
On “White Fragility” - andrenth
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility
======
zdragnar
I am amazed that I work at a company full of extremely intelligent
individuals, some of whom are truly cream of the crop types given the work we
do.

Yet, during the Floyd protests, our equity committee sent out an email with a
recommended reading list including white fragility and other similar books.

Only books that had a similar premise were included, no smart, critical books
(including some I can think of written by POC) with any other conclusions or
arguments were included.

Everything in the company, from the big picture down to the smallest details,
received critical scrutiny and thoughtful didcussion- from architecture to
code style to customer experience to market position.

And yet, any topic that can end with -ism (racism, genderism, etc) can not
ever be scrutinized. Words like "blacklist" are abolished, in spite of both
prior art and POC employees being (privately) offended that they are thought
of as being so fragile. The atmosphere is so thick on such topics that no-one
speaks up for fear of being fired.

~~~
gowld
"blacklist" isn't banned because it is thought to hurt black people's
feelings. It's banned because it promotes a psycholiguistic effect tending to
disrespect black people.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
“psycholinguistic effect”: that’s so ethereal as to be meaningless and
unfalsifiable. That’s the insidious part too with a lot of anti-racism. You
can scarcely disprove or prove any of it.

~~~
Zanni
I think it's pretty clear what gowid is saying here. The "psycholingustic
effect" is the psychological effect on people of color of a language tradition
that enforces the idea that light = good and dark = bad. Reasonable people can
disagree on how pronounced the effect _is_ and where to draw the line, but
it's not meaningless.

I've seen posts elsewhere that claim the etymology of blacklist, specifically,
isn't based on this metaphor, but this metaphor exists throughout English.
Consider this line from _A Midsummer Night 's Dream_, "Not Hermia but Helena I
love. Who will not change a raven for a dove?" where light > dark is so
_obvious_ that all you have to do is compare one girl to a dark bird and one
to a light bird to make your point.

Again, it's possible to go to far with this (e.g. whitespace), but that's a
question of _where_ to draw the line, not _if_.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The problem is that it isn't a language tradition, it's inherent in the nature
of "darkness" (i.e. the absence of light) as a concept. When it's dark you
can't see, it's night so it's cold and there could be predators etc.

If we're going to make a change to language then it should be to stop
describing _people_ as black or white. Which was never particularly accurate
to begin with, since "black people" are really varying shades of brown and
"white people" are varying shades of pink to light brown anyway.

I assume it's too much to ask that we stop categorizing people by "race"
entirely.

~~~
zaarn
Batman is a superhero that operates in darkness and has black clothing, yet
people don't think of Batman as the BBEG of their comics, no?

There is an entire TVTropes page dedicated to "Dark Is Not Evil" and it's not
a purely subversive trope either, quite popular in media as well.

There is also plenty of media (and culture) where darkness is sacred and pure,
not evil or cold. Consider the dwarves in the discworld series that hold this
belief. For more real-life examples, the hebrew bible generally refers to
shadows and darkness as good since when you live in a desert, those things
will bring you some fresh air and protection from the sun.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Batman is a superhero that operates in darkness and has black clothing, yet
> people don't think of Batman as the BBEG of their comics, no?

Superman: Literally powered by the light of the sun, boy scout who never
breaks the rules, hard-working member of the proletariat.

Batman: Tortured soul with tragic backstory, lawless vigilante, billionaire
(regarded as evil in popular media, cf. Lex Luthor).

The darkness in Batman is the adversity the hero has to overcome. It's
integral to the story but it isn't _pleasant_. You can't imagine the young
Bruce Wayne wishing for somebody to murder his parents so he can grow up to
don a bat suit and punch criminals in dark of night.

And so it is with the other common depictions of darkness in hero types -- an
internal struggle, not a desired characteristic in itself.

You can find the odd situation where darkness actually is positively desirable
in itself, but not enough to overshadow all of the more common ones where it
isn't.

~~~
zaarn
I don't believe darkness being positive is the odd one out. Even major media
has "darkness = good" not as a subverise but integral trope (see, for example,
darkness).

I don't agree with your assessment of Batman and I would point out that Batman
isn't regarded as evil in popular media (and even if he was, Superman was evil
plenty of times, see Superman Red Son)

Lastly, I would mention that in hero types, a internal struggle is usually
desired to counterbalance or embolden external conflict. Even superman has
internal conflicts.

------
save_ferris
> A bizarre echo of North Korea’s “three generations of punishment” doctrine
> could be seen in the boycotts of Holy Land grocery, a well-known hummus
> maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks it’s been abandoned by clients and
> seen its lease pulled because of racist tweets made by the CEO’s 14 year-old
> daughter eight years ago.

Seeing stuff like this makes me wonder why people keep using social media at
all.

It’s terrible that this guy’s daughter made racist posts 8 years ago, but we
have no idea what kind of person she is today. She could be doing community
organizing against police brutality and it wouldn’t matter at all.

The posterity of childhood is one of the most dystopian aspects of our
technology-driven society. It’s like a 2020 version of the Scarlet Letter.

~~~
itsdrewmiller
Her most recent racist post was 2016, at age 18 or 19 and she held a senior
position at the company. The author of this piece doesn’t seem to be super
intellectually honest, in addition to his Godwin’s law-breaking.

~~~
gowld
A "senior position" at a family hummus shop? Really?

~~~
belltaco
Is Walmart a family store too?

>Beginning as a small shop in 1986, Holy Land has expanded into a sprawling
business that includes an eatery, grocery store, catering business, and
commercial food business, with a large restaurant and production facility in
Northeast Minneapolis and a stand at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. Its
hummus, sauces, and flatbreads are carried by several area grocery stores.

~~~
PostOnce
A company with one restaurant in one city is suddenly Walmart?

There's a place like that in this town, it has 4 or 5 people working there and
two of them are the owner's sons -- they have a restaurant, and in the back
they put spices and vegetables into bags and sell them to two local markets,
and also in the hallway of the restaurant, which doubles as their "grocery
store". They cater, too. This is a town of ~30k.

Small businesses have a habit of aggrandizing themselves. The royal we and
such.

------
hprotagonist
A rough heuristic I’ve found historically very useful to judge the relative
sanity of a group or person on matters of race is the question “Do you want to
ban _Huck Finn_?”

If you do, then I shall waste no time shaking the dust off my feet when I
leave, because two things are true as a result. First, you think it’s OK to
ban books and are thus beyond the pale to start with; Second, either you
understand the denouement of that book and don’t like it because you’re a
racist, or you’ve probably internalized _White Fragility_ a bit too thoroughly
and dismiss _Huck_ out of hand because it dares to have the n-word in it and
have never read the denouement or realized what it means.

 _It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was
a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I
knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to
myself:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay
said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out
of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line,
being brung up to it, and the other warn’t.

And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and
if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I
was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog._

------
gentleman11
Everything I know about the book is from a Yaron Brooks podcast. He describes
its worldview as one where all white people are inescapably racist by due
being born white in this place and time, and that there is nothing we can do
about it because it is part of our psyche. Additionally, it is not so much
individual thoughts or intended actions that are to blame, but society and our
institutions, that are also inherently racist whether or not there are any
policies you can point to or not that indicate it. Apparently, white poeple
are uncurable in this way.

Yaron's issue is that it denies individual responsibility for their wrong-
headed thinking utterly; denies free will and the ability for individuals to
change their minds and be decent; and finally, that by characterizing people
as inherently this or that on the basis of race is itself a deeply racist
approach to the topic.

Is this an accurate summary or is it mistaken?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Is this an accurate summary or is it mistaken?

From a very quick look at the preview on Google Books, I'd say it's deeply
inaccurate when it comes to the central message of the book.

> He describes its worldview as one where all white people are inescapably
> racist by due being born white in this place and time, and that there is
> nothing we can do about it because it is part of our psyche.

The point the book seems to lay out for itself is that awareness of the nature
of racial privilege and the related sensitivity is key to enabling one to
doing something about it, the exact opposite of it being inescapable. From the
introduction: “If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was
socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a
helpful way to support my learning and growth.”

~~~
Thorentis
No, the central message of the book is that in order to become less racist,
you need to become less white. This directly ties racism to belonging to a
particular race, rather than making it a matter of individual choice and
responsibility.

And even if it is still a matter for the individual, the book asserts that
racism is an inherently white trait. Again, that's racist.

The book promotes far more racist ideas than it combats. Its popularity shows
just how happy people are for the pendulum to swing the other way.

~~~
dragonwriter
> No, the central message of the book is that in order to become less racist,
> you need to become less white.

Assuming you have read the book and reached that conclusion based on the
actual content, I'd be interested in specific support for that claim. Because
while I haven't read much (again, just some of the freely-available preview on
Google Books), that description conflicts with essentially every bit I have
read, including the sentence I quoted from the introduction, which from
reading the introduction seems to be the author’s direct statement of their
motivation with the book.

> And even if it is still a matter for the individual, the book asserts that
> racism is an inherently white trait.

It seems to say it is a system into which Whites in the modern USA tend to be
socialized into participating in in varying ways and degrees; it seems to be
extremely repetitive on the point that it is a product of social context and
not an inherent trait. I supposed it is possible that after the introduction
the author pulls a 180° and reverses every word of the Introduction, but it
seems a lot more likely that the people painting the books content as being a
bunch of things that the Right has been setting up as strawmen to argue
against for decades before the book was published in discussions of race are
just setting up those same strawmen again instead of engaging with the content
of the book.

~~~
gentleman11
> Being seen racially is a common trigger of white fragility, and thus, to
> build our stamina, white people must face the first challenge: naming our
> race.

Outside the context of this discussion, I don’t think a reader could decide
whether quotes like this are from a left wing anti-racism book, or a neo-Nazi
pseudo intellectual

More troublesome quotes below

Why only whites can be racist:

> When I say that only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United States,
> only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege
> over people of color. People of color do not have this power and privilege
> over white people.

Attributing all cultural traits to race, and then labeling everybody based on
their race

> Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the
> norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that
> norm.

~~~
Thorentis
I'm sure if you asked the author "so you're saying that racism only exists
when you have power over somebody?" they would reply simultaneously "of course
not, thoughts can be racist too" and "but all white people have power over
black people because of the fact they are white".

The whole thing is self-defeating, and it is a tragic indictment on the state
of intellectualism and academia, that a book like this can be so widely
praised.

------
andreskytt
Writing as a non-American. All if this is horrible, but it is not just the
horror of US. In my former Eastern European country, that has never ever had a
sizable non-white community, people are reading these books, picking up on
Twitter fights and apologizing for jokes they told on tv ten years ago.
Writing a book with no mention of it being based on a particular society thus
assuming the situation to be the same in Helsinki, Rome and Minneapolis, now
_that’s_ racist.

------
drdeadringer
Since roughly late 2016 the UUA [Unitarian Universalist Association] has been
ever trying to "get on top of" their self-described "white fragility issue".
This has caused and been a source of contention amongst many within both the
UUA itself and also with UUs and UU organizations at large over the years
since.

I have personal thoughts and feelings on the matter for several reasons but I
won't get into them here in order to try to remain neutral in merely stating
the fact that said contention exists.

For those curious, I encourage research and if it's not too much trouble or
against impartiality on my part I can try to point the way to some sources.

------
antiquark
Everyone is fragile. There is no "master race" which is immune to negative
emotions.

~~~
dragonwriter
“White fragility” (the concept, not the book, which I have no opinion about
and don't expect a piece leading with the false social generalizations that
are straight out of right-wing propaganda that this does to provide any
illumination that would help with that) isn't about special fragility in
Whites, it's about the special consequences of normal human fragility has in a
particular privileged elite when confronted with a challenge to that
privilege, and moreover to the mythology that provides a veneer that allows
them to see the world in which that privilege exists as just. In contexts
other than the modern USA, there are other dominant elites which no doubt
would exhibit the same effects when challenged; there's nothing _innately_
White about White fragility, it's only circumstantially White.

~~~
pnako
In fact, her own definition is (from Wikipedia):

>White Fragility is a state in which even a minimal challenge to the white
position becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves including:
argumentation, invalidation, silence, withdrawal and claims of being attacked
and misunderstood.

You could replace the world white by any other word. And you can replace the
list of defensive moves by the equivalent statement : "refusal to
unconditionally comply", since it's the only option left.

I would venture a guess that this covers about 75% of human interactions, and
99% of interactions when the discussion is about challenging someone's
interests or position.

------
alphabettsy
Maybe the writer suffers from exactly what the book describes.

The primary argument seems to be that we should stop discussing the lived
experiences of black people and the issues they keep trying to bring up
because talking about things is the real issue.

It also strips away any agency from black people by suggesting any coverage of
these issues is because of the media and white liberals instead of what black
people want.

------
vandalatyou
This is over-delicate introspection given reality that does not exist.
Cultures differ, wars have been fought. This is something that either becomes
overt or is sublimated successfully. Children think that understanding the
underlying issue makes the problem go away.

------
xg15
What I never understood with those concepts is what kind of society they are
envisioning.

Like, if color-blindness is not even a goal anymore, how would a post-racist
world look? What would be the role of whites in this world?

If "whites" don't exist anymore (not because anyone was killed but because
"whiteness" is a particular socialisation and a system of privilege which will
have been abandoned), what is the role of descendants of European settlers?

(I haven't read the book yet, so it may be I've fallen for right-wing strawmen
in those discussions.)

~~~
hirundo
> Like, if color-blindness is not even a goal anymore, how would a post-racist
> world look? What would be the role of whites in this world?

I think the claim is that a post-racist world is a racist construct because
white racism is indelible, and the role of whites is to subordinate themselves
to the oppressed and support their goals, indefinitely, as reparation.

------
8bitsrule
Many of us (I'm among them) who check far enough back into their ancestry will
find that their 'race' is far from a given. Given our recent knowledge of
genetic bottlenecks thousands of years ago, the whole notion dissolves into a
mere question of self-serving bunkum.

------
ajuc
It's insane and it leads to conservative resurgence, not only in USA but all
around the world. Which then returns to USA, and so on in a vicious circle.

~~~
war1025
> It's insane and it leads to conservative resurgence

Unclear what you mean exactly. The way I interpret it, please correct me if
I'm wrong, is:

    
    
       The concept of "White Fragility" is so ridiculous and overbearing that it causes white people to retreat to a more conservative stance.
    
    

In that case, I agree.

But I guess you could also mean it as:

    
    
       White people are so fragile in their identities that being forced to be challenged about their beliefs and behaviors causes them to become defensive and retreat to a move conservative position.
    
    

Which is I think exactly what the author claimed if I'm remembering the book
correctly.

Either way it's sort of a "heads I win tails you lose" situation she paints,
which mostly makes me not interested in playing along.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The concept of "White Fragility" is so ridiculous and overbearing that it
> causes white people to retreat to a more conservative stance.

I think this is underselling it.

The problem is that it causes "white people" to think of themselves as "white
people" instead of e.g. Americans, or just People. It creates a frame where
their team is "white people" and they should get together with their teammates
to fight for their interests. (And, of course, the same thing for "black
people" as well.)

That isn't so much "a more conservative stance" as it is a more racist stance.
Describing it as anti-racist is some kind of Orwellian doublethink.

~~~
TMWNN
"Part of left's problem is it expects/demands blacks/hispanics to vote on
ethnic basis but is appalled when whites do"
([https://twitter.com/JYDenham/status/796345533124186113](https://twitter.com/JYDenham/status/796345533124186113))

~~~
alphabettsy
This only makes sense if you remove historical and present context. “White”
people voting in their interests has often resulted in oppression of non-white
people. It’s really not interchangeable since one group is hoping to end
oppression and the other is maintaining the status quo.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
That's just assuming the conclusion.

If you stipulate that one group of people are voting to perpetuate oppression
and another are voting to end it then you know who the good guys and bad guys
are, but that's not how the people voting the way you don't want them to would
characterize the situation.

------
hnisahokehoax
So happy to see this on the front page while assange news gets flagged and
vote brigaded.

So stunning, so brave.

~~~
dang
HN has had plenty of major threads about Assange, including just a few days
ago.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=assange%20comments%3E20&sort=byDate&type=story)

------
martythemaniak
> Democratic Party leaders, pioneers of the costless gesture, have already
> embraced this performative race politics as a useful tool for disciplining
> apostates like Bernie Sanders. Bernie took off in presidential politics as a
> hard-charging crusader against a Wall Street-fattened political
> establishment, and exited four years later a self-flagellating, defeated old
> white man who seemed to regret not apologizing more for his third house.
> Clad in kente cloth scarves, the Democrats who crushed him will burn up
> CSPAN with homilies on privilege even as they reassure donors they’ll stay
> away from Medicare for All or the carried interest tax break.

It's useful to keep in mind what's actually happening to people like Taibbi,
Greenwald etc. For years, they've been trying to lead the class-war faction of
the left - for them race was irrelevant and distracted from the actual
problems, for which they had a ready made solution. These solutions, M4A, etc,
didn't have to deal with race. But, this faction lost. There's not conspiracy,
people just didn't want what Bernie, Taibbi, et all were selling, that's all.

The faction that did win does in fact talk about race and now Taibbi is out in
the cold. But it's alright, this isn't the French Resolution, no one is coming
for his head. He's just gonna have to take a back seat and wield less power.
He'll be fine.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The faction that did win does in fact talk about race and now Taibbi is out
> in the cold. But it's alright, this isn't the French Resolution, no one is
> coming for his head. He's just gonna have to take a back seat and wield less
> power. He'll be fine.

If the dynamic you're describing is correct (not saying it is) then this
conclusion is wrong. When insecure people gain power they try to
disenfranchise their enemies. But they have no real power over the far-
enemies. Some conservative in a conservative stronghold with conservative
employees and customers can't get canceled because nobody who could cancel
them is inclined to do it.

The people who get their heads chopped off (or get fired or harassed etc.) are
the near-enemies, who are the easiest to sacrifice when the new regime wants
to prove it can put heads on spikes, because they're at the same time close
enough to be vulnerable but far enough to be targets.

