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.
Tag Archives: genre: self-help
White Fragility
Curly Girl: The Handbook
I don’t remember how old I was when I decided to stop straightening my hair. I think I was in college. I was tired of all the extra work, and the damage all the straightening caused. Plus, dudes liked my curly hair more than my straight hair, and if that wasn’t the kind of external validation I needed, I don’t know what was.
I didn’t pick up Lorraine Massey’s Curly Girl: The Handbook until a couple of years later though. I skimmed through it when I got it, focusing on a couple of parts, but didn’t read the whole thing cover to cover until … COVID, you guessed it.
I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to understand their curly hair. Learning what my curl pattern was, plus how to take care of it (curly hair is not a monolith) was invaluable. Things I learned on closer examination of this book:
+ ingredients that are good for curly hair (as well as ingredients that are not)
+ tools to use when dealing with curly hair
+ how to style my hair
+ how to wash my hair so as to be gentle with and support the curl pattern
+ foods that support healthy curly hair
…among other things.
I would very much recommend this book to anyone trying to embrace their natural hair. There’s tons of good information and I went from hating my curly hair to loving it. That’s a great feeling.
The Gift of Fear
I listened to The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence on the advice of my mother, who has spent all my life (and at this point, most of hers) trying to keep me from being kidnapped and murdered.
I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.
My parents drilled in to me, for as long as I could remember, certain safety precautions that in hindsight they were 100% right about but they maybe could have been slightly less terrifying about? Then again, I haven’t been kidnapped or murdered, so they might have been on to something.
The big safety thing my parents practically beat into me, for as long as I can remember, is to never, never, NEVER for ANY reason – get into a car with someone that I don’t know. This kept me safe but also sort of ruined my life because I’m reluctant to use any ride service (uber, lyft, whatever) except a licensed taxi service. And even then I don’t love getting into those cars by myself. My poor husband has had to basically force me into uber rides or shell out twice as much money for real cabs. Still though, I’ve never been kidnapped or murdered, so once again, my parents may have been on to something.
Now that I’m an adult, I look back on their advice and realize it was spot on in some ways that didn’t make sense to me at the time but totally make sense to me now. For example – a normal adult is never going to ask a kid they don’t really know for help. They won’t ask for directions, they won’t ask a kid to help find their dog, they won’t ask the kid to show them how a flashlight works or whatever. Especially a young kid. And while as a kid all missing puppies were a big concern for me, I know now my parents were right because as a 34 year old normal adult person, I would *never* ask a kid for help. The most I can see myself doing is asking a kid to call 911 while I am dying on the sidewalk out of reach of my phone, because that is the *only* time I would probably ever ask a kid for help.
I didn’t realize it at the time but most of these lessons were protecting me before my gut instincts were developed enough to be trusted. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not and you should get out of there.
The Gift of Fear is classified as a self-help book, but I didn’t find that classification completely accurate.
Gavin de Becker, who wrote the book, is a security specialist with a lot of experience in protection. He helped to develop the MOSAIC Threat Assessments Systems that is still used today when assessing threats of violence against people, particularly public figures. The book emphasizes trusting your gut but also educates the reader on places where violence occurs (it can be anywhere, really, but common in places like home, school, work, dating, etc…) and on PINS, which stands for pre-incident indicators. In de Becker’s experience, life threatening acts of violence aren’t usually random. You can predict violence if you know what you’re looking for, but most people don’t know what they’re looking for. Something feels off in the moment but the person ignores it, and ends up in danger.
There are a number of PINS, but these are the ones I remember best and still see all the time:
+ Typecasting – putting the chosen victim in a role (usually in an insulting way) which the victim feels obligated to prove untrue. “You think you’re too good for me.”
+ Unsolicited Promises – a promise to the victim that, usually, the victim doesn’t request. Such promises are likely to be broken. “I promise this is the last time I’ll contact you.”
+ Ignoring the Word ‘No’ – self-explanatory.
Is everyone who does one of these things going to turn to violence? No. But these are considered warning signs to go with your gut. de Becker is right that we have a finely developed instinct for fear – it’s intuition developed over millions of years that comprises a thousand little observations that we aren’t even completely aware of.
I’ve read some complaints that the advice in this book is that it’s “too anecdotal” and is “just common sense” and is too focused on “male violence towards women.” (As if there aren’t numbers that back up a lot of these violent crimes are committed by men, most frequently against women.) At least one of those complaining reviews was from a dude, who probably hasn’t been told that they should “be nice” to men to placate them and that the boy who hits you in the school yard is doing it because he “likes you.” Women are told constantly to ignore their own discomfort in favor of being nice.
It’s nice that we’re moving away from that, but it’s not gone. I also think it’s good to point out that people who are escalating in these warning signs of violence don’t suddenly de-escalate. They get worse. The book *is* fear mongering, but it’s not fear mongering in a bad way. More people could stand to better be safe than sorry.
I highly recommend the book, especially to women.
words in scarlet ink 