A little over a year ago, I entered a mental confessional to lay bare any bias or racist proclivity that I may harbor. I sincerely sought to confess my white guilt or white privilege.
I think most of us will find that deep down, we actually love each other, and we all want love and respect. We want to see each other succeed. We're happy when we see excellence wherever it occurs; we're unhappy when we see suffering. Thanks for owning up to your love and standing firm on it. This helps others make their way through their own self-doubt.
"we had always been poor together"--shared sorrows and shared joys bring people together. I feel you gave Robin diAngelo what she didn't deserve--she's not preaching love; she's preaching division. You are clearly preaching love and understanding.
The fact that you equate the plight of white poor people with black poor people in the South during Jim Crow (or anywhere for that matter) is shocking and a serious indictment on the virtue of our educational system and historical narratives.
When you wrote "shared sorrows", I understood that to mean that poor white people could understand what is was like to be black in an extremely racist environment. Did I misinterpret that?
The writer makes the point that the people in his neighborhood, black and white, shared many of the same experiences--Jim Crow wasn't as pronounced in the small neighborhood in which he lived, and he felt its impact later. But on to the point, my point: Do I think that white people, poor or not, can understand what it felt like to be black in an extremely racist environment? Mark Twain seems to have done so, for starters. I think it is possible to try hard to understand what other people feel even or especially if their ethnicities are different. And hey, Thomas Mann wrote very convincingly about what it felt like to be a woman past menopause jealous of her daughter (See a novella--The Black Swan).
I’m incredulous. I am pretty confident that the black poor folk from his little town were hyper aware of the perils of being black and all the lynchings that occurred throughout the South. The fact that the author had the privilege of being oblivious to that reality is indicative of the intractable nature of racism.
Wow. I feel strongly you are wrong about Robin diAngelo and her research. She is not “preaching” at all; she is a researcher and has disclosed some truths that are uncomfortable for many; any division resulting from what she uncovers is due to some people’s refusal to face their own willful ignorance.
You said she was "preaching division." My response was specifically, clearly directed at that. I said any division is the result of refusal to deal with willful ignorance; YOU tell me if that means you. Sounds a bit fragile at that! LOL. Her research showing that some 70% of whites answer that they got multiple jobs over their careers through connections but then insist that "nobody ever gave me anything" is one example. Your two "authorities"--Bill Maher's show for crying out loud--are just more opinions. Good examples though of how we constantly choose to reinforce our own opinions.
But aren't you trusting her "research" a bit too much? I have the book right here. She writes (I've picked a page at random): "I have a white frame of reference and a white worldview." This isn't footnoted because it's mere assertion. There is no "white" worldview, unless you're talking from the perspective of a NeoNazi and I have seen what they do here in Germany where I live. Ugh. I could write quite a bit about that. Cultures don't necessarily (if ever!) go by skin color. Thomas Sowell has written (extensively--and documented) about the ways in which Scots Irish culture became "redneck" Southern culture became ghetto culture. Here's a short summary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pls-Z0KOOgw&t=64s
but I'd recommend his book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. As it happens, descended as I am from Southern whites of Scots-Irish "cracker culture," his research has particular poignance for me--and if you saw me, you'd say, "Oh, there's a white person." My family background and culture is entirely different from that of a friend whose William-Wilberforcey John Singer Sargenty family resided for generations in Boston.
Thank you, pastor for these thoughtful words. I am writing from Uganda- having come to Africa in the mid 90's to help with construction projects- mostly medical- for mission agencies. I have read two of the books you mention and have not found them helpful at all- pretty disturbing, actually.
Excellent, my sentiments exactly. I too saw "colored" and "white" drinking fountains as a kid. I hated the racism I saw as a kid, and I also was astonished at the miraculous improvements in race relations as I grew up. I remember thinking in the 70's, wow, all of a sudden I see black people with new cars, owning businesses, etc, something I had never seen before. At the time I thought it was a miracle.
Now we have all these people acting like no progress has ever been made on racism. That me by definition being white am a racist, when I know I never have been and have taken active steps my whole life to oppose it. This is so wrong and counter productive.
We know progress has been made and we know that not all white people are racist. Don’t believe the hype that ALL black people believe or think (fill in the blank) any more than ALL white people are (fill in the blank). Let’s all stop with the lazy thinking and easy judgments while acknowledging that to LISTEN is messy and really, really uncomfortable hard work.
Exactly. That’s my point. Don’t believe the hype. In fact, if it’s an opinion at all it’s a minority opinion (pardon the pun) that “ALL” white people are racist. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner gave their lives alongside James Chaney and there are MANY other such courageous figures in history, known and unsung, who fought for what is right.
right and average white people did too. I watched as Dr. King preached, and made whites realize they were wrong to discriminate without making them feel guilty. That had huge impact and most whites on a mundane day to day level turned against racism. LBJ (Pres. Johnson) would never have been able to do what he did without majority white support. People changed and it was not just famous people, or political leadership who changed. Those people followed the masses.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. I read Diangelo’s White Fragility several years ago and found it disturbing that she largely backed up her thesis with anecdotes and assumptions about what motivates others. Your essay captured the essence of what it’s like for a young person to learn that the world can be cruel and how that person grows into their role as an adult in righting societal wrongs. Despite Diangelo’s castigation of you and everyone who looks like you, I think your account is an excellent contribution to this complex topic.
In my considered opinion, Robin di Angelo is basically a bully. Douglas Murray refers to her as "the Miss Whiplash of antiracism" in his recent book, The War on the West, which I'd recommend as a bracing corrective to her line of rhetoric.
I came away from reading White Fragility with the sense that it was basically Robin Di Angelo projecting her own attitudes about race onto everyone else. When you uniformly read mean-spirited racial prejudice into the minds of all others, it simply means that your own mind dwells in that mean-spirited framing of people not like you. This is why she couldn’t imagine any pathway to racial harmony.
Great article and probably more indicative of the actual state of the citizens in the US. Just because some so called enlightened elites making a living off of racist or homophobic issues say something doesn't make it true.
Now some genious who's probably thinking I am so smart has added a L versus W to describe racism. The ignorance and desire to keep hustling a buck on racism never stops. It actually dilute's real issues like the inner city failing the people.
I believe the normal is more closely related to this article on real life.
These are my sentiments, precisely. I recall taking the implicit bias test 10-15 years ago and was not surprised to find I did not harbor the implicit bias the test designers were seeking. I suspect my score reflected, instead, the fact that my early years were spent in Japan with Japanese kindergartners and later in Turkey where my playmate was a Turkish boy who lived in an adobe house with a dirt floor.
But the test was loaded from the outset, and is an absurdly designed tool to advance the race mongers' agenda.
There is one race, the human race, and all those who say otherwise are ignorant.
Diangleo and Kendi are race hustlers and should be ignored and shunned from polite society.
Beautifully written piece; thank you for that. Nice to hear someone of your generation discuss this. (And a pastor no less.) It’s sad how overly simplistic the race conversation has become in contemporary times. The idea that things are worse for black people in 2022 compared to the era of Jim Crow or slavery is absurd, and yet the antiracism movement pushes this idea constantly. The data does not back their claims up. (Police brutality is an obvious example.) Two books are helpful for understanding race and also the historical plight of low-income white Americans: ‘Power and Liberty’ by Gordon Wood, and ‘Black Rednecks and White Liberals’ by Thomas Sowell. Here’s the truth: Everyone is ‘racist’ on some level. We’re human. We naturally notice differences in people. Our internalized biases, genetics and childhood environment rise up to form preconceived ideas about others. But we also all have so much more common than apart, regardless of race. DiAngelo and Kendi are con-artists, in my opinion; they found a profitable way to exploit racial animus and white guilt. All people of any race can be racist. All people of all races can hate. Much of it comes down to culture and class, whether it’s the urban ghetto or white Appalachia. Indentured servants were very similar to slaves; they were even sold at auctions. Poor whites also couldn’t vote or own property for a long time. We fought a nasty civil war to face our grotesque racial reality. The 1960s voting rights bills went into law. Segregation ended. There is now a thriving black middle-class.
Here’s a question: Why is it that every time white woke people discuss ‘black people’ in general they are assumed to be poor and ghetto? Isn’t THAT racist? John McWhorter answers this in his brilliant recent book, ‘Woke Racism.’
Anyway. Thanks for the discussion. Antiracism is ridiculous. We need to get away from all the ‘anti’ this and ‘phobia’ that. We’re human, goddamnit. Let’s start acting like it.
I will admit, however, that my early days as an adopted child of lower middle class folks was probably far different than your early years.
But we each, in our own way, have struggled to gradually change our views about race.
During my 20s and early 30s the minister at our local Presbyterian church guided me towards the views I hold today in terms of our frailty.
His guidance allowed me to understand that we are not cows or dogs, or other animals whose reproduction has been mostly determined by humans since before recorded history.
To this day, I share his belief that "race" is a made up term; a relic of the many centuries were one group of humans bought and sold other humans. It is a word very much like the words we used during periods of war to dehumanize our enemies.
Which is why I refuse to accept "race" as a valid term for the wonderful gift of diversity God gave us.
We all are humans. Some tall, some short, some with dark skin, some with light skin, some with yellow hair, some with dark hair, some with more gifts than others, some with gifts yet to be appreciated.
And thus, Ken, we have arrived at nearly identical points of view during our nearly 80 years of living.
Your essay illustrates that God's greatest gift is the freedom we have to think for themselves.
Please accept my wish as a long lapsed Presbyterian that God will continue to bless both of us.
Dennis, can you see how your claim of color blindness might impede the advancement of true reconciliation? What about the fact that blacks were dehumanized and oppressed for hundreds of years without there ever being a true restitution for those injustices? For hundreds of years race has been used as a means to dehumanize and terrorize African Americans; and, now that there is a movement to account for these grave injustices, which have never been seriously redressed, you think color-blindness is a morally superior approach? I don't see how we can ever achieve a color-blind society without earnestly confronting the sins of the past so there can be true healing and reconciliation. Rather it seems more like an evasion of true repentance. "If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me... Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob..." (Leviticus 26:40, 42).
My only reply, Jeremy, is that my ancestors came from Poland and Bohemia.
Do a bit of digging and you'll find that during the first wave of migration from those countries my people found a great deal of discrimination in mostly large cities such as New York, Cleveland and Chicago.
The second wave was admittedly faced with less discrimination.
My ancestors had absolutely nothing to do in terms of the history of slavery in our nation or in other nations.
Now, how can you convince me to carry your self admitted burden of historical racism, when during my entire adulthood I have worked side by side with black, brown and Asian people.
During my retirement I have continued my work as a literacy volunteer. I prefer to address historic wrongs one person or family at a time, rather than stuffing people into government apartment towers were the problems of poverty, skin color and education are conveniently hidden from view.
You solve the problem of skin color your way, Jeremy. You may achieve better results than mine, if only because you are just beginning your adulthood and the odds are in your favor of outliving me by a large margin.
I'll continue to plod along one person or one family at a time. I figure I can help five or ten families learn to read and write American English, before I die.
I'm not suggesting that you or your family had any part in the evils of racism. It doesn't change the fact that the consequences of institutional slavery have inflicted tremendous harm and injustice upon a people only because of the color of their skin. Every successive wave of immigrants to this country has been discriminated to some degree or another, but let's not kid ourselves, the level of injustice and discrimination against blacks exceeds it by many orders of magnitude. You and I belong to the country that did this. I think we dishonor our American ideals by not reckoning with this shameful past.
Jeremy, I think you've been Kendied and diAngeloed! I feel like deprogramming you! But please, before you take as gospel their ideas, do check out one or two of these: https://www.ereads.com/best-thomas-sowell-books/
I appreciate all you've said and applaud your efforts to make life better for disadvantaged people, whatever made for their disadvantage. I do ask in addition that you learn about and see that white privilege, whether you dug that well or not, Deut. 6:11, made a positive difference for your ancestors when they got to this country.
To be clear, I don't think you are part of the problem Dennis. You sound like you are part of the solution. I of course don't have the answers, but I think it begins by having difficult conversations free of contempt and accusations. I think we need to be much more transparent about our history. It should be taught more comprehensively in our schools. Also, our schools and neighborhoods are still far too segregated. If we are going to end racial division we need to be more proximate in our daily lives and associations. I also appreciate the civil dialogue. It's pretty rare these days.
As a side note, I know age is relative, but I have raised 6 teenagers so I don't consider my self a young man anymore :).
“Not reckoning with this shameful past.” How about accepting racism as your personal savior and moving on into the 21st century where every TV commercial features a black person (and they were on TV and in catalogs etc in the 60s too...) Every TV therapist is black and if you want to go to Harvard you can get in on lower test scores than the rest of us who weren’t here during that shameful past that puffs your chest with moral certitude....
“It is July 19, 1935. They are all standing at the base of a tree in the pine woods of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Above them hangs the limp body of Rubin Stacy, his overalls torn and bloodied, riddled with bullets, his hands cuffed in front of him, head snapped from the lynching rope, killed for frightening a white woman. The girl in the front is looking up at the dead black man with wonderment rather than horror, a smile of excitement on her face as if show ponies had just galloped past her at the circus. The fascination on her young face set against the gruesome nature of the gathering was captured by a photographer and is among the most widely circulated of all lynching photographs of twentieth-century America. Lynchings were part carnival, part torture chamber, and attracted thousands of onlookers who collectively became accomplices to public sadism. Photographers were tipped off in advance and installed portable printing presses at the lynching sites to sell to lynchers and onlookers like photographers at a prom. They made postcards out of the gelatin prints for people to send to their loved ones. People mailed postcards of the severed, half-burned head of Will James atop a pole in Cairo, Illinois, in 1907. They sent postcards of burned torsos that looked like the petrified victims of Vesuvius, only these horrors had come at the hands of human beings in modern times. Some people framed the lynching photographs with locks of the victim’s hair under glass if they had been able to secure any. One spectator wrote on the back of his postcard from Waco, Texas, in 1916: “This is the Barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with the cross over it your son Joe.” This was singularly American. “Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz,” wrote Time magazine many years later. Lynching postcards were so common a form of communication in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America that lynching scenes “became a burgeoning subdepartment of the postcard industry. By 1908, the trade had grown so large, and the practice of sending postcards featuring the victims of mob murderers had become so repugnant, that the U.S. postmaster general banned the cards from the mails.” But the new edict did not stop Americans from sharing their lynching exploits. From then on, they merely put the postcards in an envelope” (Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent).
Do you think you are morally superior to these white people caught up in this sadistic culture? I recommend a book to you called Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. It is chilling and should motivate ALL of us to learn from the past so we don’t become the monsters of the future.
Since Polish and Bohemian genes are some of the masters of my aged body, I must say Melissa that you are the only person to notice my use of allegory.
I've looked but cannot find a star icon to paste on your report card so I'll do the next best thing by becoming the first person to subscribe to your forthcoming missives 🤔
Let's remember that Dr. Martin Luther King--a black man--advocated for judging people by the content of their character, not by their skin color. Practically speaking, that works. I'm a teacher. If a student came to me and complained another student had yelled a racial slur at her, I feel I'd be more effective at changing the racial-slur-slinger by sitting down and having a serious conversation--not by threatening the kid. "Why do you feel that way? Why did you want to use those words?" Throwing the kid out, cancelling the kid, expelling the young racist, probably only hardens their racism. If there's any hope of change (will we ever completely get rid of racism? I'm not sure, but feel we've come a ways) then it comes through persuasion, not threats.
I agree. I think Daryl Davis is an exceptional example of what you are describing and has a successful history in transforming racial conflict by listening and humanizing those that are adversarial toward him. I think you should follow your same advice and listen to the grievances many blacks have about the trauma they experience because of racism instead of minimizing the injustices they have experienced as a result.
About the "blacks were dehumanized . .. " yes, sure, but so were many other races. The very partial and inaccurate versions of the history of slavery offered by DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones have been debunked--in fact, see Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Race, pages 118-121. For starters.
Oh, where to begin? Could start with the Irish. But did you look at that YouTube link I sent of Sowell's work? It's less than 12 minutes. Take a look at that and then we'll talk!
While you’re looking for that can you also point me to the following? The historical records that document the trans-Atlantic Irish slave trade, the Irish underground railroad, the Irish abolitionist movement, the contemporary work of literature that recounts the horrors of Irish slavery (Uncle O’Malley’s Cabin?), the Constitutional Amendment that counts Irish as 3/5ths a person, anti-miscegenation laws for Irish, the Irish Civil Rights Movement (who is the Irish Rosa Parks or Dr. King?), redlining policies directed towards Irish, Jim Crow laws for Irish, Lynching post cards with Irish victims, GI Bills that excluded Irish Americans, the Christian theology used to justify Irish slavery, and any other history I have missed about Irish racism in America.
Yes, I completed my assignment. Very interesting bit on the migration patterns from British Isles to the Southern states. Can you please point me to the research that has been done that shows the significant and persistent economic and educational disparities between whites and Irish?
Sowell's point, Jeremy, is that these disparities have wended their way from one culture to another--from white hillbilly culture (and the problems continue there! See J.D. Vance) to ghetto culture.
He never mentions colorblindness. He merely makes the pro-human case championed by FAIR. Seeing past race (or other immutable characteristics) and valuing the individual. Hard to see much wrong with that approach.
I think it is a great goal to have. However, I don't think we ever get there by turning a blind eye to how this country has and still does use race as a way to demean other human beings. Its a nice idea to suggest that we should all just move on without honestly confronting it, but I think that is unrealistic and a dismissive approach that will never achieve the racial reconciliation that we so badly need in this country.
They will say its not you. Its the system. Its in the air. Its in the real estate, the criminal justice, the banking, the government, the education, the 'structures' and such imaginary tripe. Indeed, the amount of Afr Ams (lets face it this is the main fetish, not 'people of color') in all those systems, loving them, gaining employ from them, investing and vacationing on them, belies this 1950s era myth they persist at. They are making it up just as Foucault, Fanon, Said and Crenshaw did. They theorize lies. They make the world turn to the right. We were doing fine up until 5 yrs ago. Now the right will win the world. Putin himself is horrified at this stuff.
Its uncited, like most socjus works. And in context, people of lower class/caste everywhere on earth were abused by laws, well into the present. Plenty of black people bought houses in this era. And such overt injustices are long gone. The degree to which they exist affects poorer people of all shades. Its class. Simple. Racism was real. It still is to some degree, but the endless whine is bad for black people, and infuriates everybody else, ie. 87% of the US population.
It is factual and very well supported by just asking banks, government institutions. Yes "plenty" of black people own houses today and yes there are class injustices. As for "overt injustices are long gone," "endless whine" and Racism "was" real: I've dealt with your kind of minimization and denial for as long as I can remember. It's just a different rhyme on the same argument that black people never had it "that bad" and "slavery was good for them." GTH. Makes me despair of ever getting to a time and place where black people ever receive the same respect as other human beings.
If I'd wanted to write, or if I believed "black people never had it "that bad" and "slavery was good for them." I would have done so, stranger on the internet.
Your despair I fear will continue for decades, until you and the other radicals learn the basic psychology/negative effects of this reparations pity party, learn the similarly forlorn history of other peoples, (oh and how slavery started, Africans with agency anybody?) and the utter impracticality of suggesting one group of people on earth, only one, only Afr Am, get a historical refund while nobody else does, anywhere, when millions in that group palpably do well, in all sectors and have more cultural cache than any other group. Its why 'poc' vote for Trump, and it will put the GOP in power for longer than you and I will be able disagree pointlessly on the 'white supremacist' Internet. Respectfully, and exhaustedly, one more liberal turning centrist/one more centrist turning to the right because of such self absorbed arguments.
There you go again....who said anything about reparations? or Trump, GOP or the rest of that rant?And how did I, a stranger on the internet, suddenly get to be radical? smh. As for that "historical refund"--are you aware that the British Crown did give reparations to slave owners when slavery was abolished by law? Things that make you go Hmmmm....
Do you know whose navy enforced Abolition from 1800ish on? Do you know which group of people developed the new idea of abolishing slavery? Do you know who resented it? Leaders of color from Africa to Arabia to Asia. Do you know how many slaves are still in Africa and other places, but not in the West? Do you know that horrific though slavery was, and wrong that 20th century racism was, it was just much the same worldwide.
See Henry Louis Gates History of Africa, and this.
There is just no argument, historical, practical, or moral, to continue acting as if the Atlantic Slave Trade was the only event in history we should be 'sorry' for.
I have not read all the books you referred to but I am familiar with them and many of their ideas. It seems that you might have missed the larger point they make about systemic racism. The fact that you grew up in the South and were oblivious to the abhorrent dehumanization and violence perpetrated against a group of people based on their skin color is an example of how such a pernicious system can be allowed to exist. I don't think anyone is arguing that there have not been significant material differences in the way blacks are treated today. However, our moral responsibility is commensurate with the moral knowledge we currently have, not what it was 60 years ago. As the "arc of history bends towards justice", our responsibility to act "justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God", only increases. The fact that we are beneficiaries of moral progress should not make us complacent about the less visible forms of racism that perseverate in our society. We are no better than the complacent whites of the Jim Crow era if we don't seek to eradicate the tremendous inequity that exists among our black brothers and sisters today as a result of hundreds of years of white supremacist ideology and systems of oppression. The important work of reconciliation continues.
You have missed his point that "the South" is not one monolithic place, that the southern area of the US is and always was made up of many different states with different cultures, mores and laws and, within each state, many different communities with different practices. As there was rampant, though less explicit and codified, discrimination and racism throughout Northern and Northeastern states, there were areas of "the South" like the one Ken describes. And to acknowledge that past racism and discrimination still reverberates in societal systems today does not equate with guilt and complicity on the part of people who have never carried out racist acts, who have in fact proactively worked against racism.
The issue is that the negative consequences from racism continue to plague the black community. The huge racial disparities that exist in economic and educational outcomes are a direct result of hundreds of years of brutal oppression. As inheritors of these institutions, we all bear responsibility to ameliorate the harm they've created.
I hear you. At the same time you must see that it is impossible to say people who blithely lived according to the brutal racial caste systems “never carried out racist acts.” The racism and complicity that broke generations of blacks and privileged generations of whites went way beyond active membership in the KKK or White Councils, or calling black people out of our names , or beating up and spitting on civil rights protestors.
I think most of us will find that deep down, we actually love each other, and we all want love and respect. We want to see each other succeed. We're happy when we see excellence wherever it occurs; we're unhappy when we see suffering. Thanks for owning up to your love and standing firm on it. This helps others make their way through their own self-doubt.
Truly excellent, and VERY well-written.
Thank you, Mark, for your kind words. Yes, you are right. The willingness to laugh at our foibles, as painful as they are, is therapeutic.
"we had always been poor together"--shared sorrows and shared joys bring people together. I feel you gave Robin diAngelo what she didn't deserve--she's not preaching love; she's preaching division. You are clearly preaching love and understanding.
The fact that you equate the plight of white poor people with black poor people in the South during Jim Crow (or anywhere for that matter) is shocking and a serious indictment on the virtue of our educational system and historical narratives.
Take a second look at what I actually wrote.
When you wrote "shared sorrows", I understood that to mean that poor white people could understand what is was like to be black in an extremely racist environment. Did I misinterpret that?
The writer makes the point that the people in his neighborhood, black and white, shared many of the same experiences--Jim Crow wasn't as pronounced in the small neighborhood in which he lived, and he felt its impact later. But on to the point, my point: Do I think that white people, poor or not, can understand what it felt like to be black in an extremely racist environment? Mark Twain seems to have done so, for starters. I think it is possible to try hard to understand what other people feel even or especially if their ethnicities are different. And hey, Thomas Mann wrote very convincingly about what it felt like to be a woman past menopause jealous of her daughter (See a novella--The Black Swan).
I’m incredulous. I am pretty confident that the black poor folk from his little town were hyper aware of the perils of being black and all the lynchings that occurred throughout the South. The fact that the author had the privilege of being oblivious to that reality is indicative of the intractable nature of racism.
Good thing they have you to speak for them. How virtuous!
Wow. I feel strongly you are wrong about Robin diAngelo and her research. She is not “preaching” at all; she is a researcher and has disclosed some truths that are uncomfortable for many; any division resulting from what she uncovers is due to some people’s refusal to face their own willful ignorance.
Do you mean if I disagree with her findings I am automatically refusing to face my ignorance? Try this, especially at 1:52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tjgXQDyqno
Or this: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/intellectual-fraud-robin-diangelos-white-fragility/
To touch the tip of the iceburg. Please let me know what you regard as "evidence" in her writing.
You said she was "preaching division." My response was specifically, clearly directed at that. I said any division is the result of refusal to deal with willful ignorance; YOU tell me if that means you. Sounds a bit fragile at that! LOL. Her research showing that some 70% of whites answer that they got multiple jobs over their careers through connections but then insist that "nobody ever gave me anything" is one example. Your two "authorities"--Bill Maher's show for crying out loud--are just more opinions. Good examples though of how we constantly choose to reinforce our own opinions.
But aren't you trusting her "research" a bit too much? I have the book right here. She writes (I've picked a page at random): "I have a white frame of reference and a white worldview." This isn't footnoted because it's mere assertion. There is no "white" worldview, unless you're talking from the perspective of a NeoNazi and I have seen what they do here in Germany where I live. Ugh. I could write quite a bit about that. Cultures don't necessarily (if ever!) go by skin color. Thomas Sowell has written (extensively--and documented) about the ways in which Scots Irish culture became "redneck" Southern culture became ghetto culture. Here's a short summary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pls-Z0KOOgw&t=64s
but I'd recommend his book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. As it happens, descended as I am from Southern whites of Scots-Irish "cracker culture," his research has particular poignance for me--and if you saw me, you'd say, "Oh, there's a white person." My family background and culture is entirely different from that of a friend whose William-Wilberforcey John Singer Sargenty family resided for generations in Boston.
Very good book. An excellent piece of scholarship. I recommend it as well.
Thank you, pastor for these thoughtful words. I am writing from Uganda- having come to Africa in the mid 90's to help with construction projects- mostly medical- for mission agencies. I have read two of the books you mention and have not found them helpful at all- pretty disturbing, actually.
Excellent, my sentiments exactly. I too saw "colored" and "white" drinking fountains as a kid. I hated the racism I saw as a kid, and I also was astonished at the miraculous improvements in race relations as I grew up. I remember thinking in the 70's, wow, all of a sudden I see black people with new cars, owning businesses, etc, something I had never seen before. At the time I thought it was a miracle.
Now we have all these people acting like no progress has ever been made on racism. That me by definition being white am a racist, when I know I never have been and have taken active steps my whole life to oppose it. This is so wrong and counter productive.
We know progress has been made and we know that not all white people are racist. Don’t believe the hype that ALL black people believe or think (fill in the blank) any more than ALL white people are (fill in the blank). Let’s all stop with the lazy thinking and easy judgments while acknowledging that to LISTEN is messy and really, really uncomfortable hard work.
any time I see people saying "white people" or "black people" do....whatever, these are sweeping judgements that are almost never true.
People are individuals, and respecting that is key to working together.
Indeed
Exactly. That’s my point. Don’t believe the hype. In fact, if it’s an opinion at all it’s a minority opinion (pardon the pun) that “ALL” white people are racist. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner gave their lives alongside James Chaney and there are MANY other such courageous figures in history, known and unsung, who fought for what is right.
right and average white people did too. I watched as Dr. King preached, and made whites realize they were wrong to discriminate without making them feel guilty. That had huge impact and most whites on a mundane day to day level turned against racism. LBJ (Pres. Johnson) would never have been able to do what he did without majority white support. People changed and it was not just famous people, or political leadership who changed. Those people followed the masses.
The idea "all" white people are racist and "all" black people oppressed is a itself racist. Also breathtakingly inaccurate.
Agree!
thanks for agreeing...
Yes!
This is one of the best pieces I have read here. Kudo's to the author and to FAIR for publishing it.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. I read Diangelo’s White Fragility several years ago and found it disturbing that she largely backed up her thesis with anecdotes and assumptions about what motivates others. Your essay captured the essence of what it’s like for a young person to learn that the world can be cruel and how that person grows into their role as an adult in righting societal wrongs. Despite Diangelo’s castigation of you and everyone who looks like you, I think your account is an excellent contribution to this complex topic.
In my considered opinion, Robin di Angelo is basically a bully. Douglas Murray refers to her as "the Miss Whiplash of antiracism" in his recent book, The War on the West, which I'd recommend as a bracing corrective to her line of rhetoric.
I came away from reading White Fragility with the sense that it was basically Robin Di Angelo projecting her own attitudes about race onto everyone else. When you uniformly read mean-spirited racial prejudice into the minds of all others, it simply means that your own mind dwells in that mean-spirited framing of people not like you. This is why she couldn’t imagine any pathway to racial harmony.
Great article and probably more indicative of the actual state of the citizens in the US. Just because some so called enlightened elites making a living off of racist or homophobic issues say something doesn't make it true.
Now some genious who's probably thinking I am so smart has added a L versus W to describe racism. The ignorance and desire to keep hustling a buck on racism never stops. It actually dilute's real issues like the inner city failing the people.
I believe the normal is more closely related to this article on real life.
You speak for so many of us brother. So many know what you say to be true but few can say it so well and with such truth.
Exactly
These are my sentiments, precisely. I recall taking the implicit bias test 10-15 years ago and was not surprised to find I did not harbor the implicit bias the test designers were seeking. I suspect my score reflected, instead, the fact that my early years were spent in Japan with Japanese kindergartners and later in Turkey where my playmate was a Turkish boy who lived in an adobe house with a dirt floor.
But the test was loaded from the outset, and is an absurdly designed tool to advance the race mongers' agenda.
There is one race, the human race, and all those who say otherwise are ignorant.
Diangleo and Kendi are race hustlers and should be ignored and shunned from polite society.
Race hustlers…yes, they are.
Beautifully written piece; thank you for that. Nice to hear someone of your generation discuss this. (And a pastor no less.) It’s sad how overly simplistic the race conversation has become in contemporary times. The idea that things are worse for black people in 2022 compared to the era of Jim Crow or slavery is absurd, and yet the antiracism movement pushes this idea constantly. The data does not back their claims up. (Police brutality is an obvious example.) Two books are helpful for understanding race and also the historical plight of low-income white Americans: ‘Power and Liberty’ by Gordon Wood, and ‘Black Rednecks and White Liberals’ by Thomas Sowell. Here’s the truth: Everyone is ‘racist’ on some level. We’re human. We naturally notice differences in people. Our internalized biases, genetics and childhood environment rise up to form preconceived ideas about others. But we also all have so much more common than apart, regardless of race. DiAngelo and Kendi are con-artists, in my opinion; they found a profitable way to exploit racial animus and white guilt. All people of any race can be racist. All people of all races can hate. Much of it comes down to culture and class, whether it’s the urban ghetto or white Appalachia. Indentured servants were very similar to slaves; they were even sold at auctions. Poor whites also couldn’t vote or own property for a long time. We fought a nasty civil war to face our grotesque racial reality. The 1960s voting rights bills went into law. Segregation ended. There is now a thriving black middle-class.
Here’s a question: Why is it that every time white woke people discuss ‘black people’ in general they are assumed to be poor and ghetto? Isn’t THAT racist? John McWhorter answers this in his brilliant recent book, ‘Woke Racism.’
Anyway. Thanks for the discussion. Antiracism is ridiculous. We need to get away from all the ‘anti’ this and ‘phobia’ that. We’re human, goddamnit. Let’s start acting like it.
Michael Mohr
Sincere American Writing
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
I was born one year after you were born, Ken.
I will admit, however, that my early days as an adopted child of lower middle class folks was probably far different than your early years.
But we each, in our own way, have struggled to gradually change our views about race.
During my 20s and early 30s the minister at our local Presbyterian church guided me towards the views I hold today in terms of our frailty.
His guidance allowed me to understand that we are not cows or dogs, or other animals whose reproduction has been mostly determined by humans since before recorded history.
To this day, I share his belief that "race" is a made up term; a relic of the many centuries were one group of humans bought and sold other humans. It is a word very much like the words we used during periods of war to dehumanize our enemies.
Which is why I refuse to accept "race" as a valid term for the wonderful gift of diversity God gave us.
We all are humans. Some tall, some short, some with dark skin, some with light skin, some with yellow hair, some with dark hair, some with more gifts than others, some with gifts yet to be appreciated.
And thus, Ken, we have arrived at nearly identical points of view during our nearly 80 years of living.
Your essay illustrates that God's greatest gift is the freedom we have to think for themselves.
Please accept my wish as a long lapsed Presbyterian that God will continue to bless both of us.
Dennis, can you see how your claim of color blindness might impede the advancement of true reconciliation? What about the fact that blacks were dehumanized and oppressed for hundreds of years without there ever being a true restitution for those injustices? For hundreds of years race has been used as a means to dehumanize and terrorize African Americans; and, now that there is a movement to account for these grave injustices, which have never been seriously redressed, you think color-blindness is a morally superior approach? I don't see how we can ever achieve a color-blind society without earnestly confronting the sins of the past so there can be true healing and reconciliation. Rather it seems more like an evasion of true repentance. "If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me... Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob..." (Leviticus 26:40, 42).
My only reply, Jeremy, is that my ancestors came from Poland and Bohemia.
Do a bit of digging and you'll find that during the first wave of migration from those countries my people found a great deal of discrimination in mostly large cities such as New York, Cleveland and Chicago.
The second wave was admittedly faced with less discrimination.
My ancestors had absolutely nothing to do in terms of the history of slavery in our nation or in other nations.
Now, how can you convince me to carry your self admitted burden of historical racism, when during my entire adulthood I have worked side by side with black, brown and Asian people.
During my retirement I have continued my work as a literacy volunteer. I prefer to address historic wrongs one person or family at a time, rather than stuffing people into government apartment towers were the problems of poverty, skin color and education are conveniently hidden from view.
You solve the problem of skin color your way, Jeremy. You may achieve better results than mine, if only because you are just beginning your adulthood and the odds are in your favor of outliving me by a large margin.
I'll continue to plod along one person or one family at a time. I figure I can help five or ten families learn to read and write American English, before I die.
I'm not suggesting that you or your family had any part in the evils of racism. It doesn't change the fact that the consequences of institutional slavery have inflicted tremendous harm and injustice upon a people only because of the color of their skin. Every successive wave of immigrants to this country has been discriminated to some degree or another, but let's not kid ourselves, the level of injustice and discrimination against blacks exceeds it by many orders of magnitude. You and I belong to the country that did this. I think we dishonor our American ideals by not reckoning with this shameful past.
Jeremy, I think you've been Kendied and diAngeloed! I feel like deprogramming you! But please, before you take as gospel their ideas, do check out one or two of these: https://www.ereads.com/best-thomas-sowell-books/
and check this out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pls-Z0KOOgw
How will you solve your dilemma, Jeremy?
I've told you what I do to help disadvantaged people and families.
What thoughts do you have, other than creating a national movement that aligns with your ideas?
Yes, Jeremy, I was once a young man. Took me a while to control my mouth and actively engage my ears.
I wish you well on what I believe will be a most productive life.
Your civil reply to my comment was most appreciated.
I appreciate all you've said and applaud your efforts to make life better for disadvantaged people, whatever made for their disadvantage. I do ask in addition that you learn about and see that white privilege, whether you dug that well or not, Deut. 6:11, made a positive difference for your ancestors when they got to this country.
To be clear, I don't think you are part of the problem Dennis. You sound like you are part of the solution. I of course don't have the answers, but I think it begins by having difficult conversations free of contempt and accusations. I think we need to be much more transparent about our history. It should be taught more comprehensively in our schools. Also, our schools and neighborhoods are still far too segregated. If we are going to end racial division we need to be more proximate in our daily lives and associations. I also appreciate the civil dialogue. It's pretty rare these days.
As a side note, I know age is relative, but I have raised 6 teenagers so I don't consider my self a young man anymore :).
Six teenagers? You have my condolences. I've only been able to raise 4 teenagers while retaining a portion of my sanity.
I jumped to the concept of you as a young man still in college when I peeked at your bio here on substack.
The conclusion fence is a dangerous barrier to jump over 🥴
“Not reckoning with this shameful past.” How about accepting racism as your personal savior and moving on into the 21st century where every TV commercial features a black person (and they were on TV and in catalogs etc in the 60s too...) Every TV therapist is black and if you want to go to Harvard you can get in on lower test scores than the rest of us who weren’t here during that shameful past that puffs your chest with moral certitude....
“It is July 19, 1935. They are all standing at the base of a tree in the pine woods of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Above them hangs the limp body of Rubin Stacy, his overalls torn and bloodied, riddled with bullets, his hands cuffed in front of him, head snapped from the lynching rope, killed for frightening a white woman. The girl in the front is looking up at the dead black man with wonderment rather than horror, a smile of excitement on her face as if show ponies had just galloped past her at the circus. The fascination on her young face set against the gruesome nature of the gathering was captured by a photographer and is among the most widely circulated of all lynching photographs of twentieth-century America. Lynchings were part carnival, part torture chamber, and attracted thousands of onlookers who collectively became accomplices to public sadism. Photographers were tipped off in advance and installed portable printing presses at the lynching sites to sell to lynchers and onlookers like photographers at a prom. They made postcards out of the gelatin prints for people to send to their loved ones. People mailed postcards of the severed, half-burned head of Will James atop a pole in Cairo, Illinois, in 1907. They sent postcards of burned torsos that looked like the petrified victims of Vesuvius, only these horrors had come at the hands of human beings in modern times. Some people framed the lynching photographs with locks of the victim’s hair under glass if they had been able to secure any. One spectator wrote on the back of his postcard from Waco, Texas, in 1916: “This is the Barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with the cross over it your son Joe.” This was singularly American. “Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz,” wrote Time magazine many years later. Lynching postcards were so common a form of communication in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America that lynching scenes “became a burgeoning subdepartment of the postcard industry. By 1908, the trade had grown so large, and the practice of sending postcards featuring the victims of mob murderers had become so repugnant, that the U.S. postmaster general banned the cards from the mails.” But the new edict did not stop Americans from sharing their lynching exploits. From then on, they merely put the postcards in an envelope” (Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent).
Do you think you are morally superior to these white people caught up in this sadistic culture? I recommend a book to you called Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. It is chilling and should motivate ALL of us to learn from the past so we don’t become the monsters of the future.
I think no need for sarcasm, especially as we wish (I wish) to persuade Jeremy to consider a different perspective
and by the way, as many have pointed out, the word "slaves" comes from "slavs." For historic reasons . . .
Why is this relevant to the conversation?
Since Polish and Bohemian genes are some of the masters of my aged body, I must say Melissa that you are the only person to notice my use of allegory.
I've looked but cannot find a star icon to paste on your report card so I'll do the next best thing by becoming the first person to subscribe to your forthcoming missives 🤔
Thanks. At the moment just writing a blog, The Critical Mom, plus what's on my Melissa Knox site.
Let's remember that Dr. Martin Luther King--a black man--advocated for judging people by the content of their character, not by their skin color. Practically speaking, that works. I'm a teacher. If a student came to me and complained another student had yelled a racial slur at her, I feel I'd be more effective at changing the racial-slur-slinger by sitting down and having a serious conversation--not by threatening the kid. "Why do you feel that way? Why did you want to use those words?" Throwing the kid out, cancelling the kid, expelling the young racist, probably only hardens their racism. If there's any hope of change (will we ever completely get rid of racism? I'm not sure, but feel we've come a ways) then it comes through persuasion, not threats.
I agree. I think Daryl Davis is an exceptional example of what you are describing and has a successful history in transforming racial conflict by listening and humanizing those that are adversarial toward him. I think you should follow your same advice and listen to the grievances many blacks have about the trauma they experience because of racism instead of minimizing the injustices they have experienced as a result.
About the "blacks were dehumanized . .. " yes, sure, but so were many other races. The very partial and inaccurate versions of the history of slavery offered by DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones have been debunked--in fact, see Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Race, pages 118-121. For starters.
Please educate me on which other groups of people in America were discriminated on a level even remotely commensurate to African Americans?
Indigenous people; Native Americans. -_-
Oh, where to begin? Could start with the Irish. But did you look at that YouTube link I sent of Sowell's work? It's less than 12 minutes. Take a look at that and then we'll talk!
While you’re looking for that can you also point me to the following? The historical records that document the trans-Atlantic Irish slave trade, the Irish underground railroad, the Irish abolitionist movement, the contemporary work of literature that recounts the horrors of Irish slavery (Uncle O’Malley’s Cabin?), the Constitutional Amendment that counts Irish as 3/5ths a person, anti-miscegenation laws for Irish, the Irish Civil Rights Movement (who is the Irish Rosa Parks or Dr. King?), redlining policies directed towards Irish, Jim Crow laws for Irish, Lynching post cards with Irish victims, GI Bills that excluded Irish Americans, the Christian theology used to justify Irish slavery, and any other history I have missed about Irish racism in America.
It's hard to give a full answer in a small box here. I would, again, recommend Douglas Murray, but here's a brief summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqbYoO-m6iM
The bottom line: slavery was what the west got right, ending it before others did. A few more words to that effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RKIlPQvpzY
Yes, I completed my assignment. Very interesting bit on the migration patterns from British Isles to the Southern states. Can you please point me to the research that has been done that shows the significant and persistent economic and educational disparities between whites and Irish?
Sowell's point, Jeremy, is that these disparities have wended their way from one culture to another--from white hillbilly culture (and the problems continue there! See J.D. Vance) to ghetto culture.
A black slave was worth more than an Irish immigrant-- they were given the deadliest jobs. Where’ve you been?
He never mentions colorblindness. He merely makes the pro-human case championed by FAIR. Seeing past race (or other immutable characteristics) and valuing the individual. Hard to see much wrong with that approach.
I think it is a great goal to have. However, I don't think we ever get there by turning a blind eye to how this country has and still does use race as a way to demean other human beings. Its a nice idea to suggest that we should all just move on without honestly confronting it, but I think that is unrealistic and a dismissive approach that will never achieve the racial reconciliation that we so badly need in this country.
When the wokesters claim that all white people have hidden racism, what they really mean is that THEY have hidden racism. They don't speak for me.
They will say its not you. Its the system. Its in the air. Its in the real estate, the criminal justice, the banking, the government, the education, the 'structures' and such imaginary tripe. Indeed, the amount of Afr Ams (lets face it this is the main fetish, not 'people of color') in all those systems, loving them, gaining employ from them, investing and vacationing on them, belies this 1950s era myth they persist at. They are making it up just as Foucault, Fanon, Said and Crenshaw did. They theorize lies. They make the world turn to the right. We were doing fine up until 5 yrs ago. Now the right will win the world. Putin himself is horrified at this stuff.
Read Rothstein’s The Color of Law.
Its uncited, like most socjus works. And in context, people of lower class/caste everywhere on earth were abused by laws, well into the present. Plenty of black people bought houses in this era. And such overt injustices are long gone. The degree to which they exist affects poorer people of all shades. Its class. Simple. Racism was real. It still is to some degree, but the endless whine is bad for black people, and infuriates everybody else, ie. 87% of the US population.
It is factual and very well supported by just asking banks, government institutions. Yes "plenty" of black people own houses today and yes there are class injustices. As for "overt injustices are long gone," "endless whine" and Racism "was" real: I've dealt with your kind of minimization and denial for as long as I can remember. It's just a different rhyme on the same argument that black people never had it "that bad" and "slavery was good for them." GTH. Makes me despair of ever getting to a time and place where black people ever receive the same respect as other human beings.
If I'd wanted to write, or if I believed "black people never had it "that bad" and "slavery was good for them." I would have done so, stranger on the internet.
Your despair I fear will continue for decades, until you and the other radicals learn the basic psychology/negative effects of this reparations pity party, learn the similarly forlorn history of other peoples, (oh and how slavery started, Africans with agency anybody?) and the utter impracticality of suggesting one group of people on earth, only one, only Afr Am, get a historical refund while nobody else does, anywhere, when millions in that group palpably do well, in all sectors and have more cultural cache than any other group. Its why 'poc' vote for Trump, and it will put the GOP in power for longer than you and I will be able disagree pointlessly on the 'white supremacist' Internet. Respectfully, and exhaustedly, one more liberal turning centrist/one more centrist turning to the right because of such self absorbed arguments.
There you go again....who said anything about reparations? or Trump, GOP or the rest of that rant?And how did I, a stranger on the internet, suddenly get to be radical? smh. As for that "historical refund"--are you aware that the British Crown did give reparations to slave owners when slavery was abolished by law? Things that make you go Hmmmm....
Do you know whose navy enforced Abolition from 1800ish on? Do you know which group of people developed the new idea of abolishing slavery? Do you know who resented it? Leaders of color from Africa to Arabia to Asia. Do you know how many slaves are still in Africa and other places, but not in the West? Do you know that horrific though slavery was, and wrong that 20th century racism was, it was just much the same worldwide.
See Henry Louis Gates History of Africa, and this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrfjUzYvPo&t=747s
There is just no argument, historical, practical, or moral, to continue acting as if the Atlantic Slave Trade was the only event in history we should be 'sorry' for.
Yep
I have not read all the books you referred to but I am familiar with them and many of their ideas. It seems that you might have missed the larger point they make about systemic racism. The fact that you grew up in the South and were oblivious to the abhorrent dehumanization and violence perpetrated against a group of people based on their skin color is an example of how such a pernicious system can be allowed to exist. I don't think anyone is arguing that there have not been significant material differences in the way blacks are treated today. However, our moral responsibility is commensurate with the moral knowledge we currently have, not what it was 60 years ago. As the "arc of history bends towards justice", our responsibility to act "justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God", only increases. The fact that we are beneficiaries of moral progress should not make us complacent about the less visible forms of racism that perseverate in our society. We are no better than the complacent whites of the Jim Crow era if we don't seek to eradicate the tremendous inequity that exists among our black brothers and sisters today as a result of hundreds of years of white supremacist ideology and systems of oppression. The important work of reconciliation continues.
You have missed his point that "the South" is not one monolithic place, that the southern area of the US is and always was made up of many different states with different cultures, mores and laws and, within each state, many different communities with different practices. As there was rampant, though less explicit and codified, discrimination and racism throughout Northern and Northeastern states, there were areas of "the South" like the one Ken describes. And to acknowledge that past racism and discrimination still reverberates in societal systems today does not equate with guilt and complicity on the part of people who have never carried out racist acts, who have in fact proactively worked against racism.
The issue is that the negative consequences from racism continue to plague the black community. The huge racial disparities that exist in economic and educational outcomes are a direct result of hundreds of years of brutal oppression. As inheritors of these institutions, we all bear responsibility to ameliorate the harm they've created.
I think we're back to Thomas Sowell here.
I hear you. At the same time you must see that it is impossible to say people who blithely lived according to the brutal racial caste systems “never carried out racist acts.” The racism and complicity that broke generations of blacks and privileged generations of whites went way beyond active membership in the KKK or White Councils, or calling black people out of our names , or beating up and spitting on civil rights protestors.