I don’t often tell people not to read a certain book. But in some rare cases, with books that are this bad (Dave Rubin’s recent book, John Bolton’s book and now this), I want to help people save their hard-earned money. For one thing, they can be read online for free if you look hard enough. But the main reason I’m warning people is because they are misleading with their message and damaging to our public discourse. With DiAngelo’s White Fragility, this cannot be any clearer. DiAngelo comes from the corporate world of “diversity training”, where corporations aim to make their employees personalize and internalize racism instead of understanding the structural aspects of capitalism that drive it. It’s a book aimed at a specific demographic of white, suburban soccer moms who feel guilty about their lack of understanding of history of racism and how it’s applied in America. So I’m opening up this board to anyone who has read the book already and may disagree with me. Or if you have any other books about racism you’d like to discuss, feel free to comment below…
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I'm stumped about what your objection is, since you don't mention the writing. I have read this book. It is deeply researched, informed, and brutally honest. She's not delivering self-esteem sugar pills.
Your complaints are just shallow. Isn't it a good thing to help white suburban soccer moms understand the history and practice of racism?
I think your issue is capitalism. You see racism as a symptom of capitalism, and want people to fight capitalism rather than racism. Is it that you're against the book because you're against anti-racism?
To theorize that racism's definition is the cause of white defensiveness and not any larger structural project, is just silly on its face. To work in the corporate world of diversity training is fine. But to write a book where you make people internalize their own racism, as if it's an inherent flaw white people are born with is again, silly on its face. If it sounds like I have a problem with capitalism, it's because I do. Racism is a byproduct of an unequal structure to our society through the division of distinct classes and an unequal labor force. Would Muslims in India change the inherent Hindu nationalist caste-driven racism that exists there by "challenging Hindus' defensiveness?" No they wouldn't. Only policy driven approaches and a mass social and labor movement would do that. Additionally, racism has nothing to do with "white fragility" or any personal feelings at all. It's a structural, economic byproduct of capitalism. This book is really just a therapeutic exercise in white guilt and has literally no mention of policy-based approaches (maybe because diversity trainers for corporations know that policy-based approaches would upend their status quo; but I digress). It's laughable that one could take a book like this and think that confronting racism head-on by lecturing white people will change the system. If white, middle-aged "soccer moms" as I said earlier, want to learn about racism and actually understand it, there is no shortage of excellent works out there for them. There's works from Carol Anderson, W.E.B Du Bois and Howard Zinn just to name a few. Without a background understanding of how racism works within the confines of western anglo societies, then you're not actually learning anything. You need to now how it's built in structurally and how it relates to other settler colonial societies like Israel and apartheid South Africa. My warning against reading the book is due to the fact that many people have spent their hard earned money during difficult times on a book written by a corporate stooge. It sends them down a rabbit hole of guilt, which accomplishes nothing in the end. That's why almost every left-wing scholar has critiqued this book harshly. Her job is basically to protect corporations from discrimination lawsuits and if one thinks diversity training actually works in the business world, I suggest they think again and do some more research.
I'm stumped about what your objection is, since you don't mention the writing. I have read this book. It is deeply researched, informed, and brutally honest. She's not delivering self-esteem sugar pills.
Your complaints are just shallow. Isn't it a good thing to help white suburban soccer moms understand the history and practice of racism?
I think your issue is capitalism. You see racism as a symptom of capitalism, and want people to fight capitalism rather than racism. Is it that you're against the book because you're against anti-racism?
To theorize that racism's definition is the cause of white defensiveness and not any larger structural project, is just silly on its face. To work in the corporate world of diversity training is fine. But to write a book where you make people internalize their own racism, as if it's an inherent flaw white people are born with is again, silly on its face. If it sounds like I have a problem with capitalism, it's because I do. Racism is a byproduct of an unequal structure to our society through the division of distinct classes and an unequal labor force. Would Muslims in India change the inherent Hindu nationalist caste-driven racism that exists there by "challenging Hindus' defensiveness?" No they wouldn't. Only policy driven approaches and a mass social and labor movement would do that. Additionally, racism has nothing to do with "white fragility" or any personal feelings at all. It's a structural, economic byproduct of capitalism. This book is really just a therapeutic exercise in white guilt and has literally no mention of policy-based approaches (maybe because diversity trainers for corporations know that policy-based approaches would upend their status quo; but I digress). It's laughable that one could take a book like this and think that confronting racism head-on by lecturing white people will change the system. If white, middle-aged "soccer moms" as I said earlier, want to learn about racism and actually understand it, there is no shortage of excellent works out there for them. There's works from Carol Anderson, W.E.B Du Bois and Howard Zinn just to name a few. Without a background understanding of how racism works within the confines of western anglo societies, then you're not actually learning anything. You need to now how it's built in structurally and how it relates to other settler colonial societies like Israel and apartheid South Africa. My warning against reading the book is due to the fact that many people have spent their hard earned money during difficult times on a book written by a corporate stooge. It sends them down a rabbit hole of guilt, which accomplishes nothing in the end. That's why almost every left-wing scholar has critiqued this book harshly. Her job is basically to protect corporations from discrimination lawsuits and if one thinks diversity training actually works in the business world, I suggest they think again and do some more research.