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.

Book Review: White Fragility Introduction

1. Ed Stetzer and Christianity Today are beginning a conversation about the book, White Fragility: Why its so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, by Robin DiAngelo. Race is very much in focus right now given the incidents that happened one right after the other this year--George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks. Of course these sorts of incidents seem quite frequent.

I have been part of a class and webinar we are running at Houghton College in response to this moment. We will run it again in October. The webinar portion will be free then, as this time. We are also going to run a course starting August 29 called, "Reinventing Evangelicalism."

People don't like to talk about race. Over the last few years, I have found that hardly any topic is more likely to cause people to come up for air in my feed on Facebook as something related to race. The responses to this issue are so predictable that I created a "Race Bingo" card with some of the things people say when issues of race are first mentioned to them. These are responses like, "I have a black friend," "Don't get political," and "I don't see color."

2. The response to Stetzer's link to CT's first article on Twitter was both astounding and entirely predictable. I doubt the vast majority of those who responded have even read the book. It seems obvious to me that this response comes from the attention given the book by people like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and others. It's almost impossible to have a calm discussion of the book and its concepts because the well has been poisoned.

The material presented in CT's first article, which summarizes the book, does not seem to merit this response. Indeed, the tone of the preface to the book is anything but cocky. But the response was so virulent, so harsh on Twitter that I decided I needed to finish reading the book. Indeed, I decided I should blog on it with an open heart and a critical mind. I read chapter 2 as part of the course on Race. I now sense I should read the rest.

As I picked up the book again, I marveled at how well the introduction describes exactly what took place on Ed Stetzer's Twitter feed. DiAngelo writes, "In the early days of my work as what was then termed a diversity trainer, I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many white people became at the suggestion that they were connected to racism in any way" (2). She goes on to say, "These responses were so predictable--so consistent and reliable--I was able to stop taking the resistance personally" (3). Indeed, the Twitter feed exquisitely proved her point.

3. In the Foreword to White Fragility, Michael Eric Dyson says this: "Whiteness is a fiction, what in the jargon of the academy is termed a social construct, an agreed-on myth that has empirical grit because of its effect, not its essence" (ix). I first began to understand this concept at Wesley Seminary, when I read selections from Cane Hope Felder's, Stony the Road we Trod.

"Black" was a category of the slave-trade, that lumped all Africans together as slaves. They did not see themselves as one race. Prior to the slave trade, they were from varied African tribes. They were not a "black" race. "White" then came to existence as a counterpoint, lumping the lighter skinned slave owners together, all western Europeans. "White" comes to exist as that which owns the slave and is superior to it. Before then, they were Portuguese and Spanish and English and Dutch.

But we behave according to that which we think. So as we think of ourselves as black or white, so we behave, and so perception becomes a reality because of its effect. I am thoroughly convinced of this interpretation of historical development. In fact, I consider this understanding quite profound, the stuff of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault. I'm so convinced that I only think there are two options--either you understand and agree, or you just don't really understand yet.

DiAngelo puts it this way: 'While there is no biological race as we understand it, race as a social construct has profound significance" (5).

The Foreword has a quote by Beyonce that I think is quite relevant: "It's been said that racism is so American that when we protest racism, some assume we're protesting America" (xi). I would add that elements of whiteness are so intertwined in some people's Christianity that to critique elements of whiteness can be seen as anti-Christian. How is believing that "black lives matter" anti-Christian, for example?

4. In her Author's Note, she has a number of interesting comments.

• "Exclusion by those at the table doesn't depend on willful intent; we don't have to intend to exclude for the results of our actions to be exclusion" (xiii). Quite true. It is easy not to see those who aren't in the "in" group when you are.
• "All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been accomplished through identity politics" (xiv). That is to say, it is only when we are focusing on the barriers that people experience because of their identities that change happens, whether it be emancipation, women's suffrage, or civil rights. "This book is unapologetically rooted in identity politics" (xiv).
• She acknowledges that this issue is very complex. What about a multiracial person? She hints at the concept of intersectionality, which has to do with the multiple identities we often have.

An issue I think I should emphasize is the awkwardness she feels as a white person writing about race. "In speaking as a white person to a primarily white audience, I am yet again centering white people and the white voice. I have not found a way around this dilemma" (xiv). One notes, however, that when women did not have the right to vote, only men could vote to change the situation.

5. In the introduction, she introduces the concept of "white fragility." It refers to how angry and defensive "white people" can get when you talk about race. It is Ed Stetzer's Twitter feed.

There is a force to "reinstate white equilibrium" whenever resistance to the status quo is introduced into the equation. This is real. I've experienced it as a leader. For every push against racism there seems to be a greater and opposite reaction. She tells the story of a man who pounded his fist on the table about how difficult it was for a white man to get a job now... in a work room that was 95% white.

DiAngelo makes some clarifying remarks in the introduction. Many of those in her sessions did not have any relationship with a person of color. This is a key factor in paradigm change. I've seen it on the Wesleyan Pastor's page. Now that the Wesleyan Church has some pastors of color, one cannot bring glib stereotypes about people who are in the room. It is the same thing with protests--when many Wesleyan pastors have marched, you can't accuse them all of being communists and anarchists.

It's not about being nice or mean people. Peter was a nice person and he still didn't see the Greek-speaking widows in Acts 6.

The book is aimed at white progressives. "I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color" (5). A white progressive, in this scenario, is someone who thinks he or she already gets it but doesn't really. Perhaps I will later disagree with her on who she includes in this category, but I get what she's saying. I've seen it in myself and others. We think we've arrived. We think we're "color blind." So we don't do anything to change the status quo. We don't realize our part in the perpetuation of an inequitable situation.

The Butler

Went to see The Butler tonight. The movie is loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen, an African-American who served for some 34 years in the White House. Lest the cranky shut down and not listen, it is only loosely based on Allen's life.

Allen didn't grow up in Macon. His father wasn't killed as a child. He didn't have a son who was an activist, although he did have a son. He retired because it was time, not because he came to see his job as racially patronizing. Yes, yes, Reagan may have had geopolitical rather than racial reasons not to sanction South Africa over Apartheid.

What the movie does portray well is both the situation of black Americans in the middle part of the twentieth century and, implicitly, the benefits of white privilege in America. It portrays the powerlessness of blacks in the early part of the twentieth century in the face of injustice. It shows the ridiculous prejudice of the South and its stubborn insistence on segregation. It shows the obliviousness of whites who were in position not to worry about such things or who even got righteously indignant at "law breakers" like the activists who worked to make it impossible to be oblivious.

"White privilege" can be a difficult idea for a white person like me to grasp because it is not about something that seems "extra" to me as a white person. I may still struggle to pay my bills. I may still have all sorts of challenges of my own. White privilege has to do with how much harder it would be for me if I were black or of some other race in my same shoes.

When I walk into a store or down your average rural American street, I blend in. A Hispanic or a black might get a suspicious look in a similar store.  I might be watched, second guessed, profiled. Privilege is not so much about benefits I perceive as extra but about benefits I would definitely perceive if I were black or some other minority.

It is an amazing thing that even Christians can somehow convince themselves that they are standing up for right when "putting others in their place." No doubt many of those in the South thought they were justified in their anger toward troublemakers who refused to follow the rules and get to the back of the bus or use the right seats. It's not unlike the attitude today of some toward illegal immigrants who have broken the law in how they've entered this country. "We're right to tear their families apart because they're lawbreakers," as if Jesus and Paul were big on keeping the law.

The issues change, the attitudes don't.  A lot of state's rights talk today is the same old attitudes hiding behind different issues. Don't worry, our grandchildren will wag their heads at us too. The more localized the decision making, the more likely the exclusion and injustice.  The more people represented in the discussion, the more likely the fairness and evenhandedness.

I would have hoped that race would have disappeared as an issue by now.  In the year 2000 I might have said it was happening. But 9-11 and economic crisis have set us back.  People pull back into their cocoons when times are tough. Race seems as charged to me today as it has been since the 70s. I'm hoping it is just the last gasp before whites themselves become a racial minority.

I struggled not to cry as the movie ended.  It made me feel the pain of a good man in that era, in those situations. The specific characters in the movie were fictitious, but the people they represented were all too real.

Not racist...

We had a great evening opening to the conference reflecting the 10 year anniversary of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America.

There are any number of great insights in this discussion.  For example, most of us who are "white" do not realize how much more complicated things are for "others."  We walk into stores.  We go up to bank tellers.  We rent cars.  No problem.  "Others" face questions, suspicious looks, watchful eyes.  It's not that we ask for these privileges.  Indeed, we don't even realize we are privileged.  This is a great thing to be aware of.

Language of "Repent of the sin of racism" or "Acknowledge that the structure of things is sinful" has a tendency to alienate.  While no doubt there is plenty of latent racism and injustice in the systems of things, a much more helpful approach is simply for "whites" of middle and upper class to acknowledge the privileges they have and that "others" face challenges we do not.  Then we can begin to talk about changing the way things are as a society rather than focusing on myself as an individual. 

It is simply unacceptable from a Christian standpoint for "whites" to earn on average 20 times what African-Americans do (it has progressively become worse over the last 30 years).  Don't try to explain it away... "It's because..."  Whatever you might think the cause is, it is an unacceptable situation and all Christians should want to see it changed.  We can agree to work toward solutions.

A great insight is to realize that the category of "white" isn't even real.  It is real because of social construction but has no intrinsic reality.  "White" is simply not "other."  So when the Irish first came here, they weren't white, but now they are.  Where do whites come from?  Are they English?  French? Scandinavian? Spanish?  Did we all come from the country Whitey? You might have noticed that Hispanic was not considered a distinct race on the most recent census but a subcategory of Caucasian.  Race is ultimately a matter of social construction. 

The current hives many are feeling over illegal Mexican immigrants is really an old worn out page from American history whenever there is an influx of "others," and those all bent out of shape over it don't know their history.  Historically they will end up looking just as foolish as those who got all bent out of shape over those drunken Irish Catholics or those stupid Polacks or those Chinsey slant eyed Chinese or Indian givers.  Better hide your wallet.  Here comes a Jew.  And so the masses continue to be tossed around by forces of which they are not aware.

The question of multiracial churches arose.  The intentional integration of our churches is one step Christians can take to try to overcome the inherent inequalities of American society.  Not easy, not comfortable, but a move in the kingdom direction.  As long as we live in different neighborhoods, as long as we worship in separate churches, as long as we do not interact with each other--whatever disperate groups we might have in mind--then the structure of society will have a tendency to perpetuate islands of miscommunication and inadvertant inequities.  Obviously this goes both ways, since it is more comfortable for everyone--white and black--to stay with "our own kind."  But it is only if we see and hear each other that we can really see things from each other's perspective.

Desegregation was clearly painful.  But who would deny that Birmingham today is a far more Christian city than it was sixty years ago?  And how much of the current rhetoric over "strict constructionism" of the Constitution is residual resentment of being forced to integrate, of being forced to give women equal opportunity in the work place?  Isn't that where those feelings toward Supreme Court justices really started?  I personally wouldn't want to be on that side of history.

Joe Wilson racist?

Former President Jimmy Carter suggested that Joe Wilson's comment during Obama's speech, "You lie!" was related to racism. Some who know Wilson, including Democrats, have suggested that it was more idiotic than racist. I mulled this over this morning in my own mind.

My first thought was that the anger of individuals like Wilson and others toward the health care reforms in the works right now is probably not generated by racism. Hilary Clinton would no doubt receive the same ire if she were the one standing there.

But then I asked myself the next question. Would Wilson have yelled out "You lie!" if it had been Clinton giving the speech... or Ted Kennedy? Here my thoughts took a different course. I don't think Wilson would have yelled it if it were Ted Kennedy as President giving the speech. In fact, I wonder seriously if anyone would have yelled such a thing if it were Hilary Clinton.

So I have concluded in my own mind not that the comment or anger itself was racially based but that it was likely a certain latent disrespect related to race that probably made the difference between thinking "You lie" and shouting it out. I think if Obama were not black, the comment would have stopped before getting to Wilson's mouth. So the comment was not racist, but the dynamic that allowed for the unprecedented disrespect probably was.

What do you think?