I sometimes think that the world would be a much better place if the social sciences were gathered into one pile and set on fire. Okay, maybe that’s kind of extreme. Here and there actual scholars in such fields as political science and sociology are doing genuine intellectual work. But the social sciences are also full of charlatans—because, let’s get real, they’re not really science. So when a social scientist comes up with some trendy concept, the standard is plausibility, not empirical proof. And if the concept happens to possess ideological utility, it doesn’t even need to be plausible. So it is with much of the academic discourse on that vexed subject, race in America.
As anyone who frequents venues like Medium will be aware, bashing “white people” is a favorite pastime of the Woke. The only spoiler is that more and more white people are answering back with charges of reverse racism & etc. They point out that white people are being stereotyped in a way that would never be tolerated if the target consisted of people of color: BIPOCs in the argot of the Woke. And this annoys the Woke, because they can’t really defend their double standard. What, then, to do? Thank heaven for Robin DiAngelo, PhD! She has it all figured out.
Professor DiAngelo, whose doctorate is in the field of multicultural education (I’m not making that up) is the inventor of what is in its way a brilliant concept: white fragility. Using impeccable circular argumentation, she purports to show that if a white person objects to being stereotyped, demonized, insulted or yelled at by the Woke—that’s just one more manifestation of racism! Thus the egregious double standard being applied to white people by the Woke is neatly sidestepped.
The Professor accompanies this malarkey with a lot of breast-beating about her personal sins of whiteness:
I grew up poor and white. While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism. In so doing, I have been able to address in greater depth my multiple locations and how they function together to hold racism in place. I now make the distinction that I grew up poor and white, for my experience of poverty would have been different had I not been white.
You do have to admire the way in which DiAngelo amalgamates her victimhood (growing up poor and white) with her original sin of whiteness (race privilege)—though the effect is somewhat spoiled by repeated lapses into the murky patois of the social sciences (“able to address in greater depth my multiple locations”). Anyhow, this formerly poor-but-privileged white woman, now an academic, eventually produced an entire book on the subject: White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
White Fragility, the book, runs to a mere 165 pages, which seems brief for an academic tome. Well, really, how much can you say about a lame idea? Ah, but it’s a marketable idea, because it gives the Woke a stout ideological stick with which to beat Evil White People. On that score DiAngelo showed a certain cleverness, piously noting that her book is for Woke Evil White People, i.e. those who earnestly desire a block of instruction in the rending of garments and the finer points of groveling before BIPOCs. Hence the fulsome reviews her book received, e.g.:
Robin DiAngelo demonstrates an all-too-rare ability to enter the racial conversation with complexity, nuance, and deep respect. Her writing establishes her mastery in accessing the imaginal, metaphoric mind where the possibility for transformation resides. With an unwavering conviction that change is possible, her message is clear: the incentive for white engagement in racial justice work is ultimately self-liberation. (Leticia Nieto, coauthor of Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment)
A rare and incisive examination of the system of white body supremacy that binds us all as Americans. . . . With authenticity and clarity, she provides the antidote to white fragility and a road map for developing white racial stamina and humility. White Fragility loosens the bonds of white supremacy and binds us back together as human beings. (Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands and Rock the Boat)
White fragility is the secret ingredient that makes racial conversations so difficult and achieving racial equity even harder. But by exposing it and showing us all—including white folks—how it operates and how it hurts us, individually and collectively, Robin DiAngelo has performed an invaluable service. An indispensable volume for understanding one of the most important (and yet rarely appreciated) barriers to achieving racial justice. (Tim Wise, author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son)
You can see why White Fragility made the New York Times Best Seller list.
Don’t get me wrong—I’d buy a ticket to watch Woke Evil White People being flogged through a struggle session purporting to build “white racial stamina and humility.” As far as that goes, white fragility’s just fine in my book. But no sooner did the concept surface than it was weaponized, as they say in progressive circles. And that, I suspect, was DiAngelo’s real intention. Providing Woke Evil White People with a new way to signal their virtue was just a side benefit. White fragility’s major attraction is that it arms the Woke with a stick to beat non-Woke Evil White People: “You’re white and I’m white. I’m good because I admit the evil of my whiteness, but you don’t admit it and so you’re deplorable racist scum.”
There’s one thing you won’t find in DiAngelo’s 165 turgid pages, however: the simple, obvious reason why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. They can’t get a word in edgewise! The job of white people is to shut up and listen to Newspeak like this:
Anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is very useful for understanding white fragility. According to Bourdieu, habitus is the result of socialization, the repetitive practice of actors and their interactions with each other and their social environment.… [H]abitus can be thought of as a person’s familiar ways of perceiving, interpreting, and responding to the social cues around him or her. (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, p. 101)
Why that commonplace observation needs a fancy label like habitus is not explained. But blather of this kind will be very familiar to anybody who’s suffered through some pricey corporate seminar on race and diversity. For though people like Robin DiAngelo and Ibam X. Kendi pose as fearless truth tellers and tribunes of the BIPOC, they make quite a comfortable living off Woke white guilt. In these degenerate times secular sainthood can be a lucrative calling—as we learned recently regarding the finances of Black Lives Matter.
Does all this matter, though?
It wouldn’t matter if such toxic notions were restricted to a small group of progressive zealots. But those zealots are working hard to mainstream their zany “antiracist” obsessions. They’re being implanted in public school curricula, for example, on the argument that the history of race in America was not being taught. This is a lie, of course, as I myself can attest. Despite what Nickole Hannah-Jones may claim, as a grade-school and high-school student in the Fifties and Sixties I was taught about American slavery, the Civil War, the Abolitionist movement, etc. During my high school years, the civil rights movement was in full spate and many class discussions revolved around it. In short, I didn’t need the 1619 Project to enlighten me—especially as it’s full of distortions and outright falsehoods. And students today don’t need to be sorted into racial categories and propagandized in the name of “antiracist education.” That term is an oxymoron, because in practice such “education” does nothing but maximize mutual suspicion and animosity among various racial/ethnic groups.
And “white fragility” is a figment of Robin DiAngelo’s imagination. Nowhere in her absurd book is there proffered a particle of evidence in support of her stereotyped characterizations of “white people”—or for that matter of “black people.” She made a lot of money off White Fragility, though, and I suppose that’s what inspired her to produce a sequel. With Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm DiAngelo really gets into her stride, kicking white progressives around on the floor with a sharp-toed boot. And they love it, of course, cringing masochists that they are.
Nice Racism also made the New York Times Best Seller list.
White males of the GOP hating the humanities and social sciences. So classic as to be cliche. You all really do hate subjects like U.S. history, don’t you?