words in scarlet ink

In 2020, when I listened to a few books about racial justice in the United States in part due to the clear violence shown to black people by police of all stripes, Robin DeAngelo’s White Fragility was the first book I listened to…and I hated it. For a lot of reasons.

You know how Alex Jones spouted far right conspiracy theories and reality denying bullshit (Sandy Hook massacre didn’t happen) for the grift? White Fragility is the same thing for a very specific brand of woke leftist person. This is a grift.

DeAngelo sets out to instruct white racists (because we white people are all guilty of racism by literally existing as white) how to do the work and to self examine the new original sin. But we white people are not allowed to ask questions (because it is not the job of black people to educate us), we are not allowed to deny charges of racism (this is just more evidence of said racism), we are not allowed to show emotion of any kind (because this makes it ‘about us’ and not the black folks we are racist against). White people are now allowed to feel unsafe, only black people are. White people are there to sit and agree as DeAngelo declares us all morally stained with no hope of redemption and no solution to overcoming any implicit bias or bettering the country in which we live.

In addition to being informed that I was hopelessly morally compromised, a lot of DeAngelo’s anti-racist evangelism involves infantilizing black people. Like, a lot. I’m not going to pretend that I had tons of black friends, but I had some. I’m not going to pretend I fully understand the black American experience. I do not. But I’ve met enough black people and had enough black friends to know that they are 1) not some monolith of experience and 2) they do not require me (or any white people) to sit in a corner and silently contemplate my innate and all permeating racism so that they can feel equal or whatever it is DeAngelo is pushing. It’s insulting, frankly, and my friends deserve better.

If you’d like to read an article about White Fragility that very much states my feelings on the issue with the added bonus of being written by a black man, you can do so here. John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University, and I saved his article because I knew one day I’d be writing this review and his eloquence and experience on these issues far outmatch mine.

The reason I say this book is a grift is because DeAngelo is a white woman who ‘consults’ about social justice and race relations for educational institutions, in the corporate world, wherever she can pedal her snake oil. McWhorter says she’s well intentioned, but I think he’s being generous. I think she’s a con artist. As per DeAngelo, I have no hope of ever improving either myself or the world I live in. I am irredeemable and so is American society, and so what is the point in her engaging with us except to make money on our guilt and a desire to improve the world for our fellow human beings? If she’s not helping to make things better because things can’t be made better, then what is she doing besides selling snake oil for an ailment that can’t be cured?

I’m not an expert on race relations, or social justice, or history or anything, really. But I try to be a good person to everyone, I try to fight any implicit bias I may have when I realize I have it, and I’m pretty damn good at spotting a con artist when I see one. Robin DeAngelo is a con artist and I’m out on her bullshit. Everyone else should be too.