They can discriminate. But racism is reserved for the structure of dominance and individual acts that participate in that structure.

Here was a definition of racism used by Rusty Hawkins in a recent presentation at College Wesleyan Church on the history of anti-black racism in America: "Racism is the individual or collective misuse of power that diminishes life opportunities for people because of their race." He goes on to say, "It is a changing and shifting ideology and practice with a constant and rational purpose of maintaining a racialized society."

4. So also DiAngelo indicates that "the system of racism begins with ideology" (21). This ideology is constantly reinforced and internalized. For example, "those who don't succeed are just not as naturally capable, deserving, or hardworking" (21). This concept then may look at some part of an inner city and say, "See, the reason 'black' individuals are economically depressed is because they don't work hard enough or are lazy." Such statements are usually oblivious to racist policies in the past that have led to the current social situation.

"Racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of our society" (22). "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 color."

Marilyn Frye suggests the metaphor of a birdcage. If you stand close to the cage, such as when you are looking at individual people, you don't see the bars. You see that the US had a black president. You don't understand why the bird doesn't fly away. You may especially see the birds that have escaped the cage. You may see "single situations, exceptions, and anecdotal evidence" of liberation.

Meanwhile, whites benefit from the system that is biased toward them. David Wellman describes racism as "a system of advantage based on race" (24). These advantages--which are usually not seen by whites because they relate primarily to obstacles they do not face rather than actual obstacles--are referred to as "white privilege." I am less likely to be ticketed for speeding than a black person. I am less likely to be followed in a store than a black person.

I usually would not realize I have these "privileges" because they are events I don't experience that others do. My step-daughter has a golden brown Hispanic complexion. When we lived in Indiana, she was the recipient of suspicious eyes in stores that I have never experienced. When a student of color went from IWU to Asbury in Kentucky, he experienced a more hostile environment there of which I was completely unaware as a white student there.

"This does not mean that individual white people do not struggle or face barriers. It does mean that they do not face the particular barriers of racism" (24).

I'll confess that I find it hard to argue against these basic concepts, nor do I know why someone would be motivated to do so. Nor does she seem the fiend in this chapter that others have made her out to be. Rather, it seems to me, they are simply proving her point because, on most of these claims, she is right.

Here's a video example of white privilege and racial bias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuyMuLGXxTs

5. "We might think of whiteness as all the aspects of being white" (25). Because it is the dominant social/cultural framework "whiteness is not acknowledged by white people, and the white reference point is assumed to be universal and is imposed on everyone."

It was interesting when I lived in England. I did not think of myself as having an accent. Even in the United States, I grew up thinking of my cocktail of Indiana/Florida speech as the default. New Yorkers had an accent. The British had an accent. It was quite eye-opening when a German friend Astrid in England did an American accent--my accent. I didn't think I had an accent!

In the same way, it has been natural for the dominant "white culture" of the US to assume it was normal and that anything else was a deviation. In 1946, a French reporter asked Richard Wright what he thought about the "Negro problem" in the US. His answer was quite appropriate: "There isn't any Negro problem; there is only a white problem" (25).

"White" history is what I learned in school. "White history is implied in the absence of its acknowledgement; white history is the norm for history" (27). After this course on Race, I will have to seriously alter how I teach philosophy. Philosophy is not limited to Europeans and Americans. Philosophy is reflection on reality, which all people in all times and all places have done. Yet the very philosophy textbook I wrote--and Sophie's World that I and others have used to give the Western story of philosophy--are thoroughly Eurocentric.

6. The term white supremacy is often used to refer to groups that explicitly promote the superiority of whites over all other racial groups. We think of the KKK. For a long time, such thinking has been so anathema that it was the stuff of secrecy and whispers. The current presidency has however created a climate where it is much more acceptable in the open again.

However, this is not primarily what DiAngelo and others refer to when they use the phrase. If American society is rigged to favor whites in its policies and structural realities, then "white supremacy" is a feature of our society and political system. Charles Mills has referred to white supremacy as "the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today" (29). "White supremacy has shaped a system of global European domination" through the colonial expansion of Europeans around the world in the modern era.

It is, however, largely invisible. "Much of white supremacy's power is drawn from its invisibility." It "describes the culture we live in, a culture that positions white people and all that is associated with them (whiteness) as ideal" (33).

Joe Feagin speaks of a "white racial frame" that perpetuates this supremacy (34). It involves "images, stories, interpretations, omissions, silences--that are passed along from one person and group to the next, and from one generation to the next" (34). It is the comment I remember hearing as a child about drivers from Haiti. It is the comment about the single mother "living off welfare." It is the response, "of course," to my philosophy comment above that Sophie's World only mentions Europeans. These "stored bits" combine to say that we (whites) are better people.

And it is encoded in geography. Both during the New Deal and then subsequently after World War II, areas where black individuals lived were "redlined," making it almost impossible for them to get the loans that propelled whites into their current suburban dominance. Imagine how different the urban situation would be today if such racial discrimination had not taken place. By the way, when the president recently commented on suburbs and low-income housing, he was using a page from the playbook of America's racist past.

In the end, I don't find much to object to in this chapter. Perhaps I would tweak a sentence or two, but the fundamental concepts seem pretty well established.