White Fragility

In this short post I'd like to try to give my own opinion on the renewed popularity of the book "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism". This book by Robin J. DiAngelo was published in 2018 and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for a year.

Disclaimer: I haven't read it but know what it's about. This is just my reaction to the many online discussions about this book. It recently reappeared in public discourse after the murder of George Floyd, and I'll briefly discuss what strikes me as the main point of disagreement between the political left and right.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism is a 2018 book written by Robin DiAngelo about race relations in the United States. An academic with experience in diversity training, DiAngelo coined the term "white fragility" in 2011 to describe any defensive instincts or reactions that a white person experiences when questioned about race or made to consider their own race. In White Fragility, DiAngelo views racism in the United States as systemic and often perpetuated unconsciously by individuals. She recommends against viewing racism as committed intentionally by "bad people".
_{source: Wikipedia}

Strongly generalizing, the difference of opinion on systemic racism between the left and the right can be summarized as follows: the left thinks it exists, and the right thinks it doesn't. That's it. This is a consequence of the political right's extremist views on individualism and their unquestioning belief in the meritocracy and the American Dream; for more on that read my recent posts The American Dream and Make America Great?. Their ideology boils down to this: whatever your place on the socioeconomic ladder, you and only you are responsible for that. The political right goes one step further, and blames the political left for pandering blacks and other protected groups and thereby cultivating within those groups what they call a "victim mentality". Far right pundits, like Ben Shapiro, Stefan Molineux and Steven Crowder, all of whom have a considerable fan-base, even go so far as blaming the left for robbing systemically disadvantaged groups from their individual agency by telling them they'll never amount to anything because of the impossible odds against them in a system that's biased towards white males.

These right wing pundits then assure their audience that they are not racist, they just deny that the system, which according to them is based on individual liberty, giving each individual an equal chance to climb up in the meritocracy, is racist. And they further establish their not being racist by pointing at the "real" racists, the white supremacists and so called race realists; those are the really bad people, and because they themselves are not really bad, they must be good. That's what they feel, but the facts (that don't care about their feelings) say otherwise, and that's the premise of Robin DiAngelo's book; systemic racism is real. And white people on the right and the slightly less right (there is no real leftist political party in the United States) feel uncomfortable talking about this reality because it directly contradicts their deeply seeded belief in individualism and individual agency. That's why right wing pundits point to black people's individual behavior when searching for answers to a systemic question; it's up to that individual black boy to decide to not pick up a gun and rob or murder people. To me this is a ridiculously simplistic and unrealistic position to hold. It should be as clear cut as one plus one equals two, that the solution to a systemic problem can only be systemic in nature. And that my friends takes collective, not individual, action.

All of the above also means that there's no use, as a white person, to feel individually responsible for the racism caused by the system we're all necessarily part of. It's not your fault. So don't be a white fragile. It just means that you can choose to work at changing that racist system or not. Or worse, do like the Ben Shapiro's of this world and actively contribute to perpetuating this bad system. Admitting that there are forces greater than yourself, like "the system" or "society", is not the same as fatalism. There are still countless ways in which you can shape your individual contribution to that greater whole; just don't deny that the greater whole exists, or you'll deny reality and come up with stupid arguments like Ben Shapiro. So, in closing, please watch this entertaining video on white fragility in action. It's a commentary on Ben Shapiro's interview on Joe Rogan's podcast, and it's hilarious and frustrating at the same time, as so many things are in our times...

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