White Fragility chapter 3

On to chapter 3 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"
1. This chapter addresses the form that racism has taken in more recent times. The fundamental thesis of the chapter is that American society is not less racist than it was before the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. Rather racism went underground. DiAngelo does not believe that the younger generation is less racist. "In some ways, racism's adaptations over time are more sinister than concrete rules such as Jim Crow" (50).

I do wonder if the universal and absolute framing she uses can be an unnecessary distraction that can work against what is surely the goal of the book, namely, to diminish the racist structures and dispositions of society. Are not some white people further along this path today than others? Or are all white people equally racist and no different in heart than your typical 1862 Alabamian?

Nevertheless, did racism go underground after the Civil Rights Movement? Absolutely. We have seen it rear its ugly head again openly during the current administration. It's still there. There are lots of Confederate flags hanging around Western New York. I would be surprised if they do not express not a little explicit racism in the minds of the people inside those houses.

But are younger people, on the whole, less racist than my generation? I suspect they are (although I fear the damage the last four years has likely caused some in Gen Z). Is my generation less racist than my parents' generation? Surely it is. Surely there are fewer George Wallaces and Strom Thurmonds in my generation.

So I completely take her point that racism largely went underground between 1965 and 2016. I would never deny that it is alive and well and in fact significantly growing at the moment, even among Christians. But what person of color in 2015 would have preferred to return to 1965? Even in 2020, I doubt anyone would take up this offer?

2. Nevertheless, with that caveat, I must once again suggest that the content of this chapter is overwhelming true on the whole. That's mostly what this book needs, IMO, the addition of the comment "on the whole" and "in general."

"All systems of oppression are adaptive" (40). Absolutely. I find this is true of sin as well. Let me give an example from the holiness movement. The mid-twentieth century holiness movement went way off track with a focus on external appearance. In addition to a rigid sense of women's clothing, there was an emphasis on plainness so as not to show pride in one's appearance.

Now, here's the irony--I believe there were instances where some people became proud of their plain appearance. Our drives are like a half back trying to find an opening through the defensive line. Close off one path and they'll find another. So in the period when racism could not be openly expressed, it found its avenues at water coolers and with coded language that was about race without saying it.

3. "Aversive racism" is this way of actualizing racism without using the explicit words of racism. When the president recently mentioned "low income housing," he was evoking an image of housing that in most suburban minds would have a particular racial component. When whites talk about "good schools," there is usually a particular racial component to the comment.

As an academic leader, the term "mission fit" can imply--unintentionally, mind you--a set of criteria that are only likely to apply to a particular kind of white candidate. I was part of an interview process once that had a criterion called the "lunch test." Would they enjoy having lunch with the candidate on a regular basis. It was an innocent criterion that basically asked if the person would contribute to the group's synergy as a community. Understandable.

However, it also is usually the case that we most enjoy being around people who are like us. It's the homogeneous principle. The lunch test, as powerful as it is for group cohesion, in itself makes it much more likely that you would end up hiring a white person when the group whose community you are trying to build is already overwhelmingly white. Conflict is an almost inevitable feature of expanding diversity.

4. Color blindness is a concept often drawn from MLK's famous 1963 "I Have a Dream Speech." He dreamt of a world where his children would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. This is indeed a noble goal of American society in the sense that we aim for a world where we are evaluated on the basis of our true moral identity and not on the basis of some unrelated external feature.

However, the idea of color-blindness has inadvertently become a tool to perpetuate the white default. Most white people do not see their own color. Accordingly, they confuse whiteness, white values, and white culture with what is and should be the universal norm. The concept of color-blindness thus facilitates a blindness in white people to issues of people of color.

DiAngelo illustrates this concept by a situation where a white participant in diversity training said to a black co-trainer, "I don't see race. I don't see you as black." The response was, "Then how will you see racism?" Or as someone else once said, "How will you see me?" A white person is not seeing a person of color if they are not seeing race.

One often then hears the push back that the person who sees race or who says race matters is the racist. "It is racist to acknowledge race" (41). Of course the way DiAngelo is defining race, this cannot be the case because society is not structured in a way that would bring a black domination over whites.

However, even on the popular definition of racism, we must ask what the purpose of seeing race is. The purpose is not for people of color to dominate whites. The purpose is to see the imbalance that is there in order to address it. If I have a splinter in my thumb, I am not saying my thumb is more important than my foot when I address the splinter. If I don't look at my thumb, the problem will persist.

This is the insanity of the response that "all lives matter" in response to the claim that "black lives matter." No one is saying that black lives matter more. Rather, there remains inequity in American society based on race. Would someone actually deny that black lives matter?

The "color-blind" approach treats all the houses the same when one of them is on fire. In the end, it only sees the house that isn't on fire and ignores the house that is. If you don't see the splinter, you can't fix it.

5. The chapter also reiterates the sense of many people that you cannot be acting in a way that supports the racist bias of culture if you do not do so intentionally as an individual. Don't worry. Your eternal salvation is intact, but ignoring unconscious racial bias and societal bias doesn't help people of color or society at large. If we love our neighbor as ourselves, we will press on with the inquiry. And sometimes there is a genuine heart problem lurking beneath our conscious minds in our subconscious. A true follower of Christ will want to expose and root that out.

"Children develop a sense of white superiority as early as preschool" (47). A study conducted by Picca and Feagin explored racism among some 626 white college students. It identified a substantial amount of explicit racism that took place "backstage," in all white company. In such cases, even those who might disagree with such language often did not verbalize an objection to such language and behavior. When one does so, you are met with "lighten up" or mocking for being "politically correct."

They called this dynamic, "white solidarity." Similarly, there was a sense that a person who was otherwise "nice" was not really being racist to say such things.

Bottom line for me is that we cannot dismiss racism as a problem in America just because, especially prior to 2016, people were more hush hush about it. It is alive and well, and not to mention it does not make it go away. Unspoken things often tear at the fabric of a marriage, relationship, or society.