Critical Race Theory (Part 5): A Critique of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”

In my last post, I articulated the main argument, claims, and terms Robin DiAngelo makes in her best-selling book, White Fragility. For reference, here are the links to Parts 1-4:
Part 1: Too Hot to Handle
Part 2: Storytelling and Intersectionality
Part 3: CRT Today-Is It Marxist?
Part 4: A Summary of “White Fragility”

Here in this post, I am going to articulate what I feel are the serious problems in her work. Before I do that, though, I want to clarify a few things everyone should be able to agree on. Everyone should (and I’m guessing does):

• (1) Acknowledge America’s past sins of slavey, discrimination, and Jim Crow and that there still is (indeed always will be) racism and racist people.
• (2) Acknowledge that minorities, particularly many in the black community, still face obstacles in our society that white people simply do not, and that is because our society is still feeling the effects of the actual systemic racism that was baked into the legal system for far too long.
• (3) Acknowledge that there are still things that need to be done to try to make this country a “more perfect union.”

That being said, it needs to be made clear that critical race theory (CRT) isn’t simply arguing that more needs to be done. CRT (as reflected here in DiAngelo’s book) makes further claims:

• (4) The very American system of capitalism and Constitutional law is inherently and systemically racist at its core.
• (5)  The American system is not only incapable of brining about racial equality, but also is dead set against doing so, and therefore, we need a completely new system.

It is these two claims that are problematic, debatable, and indeed (in my opinion) false. We need to keep these things clear. What makes CRT unique are claims 4-5, and just because you disagree with claims 4-5 does not mean you do not acknowledge claims 1-3.

The Problems with DiAngelo’s White Fragility
That being said, as I showed in my previous post, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility clearly reflects the point of view of CRT. As a point of basic analysis, I find her book to be very poorly argued and problematic in a host of ways. What follows are my observations.

DiAngelo’s Anecdotes = Her “Objective” Critique of the System
The first thing I noticed about DiAngelo’s book is that she fills it with anecdotes and personal stories about her work as a “diversity trainer.” At the risk of sounding too trite, most of the anecdotes came across something like this: “In this certain session, a white person said something that I felt was racially insensitive, so I pointed it out to the white person in front of the entire group. That white person was offended and claimed she wasn’t racist. She really is. That’s what white fragility looks like—when you deny you’re racist, that shows that you are racist. THEREFORE, that racism is baked into THE SYSTEM that made that person, and all white people, racist.”

Now, I’m not going to argue whether or not some people are racist and say racist things—some clearly are and some clearly do. What struck me about all these types of anecdotes in DiAngelo’s book is that she is effectively using her personal experiences as some sort of objective standard to make her claim that “all white people are racist” and that it was the “racist system” that made them that way. Not only is that problematic in and of itself but given the fact that she makes it clear in her book that the notion of “objectivity” is a tool in the racist system to propagate racism, her use of her subjective experiences as the objective standard to make sweeping judgments is, quite frankly, hypocritical.

DiAngelo’s Rather Bizarre View of History
Another problem, both with DiAngelo’s book and with the other two CRT books I’ve read, is that her very presentation of history seems to be quite skewed. In order to make the argument that the American system today is irredeemably racist, DiAngelo (and the other CRT books) refer almost exclusively to historical events that are either pre-Civil War or during the Jim Crow era before 1960. Now, to be clear, some of what is mentioned about the systemic racism of pre-Civil War America, or the Jim Crow South is quite eye-opening. Nevertheless, there is hardly any acknowledgement of the great strides America has taken in addressing racism over the past 60 years.

Instead, DiAngelo makes statements like this: “White righteousness, when inflicting pain on African Americans, is evident in the glee the white collective derives from blackface and depictions of blacks as apes and gorillas” (94). I’m sorry, but we are not living in the 1920s anymore. Again, that is not to say that there are some racist white people. Obviously, there are. But DiAngelo’s depicting American today as no different than the America of 100 years ago, her continual overgeneralizing (and quite frankly racist) depiction of all white people as gleefully applauding the oppression of black people, and her continual claims that white people see black people as subhuman—I’m sorry, is simply shameful. It simply is not true.

One particular historical point DiAngelo made that I found to be flat out bizarre was about Jackie Robinson, the first black man to break the color barrier in the major leagues in 1948. She writes, “The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete on that level” (26). She concludes by saying that narratives like that of the Jackie Robinson story “obscure the reality of ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy” (26). I’m sorry, but no one looks at the story of Jackie Robinson that way. He was a remarkable man who had to endure a lot of institutional white control and abuse, in order to dismantle that white control and abuse in baseball. He BROKE the color barrier. No one in their right mind interprets his story as, “Well, finally a black guy was strong enough to compete with the whites!”

I’m sorry, but it is absolutely shocking and laughable to see DiAngelo to take an actual historical event in which everyone agrees was a landmark event in America, in that it dismantled institutional, white, racist control of the national pastime, and then turn around and interpret it as something that reinforced institutional white control. I’m trying to be fair in my assessment of DiAngelo’s book, but her take on the Jackie Robinson is absolutely Orwellian nonsense.

Equally nonsensical is her continuing assertion that there is “white control in all institutions of society that sets the policies others must live by” (27). Now, that may have been true back in pre-Civil War times, or in the Jim Crow south, but is clearly not true in American today. What about all the minorities who have thrived and succeeded in society today? What about the countless minorities who are city officials, congressmen, senators, judges, and even president? Doesn’t that reality contradict DiAngelo’s claim that there is “white control in all institutions of society”? DiAngelo doesn’t think so! In her world, even though there are countless blacks and other minorities in positions of political power, she says they simply “support the status quo and do not challenge racism in any way significant enough to be threatening” (27).

I’m sorry, but that it utter and complete nonsense. To be clear, according to DiAngelo, no matter how successful or powerful minorities might become within American society, that isn’t evidence that the American system isn’t racist…because it is…DiAngelo has decreed it to be so. That kind of tortured logic leads me to conclude that DiAngelo’s real aim isn’t really to address actual racism. Her real aim is to use the issue of racism to achieve the goal of doing away with “the system.”

Now, I shouldn’t have to say this, but obviously I am not denying the very real consequences of America’s past racism still has on people today. What I am saying is that DiAngelo loses all credibility in my eyes when she makes blatantly reckless, false, and utterly ridiculous statements like that.

DiAngelo’s Problem with “White Woman Tears”
I found chapter 11 in the book, entitled “White Woman Tears,” to be just weird, yet I do think it gives a fairly clear depiction of DiAngelo’s thinking. To the point, in this chapter, DiAngelo tells “white women” that whenever they are in inter-racial company and some kind of “racial news” breaks and something tragic has happened to a black person, that they should not cry for that black person. The reason DiAngelo gives is two-fold:

(1) She says that given America’s racist history, black people interpret “white woman tears” as a form of terrorism: “When a white woman cries, a black man gets hurt” (133). She even likens it to the white woman who cried and falsely accused Emmit Til of attacking her. Therefore, DiAngelo concludes, “Because of its seeming innocence, well-meaning white women crying in cross-racial interactions is one of the more pernicious enactments of white fragility” (133).

(2) She says that in those cross-racial settings, that then a white woman cries, all the attention focuses on her, and “racism becomes white distress, white suffering, and white victimization” (134) and those tears are simply “self-indulgent” (135). Then “white men” feel the need to rescue the “crying white woman,” and that in turn reinforces not only the racial hierarchy, but the patriarchy as well. Meanwhile, a “black man” “must now live with the agony of having to support a white woman over a person of color in order to survive” (137).

I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to respond to any of that. That thinking strikes me as twisted, absurd, and quite frankly, racist. I’m trying to give a rational critique of DiAngelo’s book, but I’m sorry, I found this chapter to be, well, just bonkers.

DiAngelo’s Claim that if You Deny You’re Racist, Then You’re Racist
Another problematic message that comes across in DiAngelo’s book is the one that says, “Hey, white person, you’re racist. And if you deny it, that just shows how much of a racist you are.” Now again, DiAngelo concludes that all white people are racist, not based on anything any white person actually does, but based on her founding assumption that “the system” is racist and supports white supremacy. Basically, if you’re white, you’re racist by default. But if you deny you are racist, then that is the “personal sin” DiAngelo will say you are responsible for.

According to DiAngelo, if you’re white, it is impossible not to be racist. Did your parents teach you to treat everyone the same? Nope! “It is not possible to teach someone to treat everyone the same” (79). Do you have cross-racial friendships? Sorry, “racism cannot be absent from your friendship” (81). And remember, if you disagree with DiAngelo’s claims that you’re a white racist, that is what she calls white fragility. She defines “white fragility” as follows: “White fragility functions as a form of bullying” and is a “sociology of dominance” (112-113). Along with that, throughout her book DiAngelo also lists various “white people responses” to her assertion that they are racist that reflects their “white fragility” and their attempts to bully anyone confronting them on their racism.

Simply put, DiAngelo uses stories and anecdotes from her experience to extrapolate that all white people are racist, but whenever someone appealed to their own stories and anecdotes from their experience to try to argue that DiAngelo was wrong about them, DiAngelo concludes that is a form of racist bullying and “white fragility.”

I find that tactic to be quite passive-aggressive in and of itself. In a way, it actually reminds me of an incident I had in college with a girl who would occasionally come to the Christian Campus House Bible studies. She was a friend of one of the CCH members. To make a long story short, she was kind of creepy and for some reason, she took an interest in me—not a romantic interest, mind you. Rather, she had become convinced that I had an abusive childhood and that my parents had never allowed me to just be a kid—and she would say things to that effect in front of everyone. Needless to say, that made me really uncomfortable. Eventually, she kept it up to the point where I figured I’d have to sit down and talk some sense into her.

When we met, after she again told me how sure she was that my parents were abusive to me, I tried to “defend myself” and reassure her that my parents were very loving parents, that everyone from my childhood could assure her that not only was I allowed to be a child. Let me tell you, it is a very awkward thing to defend yourself against disturbing accusations, no matter how ridiculous they may be. In any case, after I said my piece, she just looked and me and said, “That’s the exact same thing I used to tell people, but I was in denial.” And then she pulled out a small book entitled something like, Finding the Child Within, with a cartoon on the cover of a sad-child holding a red heart, and encouraged me to read it. At that point, I just smiled, took the book, and said I had somewhere to go. I realized there was no point in engaging with her anymore. Any attempt on my part to convince her she was wrong would only reinforce her deluded conviction (based solely on her own experience as a child) that I was abused as a child. There was no need for me to “defend myself” because I knew the very premise of her claim was false.

Here’s how that applies to DiAngelo’s book. Are there people who really are pretty racist who go out of their way to deny it? Sure. Just like there are sexists and misogynists out there who swear they are “pro-women” and trumpet women’s causes, yet treat women horribly, and sometimes criminally (I’m looking at you Harvey Weinstein). But that is not really the same thing as what DiAngelo is alleging. She is saying that while everyone has biases and everyone has certain prejudices and assumptions about other people (that is true, by the way) that white people, by virtue of being white, also are racist because the supposed “system of white supremacy” benefits them. If that is her “definition,” then I find the very premise of her claim to be false. Therefore, there is no need to try to “defend myself” against it. To begin to do so is to play her game that she has already set up to make sure you can’t win, for one of her rules says, “If you object, you’re a racial bully.”

Sorry, I’m not playing that game. Sure, I have inevitable biases, prejudices, and assumptions. Yes, I’m aware of them and I try to keep them in check and treat people as honestly and fairly as a I can. But sorry, if you’re going to say I’m racist because I’m white, I’m out—you’re not a serious or honest person, and not worth my time. Instead of shining a light on actual problems that need to be fixed, you’re showing yourself to be nothing more than a racial Pharisee who likes to come across as “righteous” by virtue of judging other people who don’t agree with you as “racist sinners.” Sorry, but a much more profitable use of my, or anyone’s time, would be to focus on actual problems in America involving race that should be addressed, and demanding our leaders actually address them.

Thank you for the book—I’ll never look at it again.