PREMIUM: The Conservative's Guide to 'White Fragility'

The purpose of this presentation is to be something akin to a conservative’s guide to White Fragility. I realise that many people won’t have the time to read this book or other related materials, and I will aim to make this as clear as possible.

From Only £5/month

Subscribe to Lotus Eaters now for full access to premium content.

Subscribe Now

Introduction

I also want to make it clear that I do not endorse any of the positions I am going to describe here. I am an individualist and a constitutionalist, I do not believe in group rights for any race.

White Fragility is a pop-philosophy book by Dr Robin DiAngelo, which is aimed at white, educated, middle-class American progressives with the purpose of trying to stop them being so racist.

It is wildly successful, topping bestseller lists for months, and has been hailed by left-wing thinkers and publications as an accessible diagnosis of the problem of “whiteness” in the United States, though suggests few solutions.

For some reason, this book is also recommended reading by the ministry of defence, the NHS, MI5 and various big brand supermarkets in the UK.

It’s hard to know exactly what to call the collection of interrelated disciplines within which DiAngelo operates, as the terms used to describe the subject have been informal and amorphous, or given software updates when the academic calculus determines that previous labels used were somehow problematic.

For the purpose of this talk, I’ll use the term “intersectionality”, which should be understood as an umbrella term to encompass various extremely-left-wing movements for “social justice”, that use tools such as Critical Race Theory in the service of a style of analysis that is essentially Marxist in outlook.

This ideology can be characterised for its opposition to whiteness, maleness, capitalism and Western traditionalism, as these are engines of inequality and considered to be sources of oppression over non-white, non-male, non-capitalist, non-Western ways of living. The desirable result is that each group in society should be, in all ways, equal with others.

This is the worldview that is referred to, by both its proponents and opponents, as being “woke”.

What is White Fragility?

In White Fragility, Robin Di Angelo lays out her basic thesis about white people and their relation to their own race. She describes our reaction to discussions about race as “white fragility”, which is the result of white people’s lack of tolerance of “racial stress”.

This “racial stress” is triggered by “the mere suggestion that being white has meaning”. White people act as if their moral worldview is under attack, and display “anger, fear and guilt” in order to “reinstate white equilibrium” in order to return to “racial comfort” and maintain white dominance within “the racial hierarchy”.

The “discomfort and anxiety” that causes white fragility is born from “superiority and entitlement” on the part of white people, and is a “powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white advantage”.

While White Fragility is the term DiAngelo uses to describe the inability of white people to endure “challenges to our racial positions”. She doesn't want you to think of it as weakness. Indeed, the power she believes white people weild is more than sufficient to protect our racial interests.

Di Angelo asserts that we must “name our race”; that is, we must see ourselves as white people who have a white frame of reference in a white worldview, having a white experience as they move through the world. White people’s race matters and Di Angelo wishes for us to embrace it.

She believes that two “Western” ideologies, individualism and objectivity, prevent white people from understanding their own racial lens. These apparently prevent white people from being able to explore the “collective aspects of the white experience”.

Our individualistic view of the world conditions us against understanding how and why racial groups matter, and our objective lens prevents us from understanding that the "white" perspective is not universal.

You might ask why, if something is racial, should we consider it possible or desirable to change it, and DiAngelo explains that while there is nothing biological about race, race is nevertheless the organising principle of American society.

To establish this, she must shuffle her definitions of these words in order to elicit the appropriate moral response from her fellow white progressives.

Racism is commonly defined along the lines of prejudice against people of other races because of feelings of superiority for one’s own race, from which presumably follows unjust discrimination. Racism is an opinion that an individual holds, and potentially acts upon.

Di Angelo does not agree, and believes that racism is “a racial group’s collective prejudice” when “backed by the power of legal authority and institutional control” as a “far reaching system that functions independently from the intentions of self-images or individual actors”, leading her to summarise it with a quote from a suitably diverse professor: “racism is a structure, not an event” and that there can be "racism without racists".

In essence, racism requires a dominant group to have control of institutions to deny the civil rights of an inferior group.

The system of racism in which Di Angelo believes is ideological. White people are conditioned into it from birth, and it is reinforced across society in schools, politics, advertising, public holidays and common phrases.

Every aspect of “white” society is informed by this ideology and is reinforced by social penalties when someone attempts to challenge it; it is the framework through which we “represent, interpret, understand and make sense of social existence”. In the US, these values are individualism, capitalism, democracy, consumerism and meritocracy.

This ideology is the most powerful because it apparently obscures racism as a system of inequality, and both black and white people will support such a system. Therefore, the Western system is not separable from Di Angelo’s concept of racism, white supremacy or oppression because the very nature of it is an expression of white racial consciousness.

Supporting this system is how she explains that white people are all inherently racist, and it is why non-white people cannot be racist in the United States, and other majority-white cultures.

It isn’t that white people are openly bigoted, it is that they are white people, and that comes with a set of ideological prescriptions that create systems that she calls “whiteness”. All white people benefit from this system of “white supremacy”, even if they are anti-racists and oppose racism as normally defined. This is their “white privilege”, and, of course, this can only apply to the racial beneficiaries of the system, so there can be no “reverse racism”.

Whiteness is the term used for the cultural space that white people in the United States have created, but in her view it is not bound to white people. This leads her to bizarre conclusions, such as:

“Consider how we talk about white neighbourhoods: good, safe, sheltered, clean, desirable. By definition, other spaces (non-white) are bad, dangerous, crime-ridden and to be avoided”.

Di Angelo is suggesting that for “white” spaces to be defined as good, non-white spaces must be defined as not good, or else we do not have a proper way of defining the good spaces as white.

This is logically incoherent, however. We don’t define the space as being “white” when it achieves a specified list of standards, we describe a space according to the culture/ethnicity of the people who inhabit it. We wouldn’t describe a 4th century BC Germanic village as “good, safe, sheltered, clean and desirable”, so by Di Angelo’s formulation we must conclude the Germanic tribes created a non-white space, and did not have a white worldview.

And, from her perspective, she is right, but using the wrong terminology to express herself. The question is why is she using racialised words to describe this state of affairs at all, when far more accurate words are available that do not blur the boundaries of ethnicities and do not tie culture to race?

Who Are White People?

The frame DiAngelo creates with the term “white” is a product of the American experience of race. This fact is obscured in the racialised terminology intersectionalists use to discuss the subject abstractly, which attempts to universalise the terms “white” and “whiteness” to apply to anyone of European heritage.

This turns the word “white” from a descriptive to a prescriptive term, and frames the discussion in terms of race as a political concept, rather than an attribute most people consider fixed and not especially relevant to their own political concerns. Most people are not racists and do not wish to become racists, so, as DiAngelo observes, using the term “white” triggers a moral reaction from those being characterised in this way.

So how can we make sense of this without accepting Robin DiAngelo’s assertion that we are already racists, but didn’t actually know it?

The Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture did great service in helping to clarify the issue in an article describing whiteness, that draws directly from DiAngelo’s work and even includes a 22 minute video of her explaining the key concepts.

Alongside the article, they produced a useful infographic that was widely reviled by non-intersectionalists for appearing to be racist. The main thrust of complaints focused on the nature of the attributes that were ascribed to “whiteness” and “white culture”, such as hard work, time keeping, the nuclear family, self-reliance and more.

To the non-Americanised users of the internet, this seemed outrageous. How can you say “hard work” is something that white people do? The implication seemed to be that non-white people do not do hard work, or that all white people are hard workers, as with the other attributes listed. It’s understandable why the public viewed this as racism, and after a backlash, the Smithsonian took it down.

However, we Europeans can look at this through our own shared cultural lens, and this helps bring the subject into sharp focus. In fact, when approached in this way, the Smithsonian’s infographic becomes a lot less racist, although it becomes far more inaccurate.

Is “rugged individualism” is a term we would apply to Swedish culture? Is the marital fidelity of a nuclear family something we ascribe to French culture? Is objective, rational, linear thinking what first springs to mind when reading German idealism? Is a heavy focus on the British Empire a core part of Spanish history lessons? Is the Protestant work ethic associated with Italy and do Italians follow rigid time schedules? Is Russia governed under the politics of majority rule? Does Albania recognise Christianity as the dominant religion? Is communication in Greece performed in “the King’s English”?

And which European country thinks that “bland is best” when it comes to eating their steak and potatoes?

That’s right, it’s England. When they say the word “white”, what they really mean is “English”.

These cultural characteristics and attitudes are not universalisable to white people as they are not shared in common by white people; they are particular to England and the English.

It reveals the terminological inadequacy of the American left’s desire to racialise the way we view the world. The term “white”, “whiteness” and “white supremacy” would suggest a homogenous European culture based around shared racial characteristics, which is simply not the case.

These are not racial attributes, but cultural ones, that can and should be adopted and assimilated into, as we have seen with immigrants of any colour into our own societies, but none more powerfully than in the United States itself with the different European cultures.

By DiAngelos own admission, “white”, “whiteness” and “white supremacy” are not really racial terms. They are not qualities shared by Europeans nor do they exclude non-Europeans. They are, in fact, simply the norms of English culture as evolved from the English colonies in the Americas. This is not racially prescriptive, it is culturally prescriptive. What she calls “white fragility” could simply be called “Englishness”, or in colonial-speak, “Americanism”.

But why would she even feel the need to characterise them as racial attributes in the first place?

Robin DiAngelo is a Racist

I would suggest it is because DiAngelo herself is a racist, and by the common English definition, this is quite straightforward to demonstrate, starting with her assumption of the given racism of any situation, which reduces her to stereotyping race in her own analysis.

She gives an example of a conversation she had with a white female friend that revolves around a mutual friend of theirs who had purchased a house in New Orleans for only $25,000. The white woman adds that the mutual friend had to purchase a gun as they are afraid to leave the house.

The next line from DiAngelo is this:

“I immediately knew they had bought a home in a black neighbourhood.

DiAngelo is confirmed in her racial assumption when she learns that the neighbourhood was indeed black.

She then directly addresses the obvious question that prompts itself: “but if the neighbourhood is really dangerous, why is acknowledging the danger a sign of racism?”

This is her answer:

“Research in implicit bias has shown that perceptions of criminal activity are influenced by race. White people will perceive danger simply by the presence of black people; we cannot trust our perceptions when it comes to race and crime.”

Astounding. Racism is the only answer to every question, but the methods by which we identify and measure reality are themselves racist. She is assuming we are all as racially conscious as she is. She ends chapter 3 by speculating that whites who explicitly “avow racism” are the honest white people, those who engage in “aversive racism” are, in fact, lying to themselves.

DiAngelo believes that because a white person is born into a predominantly-white society, that person "belongs". She belongs racially, and this belonging is "a deep and ever-present feeling" that has always been with her. She felt that growing up as a white person in a white society gives her access to the upper echelons of society, where everyone else is white. Servants, maids and cooks are non-white, making it sound as if DiAngelo grew up on an 18th century plantation. She firmly believes the world is ordered "hierarchically by race", with whites at the top and nonwhites at the bottom.

She spends chapter 5 discounting reasons for the state of things that are not explained via the medium of race, through a natural extension of identity politics. Anything that is particular to American culture is “racially” theirs, and therefore blackness, whatever it is supposed to mean, represents its opposite.

DiAngelo never defines blackness, though chapter 6 is dedicated to “anti-blackness”, which are the “ideologies of racism such as individualism and colour blindness”.

You might think these are anti-racist ideologies, specifically judging people by their individual behaviour and not their race, but recall that this prevents white people seeing themselves as white collective, and this is what enables us to unconsciously perpetuate our racist societies. We must, instead, discuss “white people as a group...in order to disrupt our unracialised identities”.

But what kind of racial identity is being forced onto white people? An entirely negative one, as far as DiAngelo is concerned. In chapter 12 she tells us that a positive white identity is “an impossible goal” as “white identity is inherently racist”.

As Robin DiAngelo is one of the foremost proponents of the white identity, deeply holds it and attempts to educate others in it, is it not reasonable to say that DiAngelo is a racist and is trying to educate others in racism, by her own standards?

DiAngelo is keen to speak specifically about “anti-black sentiment” that is “integral to white identity”. I am happy to accept that there could well be an anti-black sentiment that is indeed integral to white identity, but white people (as she has observed) do not tend to hold a racial identity, they hold their individual identities or they hold their national identity.

By interrupting this individualism, DiAngelo is actually forcing a white identity upon these individualistic people, thereby forcing an anti-black sentiment upon them as well that was not previously there. Is this desirable for either black or white people? Why should we wish to do this?

It seems counterproductive at best, and at worst it seems that DiAngelo is actually attempting to create racists in order to validate her theory about the racism of white people - a racism that she herself admits she deeply holds.

The following are a selection of excerpts from the chapter that are word-for-word her opinion, and literal in their meaning:

“I believe that in the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial ‘other’, and we must grapple with this relationship for it is a foundational aspect of the racial socialisation of white fragility.”

“I have black friends whom I love deeply, I do not have to suppress feelings of hatred and contempt as I sit with them; I see their humanity. But on the macro level, I also recognise the deep anti-black feelings that have been inculcated into me since childhood. These feelings surface immediately - in fact, before I can even think - when I conceptualise black people in general. The sentiments arise when I pass black strangers on the street, see stereotypical depictions of black people in the media, and hear the thinly veiled warnings and jokes passed between white people.”

“I believe that the white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: that we are capable and guilty of perpetrating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others. We have a particular hatred of ‘uppity’ blacks, those who dare step out of their place and look us in the eye as equals.”

To those people who don’t view the world as competing blocs of racial collectives, this might seem like DiAngelo is attempting to project her own horrific racism onto everyone else. As she already observed, most white people (in the United States) are individualists. Her phrase “in the white mind” means in the mind of the racially-conscious white person...a person like herself.

But for those white people for whom white is merely a description and not an identity, there is no “white mind”; they are individualistic. Their opinions probably do not reflect DiAngelo’s own because they do not view themselves as a white racial collective.

DiAngelo does not draw this distinction, of course, because it would undermine her claim to be able to read the “white mind”; in reality, she can only read her own mind and find that her own views on white people and black people are subject to her own prejudices.

What DiAngelo means when she says we must “name our race” is that we must name our culture, in the terms of ex-English colonies, that culture is English.

White fragility has nothing to do with Germany, so I have come here today to apologise to you for the insidious way in which we English have, through very long and convoluted means, managed to once-more impose the consequences of our historic actions on the rest of Europe.

Thank you.