White Fragility 12: Where from here?

We come to the final chapter of White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, by Robin DiAngelo. The book has been good for me to read. I have agreed with the vast majority of the book. If you compare my reviews to the chapters themselves, you will get a sense both of how I might present the truths of the books and some of the questions I have had.

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
Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness
Chapter 7: White Triggers
Chapter 8: The Result: White Fragility
Chapter 9: White Fragility in Action
Chapter 10: White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement
Chapter 11: White Women's Tears

Chapter 12: Where do we go from here?
1. I think it might be helpful to start with her approach to herself. Because she defines racism as a feature of white culture that is as much a matter of impact as intention, "I don't see my efforts to uncover how race shapes my life as a matter of guilt" (149). "I don't feel guilty about racism." This might be a surprise to some of her despisers, but it reinforces her basic claims.

She never directly says, "All white people are racists" in the book. She comes close in a couple places, and probably she would not object to the statement. It probably would be more palatable for others to put her position this way: All white people benefit from and participate in racism. Racism, she would say, inevitably shapes my life as a white person.

What might I feel guilty about? I would say the choices I make in relation to my role in those racist structures. She does not believe any of us who are white can ever fully remove ourselves from this racist bias. "Rather, I strive to be 'less white'" (150). "To be less white is to be open to, interested in, and compassionate toward the racial realities of people of color."

"The default of the current system is the reproduction of racial inequality" (153). As white people, "we must never consider ourselves finished with our learning." "It is a messy, lifelong process" (154). "I will never be completely free of racism or finished with my learning" (147).

I might mention that she does not find the move of developing a positive white identity a possible goal (149). For example, I prefer to identify myself as English, Dutch, German, and Scots-Irish rather than white. She does not consider this adjustment beneficial because, in her view, it obscures my inevitable identity as a "white" American. If I do not look at that aspect of who I am, I will simply be falling into the color-blind trap.

2. She does suggest some helpful strategies for a white person wanting to improve the racist situation of our culture. First, in relation to other white people.

• First, "try to point the finger inward, not outward" (150) when approaching another white person on issues of racism. There is always the danger of thinking myself the one fixing the racism in others without acknowledging my own problems. "I try to affirm a person's perspective before I share mine." 
• This of course doesn't work on the racially tone deaf. I received some condescending racism advice from some self-righteous ignoramus on Twitter the other day. I at least have some self-knowledge. He apparently did not.
• Second, give yourself some time if you aren't quite sure what to say in the moment. I'm assuming she is talking about when a white person is in a more private conversation with another white person rather than when you are in a public situation with people of color.
• In the end, "niceness" will not improve the situation. White people must show courage to address racism as it shows itself.

With regard to our friends and acquaintances of color, if you have said or done something that has negative impact with regard to race or embodies racism

• First, process the situation with another white person who shares this quest. It is not the person of color's duty to take care of your feelings or reassure you.
• Ask to meet when you are ready, tell them why. If they don't want to meet, deal with it.
• Own your racism. Don't make excuses. Don't say, "if..."
• Ask the person of color what you have missed in your understanding of the situation.
• Make a commitment to do better?

3. Good responses to make:

• I appreciate this feedback.
• This is very helpful.
• This is hard, but also important.
• I have some work to do.
• more are mentioned

4. Adopt assumptions like these:

• Forget the question of whether you're morally good or bad. This quest is about impact.
• Recognize that racism is multilayered in our culture.
• White people inevitably have blind spots on racism.
• Authentic antiracism is rarely comfortable.
• The antidote is action.
• I bring my group's history with me. History matters.
• Racism hurts people of color.
• White comfort maintains the racial status quo. 
• more are mentioned

5. Ways that these assumptions interrupt racism:

• minimize our defensiveness
• show our vulnerability
• allow for growth
• interrupt internalized superiority
• build authentic relationships
• more

As a Christian, I believe I must love my neighbor as myself. I also believe that inner strength doesn't feel the need to defend itself. It only fights when it is good for the other and in the rare time when it is right to protect itself.

I can take critique because I am interested in what is true and in what is right. Racism is all too real. If I am to err, let me stop erring on the side of myself.

White Fragility Chapter 11: White Women's Tears

Second to last chapter of White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, by Robin DiAngelo.

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
Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness
Chapter 7: White Triggers
Chapter 8: The Result: White Fragility
Chapter 9: White Fragility in Action
Chapter 10: White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement

Chapter 11: White Women's Tears

1. This is an interesting chapter. If I were to write it, I would have to write it very carefully not to be liable to an accusation of sexism. It does raise some thorny questions for me about self-critique. Are people of color allowed to push back on some of her theses in ways I am not? Is she better situated to critique "white" people as a "white" person? Is she allowed to critique women as a woman in a way I am not?

One term sometimes used in these discussions is intersectionality. So she participates in the majority "white" group but the minority (in terms of power) group of women. She thus experiences sexism while participating in the benefits (to her) of a racist society.

She is not of course critiquing women as women. She is only critiquing white women in a general rather than absolute way. Not all white women behave as she describes. She is describing a phenomenon she has repeatedly observed. She clearly believes that crying serves in cross-racial discussion to re-direct the focus of attention on the white woman crying rather than the person of color whom she has possibly just wronged in discussion. "White women's tears have a powerful impact in this setting, effectively reinscribing rather than ameliorating racism" (132).

"When a white woman cries over some aspect of racism, all the attention immediately goes to her" (134). She quotes Reagen Price: "Imagine first responders at the scene of an accident rushing to comfort the person whose car struck a pedestrian, while the pedestrian lies bleeding on the street."

2. She argues that emotions are political in this situation in two ways. First, they play out along lines set by our cultural frameworks. Emotions express themselves in accordance with "the frameworks we are using to make sense of social relations" (132). We are told that it is ok for men to get angry but not women, for example.

In the context of race, she believes the tears come from the assumption that I can be exempt from racism. If the framework was rather, "racist assumptions are inevitable," then I would not feel "hurt, offended, and shamed when an unaware racist assumption is pointed out" (132). She wants to reset the framework of our emotions so that they do not work to reinforce the racial status quo.

The second way in which women's tears are political has to do with the history of white women's tears in the story of race in America. There is a saying in black circles: "When a white woman cries, a black man gets hurt" (133). The best known story here is that of Emmett Till, who was lynched for allegedly flirting with a white woman. (In 2007, she actually recanted her story)

In 1955, Till was visiting family in Alabama and, after this incident in a grocery store, ended up abducted, mutilated, and sunk in a river. His murderers were acquitted by an all white jury. They later acknowledged it. The display of his dead body in Chicago in some ways sparked the civil rights movement. White tears trigger this history for many African-Americans.

Here is a comment on white women's tears by a woman of color: "You are crying because you are uncomfortable with your feelings when we are barely allowed to have any... We are supposed to remain stoic and strong because otherwise we become the angry and scary people of color... We are abused daily, beaten, raped, and killed but you are sad and that's what is important" (135). DiAngelo concludes, "For people of color, our tears demonstrate our racial insulation and privilege." "Tears that are driven by white guilt are self-indulgent" (135).

3. So white fragility tends to manifest itself, she would say following a cultural script, in tears. In white men, it tends to manifest itself in dominance and intimidation. A white man might try to control the situation. He might, "play the devil's advocate" (134). He might say he's the victim of "reverse racism" (135). He might accuse a person of color of playing the "race card." He might intellectualize by recommending books and resources. He might correct the analysis of the person of color or a white woman consultant.

Women's tears, she says, can manipulate men of all races. "Patriarchy is reinforced as they play savior to the damsel in distress" (137). Meanwhile, for black men, "ameliorating a white woman's distress as quickly as possible may be felt as a literal matter of survival." She also notes, as an aside that it is primarily white women who have benefited from affirmative action more than people of color.

Chapter 10, White Fragility: Rules of Engagement

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
Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness
Chapter 7: White Triggers
Chapter 8: The Result: White Fragility
Chapter 9: White Fragility in Action

Chapter 10: White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement
I. The dominant conceptualization of racism as individual acts "functions beautifully to make it nearly impossible to engage in the necessary dialogue and self-reflection that can lead to change" (123).

She has discovered "rules of engagement" when approaching fellow whites on the subject. She is not endorsing these at all but indicating objections that will immediately be raised or obstacles that will stand in the way of conversation.

1. Do not give feedback on racism as it relates to an individual white person under any circumstances.

If you do:

2. Tone is crucial. You must be very calm and emotionless when you give this feedback. Any emotion and your critique will be considered invalid and easily dismissed.

3. You must trust that I am not a racist to be able to take any of my feedback.

4. If there are any issues between us, those must be solved before we can talk about race.

5. Feedback must be immediate when a possible instance of racism takes place.

6. Feedback is most effective when private, even if the event took place in front of others. "If you cannot protect me from embarrassment, the feedback is invalid, and you are the transgressor" (124).

7. Be as indirect as possible. Directness is insensitive.

8. "As a white person, I must feel completely safe during any discussion of race." "Point of clarification: when I say 'safe,' what I really mean is comfortable."

9. If you say I have racial privilege, you are invalidating whatever form of oppression I experience. Then we will get diverted into a long discussion of that.

10. You must acknowledge that my intentions are good (even if the impact of my behavior is harmful to others).

11. You have misunderstood me if you think my behavior had a racist impact. You must let me re-explain myself until you acknowledge it was your misunderstanding.

Here are her rules when getting push-back on any instance of racism coming out of her:

• Give me feedback anywhere, anytime. "I will take it any way I can get it" (125).
• Thank you.

She has not found in general that those who give such feedback, whether white or of color, are anything but sincere people who typically agonize over giving such feedback, only to be the recipient of highly emotional and unpleasant responses.

"Racism is the norm rather than the aberration" (125). "There is no face to save and the game is up." "I need to work hard to change my role in this system, but I can't do it alone. This understanding leads me to gratitude when others help me" (126).

II. I would summarize the last part of the chapter in this way:

• "If kindness gets there faster, I am all for it" (128).
• But niceness is a cultural feature of English and thus much of white American culture. It is not a feature of all cultures of color. "What feels respectful to white people can be exactly what does not create a respectful environment for people of color" (127).
• In the end, it is more important for us to make progress on these issues that to protect the feelings of fragile white people. 

So guidelines like 1) Don't judge, 2) Don't make assumptions, 3) Assume good intentions, 4) Speak your truth, and 5) Respect often can keep a white person from making progress on counteracting the racist orientation of our society.

"Stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don't have them" (129).

III. Perhaps I should stop the review of this chapter there, because I have summarized its basic points in the way I think is most helpful. I did find some of this last part counterproductive. For example, I agree that I should be thick-skinned and be able to take a more confrontational approach, realizing that the niceness of my English sensibilities is cultural as well. I can take it!

BUT, if you want to be as effective as possible with whites, I think you will do your best, as much as is possible while pursuing the goal, to meet them where they are in their culture. See what I'm saying. You can be direct in a way that completely self-sabotages the goal. Niceness is not a feature of white supremacy. It is a feature of English and other cultures.

It has to be a dance because it's a catch 22. People will be made uncomfortable, yes. It seems inevitable. But you will fail at your goal if you don't at least to some extent try to meet them where they are in their culture. And what's the point of the enterprise if you fail?

Second there is again the contradiction of her invoking objective truth while almost seeming to deny it. I found this statement very striking: "All perspectives are not equally valid" (127). Yes, I agree. There is truth that moves beyond cultural perspective. One of those truths is that we are not a color-blind society. Yet she has critiqued objectivity as a feature of white culture.

Finally, once again, I think she would persuade more people if she presented her claims as generalizations rather than absolutes. "White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview" (129). I agree. I grew up with it without question. We operate within this structure regardless of our "intentions, awareness, or agreement." I also think this is largely true, but I think it is more true of some than others.

My thoughts... open to critique. I can take it!

White Fragility Chapter 9: Manifestations

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
Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness
Chapter 7: White Triggers
Chapter 8: The Result: White Fragility

Chapter 9: White Fragility in Action
1. There are a number of stories at the beginning of the chapter. And indeed I believe it is from DiAngelo's consulting work that she came up with the term white fragility. She uses it to refer to her pervasive experience of reactions to training on underlying racial bias. White people respond consistently in similar ways.

• not liking the use of the term white
• backlash from bringing up the fact that the faculty of a department is entirely white
• enlisting people of color to console white people exhausted from seeking justice
• wanting training to be "comfortable"
• transferring anger at her as a white speaker to the person of color who invited her

In this chapter she mentions that in her training, she indicates that "all white people are invested in and collude with racism" (119). She still hasn't directly said that all white people are racist. Waiting for that still because that is one of the points of backlash on the book.

"White people are receptive to my presentation as long as it remains abstract. The moment I name some racially problematic dynamic or action happening in the room in the moment... white fragility erupts." She gives an example of a seminar where she points out to a woman that her response to a black man had invalidated his experience. It goes off the rails. Now it becomes about her, about consoling her. The man's experience is no longer the focus. The focus shifts to managing the emotions of the fragile white person.

A woman from Germany exempts herself from anything to do with racism. DiAngelo asks some probing questions. Did she not form any conceptions about Africans growing up in Germany? Had she ever watched American films? He had been in the States for twenty-three years--had she picked up any conceptions here? She never told the woman she was a racist, but the woman remained angry with DiAngelo even months later when she returned to that organization.

She receives an email out of the blue from her website. "I seriously doubt that there is one single thing you could tell me about race" (120).  The email rails on about how much the writer knows about race, that race has nothing to do with her. Out of the blue!

2. The feelings, behaviors, and claims that she repeatedly receives back will be familiar to anyone who has gotten this far in the book.

Feelings in response: feel attacked, insulted, judged, singled out, shamed, guilted, accused, scared, angry, outraged.

Behaviors in response: crying, arguing, denying, avoiding, leaving, withdrawing, focusing on intentions rather than affects and outcomes

Claims:

• I know people of color.
• I already know all this.
• You don't know me.
• That is just your opinion.
• Some people find offense where there isn't any.
• You are elitist.
• I just said one little innocent thing. 
• You are judging me.
• You're playing the race card.
• You misunderstood me.
• I can't say anything right.
• The problem is your tone.
• You hurt my feelings.
• You're being racist against me.

On the one hand, I can't say that someone's response, spoken or unspoken, could actually be true in their individual instance. On the other hand, I imagine in most instances she is right that the speaker is in denial.

3. There is a page full of assumptions that more or less reiterate material we have already encountered in the book. So I end with her final list on how white fragility functions:

• To maintain white solidarity
• To close off self-reflection
• To trivialize the reality of racism
• To stop the discussion
• To make white people the victims
• To hijack the conversation
• To protect a limited worldview
• To take race off the table
• To protect white privilege
• To focus on the messenger rather than the message

White Fragility chapter 8: Whiplash

I managed to read two chapters of White Fragility today, chapter 8... but I'm just posting on one because I'm tired. :-)

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
Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness
Chapter 7: White Triggers

Chapter 8: The Result: White Fragility
1. "A remarkable preponderance of white Americans believe that they also experience racial prejudice" (107). "More than half of whites--55 percent--surveyed say that, generally speaking, they believe there is discrimination against white people today" (108).

Meanwhile, "white people's moral objection to racism increases their resistance to acknowledging their complicity with it" (108). "Whites invoke the power to choose when, how, and to what extent racism is addressed or challenged" (109). "One way that whites protect their positions when challenged on race is to invoke the discourse of self-defense. Through this discourse, whites characterize themselves as victimized, slammed, blamed, and attacked."

"The language of violence... is not without significance, as it is another example of how white fragility distorts reality" (110). "By employing terms that connote physical abuse, whites tap into the classic story that people of color (particularly African-Americans) are dangerous and violent."

Also, "Because the new racial climate in America forbids the open expression of racially based feelings, views, and positions, when whites discuss issues that make them uncomfortable, they become almost incomprehensible" (110, Bonilla-Silva).

"White equilibrium is a cocoon of racial comfort, centrality, superiority, entitlement, racial apathy, and obliviousness, all rooted in an identity of being good people free of racism Challenging this cocoon throws off our racial balance" (112).

2. In the news today is the killing of Cannon Hinnant. This 5 year old boy was tragically killed by a black man in Virginia. The father of the boy did not believe that the killing was race-related. Indeed, we have to wonder if this man suffers from mental illness. He was quickly arrested and is in jail.

Predictably, certain media outlets have seized on the incident as if to say, "See, a horrible black man killed a white boy. Why isn't this in the national news?" As we have read in DiAngelo, the charge is that it is racist and inequitable not to mention both in discussions of race.

But there is no reason to push this murder into the national race discussion except for racism. It is the white supremacist element of American culture trying to re-establish equilibrium from the BLM movement after the death of George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, and others. It attempts to create a moral equivalency between white police violence on the African-American community and the act of this individual black man, whose act may have had nothing to do with race.

The meaning of such rhetoric in large part has to do with its trajectory. The violence of white police against black men has a history going back to the slave trade, to slavery, to the laws of the south after reconstruction that jailed black men for nothing, to lynching, to abhorrent movies like The Birth of a Nation, to the Jim Crow laws, to housing rules that created what would become violent ghettos, to laws that disproportionately incarcerate black men.

When we protest the killing of George Floyd, we are standing against four hundred years of white supremacy that is cooked into our society. When we bring race into the killing of Cannon Hinnant against this backdrop, at best we are tone deaf. More likely, we are subconsciously (or consciously) trying to re-establish the white supremacist narrative that black men are dangerous criminals who should be locked up or killed with a vengeance. There is no reason to reference this story in relation to race except an offensive ignorance or a racist and white supremacist motivation.

3. "White fragility functions as a form of bullying. I am going to make it so miserable for you to confront me--no matter how diplomatically you try to do so--that you will simply back off, give up, and never raise the issue again" (112). It is a "sociology of dominance" (113).

She ends with a question she often poses to people of color in her training sessions. "What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?" A man of color sighed once and said, "It would be revolutionary" (113).

Last night in the Race and American Christianity course, a theme was mentioned I have heard often of late. Black individuals are tired of having to defend the claim that they are the recipients of regular prejudice and racism. One student told of how, in a mixed gathering, police in the room immediately singled him out as suspicious. We hear this story over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Black individuals are tired of having to explain this to white people. They shouldn't have to. It's time for those of us who are advocates for righteousness to handle our own people's problems.

White Fragility Chapter 7: White Triggers

Chapter 6 is up today in the controversial book, 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
Chapter 6: Anti-Blackness

Chapter 7: Racial Triggers for White People
1. As I start this post, I am coming from the second to last class of the summer Race and American Christianity class at Houghton College. (The course/webinar will be offered again in October, by the way.) Tonight's class was on the penal system. I knew some pieces of what was shared but I was really blown away on so many levels.

Perhaps I shouldn't say but I was really struck by the enormity of ignorance of the culture in which I grew up. I shouldn't be surprised because seminary had already made this abundantly clear in relation to the Bible. Take what happened to the mentally ill under the Reagan administration. They were turned out to the streets. Then many of them found their way back into the penal system. In fact, many institutions for the mentally ill were converted to prisons.

Then with the privatization of prisons, prisons become a big business at the state's expense. Incarceration has dramatically increased. I heard about districts in Erie County that are drawn specifically to get the funding from the numbers of (non-voters) in prison which then go to the small district drawn around it. It certainly sounds like a racket. I must say, my faith in American institutions in general is lower than it has ever been.

2. Again, the idea of white fragility relates to the phenomenon of how white individuals tend to have intense emotional reactions when it is suggested that they may not be as free of racial bias as they think and that the culture is generally rigged in their favor. Common responses include "anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation, and cognitive dissonance" (101).

She suggests some of the sources for these reactions are:

• social taboos about talking about race
• the binary of "you're either good or bad" on this issue
• underlying resentment of people of color
• the belief that we are objective on these issues
• subconscious biases we don't want to acknowledge
• the benefits of believing we have earned our favored status
• inherited anti-black sentiments

Here are some of the suggestions that she has observed trigger such emotional responses:

• the suggestion that a white person's viewpoint is not objective but comes from a racialized point of reference
• people of color sharing their experiences of racial bias in society
• people of color correcting a white perspective on their own experiences
• white individuals disagreeing with the default white narrative
• the claim that access is unequal between races
• people of color in positions of leadership
• stories of people of color not behaving according to the scripts of racial bias
• denial that the typical white narrative is universal

3. She tells a story at the end of the chapter about some teachers who almost brought a lawsuit on their school because they were not able to distinguish between their individual intentions and the impact of words on others. This relates to the individualism she has talked about and the reduction of racism to one's intentions.

This is an important distinction. In working for racial reconciliation, it is not just a matter of whether a person has good intentions. We need to consider the impact of our words and actions as well. A former colleague of mine used to say something like, "Yes, yes, you all are nice (white) people. But you harm people of color unintentionally in your ignorance." S/he wasn't quite that blunt. :-)

4. A framework DiAngelo uses in this chapter comes from Pierre Bourdieu, known for his concept of the habitus. Our habitus is our normal way of perceiving, interpreting, and responding to things in our environment. When there is disequilibrium in our habitus, it rebounds to maintain our social comfort and helps us regain our balance. This happens unconsciously.

DiAngelo applies this concept to white fragility. When our racial habitus, our white racial status quo, is disturbed, we unconsciously respond in a defensive way that tries to re-establish our stability.

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.

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."

Previous Posts
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.

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.