White Fragility: Book Review

This is quite simply one of the most idiotic books on racism that I have ever read. Imagine an ideology that blames everyday white people for racial disparities, one that functions on publicly shaming white people in order to change the world. That ideology fails catastrophically, of course, because people don't like seeing themselves as part of the problem—especially when they are trying to be the solution. Then we have this book, advocating that we publicly shame white people for responding badly to being publicly shamed.

Ironically, it is essentially bootstrapping theory applied to white people on racism: if white people just stopped being racist, then racism would go away! And then it fails to work. Well, that's because of white fragility. White people need to bootstrap harder! Stop failing, white people.

Basic Structure of the Review:

1. The use of systems is vaguely defined and sweeping in scope.

2. The focus on unconscious bias. What is the scope and power of this?

3. Alternatives to their use of systems of oppression.

4. They should stop demanding submissive behavior and approach things pragmatically.

5. Assorted nonsense throughout the book worth addressing.

1. Theories should give you a red flag when they are vaguely defined and fail to clarify the specific causal relationships being asserted, alongside failing to specify the scope and significance of those relationships. These theories usually make sweeping assertions, and the only sense in which they specify the relevant causal relationships is with examples. The problem is that they usually provide these scattered anecdotes out of context, instead of outlining those examples within the wider context to both provide clarity and justify the sweeping nature of the claims.

White Fragility provides some discussion about the underlying theory, with the rest of the book building off those assumptions. The book kind of falls flat when you question those assumptions. The general idea is that racism is not reducible to prejudice in interpersonal interactions, but claims that it refers to whole systems that make up society. The white supremacist system that makes up society gives a certain power to the prejudice of white people (even unconscious prejudice) to the extent that it creates the widespread inequalities in society. Further, there are not simply some racist aspects in society. Nearly every aspect of society works to both privilege white people and oppress black people. Only by actively working against this system in all its aspects can you defeat white supremacy.

I've already outlined the problems above. The theory is both sweeping and vaguely defined. Keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with having a theory that is sweeping in scope. It is the conjunction of this scope with the vagueness of the causal relationships that makes the theory doubtful. In White Fragility, the specific relationships are never laid out in their entirety: in other words, a taxonomy accounting for the mechanisms of the system is never clarified. You can only really understand what the mechanisms are through the scattering of examples she provides later on. For example, she brings up racist jokes quite a bit. But she is rather vague about the power of these jokes. Of course, jokes are just one aspect of the whole system, but she also takes for granted that they have enough power that white people are obligated to speak out against them. We should be clarifying what constitutes a racist joke (who is the butt of the joke?), how much the joke actually contributes to the racial disparities that we see, and how this compares to other potential mechanisms; for the last thing mentioned, it is worth asking whether racist jokes perpetuate stereotypes to the same degree that the actual behavior of black people does.

This is definitely a hot take, but should I take for granted that jokes about black people create stronger stereotypes than the actual gang behavior that exists in some black communities? Or what about the conservative bugbear of gangsta rap? Does the glorification of gang behavior in hip hop have more, equal, or less effect than racist jokes? How do you know? The theory of white supremacy does not address this to any extent because it is so vague about its assertions. When you simply claim that racist jokes are part of the overall system that privileges whites and oppresses black people, then you don't really need to specify all these things. It is worth asking, is it possible that racist jokes are so insignificant that there really is no point in calling them out?

I can speculate about an overall response to this criticism. Maybe they will concede that racist jokes don't play as strong a role as the actual behavior of black people, but they would then assert that the behavior of black people must be explained, in turn. That is fair, but their claim would just bring us full circle, suggesting that black communities behave like this because of the system, with the same vague assertions demanding clarification.

And it is worth asking what falsification would look like. The reason clarification is important is because it allows you to test and/or ground the theory in empirical reality, instead of vaguely referencing it. Like every theory, the theory might be wrong, and we should understand the circumstances under which it would end up being wrong.

2. White Fragility is vague about the claims that it makes, as stated above, but the implication of the arguments and the examples seems to direct you toward thinking that the primary mechanism is unconscious bias. This is why diversity training and telling white people how they are racist is such an important thing.

As with my questions about racist jokes above, to what extent does unconscious bias actually account for the problem? Theories like these spend a lot more time talking about how bias exists than it does showing that bias actually has the effects that it apparently does. I think there is very good reason to think unconscious bias is not as significant a factor as these theories suggest.

Indeed, in Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell points out that black people made major relative economic gains over time in the early twentieth century (the great migration), and this was despite the fact that many black Americans no doubt experienced bias worse than even today. It was not until recently that the gains seemed to have stagnated. Black families did not fall apart until the 1960s, persisting even through slavery and Jim Crow.

Additionally, research shows that diversity training that involves holding white people accountable for their racism doesn't seem to actually work, and other approaches produce better results. The general idea, among other factors, is that people like to view themselves as the heroes of their own stories, rather than part of the problem. People are more receptive and more likely fix problems of diversity by being invited to programs that encourage them to be the solution the problem. Finally, people are less likely to have unconscious bias, not by being aware of the biases, but by explaining their reasoning. If you have someone simply explain why they made a given decision, they are less likely to be biased. You can complain about white fragility, or you approach issues pragmatically and actually fix them in ways that are empirically supported.

https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

3. I don't reject every aspect of this systems-based approach to understanding how society works. It just needs to be moderated significantly. Instead of declaring the whole of society consistently and persistently white supremacist, it needs to acknowledge the emergence of Woke ideology and how it has shaped everyday life.

A system is nothing more than a way in which a shared ideology, embedded within a culture, underlies various institutions so that they work together for a common purpose. This leads to outcomes that might not be directed by anyone in particular, but still produces the results because everyone at least has an implicit agreement. Cancel culture is the notion that regular joes off the street should be fired, kicked out of apartments, etc. for stupid things they said on the internet or in other unrelated contexts. And no, simply being criticized on the internet is not cancel culture. The point is that cancel culture results from forces like this.

I would reject the idea that systems have as strong of a scope as White Fragility claims, given how explanations for long-lasting historical trends tend to outlast ideologies. There are many different branches of science that touch upon race relations in America, and the explanations are much more complicated than notions of unconscious bias holding black people back.

There is a very big difference between saying that we live in a society with often pernicious racism, and saying that the system as a whole is racist and that nearly every aspect of society exists to perpetuate this system. By having a more limited approach, it softens the claims and makes it easier to test or ground them empirically. If there was a shared ideology without the predictable effects, then the claim would be false.

4. A common problem with many left-wing ideologies is that they consistently overestimate people's ability to be altruistic, and when their ideologies fail to mesh well with their application to reality, advocates start finger wagging and demanding further submission to their cause because it is the moral thing to do. This happens in marxism, and this happens in popular applications of CRT.

White Fragility is basically a reaction to their failure to apply their own theories to everyday life. Their theory of white supremacy demands that white people submit to the whims of POC in their personal lives, taking for granted their opinions and feedback on how they are part of the problem; and when white people react in the same way any person would react in that kind of situation, CRT advocates double down and try to lecture white people on how they are reacting, demanding yet more submission.

I could present my criticism in more inflammatory ways, but I'll leave the general idea like this: What is being described here is an incredibly dangerous social dynamic, where one group's desire to be better is being taken advantage of by others who are, in turn, not willing to take feedback on their own assumptions. It is admirable if you seek self-improvement and desire to change yourself for the better, but it always worth asking two important questions: improvement by what standard, and by what mechanism?

Clarifying, you should not take for granted that some expert, particularly on the topic of morality, has a standard appropriate for you. There are plenty of people who neatly lean into the role of moral authority, and use this to control other people around them; it might not even be conscious on their end. For the mechanism, I am referring to who is participating in the feedback. If the feedback is one-directional, then it easily becomes exploitative.

Naturally, this applies to White Fragility because this is what happens when the notion of lived experience is treated as a sacred form of knowledge. Because it is their own life they are reporting on, there is presumably no rejoinder that could be made, and white people just need to take this feedback for granted. This is easily acknowledged in the abstract, but in the complexity that is the real world, there are so many different problems that arise. POC have their own biases, just as any human does. Black people were largely supportive of Trump's immigration restrictions on Muslims. Black people were often the ones attacking Asian Americans during *that virus.* Given that all people are flawed, social dynamics ideally work in two directions, where feedback is allowed to move both ways.

My point is not necessarily that white people are "oppressed." This word is overused in common parlance. What matters is that social interactions work best when everyone is understood to be biased, and people are not expected to submit themselves to others based on the histories of their demographics, or the alleged systemic effects of their actions. It is not surprising that the Alt-Right, and Andrew Tate on the gender side of things, become so popular when the only thing the left has to offer whites and men is lecturing on how they are part of the problem, and generally provide no positive vision that is in the realm of their own individual interests.

A last comment on something that serves to annoy me is when people on the left react with bafflement over why some people go "against their interests." How could a woman oppose abortions rights?! What could possibly motivate them to vote against their own interests?! It never crosses their mind that morality is generally seen as someone throwing aside their own interests for another, and that the most moral acts are usually an ultimate act of self-destruction. A woman taking a bullet for a child is one of the most self-destructive things one can do; and almost everyone would call this one of the most moral acts one can do for precisely that reason. Further, the people who can't comprehend why a woman might undermine her own interests in abortion are generally the same people who actively demand people throw aside their own interests for the sake of some moral position. White Fragility is the perfect example.

5. White Fragility also just has a scattering of nonsense ideas that are worth mentioning at the end, here.

(A) The book assumes Identity Populism. What I mean by this are the consistent references to what POC are constantly telling white people, with the assumption that there is consensus if not universal agreement. This should not be taken for granted. There is wide-spread disagreement among POC, and when Wokists like DiAngelo talk about the views of POC, what they really mean are POC who are already inclined to agree with their worldview. A Thomas Sowell or a Colman Hughes are likely to be disregarded as Uncle Toms because they are either right wing or independent.

(B) I already mentioned the fact that lived experience is treated as sacred knowledge. I won't get too much into the weeds in this particular post. What matters is that I come from a perspective of someone who is interested in epistemology, which is the study of theories of knowledge. Epistemologies that sacralize lived experience are basically an intellectual abomination, and are generally one of the primary problems that I have with Woke ideology. The basic rundown is this: (1) Selection bias. "What POC are saying" really means "what my friends of color are saying." (2) Comparative claims are often made, yet cannot actually be justified by one's experience. (3) We are talking about reports on people's lived experience, not the experiences themselves. In other words, they might be lying. (4) Values are often assumed and taken for granted. (5) Concepts are taken for granted and influence how we parse and interpret experience. And (6) theory-ladenness, which is generally a problem in science, but can be applied to everyday life; when we observe things in everyday life, we tend to assume an explanation and consider the observation as proof of the explanation when it is not. (6.1) Past events are assumptions that we make to explain what we see in the present day. (6.2) Mental events are assumptions that we make to explain the actions of other people. (6.3) Causal mechanisms, generally, are explanations of correlations.

(C) There is this assumption that interactions between individuals should be mediated by historical trends between demographics of people. Apparently white women's tears are invalid and are an act of racism because they are part of a racist trend of white women using their tears to hurt black men (like Emmett Till). Not once is it considered that this pattern might be flipped on its head to justify abuse in the opposite direction. DiAngelo starts by generally talking about white women's tears with barely any clarification about when or if there are any legitimate instances of white women crying. She then moves on to examples, which all assume that the woman is using them to obfuscate discussion of racism and make things about themselves. While it is possible for this to be a case, DiAngelo is never clear about when or if there are exceptions, or if this bad behavior is even the overall trend.

As we have seen with the central park "Karen" and the citi bike "Karen," both of which are hoaxes, this too easily feeds into humanities' worst tendencies, where people just assume the white woman is wrong because of a stereotype perpetuated by books like this. It is also worth asking if hoaxes like this technically fit the idea of systemic racism. There is obviously power behind the actions of black men weaponizing their race to destroy the lives of white women: The first "karen" lost her job, her dog, and was literally driven out of the country. In the beginning of the second "karen" instance, the media jumped on the chance to contact the woman's employers, and even went to her apartment complex to tell all the black people there of her apparent racism. What could be a better example of a racist system—a system that brings institutions together like a well-oiled machine to produce racist effects?

(D) The book also assumes that stereotyping identity groups' patterns of argumentation functions as a kind of refutation. For example, white men tend to respond to criticism by saying they are "just playing devil's advocate" or by suggesting certain books, among other things. As if we're supposed to assume that these arguments are bad from the outset. Certainly, throwing book suggestions at people during discussion can derail the talk. Playing devil's advocate can also be incompetent and an unproductive nuisance. But the possibility of incompetence does not mean I'm going to assume it as a default. Imagine if I got into a debate with a pro-choice advocate and tried to preempt the person: "I tend to see pro-choice activists claim they have a right to choose. They argue that they aren't pro-baby killing, but simply support the ability to choose." Etc. Etc. Does my preemption of the arguments have any bearing on the legitimacy of their arguments? No. I still have to rebut them.

(E) Something related to the above is an example of just how clownish the book can get in terms of its accusations of racism. The gist was that if you talk about a negative thing that correlates with black people, even without mentioning black people, then you are contributing to the racist system. A specific example was when white people talk about bad communities. In discussions about where to live, white people will often talk about places you should avoid for your own sake or for the sake of your children, yet they won't talk about race at all. Despite this, they are still racist, because it leads to things like white flight and subsequent segregation.

You can acknowledge the unfortunate consequences, but I think it is rather obvious that the consequences can be addressed in ways that are better than telling individual white people to stop seeking out their own interests. Are they really going to start moving to bad neighborhoods for any reason? Especially if it's through public call outs and condescension? People tend toward selfishness by nature, and we should approach our solutions in society by operating on this assumption.

(F) Finally, there were some rather baffling arguments at the beginning of the book, where DiAngelo argues that race is a social construct. As with the old discussions about gender being a social construct, these debates flounder because of a serious lack of conceptual tools for talking about the issue. People vaguely declare that X is socially constructed or genetic without clarifying the manner in which it is socially constructed or genetic. You can argue that race is conceptually constructed in the sense that lumping people into groups is somewhat arbitrary. At the same time, specific characteristics, like skin color and facial structure differences, are mostly the result of genetic differences. You can argue that race is conceptually constructed, but also say that certain racial traits themselves are genetic. You do this by distinguishing conceptual construction from trait construction. Race is constructed in the first manner, but skin color is largely not in the second manner.

At the same time, height is also conceptually constructed and simultaneously a trait that is explained by genetic difference: How we break people up into groups—tall/short, tall/average/short, etc.—is socially constructed; yet, the trait itself is largely explained by differences in genes. By DiAngelo's logic, height is a social construct, because it is conceptually constructed in the same way that race is. Would you go around vaguely claiming height is social constructed, or would you want to clarify by saying it is conceptually constructed but not trait constructed? Shouldn't you do the same thing for race?

There was another baffling argument where DiAngelo seemed to imply that natural selection is a form of construction resulting from the environment. The general idea is that genetics change in response to environmental pressures, making the resultant trait changes constructed by environmental factors. She used this in reference to skin color differences. Yet, if a controversial scientist came forward suggesting that intelligence differed between races, then he would ultimately be claiming the same thing: that environmental pressures led to differences in intelligence. No one would claim that this is an argument for intelligence being constructed by the environment, however. Maybe DiAngelo was not exactly arguing this. She certainly did not intend to argue to the logical consequences. The comment was made in passing, but it definitely did catch my attention because of its utter stupidity.

Conclusion

This book is worth your time if you want to get into the mindset of someone who believes this crap—or if you're a white woman who likes erotica, and gets off to being dominated and degraded by others. But you should honestly stop being so political. Stick to your pornography.