I had seen sections of Taibbi’s excellent takedown of White Fragility, but only read the whole essay today. Robin DiAngelo’s only solution offered to white people is that they become less white. I think she, and others, are pointing to a different consensus as to what must be done. You must denounce other white people, individually and collectively, in order to be saved. Notice that this doesn’t cost you a cent. Redemption without sacrifice.
***
Reading my previous posts that touch on the subject, I once made the point that “fragility” is not the potential sin I would associate with white people, but it’s opposite. What seems to be happening is the formulation “See? You are defending yourself, therefore you must feel defensive. People feel defensive when they are actually weak, not strong. Therefore you prove my accusation that you are fragile. UH! UH! See? There you are, doing it again!”
Rather convenient.
However, I think there is a place where this is subtly true. They are attempting to motivate some white people to join in by using this tactic. For those people, it might be true. For the others, I don’t see how they can have it both ways.
For myself, I long ago decided that black spokespeople have little or nothing to do with the black people I actually encounter in my life. The people I encounter are human beings, and some are darker, some are lighter. I am now told this is an impossible formulation that denies the reality of oppression. However, I am told this by precisely those people who have an interest in maintaining division, because their jobs, their self-esteem, or their excuses why they ain’t rich depend upon it. The black people I actually know are worried about their golf handicap, whether they have enough money to retire, whether their children are going to get a good education, whether they are going to keep this new job, whether their church will weather this CoVid storm, whether the young Christians they are teaching will actually learn the life lessons they need, whether their daughter’s teacher will be willing to be strict with her…very much the same things my white and Asian acquaintances have. They’re just darker people saying these things.
The world has gone mad, and I’m just trying not to get dragged in its trail.
In the spirit of the times, the text of a recent spam comment that someone left on David Foster’s recent post:
I looked at the website at xxxxxxx.xxx and couldn’t figure out if it was parody or a scheme to get web-design business for the comment author. Robin DiAngelo has a slicker racket than the person who wrote the spam comment, but the difference between them is a matter of degree rather than essence.
The truth of the matter is that half the world is trying to get into the countries run by white people. Sorry, that is just the truth.
>The truth of the matter is that half the world is trying to get into the countries run by white people.<
Those folks can be easily stopped. The folks I want to see in Gitmo are the ones at the top(corporate, media, BIG EDU, et al) for treason.
Redemption without sacrifice.
Strange way to spell ‘betrayal.’
Robin DiAngelo is this decade’s Tim Wise. When I heard DiAngelo’s spiel, I said, “What, again?”
AVI, I see your problem. You just don’t know anyone that’s Authentically Black. No one with street cred from a stretch up or down state or bullet scars. I lost track of the couple I knew when they went back in the system.
This explains why none of the “spokespersons” are people that combine pigment with real accomplishment like Justice Thomas.
My style is listening more than engaging, and I can report you hear the same opinion from UMC blacks towards poorer blacks that you do from UMC whites towards poorer whites. This fight is SJWs and globalists (who are both feeling very threatened as zombie post-Cold War globalism crashes and burns) vs classic liberals and nationalists, regardless of color.
An I the only one who notices that darker blacks tend to be more conservative than light skinned blacks? It’s not that so many dark blacks are conservative but that a lot of the lighter skinned blacks seem angry.
I have seen quite a few African blacks, from Africa, and they seem unconcerned with racism. They are just glad to be here.
“he truth of the matter is that half the world is trying to get into the countries run by white people. Sorry, that is just the truth.”
LOL. Because those same white people wrecked their country and its economy, for their own profit. Sorry, that is just the truth. ;)
Remember It’s not about you, it’s about them.
If you lack confidence or a sound philosophical basis for your position, you can tolerate no dissention. I see this with regard to almost any issue that has become a required position to belong. Climate Change, Recycling, BLM, diversity are all the same. You must belong with the rules being set in real time by the most devious or power hungry individuals.
AVI, are you referring to Burke’s piece at newdiscourses? I don’t see anything by Taibbi.
@ George – Thank you. Fixed.
@ Pen Gun – Yes it’s a shame what those white people have done to China.
AVI: “Yes it’s a shame what those white people have done to China.”
I know you jest, AVI, and this is tangential to the topic, but it may be worth noticing.
White people — specifically English white people — launched two Opium Wars against a peaceful China, the first in the 1840s, to force China to allow them to sell opium to Chinese people, with the expected addictive & anti-social results. Other white Europeans piled on, and then later the non-white (or since they are successful, maybe Democrats count them as white?) Japanese invaded and took control of Manchuria. In a little-noticed event at the tail end of WWII, the white (or maybe Red?) USSR invaded. In the official Chinese Communist telling, that period of exploitation ended with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.
These days, every Chinese school kid learns about that “Century of Humiliation”, and Chinese leaders have been quite explicit — China aims to get into a position where that kind of exploitation is never going to be allowed to happen again. Being aware of that history is a useful framework for understanding Chinese policy today. China’s leaders have a very clear national objective; do the leaders of England, or Germany, or Finland, or the USA?
An interesting book on this topic is Michael Pillsbury’s “Hundred-Year Marathon” (2015).