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Robin DiAngelo didn't come up with anything per se. She just published and popularized a very salient critique against white liberal/progressive/leftist inaction in the face of the enormous gaps between blacks and whites in the US. A critique that had been floating about in academia for a while. (It should come as no surprise that she cites Noel Ignatiev & friends a lot.)
Most people don't understand what the term "white fragility" means and what it's useful for. White Fragility is not just about skin color. It's about your stated beliefs + your skin color. To give an example, if you are unapologetically racist and white you are not fragile. But if you are white and believe yourself not to be racist? Well... Why aren't you helping the blacks more? From that point onward every word that exits your mouth is white fragility in action. Why do you think blacks are poorer? Have worse educational outcomes? Have worse jobs? Everything you say here that isn't explicitly racist is either white fragility or an invitation for DiAngelo to ask you why you aren't doing more to help. And every answer you give to that question that isn't 'Yes Mam' followed by extensive plans for action is white fragility in action.
Robin DiAngelo walks into institutions filled to the brim with white self-described anti-racists and tears them a new one for not actually being anti-racist. And she is right. A person who says they care about racism and all the gaps between blacks and whites but doesn't do anything about it is either a hypocrite or a liar. Why shouldn't a group full of self-described anti-racists be called out on their lack of action? Black people are literally dying whilst you fret over what is for lunch.
Robin DiAngelo isn't breaking any rules here. Why shouldn't people who say they care about matters of race and the oppression be forced into action? Why should the plight of one overprivileged fragile white person who loses their job and healthcare matter more than the plight of millions of black people? Why should their personal worries be allowed to act as a bulwark against real anti-racist action? Why should the free market system that ties jobs with healthcare be used as a rhetorical moral shield for white people when it has been used as a sword against black people for centuries?
Robin DiAnglo talks about why she named her book what she did because she needed a term and an explanation for why white people were getting upset when exposed to her nonsense. And she couldn’t grok that people go to work to pay their rent/mortgage and not to publicly interrogate their subconscious as it is portrayed to them by $6,000/hour grifter consultants. I’m 💯 sure the managerial/executive class at many companies does prattle on in an empty manner about EDI, but this loops right back around to the underlying class conflict EDI deprioritizes.
The Blocked and Reported pedants did an interview with someone who went through one of DiAngelo’s company’s sessions. She was a graphic designer who, for her job, made a poster for the Odyssey. It was a minimalist poster that had a ship on a white background with the familiar blue-and-while Meander pattern you find on paper coffee cups in 80s movies. DiAngelo’s consultants told her coworkers the ship was a subconscious manifestation of colonialism and the Meander was a subconscious manifestation of Nazi swastikas.
Normally, going around telling someone’s coworkers they’re a secret Nazi will land you in HR. But you’re supposed to thank an EDI consultant and not be upset if they do it?
All you’ve offered are the espoused goals of EDI consultants. But you exempt mention of their methods, which is why DiAngelo had to come up with an explanation about why she was reducing people to tears that eased her conscience while the consulting checks kept cashing. And it’s definitely a class issue when management subjects workers to this stuff as a PR move.
Nothing you say changes the fact that self-described anti-racists are sitting on their asses in positions of power doing nothing to help black people who have been suffering for centuries. Sorry but no one should care about the crocodile tears of white overprivileged liars and hypocrites when they are finally confronted with the reality of their being.
All you are doing is shifting the conversation away from the plight of blacks and instead focusing on the fact a privileged white person doesn't like being called what they are. If you don't believe black suffering matters stop pretending and get out of the way of progress. The free market, that white people love when it benefits them and helps them exploit others, is now finally, in the tiniest way possible, affecting the most privileged people on earth slightly negatively by comparison. Forgive me for not caring when this 'inconvenience' is contrasted with literal slavery.
I don’t care one way or the other what you do or don’t care about. But you’ll need to define “the most privileged people on Earth” more broadly than the the capital-owning class to make your point, which proves mine.
Also, what evidence do you have that even a simple majority of people subjected to bizarre EDI sessions are “self-described anti-racists”? Tons of not-online normies who go to work for a paycheck work for companies who do, on the other hand, have a C-suite willing to hire “self-described anti-racists” as consultants and officers to provide a bit of a prophylactic against potential discrimination lawsuits.
I care about racism and the harm that it causes. Don't you? Are you a racist?
Being a white office worker makes you top 1% in the world when it comes to nigh every metric possible. If you think you are making a point by recognizing this fact then you will have to elucidate me.
You have to follow the context of the conversation if this is going to work, you can't just go comment by comment.
Either the people are anti-racist and not doing a good enough job and should be scolded, or they are racist since they don't want to do anything real to help fight against racism.
Or anti-racism offers a false binary, and people that take it seriously like Ibrahim X. Kendi end up sincerely advocating for an unelected panel of EDI government officials to be placed above the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government in the pages of the Atlantic, effectively ending electoral politics if elections don’t redress racism is coherent with anti-racism’s assertion that no person/organization/structure/action/etc. can be neutral.
The binary isn't false. Either blacks are suffering more than whites, or they are not. It's not up to you as a white person to dictate the safest possible way for equality to come about anymore. Whites have had decades to put their preferred methods into action and none of them have worked. The gaps between blacks and whites are the same.
Sorry, but you don't get to sacrifice more black bodies for your white comfort anymore. The suffering and oppressed have no reason or moral obligation to value the continuation of the system that hurts and oppresses them and their children. If we can't achieve racial harmony within the white structures of power, then they will have to be abolished just like black and brown bodies had to abolish the white structure of slavery.
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Because people aren't being hypocrites for fun; they're being hypocrites because they're forced into it. Attacking hypocrites under these circumstances is just adding more force.
Forced at what stage?
If they are forced into identifying as anti-racist then they are just racist cowards. Why shouldn't we apply more force to racist cowards?
In any case it seems you are valuing the comfort of white inaction above the suffering, oppression and death of black victims.
That's like saying that if you have to be forced to obey the Patriot Act, you're a non-patriotic coward.
The demands that you have to follow in order to be an "anti-racist" and keep your job have little to do with actually being anti-racist.
According to privileged white people who have overseen decades of oppression over blacks. Robin DiAngelo is there to remind you that your white privilege does not hold more value than black suffering just because you are currently benefiting from it.
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