Robin DiAngelo: Matt and Chris struggle with their fragility
Racism is all around. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds white people together. And if you try to deny it, it only makes it stronger. That's Robin DiAngelo's thesis, anyway, and she calls this dark force (and the book that made her famous) White Fragility. You know you've got white fragility if you refuse to accept the truth of white fragility. Also, all white people have it. So that's pretty straightforward at least. How do you fight the curse of whiteness? Well, it's a lifelong journey of 'Doing the Work', but one thing's for sure: it starts with reading books like White Fragility and attending seminars well... like hers.DiAngelo's been out of the discourse recently, as far as we can tell, busy beavering away on new books like Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm and dismantling white supremacy via corporate group therapy sessions. However, in our original show blurb, we promised to cover 'gurus from Jordan Peterson to Robin DiAngelo', so here we are. Now she's no longer this week's hot culture war topic that's getting people (...racists probably) all riled up, it's the perfect time to cross this particular Pokemon off our list. We listened to a lecture she gave in 2018, where she helpfully lays out the key aspects of her theory. There's so much in store for listeners this week. You'll be able to thrill to the anecdote of how DiAngelo herself was disgustingly racist to a colleague, be shocked as Chris once again references Northern Ireland's colourful history and tries to deflect his people's obvious guilt onto the English, be amazed as Matthew courageously confronts his settler-colonial privilege, and learn the real story of the first African American baseball player to cross the colour line (as told by DiAngelo).So join the intrepid duo as they embark on this neverending journey to interrogate their whiteness. And maybe - verrrry carefully - try to be just a little bit critical of DiAngelo's arguments without axiomatically proving themselves hopelessly racist. Listen in and judge for yourself!LinksRobin DiAngelo's 2018 lecture on White Fragility at Seattle Central LibraryLiam Bright's recent 'White Psychodrama' paperKanye 'Ye' West Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #332Sam Harris: The Politics of Unreality: Ukraine and Nuclear Risk: A Conversation with Timothy Snyder (#301)
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist, Chris Kavanagh, and a psychologist, Matthew Brown, listen to the greatest minds the online world has to offer.
We try to understand what they're talking about.
That's all I've got to say, Chris.
So, welcome.
Glad you're here.
You ready for some decoding?
Yes, I am.
It's been a while since we've had a full decoding episode, so I feel like the old decoding muscles have started to atrophy.
We're back in the saddle.
We've both been watching a lot of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, haven't we?
We've been enjoying it.
That's how we've been spending our time.
It's been good.
Well, I have not recently because I already finished it in a long...
Binge before.
So, but the way I consume that kind of content is also different from you, Matt, in that I...
You listen to it at four times speed, do you?
No, I do not.
But it is more that because I'm often doing other things while I'm listening or like commuting or that kind of thing, in some way, it's like an audio drama for me because you say watching, but it's listening.
You know, you haven't really consumed it.
You've been missing out because the...
The visuals are important, Chris.
They're very important.
Just the expressions on Dennis' face alone mean that you've only really appreciated half the show.
You know, you do what you can.
You're a multitasker.
I know that.
You're a busy man.
That's right.
So, yes.
But it is a very enjoyable show and we are going to have a chat about it with David Pizarro from The Very Bad Wizard.
Something for people to randomly look forward to who might be also fans of that show.
But, you know, Matt, to limber up our decoding muscles, I thought we, you know, we sometimes talk about things that have occurred in the guru space.
And there's a couple of events that seem notable.
The news very recently, for example, is that Elon Musk has Appeared to finalize or be in the process of finalizing his deal to buy Twitter.
Appearing at the entrance with a sink in hand.
A long way to go for a pun to say let that sink in.
So he arrived at the entrance to Twitter carrying a like a large ceramic sink.
Like let that sink in.
That's a commitment to a pun.
So, you know, the reason it's relevant for us is that, apart from that, Elon Musk is a tech guru and will very likely finish him to end off the tech season.
But also, he has promised to put an emphasis on free speech and potentially restore some guru figures who have been kicked off the platform, notably...
In private messages, he was talking about restoring Donald Trump.
But nobody really knows what exactly will happen now.
But I'm just curious, Matt, do you think...
You know that scene in Ghostbusters where they open...
They're like the ghost vault and they just all fly out over New York.
Do you think that's what's going to have the Twitter, like James Lindsay, Stefan Bologna, Alex Jones, just running around with their hotcakes?
Yeah, Twitter will be both better and worse somehow.
I say better because Donald Trump, for all his many failings, I mean, say what you like about him.
The man can post.
I think that's the one that people are watching if he comes back.
But I'm just curious how far it goes and if it actually occurs beyond a few token examples.
I kind of feel that a lot of the tech CEOs, of course they can have an influence, of course they can do things, but it feels like actually running a social network is a lot of hassle and you do come to realize that Oh,
crap.
Like if we don't have content moderation, we're going to be hauled up in front of committees about genocides and mass shootings.
And even if you do have content moderation, it will be that.
So I don't know that Elon's laissez-faire approach will hold as he learns more or faces backlash for things.
So we'll see.
Yeah.
No, I think he'll be bored of it within a matter of weeks and he'll be focused on his next thing, which will be launching a sink into the orbit of Mars or something.
That's my prediction.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see how it goes.
Now, that news, you know, kind of related to Guru's recent piece of content, which is definitely related to Guru Sphere and the Guru that we covered, Lex Friedman.
So Lex chose to have an interview with Kanye.
And this follows on the back of an eight-hour podcast that Lex conducted with a tech guru guy, Balaji.
I forget his name.
Balaji Srinivasan, I think.
Yeah, so from one very long, indulgent podcast to a podcast with Kanye West, who is a musician.
Seems to be undergoing various mental health issues, but most notably has been making various public anti-Semitic statements and extreme claims about conspiracy.
So Lex deciding to host him, knowing that that is likely to happen, is obviously going to be a lightning rod for attention and criticism and that kind of thing.
So let's just...
Hear a little bit of the kind of things that Kanye was saying on Lex's podcast.
What do you think they put me right now?
They put me as the prophet, not the leader.
It doesn't have to be the leader, right?
Because we need a more intelligent person to be the leader.
But at least, right, they put me as the prophet.
They put me as the only person that would say this.
And I'm just saying that was four Jewish members that...
Controlled my voice because for the fact that 90% of Black people in entertainment, from sports to music to acting, are in some way tied into Jewish business people.
Meaning that in some way, just like if Rahm is sitting next to Obama or Jared's sitting next to Trump, there's a Jewish person right there controlling...
The country, the Jewish people controlling who gets the best video or not, controlling what the media says about me.
It's a person, not Jewish.
Let me just say one thing.
But they are, though.
That's the only thing.
It just so happens that they are.
That doesn't mean that I hate them.
That just means that they are.
Well, Chris, I mean, foreshadowing the current decoding just a little bit, I think it's brave and important.
Start seeing race like Kanye is doing.
You know, he's just noticing the racial identity of the people that are oppressing him.
So what would you indicate with that?
Yeah, it's not a subtle heaping of anti-Semitic tropes.
It's like the entire container has been poured into the cup, right?
Yeah, so...
There's lots of that throughout the two and a half hour interview with Lex.
And to Lex's credit, he pushed back more than I anticipated.
He did compare Kanye's rhetoric to Goebbels or Goebbels, Goebbels, Goebbels, however you pronounce his name, the Nazi propagandist.
And he pointed out, you know, it's dehumanizing.
He's talking about groups.
So I think Lex deserves credit.
To some extent for pushing back.
However, it's still Lex.
So the pushback, it's relatively limited in scope.
And it's still accompanied by phoning Prius for Kanye.
And it's unclear what advantage to the world or how this serves love by platforming someone like this.
It definitely serves Lex's...
Download metrics, but in his mission to make the world a better place, is that achieved by letting people hear Kanye rant about the Jews?
Yeah, I think this particular episode, last I looked, was 2 million in downloads, Chris, and his typical downloads are like 200,000.
So it certainly worked in that sense.
Yeah, one wonders what the point of having a public heart-to-heart with Kanye about this would be.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, Kenya's also a hardcore Christian, and so he views abortion as, you know, he makes these parallels about the true Holocaust as black children being aborted in America.
At one point, his solution that he offers to that is that he's going to buy land and build farm slash monasteries where people can study engineering, which is the only subject that he thinks people should be allowed to study.
And you're just like, is it worthwhile to hear this kind of solutions and stuff, you know?
And in any case, the other aspect of it that I wanted to highlight was there's a part during the interview where Lex seems genuinely hurt by something Kanye says, and it comes here.
Well, some of it I pointed out today, but I don't know you deeply enough.
What was the bullshit?
Jewish media, Jewish...
That's not bullshit.
The bullshit is that the Jewish media won't admit...
Your dad was right.
Your dad was right.
The words you used.
You weren't...
And I said it.
You're not going to make me say it 800 more times.
I don't know if it resonated, because you keep saying, like, the words...
Did it resonate to y 'all that y 'all ain't do nothing about it?
And that all y 'all want to do is have somebody apologize and sweep under the rug your bullshit that you've been doing the whole time.
You own the same bullshit as the other people.
So you're doing the same thing that the other, let's say media, because I'm not allowed to say, has done.
So until somebody stands up...
Which is what, man?
Which is what?
I'm trying to call you out on your bullshit because I hope I'm somebody you can trust.
I don't fucking trust you.
Well, you should find people in your life you can trust.
Don't tell me what I should do.
I'm not one of your BLM marchers.
But bledgering man.
He's a bledgering man.
Yeah.
It is interesting, isn't it, those two personalities rubbing up against each other because you have the soft, squishy civility porn where personal relationships of mutual love and understanding is the foundation for everything.
This is the man who believed he could go to Ukraine and Russia and sit down and connect personally with Putin and Zelensky and sort things out that way.
And having that rub up against Kanye's more abrasive Personality is kind of fun to hear.
Yeah, but that pause, like the long pause where Lex seems hurt that Kanye says he doesn't trust him, that struck me at the time, and it struck many people that listened, because they pointed out that Lex seemed upset about that, and indeed he is,
so later on he brings it up again.
Here.
Fix him.
I see that's what you're trying to do.
And you probably, listen, People should not doubt.
Yay.
But I gotta tell you, I have to be honest.
This is silly, because you don't know me.
But it hurt when you say you don't trust me.
You kind of lost me.
I don't think anyone's ever said that to me.
I don't know, man.
Fuck that.
I don't care about views or clickbait or any of that bullshit.
I just thought you were one of the greatest artists ever.
It'd be cool to talk to you.
I feel like you got...
Pain you're working through.
I never had anyone say that to me.
I'm just being a mess about it, I guess.
That's fucked up, though.
But maybe it's not.
Maybe you shouldn't trust it.
But I just haven't had that experience.
Yeah.
Do you think I would trust anybody at this point in my life?
Yeah, it's tough.
It's tough.
It's tough.
I hear you.
And it's also kind of good to see how much strength you got.
You're not broken by any of this.
You're under a lot of attack.
A lot of attack.
By a lot of people.
You have a vision.
And you're trying to feel your way through it.
And you might get destroyed for it.
That's the human...
That's the risk you take.
Yeah, Matt.
So what's Kanye's vision that he's getting attacked for?
What's that?
You know, that's the flip side of Lex.
Yes, he does pull Kanye up repeatedly on the anti-Semitism thing.
But there, he's kind of like, you know...
But yeah, I get it, man.
You're just fighting for your truth and your strong personality and stuff.
But what's he saying, Lex?
What's the vision he's telling the world that the Jews are running and have been keeping him down?
Yeah, it does give you insight into Lex's personality because I think he, in the moment, just completely forgot about that.
What he was focused on was that Kanye kind of offered him a road out of...
Or the insult, the personal insult.
The personal insult, which he could then reciprocate in saying, yeah, you know, you find it hard to trust anyone and that's why you don't trust me.
It's not that you don't like me.
I get it.
I get it.
Yeah, so it's interesting.
He's just such a soft...
Like, is this an odd way to approach, like, this is a big ticket interview.
It's not a private chat.
It's a public broadcast.
And how Lex approaches it is emblematic of that emphasis on establishing those strong, warm, beautiful, trusting interpersonal relationships and treating that as the foundation, the bedrock upon which any kind of sense-making or whatever can be made.
And you contrast that with...
The old-fashioned way of doing it, the way a professional journalist would do it.
Someone like one of our recent guests, Helen Lewis, when she approached someone like Jordan Peterson, which is to not try to become best friends with them in the moment, live, but rather to be a tough journalist, ask them difficult questions,
not let them wriggle out.
And if they don't like you, that's fine.
Yeah, that's in large part what the guru sphere is offering as an alternative, right?
Because it doesn't claim to be that.
It claims to be more this, let's have a three-hour conversation and become like intimately close and treat you not as somebody who deserves to be cross-examined, but just as a person.
But you see the limitations of that approach.
When it comes to Lex actually having to grapple with somebody just openly promoting anti-Semitism.
And it comes across as strange, the fixation on like your hurt feelings that somebody's saying they don't trust you because Kanye is a celebrity and you're a podcaster.
Unless there's some secret relationship, you know, or ongoing behind the scenes, it's completely unclear why you would expect, like that's a weird thing to expect someone to have this.
Level of trust directed towards you, because why?
Why would you trust a stranger interviewing you?
It's very interesting, like I said before, this insight into the kind of sheltered crèche-type world in which these independent podcasters live, in which...
All of the interviews are softball interviews.
All of them are complimenting each other on what wonderful human beings they are and essentially engaging in mutual backpadding and cross-promotion.
Kanye, despite being apparently a braving lunatic, is actually, in a sense, a much more normal person in approaching this, which is, why the hell are you wanting to be my best friend?
Yeah, I know there are other moments in the interview where he kind of panders to Lex, like, Talking about the importance of Lex as an engineer and all this kind of stuff.
So it's just, you know, people can listen to it.
It's up to Lex, who he wants to platform and stuff.
But I just don't like, Lex has this stance where he presents himself as a martyr, willing to take the slings and arrows because he's going to have these conversations with controversial figures on his subreddit that, like, pinned.
thing from Lex, the pinned message is saying, in the next couple of years, I'm going to have controversial guests.
I'll get attacked from all sides, but you guys know my heart, right?
And it's
That stuff veers to me into manipulative guru territory, where you're telling the people all criticisms of me.
For platforming people like Kanye, they're illegitimate because I've got a good heart.
And you people who are, you know, the real people, the people that have known me for long, you will know that all those attacks aren't real and they're going to say mean things about me trying to get attention and stuff.
And it feels manipulative, but also in Lex's case, it probably is earnest that that's how he sees himself.
But you can be earnest and manipulative.
Yeah, I feel it is earnest.
But yeah, like you say, the genuine aspects there can dovetail quite nicely and be self-serving in various ways, which is interesting.
Another little bit of foreshadowing of the episode we're going to do.
But anyway, good on Lex.
He's platforming voices of colour and hopefully making progress to throwing off the Jewish yoke.
Yeah.
Okay, so we'll get to the main decoding now, but the very last thing to say, just in contrast to that, Matt, and the follow-up on the segment that we had last episode complaining about the Russian apologetics that you find in a lot of the guru sphere, Sam Harris just did an episode called The Politics of Unreality,
Ukraine and Nuclear Risk, and it's by...
An area expert in Ukraine and Russia, Timothy Snyder.
And it's directly presented as a rebuttal to lots of the hot takes flapping around in the heterodox and group sphere.
And it's very good.
I really enjoyed it.
So I just want to recommend if people would like to hear a sensible perspective that treats Ukraine as a, you know, a nation with its own interests, people.
That are not just pawns in these global power games.
That's a really good conversation from an area expert.
And Sam lets him have the floor for most of the conversation.
So good on Sam.
Yeah, I saw some of the responses to your complimenting Sam on Twitter, which is...
Like, oh, so you've changed your tune now, Chris.
You're not a hater anymore.
And it's quite frustrating to me because I have so much first-hand experience of you.
Yes, you're critical of people like Sam Harris, but unlike some, there are people who are haters and a lot of people say on our subreddit, I know that we'll just absolutely hate Sam Harris and won't give him any credit.
That's not you.
You praise him probably about half the time, I would say, when he does something good.
I think you're trying to train people to, you know, do more good things.
My chessboard doesn't have that many dimensions.
I purely just, like, some things that Sam says, I think...
Are good.
Stuff that he does is good.
And some things I strongly disagree with, which we've covered in person with him for multiple hours.
So to me, like you say, it isn't hard.
That response also creates to me where people are like, oh, so now you see you were wrong to criticize.
And it's like, no, it's absolutely fine to criticize someone on...
Aspects that you disagree or you think that they got wrong and then praise them or say that you agree when there's something that they say which you agree with.
I don't understand why this is complex.
This shouldn't be hard, people.
This should not be hard.
It doesn't mean that all the criticisms that I previously had are now gone.
Because there's a nice episode about Ukraine, right?
It's not that simple.
Yes, just accept grey in your world.
That's all.
I'm imagining people perceiving you as like flip-flopping between hater and fanboy.
Yeah, they are.
Like that meme with a guy with a button.
Like, slam Sam Harris on Twitter or Prism and the sweat dropping down.
It's not like that.
It's not like that.
Yeah, anyway, it's a good episode, apart from, completely aside from whatever psychodramas surround people's reaction to me praising it.
But there we go.
So, speaking of psychodramas, the guru that we're looking at this week, the main course for this week's podcast is one Robin DiAngelo.
Now, she's been on the...
Little blurb for our podcast from the start, because we promised that we will look at people, you know, across the spectrum from Jordan Peterson to Robin DiAngelo, right?
And we never looked at Robin DiAngelo.
And why is that, Matt?
Is that because you're such a coward?
Is that the reason?
Yeah, afraid of getting cancelled.
No, multiple reasons, I guess.
We'll probably talk about this later on in the podcast in more depth, but, you know, the lefty...
Guru types or potential gurus seem to be qualitatively different from the right-wing ones.
And we might return to this question at the end of the episode.
And they don't fit our gurometer particularly well, I guess.
So it seems to be a different phenomenon.
And this is not to say that there are no bad ideas on the left and all the bad ideas are on the right or whatever.
It's just that it seems to be different.
And as well as that, I guess it didn't seem to ever be a great deal of fun.
And I'm not sure how much fun we're going to have in this decoding.
So I suppose that sort of gets into it too.
Like I enjoy, I have to admit, there's part of me that enjoyed the sense-making cubed discussion.
Like it's just so wild and wacky.
There's a lot of fun to be had there.
Maybe less so when it comes to American racial anxiety.
But probably the third thing.
I've forgotten the third thing.
I have it.
I've got it.
I plucked it out of the ether.
D 'Angelo was kind of celebrated and then became a punching bag for everyone.
She was punched by the right wing for being an identitarian and obsessed with race and all this kind of thing.
But she was also criticized on the left for being a kind of corporate, I don't know, like somebody offering Training and selling these workshops for large amounts of money, but not actually affecting changes or that kind of stuff.
So kind of talking to middle class, to upper class white people about racism and getting paid to do so, but that's it, right?
So it kind of felt like an easy punching bag to just criticize.
But the thing is, she's kind of out of...
No, she's not out of the discourse.
She's never out of the discourse because her and Kendi are totemic figures for the white fragility and the perspective that we're going to talk about.
But I think she is now, at least, we're not jumping on a bandwagon, right?
People are not really talking about her most recent book or that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's right.
I remember when our podcast...
It was getting started.
D 'Angelo was no longer cool.
She wasn't really hip.
And it was increasingly kind of the done thing to dunk on her.
And it felt at the time that we would be jumping on that bandwagon and kind of like an easy goal.
But yeah, like you said, the spotlight has moved on.
Unlike a lot of the IDW type gurus, she's not actually constantly dropping.
Social media bombs and attracting the limelight with some new controversial take.
She seems to be beavering away in the background, writing books and doing these diversity and inclusion trainings.
So, you know, seems, why not?
Now nobody cares.
We can cover her.
Yeah, and that's how we jump on that.
That's how we do things.
You can learn a thing or two, Lex.
You know, you don't have to get superstars like Kanye.
Just wait till a topic is no longer.
A big deal.
And nobody cares anymore.
That's when you strike.
That's how you're successful.
When the iron is completely cold, it's longer.
It's non-malleable.
So, yeah.
And Robin DiAngelo, for anybody who doesn't know, she's most famous for a book she published, which was White Fragility, Why It's So Hard.
For white people to talk about racism.
That was in 2018.
And she went on various talking tours and appeared on talk shows or gave lectures.
But like Matt said, she's not a guru in the sense of like, she doesn't have takes on Ukraine.
I haven't seen anyone comment on her commentary on COVID.
That's the kind of thing.
She produced that book.
She goes and gives lectures and training and organizes workshops around those concepts.
Just last year, she published another book, Nice Racism, How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm.
So it's the same thing, right?
And that's kind of, I think, a slightly important aspect.
Just imagine how different that is from James Lindsay, who's presented as her inverse counterpoint.
Yes, he was giving talks about critical race theory and woke intolerance and stuff, but James was also Anyway,
it also applies to people like Kendi.
They sometimes get in controversies, but by and large, they're mostly just giving lectures at think tanks or for companies or writing some book.
anyway, to complete the little biography.
For Robin DiAngelo, she got her start in that anti-racism, diversity, equity, inclusion training, did a PhD, moved into academia for a little while.
She coined that term, white fragility, in a 2011 paper in the International Journal of Critical Pedagogy.
And maybe just a couple of quotes from her, Chris, just for people that...
Just to set the stage, because the lecture that we're going to decode is very much on her book, White Fragility, and concepts around it.
So we can, I think, provide a little bit of background there that will just help you understand where she's coming from.
So she's defined the concept of white fragility as a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.
And she says that white people in the US and other white settler colonialist societies, I guess Australia included, live in a racially insular social environment.
This insulation builds our expectations for racial
I term this lack of racial stamina white fragility.
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.
These moves function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and maintain control.
So, she says very similar things in the lecture, Chris, but, you know, that just gets people in the zone.
You know, it just gets people in the zone.
Yeah, yeah.
So, the talk that we're looking at is, it's from a couple of years ago, four years ago, and it's...
Dr. Robin DiAngelo discusses white fragility on the channel on YouTube, the Seattle channel is where we find it.
But we did watch some of her more recent content, a discussion from a year ago, an interview she did.
And, you know, it's similar.
But this is a, this is, I think her talks from a couple of years ago were a little bit more bombastic.
And in the same way that like we could cover a dad sad episode where He's being more reasonable and just focusing on evolutionary consumption or whatever.
That wouldn't really capture why people complain about him.
So we did switch from the content that we were going to look to this older content.
And Matt offered, you know, in her words, a summary of what she's about.
So let's let her...
Do so now.
But just before that, Matt, I want to highlight one thing.
So the audience that she's speaking to in this talk is the kind of audience that when there is a land acknowledgement read out at the start, it gets this kind of reaction.
And before we begin this evening, I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered together on the ancestral land of the Coast Salish people.
Yeah, I wish we could show people the expression on that lady's face when she was receiving that applause.
She was so pleased.
It was like she just liberated an entire region.
I have not heard a land acknowledgement receive a whoop before, right?
So it's fair to say that we are dealing with an audience of people who are on board.
Progressive, liberal type.
They are not, this is not a conservative, skewed audience, right?
I think the context here matters because we'll see in some of the content as we go on that there's a slight playing to the crowd, but in any case.
Yeah, but this is very on brand for Robin Delger because she herself emphasizes that her audience for her books and her talks and her seminars is intended to be white progressives.
You know, that is her self-acknowledged audience for her material.
Yes, correct.
I'm going to let her outline the, I think this is her outlining the concept of white fragility.
So there's a good place to start as any.
Given how seldom we experience racial discomfort in a society we dominate, we haven't had to build our racial stamina.
Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race.
We consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very identities as good moral people.
Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense.
The smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable.
The mere suggestion that being white has meaning often triggers a range of defensive responses.
And these include emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.
These responses work to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy.
I conceptualize this process as white fragility.
Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement.
White fragility is not weakness per se.
In fact, it is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection of white advantage.
Yeah, so that is very much the theme of her talk and I think a lot of her material, she's very interested in the reactions of white people when confronted with ways in which they are complicit.
and perpetuate a racist system, these kind of negative, withdrawing reactions which act to prevent them being better, changing their behavior and contributing to, yeah, reducing the problem of racism.
Yeah, and I think that she connects those reactions to systemic racism, that society, these reactions are, in a way, just a symptom of a larger...
And her approach to racism is very much, there's some contradictions, but for the minute, let's just outline what she argues, right?
So here's a part where she explains how her perspective fits with understandings of systemic racism.
Other participants simplistically reduced racism to a matter of nice people versus mean people.
Most appeared to believe that racism ended in 1865 with the end of enslavement.
There was both knee-jerk defensiveness about any suggestion that being white had meaning and a refusal to acknowledge any advantage to being white.
And over time, I began to see what I think of as the pillars of whiteness, the unexamined beliefs that prop up our racial responses.
I could see the power of the belief that only bad people were racist, as well as how individualism allowed white people to exempt themselves from the forces of socialization.
I could see how we are taught to think about racism only as discrete acts committed by individual people rather than as a complex interconnected system.
And in light of so many white expressions of resentment toward people of color,
I saw our investment in a system that serves us.
I also saw how hard we worked to deny all this and how defensive we became when these dynamics were named.
In turn, I saw how our defensiveness maintained the racial status quo.
Yeah, so this is her explaining why breaking down the defensiveness of white people in not acknowledging the ways in which they are being racist, perhaps in unconscious or subtle ways, and how important it is for them to reflect on themselves,
do the work, and try to be better.
But there's another point here that I think is important, and this reflects something Kendi argued in the content of his that we looked at.
Move, at least rhetorically, away from racism as focused on individual sentiment and intention, right?
So she is saying that people being intentionally racist is not the only form of racism that matters, right?
So it doesn't require that somebody be intentionally prejudiced against others.
From another race, in order for them to contribute to systems that hold back people that are oppressed in a society.
And that is true.
This is part of the argument of both her and Kendi that I think that I'm on board with, that it can be the case that people have good intentions, but they defend the system which produces very unfair outcomes for people from different ethnic...
And it doesn't require maliciousness for that to be the case.
And it also doesn't mean that somebody necessarily has to perceive of themselves as racist in order to do something racist, right?
Yeah, there are aspects of it that I am on board with.
I don't have an issue with the concept of microaggressions, I suppose, right?
So my wife, Michiko, in Australia, she can report on what you might call racist microaggressions, people unintentionally, usually, being somewhat dismissive or somewhat whatever you want to call it.
I'm not quite sure how to describe it.
And that can have a real impact over time.
But the bit I get confused about is that linkage to the systemic racism part, because my understanding of systemic racism is often historical things and policies, and for instance, requiring education to happen in a particular language or
the way banks are approving home loans according to specific areas.
I don't quite see the link of how the individual level, subtle, unconscious, sort of interpersonal microaggressions feed into Yeah,
I think there is a disjunction which will come up more when we look at some of the other points that are purported to help to address this.
But, you know, like with microaggressions as well, I tend to think that when you say you're okay with them, what I take you to mean is you think that people can make subtle prejudice or be unintentionally racist, but you're not okay with them.
in the grinds that you think
are things that we should focus on and
I'm okay with the concept.
I think the concept is legitimate.
It's a real thing is what I'm saying.
But whether or not you need training to focus on that or if it is even call erasable given the nature of humans is an open question I think.
But you are right.
This is going to run up Against some of the stuff that comes later, but I'm going to stick with it because I think that some of the talk does orientate around that kind of presentation of systemic racism as the problem.
And we are in 2018 with copious empirical evidence.
So let's pick it up there.
Employment discrimination, educational discrimination, biased laws and policing practices, white flight, subprime mortgages, mass incarceration, the school to prison pipeline, disproportionate special ed referrals and punishments, testing, tracking, school funding,
biased media representation, historical omissions, and so much more.
It is a system, not an event.
It's the system we're in, and none of us could be, and none of us were exempt from its forces.
And there's a lot of moves, I think, in this talk and in this kind of oeuvre in general to switch between the arguments.
So, like, if you're defining racism as something which...
Intent doesn't matter.
And you don't want to focus on labeling individuals good or bad.
You want to talk about, you know, structures and people performing actions or, you know, Kendi talks about this as well.
There is then a move when people are being labeled racist that...
They're not talking about structures, but they're talking about individual perception and these kind of things.
So there's a bit of jumping around of Matt and Bailey, I think.
But here's a bit more, Matt, of her outlining the systemic side of things.
Racism is a system, not an event.
And it's the system we're in.
And none of us could be and none of us were exempt from its forces.
But the way we're taught to think of racism functions beautifully to not only obscure the system, but to exempt us from its forces, or to have us believe we are exempted from its forces.
Now, as a white person, I was raised to be racially illiterate, and I actually think all white people are raised to be racially illiterate in this culture.
And in gaining racial literacy, I have had to understand not just the collective dynamics and dimensions of racism, but how racism impacts different groups who are perceived and defined as people of color,
how it impacts them differently.
So not all peoples of color experience racism differently.
Different groups is different, where and how they are positioned always in relation to whiteness or far away from whiteness, and how that manifests, right?
All of that must be understood.
Yeah, I think D 'Angelo struggles a little bit, and I think in her work, it attempts to kind of square this circle, which is that, like...
Her job as a DEI type trainer, somebody who runs sessions and tries to educate people to undertake a bit of a personal introspective journey into behaving better at an individual level as being like a really important project in a mission towards better social equity and so on.
That rubs up against the academic theoretical conceptions of structural racism, which Robin D'Angelo is certainly aware of, and I think a lot of what she talks about is kind of attempting
Yeah, and towards the end of that clip,
she Talks about different perspectives, right, that people might have and that depending on your background and identity, you will see things or not see them, right?
And there are things which white people in particular are blind to because they're the dominant group, at least in America.
And also she suggests that in general, the concept of race and ethnicity orbits around the concept of whiteness as the central guiding pole.
So everything else is to be measured against that.
So whether or not you acknowledge that, she's saying that that is the reality.
So if you don't grapple with the concept of whiteness, then you're just ignoring
This is arguably the most complex, nuanced social dilemma since the beginning of this country.
And there are myriad roads in, and all of them are essential, but so consistently left off the table is whiteness, right?
So we often learn about this group and that group and their struggles and their triumphs and their heroes and heroines, and yet we don't ask ourselves, struggles and triumphs in relation to whom, right?
And so, again, I'm going to focus on white folks and white people.
The flip side of that is that it does position a focus on whiteness as extremely central to all of this, right?
That that's what you should be talking about as a white person is whiteness and white people.
And there is another group of people that argue that and that, you know, people are less.
I know that this gets called out, the parallels there, but it is something that you note.
She'll talk about later how, you know, when you have an issue, you should go and talk to your white friends as opposed to put the emotional labor on people of color.
But white affinity groups, it's really, it just, it really does rub me the wrong way.
And not in a fragile way, in a way of Well, that's, you know, I'm not sure you really want to be emphasizing the affinity of all white people.
Yeah, and later on she talks about how a focus on individuals and a focus on universal humanism or treating people as simply as humans are very bad things.
The second is individualism.
Apparently white people do not understand socialization.
Because we really think that we are exempt from it.
And of course, the irony of that is because we're socialized to value the individual, we put a lot of effort there.
But we think that, you know, just because I say I am or want to be, I could be exempt from these forces.
So that is another challenge.
And again, generalizing, suggesting race has meaning for white people will often trigger white fragility.
We think if we don't see it...
It isn't there, and you haven't explained it to me yet enough so that I understand it, so I'm not really sure that could be valid.
And in this, I mean, this is a good example of how Robert DeAngelo, like a lot of, I think, prominent left-wing figures, unlike the right-wing figures, they're not really heterodox or standing out.
The tension that she's kind of speaking to, which is this tension between a kind of a social justice framework where you solve social problems by focusing more and keeping in your mind.
Blackness or the whiteness or whatever your ethnicity is or gender or whatever identity.
That comes into conflict with the more liberal kind of thinking, which is that you should try to think about these things less.
But, you know, Robin DiAngelo isn't alone in this.
In a way, she's a spokesperson for a stream of thought, is my point.
Yeah.
So, again, there's a clip here which I think states all of this quite explicitly.
So, here we go.
So post-civil rights, racism got reduced to the following formula.
A racist is an individual who consciously does not like people based on race and is intentionally mean to them.
Always an individual, must be conscious, must be intentional.
And that definition exempts virtually all white people from the system of racism.
This definition...
I believe is the root of virtually all white defensiveness on racism.
Have you guys noticed any white defensiveness on racism?
Yeah.
It makes it virtually impossible to talk to the average white person about the inevitable absorption of a racist worldview that we get from being socialized in a racist culture in which white supremacy is the bedrock.
Because you suggest that anything I have done is racially problematic in any way, and I'm going to hear a question to my moral character, and I'm going to need to defend my moral character.
So that, you know, there's the, again, it's just spilling it out, but it's that point about probably the dominant conception, if you asked people to define racism outside of liberalism.
The second definition is probably becoming a lot more prevalent, particularly in progressive liberal spaces, but it's not the understanding that is intuitively grasped by people,
right?
You need to be...
Educated, so to speak, that that's what people are talking about when they mean racism.
So that if your objection is, I don't harbor any racial animus, your personal feeling about it is irrelevant because you exist in a system that means that you are, by socialization and by complicity,
a contributor and a defender of that racist system.
So there's no way that you cannot...
Be racist if you live in the U.S. and are white.
And already settle a colonial country, so include myself in this.
Yeah, and Robin says this quite explicitly later on, that basically, if you're white and you're in one of these countries, you, like it or not, you are a racist.
So, now, that point, though, where she talks about, like, people get defensive, right, then when you accuse them of being racist, that to me seems a little bit like...
Obvious, because the first definition of racism that most people understand is a commentary on a person's moral character.
If you're someone that harbors strong animus of people because of the race, you're a bad person.
You're a bigot, right?
You're a racist.
But Chris, Chris, Chris, I think what you're gliding over a little bit is that she emphasizes that good people can be racist, and you can be racist subconsciously.
Reflexively and unintentionally.
And therefore, it shouldn't be seen as a moral threat.
No, no, I get that.
But that's the point, is that if you harbour the first definition, or that's your kind of understanding, when somebody says you're racist...
Oh yeah, then it seems to you quite natural that somebody might feel at least a little bit upset.
Right.
So if somebody, you're like walking around and you say, oh, that person's being racist.
Like, Kendi also does this where he's like, we should remove the moral judgment from that because it's just, it can just be as simple as that person is contributing to systems of racism without awareness, right?
But the problem is it does come with a moral judgment.
Yeah, like one can define a word any way one likes, and academics often do.
But I'm not sure if it's a good idea to redefine racist and racism in such a broad and subtle and abstract way because I would like...
To think that a racist should be morally condemned and a definition of racism in which it is reserved for bad things that should be prescribed.
I don't understand why you would seek out that ambiguity if you just use the word structural, systemic, institutionalized racism.
You qualify it, then it removes it from...
The first definition because you're providing a clarification.
So it feels like there's a little bit of intentional ambiguity that comes up where people are saying, you know, why are you reacting to just being told that you exist within a society which has a history of racism and that this has impacted?
your upbringing.
And it's like, yeah, but that's not what people usually mean if someone walks up to you and
Yeah, look, I think it's a good idea to keep those concepts separate.
I'm as defensive as the next person, I think, when it comes to moral threats.
But I have no problem with acknowledging that being born in an exceedingly rich country like Australia and being born...
Straight, male, and white has all been a net positive for me and has given me all kinds of legs up, like being born to a middle-class family.
Very helpful.
One can easily acknowledge that.
And that just seems like a different kind of thing than racism in the traditional version of the word.
The conversation that Ezra Klein had with Kendi also came upon this point because Ezra was...
Point denied, Jindal, that we would still need a word to distinguish the people who, because there are actual bigots, right?
There is white nationalists and overt racists out there.
So you need a word.
And Kendi suggested an alternative.
I can't remember what the idiom he suggested was, but it strikes me that everybody actually does acknowledge.
These distinctions.
But if you just use a single word to apply to all of them, it's ambiguous as to what you're accusing people of.
And you can move backwards and forwards between those two meanings, which I think is what you were saying.
The other observation I've got there is that this is So, it's like a form of Freudian psychoanalysis.
And I think there are many points in her lecture where there are strong hints that what is needed, what is required, is a lifelong journey of introspection and becoming better.
You'll never really erase.
It'll always be there, but it's something that by working towards on an individual level, introspectively, that will help society and people of colour.
Yes, and to offer a rebuttal to us right now, because our position is the one that she's criticising, right?
So here's her saying, you know, that why we are wrong.
Racism became bad post-civil rights.
So this sets up what I think about as the good-bad binary.
So, like, there's a rhetorical move because the argument is, like, if you recognize or if you limit Racism to that overt, acknowledged, bigoted person.
There's only a small proportion of society that seems to fit into that.
But systemic racism, like in the courts or in the housing system or in banking, is a much more intractable And it's also something that doesn't require the Ku Klux Klan to be in control of it,
right?
But the part I don't agree with is that having the concept of racist people and using the word racist for that means that you couldn't also acknowledge that there are systems and structures from historical inequities that continue to impact people.
It seems to me that you don't have to choose.
You can have that thing, the intentional racism.
Is a thing that we should condemn, which is bad, and we want to morally judge.
And systemic racism, institutional racism is a factor in most societies and is something that is hard to address and it doesn't always relate to an individual's intentions.
Yeah, I described this lecture to you before as kind of like picking at the scab of white liberal insecurities and neuroses and feelings of guilt.
And, you know, in some ways, it's quite like I kind of like some of the things she says, but not necessarily where she takes them.
Like, I think, for instance, she talks about this a bit later on, which is the sort of self-satisfied way in which...
Liberal, progressive people have all the right opinions, congratulate themselves on being super woke, etc.
But then, of course, in their daily lives, they make a whole bunch of decisions which kind of reek of hypocrisy.
Making sure that your kids go to a good school, making sure you live in a good neighbourhood.
The way Robin DiAngelo frames that is that all of those decisions are designed to insulate yourself from people of colour, whereas my interpretation is a bit...
Broader than that could just as easily be interpreted through a socialist lens as well.
Yeah, so there is this aspect to it.
I got this sense quite a lot that the audience that D 'Angelo is talking to are progressive right liberals from the reactions and they're on board with the message that she gives.
And what she consistently tells them is that They are the worst.
They're even worse than the people that are overt racists because their form of racism is more insidious and more hidden, right?
And it can be more damaging for people.
But instead of the reaction which she posits, which is that the people will become defensive and angry, it feels very much like the people are happy.
To hear this and enjoying it.
And she kind of gets into it.
So I'm going to play a couple of clips that highlight this.
But this one, this is just a little short one talking about Seattle.
But, you know, my point is I just thought it was all about open-mindedness and alternativeness.
And let me just say that, you know, I love Seattle.
and everything I learned about white fragility, I learned here working with white progressives.
Thank you.
See?
Okay, so like a progressive liberal city, but, you know, this is where I learned everything about this white fragility concept.
But it's not met with like, oh, you know, a stony silence.
It's woo!
Yeah, that's right.
We're so terrible.
You know, we're such hypocrites.
But this is the aspect of it, which for me is perhaps the most interesting and kind of funny, to be honest, which is that...
Robin DiAngelo's thing, she includes herself with the audience, which is a kind of a sadomasochistic kind of thrill, which is that I'm terrible, you're terrible, there's no way we can avoid being terrible.
Everyone's very resistant to this, but people like us have the wherewithal to embrace that.
And as you said, the response to it is extremely affirming.
So if you assume that the audience goes to these things with a deep sense of insecurity and guilt and paranoia and neurosis, then you can view this session as a sort of elaborate means of,
in a backhanded way, by embracing the...
The sin.
How bad you are.
How bad you are.
That's right.
But by embracing it, you get this thrill and feel better about the thing that was causing you the psychic stress.
Yeah.
I get like a slightly creepy feeling in some of the points where I feel like I shouldn't be watching this.
Not because it's triggering me because of the deep, you know, visual insights I'm being driven.
People are getting off on it a little bit too much.
The same way, and so anyway, let me play another example.
So here's a claim which seems doubtful on the face of it.
This book is intended for us, for white progressives who so often, despite our conscious intentions, make life so difficult for people of color.
I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.
And I define a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she is not racist or is less racist or is in the choir or already gets it.
White progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because to the degree that we think we have it, we're going to put all of our energy into making sure you think that we have it and none of it into what we need to be doing for the rest of our lives.
So it's a weird Catch-22 or a circular thing.
I don't know how to put it, but...
People have pointed this out, like, endlessly, right?
That, like, if you object to being labeled racist in the way that D 'Angelo defines it, it is an illustration that you are racist, right?
So there is no objection to her explanation.
That does not leave you a racist.
It is the same obvious thing that applies when somebody says, like, if they're critical of some specific anti-racist position or training, and then people say, so you're pro-racism, right?
Because you're against this.
And it's a really obvious rhetorical move that everyone understands in all our contexts, but it often does get a pass from...
The liberal side on this specific topic.
For me, it has strong resonances with psychoanalysis, which is appropriate, I think, because Robin DiAngelo's mission is about...
An internal journey and a journey of self-reflection and to uncover those hidden unconscious things that are going on within your soul.
And in psychoanalysis, we have this idea of repression.
I say we, I'm not a psychoanalyst for God's sake.
Coming out of the closet.
They have a concept of repression, right?
Which is that if you say you want to sleep with your mother, you're very attracted to her, fine.
Clearly you do.
If you object and are upset about the suggestion.
That you want to do that, then this is a sign of repression.
If anything, you feel that attraction to your mother even more powerfully because it's unacknowledged and it's unexplored than someone who admits it.
And this is a trick that you see in various religions and cults and so on, which is that it is a rhetorical catch-22, which is that the only way through is to accept the message, accept the suggestion, do not attempt to argue with it.
Let me play another illustration of this map.
So here's D'Angelo kind of reacting to the feedback that she's getting from the crowd.
And when white people hear me and they feel angry and pissed off and defensive, can I just say this now that you guys are listening to me up here?
When you laugh at my jokes, I'm going to keep getting looser and looser.
Damn white people are pissy about racism.
We are so pissy on this topic.
We're mean on this topic, right?
And so if you're sitting here feeling that...
Just see if it isn't rooted in this definition.
And if you cannot let go of this, you're just not going to be able to move forward.
Yeah, so the amusing thing with that is that there's literally no one in the audience who is feeling pissy or reactive.
Everyone is completely on board with this acknowledgement.
At least overtly.
Yeah, at least overtly.
Listening to this gave me the newfound appreciation for why some people compare wokeness to being akin to religion.
There are many differences.
But one of the things that is similar, which is that in talks like this, it's very similar to an evangelist preacher who talks about the sin, talks about the ways in which they've sinned, talks about the ways in which they've failed, and accuses the audience of being horrible sinners as well.
And the vibe.
In that kind of religious setting is very similar, which is everyone is enjoying this.
The evangelist is proud and extremely pleased to be talking about what a sinner he is.
The audience is rapturously endorsing the same kind of thing because the mission, the lifelong mission, is to attempt to purge yourself of this thing.
You'll never succeed, but people find a great deal of meaning in that.
Yeah, and so, just to illustrate this, here's the person introducing the talk, describing what encountering D 'Angelo's work has done for them.
D 'Angelo's essays and talks have been so important and revelatory to me.
I know that I'll be reckoning with my own internalized racism, with my own socialization, and trying to reduce harm throughout my entire life, both personally and professionally.
So, you know, change that language a little bit and, you know,
You would have people recognizing that, you know, I encountered the work of this person and I will now be reflecting on the insights and trying to atone for my sins for the rest of my life.
Like, it obviously has parallels to religious doctrines about everybody's a sinner.
And frankly, like, the kind of cult dynamics that if you...
Find what I'm saying challenging.
We've seen this in so many of the gurus that we look at.
If you find what I'm doing challenging, it's not because there's something wrong with what I'm saying.
It's because you haven't developed enough spiritually to understand it.
And I'll just play a clip, Matt, that highlights that.
What feelings do white people have when we often try to give them feedback?
Well, we withdraw, we cry, we go silent, we argue, we deny, we focus on our intentions, we seek forgiveness, we explain.
We insist there was a misunderstanding.
And so what kind of claims do we make to justify behaving this way and feeling this way?
I know people of color.
I marched in the 60s.
I took this in college.
I was a minority in Japan.
The real oppression is class.
You misunderstood me.
You're playing the race card.
If you knew me or understood me, you'd know I can't be racist.
This is not welcoming to me.
You're making me feel guilty.
Chris, when I was a kid, there were Christian evangelists that would hand out flyers and pamphlets and things like that.
And I remember one of them in particular because it was in cartoon form designed for kids.
And the title of it was, Am I a Good Person?
And the theme of the whole thing was this boy you were meant to identify with protesting that he was a good person.
And then the kids essentially had this kind of struggle session with God, which is, you know, have you had bad thoughts?
Have you ever been selfish?
Have you ever done X, Y, Z, and whatever?
And the message of this pamphlet was that the thing that is preventing you from finding God and from really being a more pure person, Is this refusal of you to acknowledge that you're a sinner?
And I have to say, the residences are quite strong.
Yeah.
And there's, you know, I feel like people would recognize this, like, whatever your opinions are about the issues of, like, systemic racism or stances on reparations,
affirmative action, any progressive policies to address.
I think you can have any position, but you can also recognize the rhetorical technique of telling people that if they are emotionally reacting to what you are telling them and they're objecting to it or they're thinking of reasons not to accept it,
that that is just showing that they need to do more work to internalize how they're wrong.
That is such an obvious Manipulative technique used in any other context.
So it shouldn't be given a pass here.
I don't doubt that people get defensive.
I don't doubt that there are people who haven't thought about these issues and react very badly to any suggestion they're anything but a perfectly lovely, non-racist person.
But her claim is going further than that.
As opposed to earlier, at the start we were talking about systems of society and these structures that people are born into.
But now we've changed to very much focusing on people's internal inability to admit their fault and their complacency.
It feels like there is a shift here to a very internalized psychological focus.
And it does have parallels.
With confessionalism in religion or being lectured by a guru who is revealing to you the true insights about your character that you never saw?
I just want to reiterate your point, which is I want to distinguish our criticisms of D 'Angelo's rhetoric here from whatever political opinions people may have about these social issues.
I think it is perfectly possible for someone to have a radical, very strong position on, say, reparations.
I have a radical position on things like colonial countries having, you know, formal treaties and things like that, representation for Indigenous groups, for affirmative action, for instance.
You can have very strong opinions there, and you can still think that actually maybe what Robin DiAngelo is proposing here is not very helpful.
You know, sometimes one of the defenses is that this is speaking in an American context to an American audience, right?
White people from Northern Ireland and Australia were not well pleased to comment on these issues because we don't live in that society.
We haven't gone through those experiences.
But lest you think this is being restricted to the US, listen to this.
I work in a very diverse environment.
If we can't say that, and many of us can't, we'll come up with some kind of proximity.
I have people calling my family.
Me?
I'm not racist.
use of New York.
This one will get used interchangeably with, I'm not racist, I'm from Canada.
I'm not racist, I'm from Hawaii.
I'm not racist, I'm from Europe.
I'm not racist, I was in the military.
Apparently there is no racism in any of those places.
When I hear that one, I used to live in New York where I was saying, oh my god, you walked by people of color and didn't lose your shit?
That's amazing.
Okay.
So how many of you in a conversation with a white person have heard some version of those narratives right there, those three?
Okay.
All right.
And if we're going to be really honest, we've said some version of these narratives.
That last one, sociologists actually have a term for it.
It's called the inoculation case.
You're right.
She does make it clear that the points she's speaking to are not geographically constrained to the United States, which is convenient for us because it means that we're qualified to.
Well, and she's right about the point, right, that, you know, saying, I'm from Europe, I couldn't be racist.
Whoever the fuck said that, like, you know, obviously that's an invalid argument, as is the one that you married someone of color or from an ethnic minority, and therefore you cannot be racist.
Like, there's so many historical examples of people who are overtly racist and married to people.
Or she is right that those defenses are invalid.
However, however, I do think there is an exportation of the particular American context to the rest of the world.
And then, like, a lack of...
There's plenty of ethnic conflicts which are purely white, different people that are equally white, like my home country has its own divisions like that, or countries where the ethnic divisions have nothing to do with whiteness.
They are...
Separate things.
Countries have their own histories and their own divisions.
Yeah, but the thing that she's talking to there is something that she talks about for maybe three-quarters of the lecture, which is enumerating all of the different ways in which people attempt to defend themselves against racism instead of acknowledging it, and doing that eye-roll response about how none of them are actually legitimate,
with the underlying point being that basically if you're...
You are racist, and you need to acknowledge that, and you need to go to sessions like the ones that she runs, read her books, and start to dig into that.
So it's still on the same kind of theme.
It might be slightly repetitive, but I still think it's good to illustrate what we mean.
And so when you're talking about the potential for somebody to emphasize that you need to be more Self-reflective on things and that the obstacle to self-improvement lies within.
There's ways in which that's reasonable and ways in which it isn't.
So let's have a listen to this and people can judge for themselves where this falls.
You know, the worst fear of a white progressive is that we're going to say or do something racist.
But by God, don't you dare say that I just said or did something racist rather than thank you.
You know, I didn't see myself doing that and now I can do something different.
Alright, I was in the Peace Corps.
I marched in the 60s.
I voted for Obama.
I'm on the equity team.
We could go on.
I already know all this.
I told you I've been to Costa Rica.
and tutored there for a week with the little children.
This is a real Seattle one.
We don't like how white our neighborhood is, but we had to move here for the schools.
What could we do?
I think it's very disingenuous.
I think we do like how white our neighborhoods are.
And that's another conversation.
All right, so these are not colorblind.
These are color celebrate.
I love it, right?
And I'm going to just say this.
I love it in the right doses.
One, whenever people are telling you that you're being racist, Response should be one of gratitude, right?
I mean, I kind of feel that that's unlikely to be the case.
I get that she is talking about how to manage defensiveness, but if you address criticism to people, they are going to be.
Defensive, usually.
It's natural psychology, but if you accuse someone of something and they weren't guilty of it, they would defend themselves.
And if they are defensive and they are guilty of it, they'll defend themselves.
So the defending themselves bit feels like a constant.
But I guess her point is everybody is guilty.
So if you deny it, you're just in denial.
There isn't a way to defend yourself which is valid.
Well, for me, I'm a little bit conflicted because on one hand, I'm kind of on board with the thrust of what she's saying there, which is that highly educated, wealthy progressives are a bunch of hypocrites.
And, you know, that theme I'm on board with.
But I guess the thing that it just strikes the wrong tone for me...
And you can tell it in the audience reactions, and if you could see the expressions on the various presenters' faces, you'd see it as well, which is, it does feel quite performative, this kind of reveling, like we talked about it being this kind of slightly masochistic exercise, which is, aren't we so terrible?
But I'm just not sure whether a corporate diversity training seminar or reflecting on whiteness, whatever, is that going to cause any wealthy white people to move to?
a bad neighborhood and send their kids to a public school.
I wonder where Robin DiAngelo lives.
Has she made a conscious choice to
Yeah, so there is an anecdote that relates to this and it's talking about D 'Angelo's friend considering to buy a house and she wants to illustrate it as How racism is normalized in white communities or white friendships?
So, in any case, here's the start of that.
Conversation I had with a white friend.
She was telling me about a white couple who she knew who had just moved to New Orleans and bought a house for a mere $25,000.
Of course, she immediately added, they also had to buy a gun, and Joan is afraid to leave the house.
I immediately knew they had bought a home in a black neighborhood.
This was a moment of white racial bonding between this couple who shared the story of racial danger and my friend, and then between my friend and me as she repeated the story.
Through this tale, the four of us fortified familiar images of the horror of black space and drew boundaries between us and them without ever having to directly name race, Notice that the need for a gun is a key part of this story.
It would not have the degree of social capital it holds if the emphasis were on the price of the house alone.
Rather, the story's emotional power rests on why a house would be that cheap.
Because it's in a black neighborhood where white people literally might not get out alive.
So that fits the theme.
That in that circumstance, even in the case where somebody is moving to an underprivileged area that might have higher crime rates, that action is still a chance to display white racial prejudice,
right, by talking about buying a gun and then other white friends discussing the move, but the implication being like horror at living in a black community.
The argument is that that worry about moving to a bad neighbourhood with high crime rates is code for expressing your fears about black people.
I guess I have issues with that anecdote.
One of them is because that tendency of middle-class people to really, really want to live in good neighbourhoods and send their kids to good schools is universal.
And I say that...
In Australia, where academics, for instance, it's true.
You know, it doesn't matter if you're super progressive or woke or whatever.
They're just as keen on private schools and good neighbourhoods as anyone else.
But in Australia, it's a bit different, perhaps, from the United States, where you don't have quite the same degree of socioeconomic stratification.
And, like, nobody wants to live in western suburbs of Sydney.
They're overwhelmingly white, but they're still not somewhere where wealthy, privileged people...
And I think it's for reasons, you know, the obvious explanation is it's for reasons that are socioeconomic, right?
And not necessarily code for being about race.
Yeah, so it's kind of hard to disagree with the anecdote that's been provided because as she describes it, there are elements to it which sound like...
It's related to racial perception.
So this is the second part of this anecdote.
I also wanted to confirm my assumption that she was talking about a black neighborhood.
I share the text exchange here.
Hey, what city did you say your friends had bought a house in for $25,000?
She replies, New Orleans.
They said they live in a very bad neighborhood and they each have to have a gun to protect themselves.
I wouldn't pay five cents for that neighborhood.
I reply, I assume it's a black neighborhood?
Yes, you get what you pay for.
I'd rather pay $500,000 and live somewhere where I wasn't afraid.
I reply, I wasn't asking because I want to live there.
I'm writing about this in my book.
I'm writing about this in my book.
The way that white people talk about race without ever coming out and talking about race.
She had a very interesting response to that.
I wouldn't want you to live there because it's too far away from me.
Seems like she detected the trap.
Well, it's one of those cases where you're like, I can imagine this scenario playing out as red, but also D 'Angelo is kind of like, she's not the butt of the joke in this anecdote, right?
It's her racist friend who she unveils in the story that she's trapped into revealing her racism and then she tries to backpedal about it.
I know this goes on.
I know that there are lots of cases where you will have personal experience of people saying stuff that's racist or whatever, but it genuinely doesn't happen in my life very much.
I can probably count the amount of times any conversation, anything like that, on my hand.
But she's talking about it as if it's an everyday...
Maybe part of that is because she's talking to people who are in the position to buy houses.
Like you talked about, there's plenty of places where the areas that are dangerous or whatever are not racially coded.
It's income or it's some other feature.
And I don't know.
It feels very flattening that, like, in this case, she can set up the parameters where it does turn out that it's about race.
But she basically implies...
Anytime people would be concerned about being in a high crime area, it is about risk.
Well, it was D 'Angelo who confirmed that that's a black neighbourhood.
It wasn't her friend, right?
So I feel like even that, I mean, like if I said, oh, I'm sending my, decided to send my kids to a private school.
We're not going to go to the state school anymore.
And if you said, well, Matt, I assume this private school is overwhelmingly white, is it?
And I went, yes.
Then you say, okay, that's going in the book I'm writing about.
Yeah, white supremacy.
Then we wouldn't be friends anymore, Chris.
That would be not a very friendly thing to do.
Yeah, I mean, very nice for her friend that that exchange is there.
But so there's an example later that kind of parallels this.
So she talks about how this is usually a kind of racial bonding that goes on where people would talk about how they would never send their children.
To those areas and they would value safety over those things.
And I'm like, is that how that conversation would go?
Like, I just, I don't know, maybe it's hard for me to fathom because a little bit the gun stuff and all that as well, right?
Like it's, this scenario is, it feels quite alien to me.
Yeah, that scenario, that anecdote she gave, it didn't feel like it was demonstrating the point that she thought it was to me.
I mean, I've been in these situations though.
I remember meeting an old guy while walking the dog and he said, it's a bit Japanese this morning, isn't it?
And I said, what?
Japanese?
What are you talking about?
And he went, you know, nippy.
This guy was about 70. And anyway, that didn't go well for, that wasn't a pleasant conversation for either of us.
But anyway, that's an example, right?
Where this guy, this old fart was.
Thinking he was in safe company, doing a bit of bonding in a very sort of friendly, blokey kind of way.
And I wasn't up for it.
But that's more common.
No, that's my point.
Is there circumstances where somebody does that?
And the normal response of young liberal people is to say, yeah, it is nippy.
Yeah, no, it's not.
The thing that she's referring to can and does exist.
It is rare.
I mean, I think it's happened two or three times in my life because I generally move in progressive circles like D 'Angelo.
So there's no bonding going on.
So she would counteract this argument by saying that by positing yourself as not engaging in that, that you're like, that's white fragility.
That's being unable...
To see that you are perpetuating the system.
And your denial is part of the thing which allows the system to persist, right?
So to allow her to talk about it.
I'm going to just ask a rhetorical question to people of colour in the room.
How often have you tried to talk to white people about our inevitable and often racist behaviours?
And how'd that go well for you?
Okay?
I mean, literally, like not even once, right?
And so it's weaponized defensiveness.
It's weaponized hurt feelings.
It's weaponized denial and obliviousness.
So weaponized defensiveness.
I think the popular presentation is the white tears, right?
That if people are accused of being racist, they'll...
Kind of cry and moan about it.
And then people will give them sympathy and attention, right?
So in principle, Chris, of course, discouraging discourse or discouraging approaches that you don't want by responding in a very negative, emotional kind of way can and is a controlling behaviour.
And I'm sure it can happen with respect to dealing with issues around race, just like it can with anything else in life.
I think she could be overstating, though, the degree.
Of sort of cultural capital that such a response, like the angry denial that it has, at least in progressive spaces or even in any space.
So I've told you this anecdote before, but these incidents are...
Fortunately, exceedingly rare.
But I had an incident where there was some kids at the youth group or there was a particular girl at the youth group that was really quite a mean girl.
She'd make fun of kids for being fat, just be generally bossy and nasty in all kinds of ways.
And it's fine, whatever.
It's not fine, but kids are kids.
But then she was doing a kind of imitating Asian eyes in terms of teasing my kids.
And I had to go and have a chat with the mother to...
Basically, sort this out, tell her to deal with it, that it wasn't acceptable, etc.
So, you know, it was, I guess, an example of the kind of conversation that she's talking about.
Now, even though this is like regional Queensland, this is not a highly educated, wealthy place, that space was not a progressive, advanced kind of situation.
I felt actually reasonably comfortable in confronting this lady because I knew that her just refusing to deal with it or, you know, Not agreeing to what I was expecting of her.
I knew that really wasn't an option for her.
And I think she knew that as well.
So even in a non-progressive space and just like a normal community setting in a relatively underprivileged area, which is where we live around here, it's a no-go.
If someone has done something that is racist, you're just not allowed and you're not allowed to just get upset and that's not going to dismiss the problem.
Yeah, and I kind of feel like the target where I see that this would have perhaps a stronger legitimacy is when you have the kind of histrionic, conservative right-wing response to any time that people,
like, you know, say, for example...
Voter ID laws are introduced and voter ID laws are known to suppress the turnout of black voters or minority voters who by and large vote for Democrats.
So Republicans take steps to introduce more stringent voting requirements, right?
And if people are pointing out, well, this is an attempt to suppress a minority vote.
And then people say, what?
This is, how dare you?
You know, it's just about the procedures and that kind of thing.
And you can see, like, Tucker Carlson overreacting to this.
But that's not what Hermione Focus is.
Hermione Focus is the progressive liberals.
And in particular, as well, she says this about, like, young people.
No, I get asked all the time, do you think young people today are less racist?
Actually, the question usually begins with, don't you think?
And just a heads up, if you approach me with, don't you think, the answer is no.
Because that's not an open question.
But no, I don't actually think young people today are less racist because that consciousness hasn't changed our outcomes.
In fact, they're getting worse.
Right?
Okay.
Yeah, so you get a sense there, which is that it is ubiquitous, it is pervasive, and it's very bad and it's getting worse.
I think you get some insight, though, into the kinds of things she's talking about because she's not talking about Racial slurs or some sort of racial abuse of some kind, it can often be quite subtle things which people need to get called out upon.
It's racism that progressive whites are most likely to hold, but because it conflicts with our identities as good people, we're most likely to be in denial about it.
So let me find that piece.
It's a manifestation of racism that well-intentioned people who see themselves as educated and progressive are more likely to exhibit.
It exists under the surface of consciousness because it conflicts with consciously held beliefs of racial equity and justice.
Aversive racism is a subtle but insidious form as aversive racists enact racism in ways that allow them to maintain a positive self-image, e.g.
I have lots of friends of color.
I judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
And whites enact racism while maintaining a positive self-image in many ways.
For example, rationalizing racial segregation as unfortunate but necessary to access good schools.
Rationalizing that our workplaces are virtually all white because people of color just don't apply.
Avoiding direct racial language and using racially coded terms such as urban, underprivileged, diverse, sketchy, and good neighborhoods.
Yeah, so she talks about, I think it's called aversive racism, where it's not the overt, denigrating type.
It's more like a subtle, often accompanied by like a denial of racism.
So it would be the kind which is more common.
In liberal spaces, but like suggested in that clip, is more insidious because people don't notice it.
So along with the house-selling anecdote, that's about someone else, but towards the end of the talk, she gives an anecdote which is talking about a subtle form of racism, and it's one that she is offering as an example of herself,
like engaging in a...
Microaggression or an aversive form of racism.
So let's hear what an example of that sounds like.
So she scheduled a meeting with the equity team and it was three in the afternoon and we went in and it turns out that she was also a black woman.
I will call her Angela.
And right away, she had this survey that had lots of questions about what we do.
But it was the afternoon.
I found the survey kind of annoying, and it was tedious, and it didn't really speak to what we do, so I kind of shoved it aside.
And I said, let me explain.
We go out into the different satellite offices, and we lead racial justice trainings.
In fact, we went up to the far north one recently, and Deborah...
Was asked not to come back.
I guess her hair scared the white people.
Make this little joke, right?
Because Deborah has long, locked hair.
The meeting ends.
And I wish I could tell you that I realized what I had said, but I didn't.
So a few days later, Marsha came to me and said, Angela was really offended by that joke you made about black women's hair.
And, you know, that I immediately, I know better.
So in this anecdote, D 'Angelo was intending to take a shot at the kind of white people that would be resistant and scared of the black woman.
Although trainer and ask her not to come back.
Yeah, yeah.
But she flippantly said that they were afraid of her hair, you know, as a kind of, you know, that she's like a scary black woman, right?
But that was wrong.
Yes. So let's hear what she did after she realized that she had made that mistake.
So I followed a series of steps to repair that.
And the first thing I did is I called a friend of mine, another white woman named Christine, and said, I need to process something with you.
And, you know, I vented my anxiety, my embarrassment.
And then when I kind of got that off, we put our heads together.
And it's like, let's think about how...
Your racism was manifesting in that meeting.
Get really clear, okay?
I got clear, and I felt ready to then come back to Angela.
So I called her, and I said, would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the racism I perpetrated towards you in the meeting last week?
And she said yes.
Now, she could have said no, and I was prepared.
In fact, I thought she was going to say no.
I thought she was going to say, whoa, are you a hypocrite?
And if I could not hold that, then I was not going to be making an authentic repair, right?
Yeah, so here, Matt, there's a couple of things, but think of how far away we are from the systemic factors and intentions don't matter, right?
I guess we are still in the point that intention doesn't matter, actually, to be fair, because her intention was to make fun of the other white people.
But that highly artificial language of, would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the racism that I perpetrated towards you?
Like, that's not the way people speak.
That's like a highly...
Processed, therapeutic talk.
It sounds so awkward.
And she's presenting it as the ideal thing.
And it reminds me of when I hear these kind of self-help guru types.
And they talk about the way that people should discuss their feelings.
And it's always this very processed language that is artificial.
But within the in-group, it sounds like you're kind of hitting the various things that you need to.
And also that bit beforehand where like, I presume to avoid causing discomfort and imposing on black people's time, she processed the event with another white person.
And that's presented as the ideal, right?
Like, go work out your issues with the other white people and then come to talk to the black people.
And I mean, it strikes me as a bad idea, especially when her previous anecdote was highlighting that her other friends...
Non-reflective racists, right?
So, like, I guess you have to have another person that's suitably trained and has the right mindset in order to help you process it correctly because I presume most white people would just endorse your fragility.
Yeah, I don't know.
It does feel very alien and synthetic, but...
So, if you're in a network of other...
Fragility trainers.
You might get the feedback in order to make that kind of apology, but it's just because she's talking about how prevalent aversive racism is amongst white people and how often they'll make excuses for themselves.
So if you put a group of them together, won't that just make them more likely to come up with justifications?
There's a contradiction there where she, earlier on and throughout the lecture, she really emphasises that it is all of us, right?
All white progressives are similarly, ubiquitously infected with this racism.
But you can see in the response of the crowd and the fact that she highlights that she's got a friend and she's super aware of her and whatever, that I don't think they see, they do see themselves as people that are oblivious or people that are not able to.
To deal with this stuff.
Like, they are, right?
They're better.
Yeah, so, okay, the last part of this anecdote.
So here's the kind of ending of that story.
The other piece that I owned was that in my cockiness, I was being the woke white person and making fun of the white people who didn't get it.
So I was making that move.
I was credentialing myself.
So I owned that.
And then because I knew that Christine and I as two white people would probably have missed some things, I said, Angela, is there anything I missed?
And she said, yes.
That survey you so glibly shoved aside, I wrote that survey.
And I have spent my life justifying my intelligence to white people.
Okay, that was just like a...
I mean, because I immediately got it.
Never occurred to me she wrote the survey.
You know, looking back at how I just dismissed it.
So I owned that.
I apologized.
And then, next step I took was, is there anything else that needs to be said or heard that we might move forward?
And she said, yes.
The next time you run your racism at me, I want to pause right there.
Notice that she didn't say if.
She basically said, if we're going to be working together, I know you're going to run your racism at me again.
So the next time you do it, would you like your feedback publicly or privately?
Yeah, I loved her for that.
And I said, oh, publicly, definitely.
I think most white people would have said, oh God, no, privately.
It's really, really, I told her it's really important that other white people see that I am not free of these patterns.
I run them less.
I'm not defensive when I run them.
Notice I never explain my intentions.
I have very good repair skills, but I have these patterns.
And it's important that other white people see that and that I have the opportunity to model non-defensiveness.
So I hope she learned from that incident next time she gets given a survey.
She inquired to the race of the person who wrote the survey before deciding whether she likes it or dislikes it.
Like, that in itself is an insane point that she makes because by her own telling, she didn't know anything about the author of the survey and she didn't like it, right?
She didn't think it was a good survey.
But because it turned out that it was written by a black person, that was racist.
But that, how could...
It's like, are you, because that, like, hold on.
Because if the survey was bad, right, let's just say she's right, right?
I actually think she's probably just being, she was being hoity-toity and like kind of dismissing a survey because nobody likes filling in.
Nobody likes surveys.
You always think they're not really applicable to you, right?
In any case.
But like, we know from her own telling that she didn't like the survey purely for reasons unconnected to.
Unless she's, you know, being defensive.
And yes, and she's left that important detail out.
But let's assume that she told it accurately.
But in that case, what can she do to not perpetuate that racism, except not criticize any survey that she sees until she finds out who the author is and what their particular ethnic background is?
Because, like, it...
It simply is the case that a black person could write a bad survey.
Like, that's an independent factor, right?
Black people and white people are human.
They can do good work and bad work.
But she's kind of acting as if it would be unjust for her to describe that survey as being bad in any respect because of the person's identity.
And she goes on to talk about the problems of colorblindness, but this isn't even that.
Yeah, I feel that the premise underlying her anecdote is that you shouldn't criticize something that a person of color has done.
As a white person.
As a white person.
And I feel that's just very wrong.
That is a bad thing to do and actually works against whatever good changes we'd like to see in the world.
For instance, I have several research high degree students.
One of them, Vijay, is a person of color.
Another one, Cathy, is not.
But if I refrained from criticizing Vijay's work, that would not be helpful to him.
That would not be a good thing in any way, shape or form, surely.
Yeah, you would think so.
But this is part of the issue, right?
Because another part of this anecdote is her saying she was trying to take this position as the more...
The woke white person making fun of the other white people, right?
But, like, what has she done for this entire talk except that exact thing that she's saying is an invalid move?
And even in this example, at the end, she says, you know, the person asked, do I want public or private criticism?
Most people would say private, but I said...
Public.
And it's like, well, you clearly really learned your lesson about presenting yourself as better.
And then saying, I'm not, you know, I'm not saying I'm perfect and I'm not thing.
It's like a Weinsteinian, I'm going to advance the conspiracy and then say I'm not advancing the conspiracy.
Like you are positioning yourself as the better, more woke person.
Exactly.
That's what I was hinting at before with the contradiction of emphasizing that.
She's not better.
We're all equally guilty.
Nobody can avoid doing these bad things.
But she is better, and the people in the audience feel that they're better too, because what sets them apart is that they have the emotional robustness and the openness of mind to lean in and embrace their badness.
So this is the arc of the entire lecture, in fact, which is that three-quarters of it is...
Basically enumerating the ways in which other white people, not D 'Angelo or people in her circle, attempt to reject and deny and obfuscate and avoid pleading guilty to this sin.
What sets her apart is not that she's not guilty of the sin, but rather that she fully embraces the fact that she is a sinner, will no doubt continue to sin, but she's on a path to redemption.
So just to highlight that point about there's no way to be criticized which is invalid, you know, if the person has the right identity characteristics.
This is it being stated explicitly.
There are no rules.
For how you should tell me that I've harmed you.
It takes courage to break with white solidarity.
How can I support those that do?
If I'm not willing to step out and take a risk, how can I back other white people who do instead of tearing them down?
Finding that one thing that I said in this talk tonight that you can grab onto so that you don't have to look at yourself.
Given socialization, it's more likely that I am the one who doesn't understand the issue.
That clip was slightly different than the one I intended, because that was why people should defer to her, right?
And why, if you're trying to criticize her, it's basically just showing that you're not yet on the right path.
You're just looking to defend white supremacy in your society by not...
Yeah.
But the one thing, and this is just a description, not a criticism, which is that the way she very much thinks about these conversations about race, which is obviously, you know, should happen an awful lot, and what she has expertise in training people how to do.
She emphasizes that these are not symmetrical discussions, that there is one set of rules for the people who are airing the grievances, which is that...
Everything is legitimate.
Everything is valid.
When it comes to how the response is made, there are a great many rules, which she spends most of the lecture talking about.
Yeah, so there are a wide array of rules that you have to apply.
There is a very strong moralizing aspect to it.
So, for example...
If you are in the position of any of this being used to you, she raises this question.
So I'm going to end by just bringing this question up so that I can preempt it because I really don't like this question.
And if this is the question you have right now, if you're white and this is the question you have right now, then I have one for you.
What has allowed you to remain ignorant about how to interrupt racism?
Why in 2018 is that your question?
And that's actually a sincere, challenging question.
Because if you really start to map it out, you'll have your answer.
Oh, and this is in response to somebody positing, what should we do?
Like, so what's the call to action?
How do we...
Address this.
And her answer is like, it's very inward focused.
You should reflect on why you are asking me that question and what you have done wrong to get yourself to that position.
It's like, right, but still, the question for me is, given all these systems of inequity and so on that you've talked about, why isn't there, like, what's the solution?
For progressive Democrats in America or support anti-racist charities or that kind of thing.
But her answer is, think about why you asked that question.
Yeah.
And you'll get your answer.
And that's a very guru-ish thing, right?
You're asking the wrong questions and that's why you're still stuck where you are.
But yeah, I liked that question that was asked because it was something that I was thinking throughout the entire thing, which is that...
Really, all of the lecture is devoted to talking about white fragility and how all the reasons that people might give to sort of defend themselves against acknowledging their pervasive racism are invalid and how you need to embrace that.
But at no point really talks about what should be done.
I mean, she did give that anecdote about herself, but she doesn't really describe the kinds of things that she says.
Or trainers like her say in these training sessions, which elicit these reactive responses.
I went to one of these kinds of DEI-type seminars at my university, which was not primarily focused on race.
It's primarily focused on preventing sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour like that in the workplace.
And like everyone else who turned up there, I turned up in a negative frame of mind.
I was getting interrupted from my very important research work to do this bullshit corporate seminar.
I don't need to.
You know, I'm not harassing anybody.
I don't need to do this.
So, I turned up with that for a moment, which I think is understandable, but it was actually very good.
They gave a bunch of scenarios that were deliberately ambiguous and deliberately in the grey zone and where the answer wasn't incredibly clear about the most appropriate way to do or what was appropriate and what isn't appropriate, and it really did invite people to think about that.
I've realised that I just approached it in a negative frame of mind and came away with very positive opinions about it.
I'm sure it would be very beneficial to people that were, especially guys that were socially awkward, not picking up on social cues or whatever, and may act inappropriately and misinterpret things.
I think it's very beneficial.
I suspect that the kind of things that D 'Angelo and people in her school of thought do that elicit...
Like, negative reactions.
Like, nobody in that training seminar that I attended reacted negatively.
Everyone found it kind of interesting.
But if they had gone about it and saying, all the men among you are all potential rapists, each one of you, whether you intend to or not, are making the women in your workplace feel threatened and uncomfortable.
So you need to think about what it is that you're doing and how you do it.
Like, if it had been done like that, then I would have reacted badly.
And I think that...
Would be legitimate.
I'm actually just very curious as to what goes on in these sessions that elicits those reactions.
Yeah, and I think her talk does give a fair amount of hints to that kind of thing.
Like, for example, she mentions generalizing about white people and she says...
And again, that has nothing to do with whether they're informed.
And in fact, if you are white and you have not devoted years of sustained study, struggle, and focus on this topic, your opinions are necessarily very limited.
And no, a trip to Costa Rica, multiracial nieces and nephews, right?
These are not sustained study struggle and focus.
Now, how can I say that when I don't know most of the people in this room?
And this, of course, is the first thing that tends to trigger white fragility, generalizing about white people.
As a sociologist, I'm really comfortable generalizing about white people.
So, that is her saying, you know, intentionally, she is going to generalize in a way that people will find objectionable.
And that's a part of the strategy to get people to react and demonstrate their fragility.
Yeah, you could make a strong guess as to the tone in which these sessions are conducted, by the way, for the tone of this lecture.
And I think we, you too, I think, Chris, have heard, you know, firsthand accounts of people that have attended these kinds of sessions.
And from the way they describe it, it's obviously a secondhand report, but it didn't sound healthy or productive to me anyway.
Yeah, so she was also talking about that like uninformed versus informed, which I think is an important distinction to have that, you know, what's your opinion on the origin of the coronavirus?
Are you a random punter with no training in virology and epidemiology who knew nothing about viruses until COVID came?
I don't think your opinion is worth as much as a trained virologist.
And I also think this could apply in the case of diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Most people haven't given much thought to what kind of policies you would put in a place or how to rectify imbalances in populations and all that kind of thing.
This is true, but it's also in her interest.
To suggest that the solution is become highly invested in this subject and devote a large amount of time to thinking and doing the work that will never end on this subject because she is a diversity and white fragility or whatever the case is trainer,
somebody who prepares courses for companies and for universities on this topic.
So there's a little bit...
Of a potential self-serving solution there.
Yeah, but I mean, I also get the vibe.
I mean, you get a sense from what she's said there, which is that the opinion of the poor slobs that get told to attend those seminars, their point of view is illegitimate.
Like, they need to sit down and listen.
If that vibe is coming through during those seminars, I just don't think that's a healthy way to do it.
It's different from a highly technical subject like the origins of the coronavirus.
What we're talking about here is subtle.
Microaggressions and things people might be doing and misinterpreting or people not realizing that they're sending certain signals or whatever.
This is just interpersonal stuff and it's very similar to the DEI training that I just described, which was focused on sexual harassment.
Whereas you do want to hear from people, you do want to find out those perspectives.
If you tell them all, you don't get an opinion, you don't know anything, you just need to...
Sit down and think and contemplate how awful you are and how you can do better.
That just seems like a terrible way to run a DEI seminar.
Yeah, because if you know anything about people's psychology, you should know that they're not going to respond.
Well, to being told that.
And she does make that explicit point, so here's her talking earlier about that.
But, you know, my point is, I just thought it was all about open-mindedness and alternativeness.
And let me just say that, you know, I love Seattle, and everything I learned about white fragility, I learned here working with white progressives.
So, chapter one, challenges to talking to white people about racism.
I have never met a white person who did not have an opinion on racism, have you?
If you are not sure that all white people have opinions on racism, just bring it up the next time you're around a bunch of white people.
Maybe tonight when you have a drink in Ballard after the talk.
And see how that goes.
Not only do we all have opinions, But they tend to be very emotionally charged, and that has nothing to do with whether they're informed or not.
I have an opinion on virtually everything that does not make them informed.
I don't believe you can grow up or spend any significant time in the United States without developing opinions on racism, and they will be emotional and strongly held.
So in that clip, she posits that everyone in America has an opinion on race and that some of them are going to be ill-informed, which is definitely true.
But she kind of presents it as like, ask a white person about race and they'll give you an opinion.
And I was like, so is the argument if you ask any other ethnicity in America about their opinion on race?
You'll get nothing.
You know, they'll say, I haven't thought about it.
Like, it's a main topic in America.
Like, there's this kind of denial, which is quite prevalent in, again, in liberal spaces focused on liberals.
That's the issue, because I think there is a denial of the topic in conservative spaces.
But in liberal spaces, it is a very frequently discussed topic.
She's presented as if...
Nobody is allowed to talk about it.
And that's just not true in progressive spaces.
She even makes a dig, I guess it's some elite place that they might go to the bar afterwards, right?
And they all hoot and laugh about it.
But you're just like, but these are your people.
These are people that are receptive to that message.
I don't quite get it either.
The audience is definitely those people as well.
And they're hooting and laughing, very much enjoying.
It's a little bit of self-flagellation, but it's also kind of directed at other people, not in the room.
And like you said, I don't get the point.
If you ask people about racism, they'll have an opinion.
Ask black people about racism, they'll have an opinion.
If you ask either group about taxation, they'll have an opinion.
It could be uninformed.
You ask them about anything.
I don't get the point.
Is it that white people shouldn't have an opinion about racism in the United States?
I think so.
Or at least they shouldn't until they're informed about the structures.
I don't think it's having an opinion that's an issue.
I think it's the not having the correct opinion, which is the problem.
But Matt, there's an example that illustrates why part of the reason that I see her approach as being not just wrong, but potentially Distorting.
So she gives this account where she's talking about the first African-American baseball player.
So let's listen to it.
So I want to give you an example of the power of the story.
And I want to do it through the Jackie Robinson story.
You all know Jackie Robinson?
Right?
So Jackie Robinson has been quite celebrated for doing something.
What's the tagline that goes with Jackie Robinson?
He...
He broke the color line.
Right?
Now, so let's do a little discourse analysis.
Because every year on the anniversary, we celebrate him breaking the color line.
So think about what that invokes, right?
He was exceptional.
He was special.
He did it.
Finally, one of them had what it took to break through and play with us.
Up until him, nobody had what it took.
So subtext, inferior group, right?
But he did it, and of course, the day he did it, the day he broke the color line, racism and sports ended.
Yeah, I don't think anyone thinks that racism at sport ended with that event.
Don't say anyone.
There's always some people who Tucker Carlson is a thing.
Okay, all right, all right.
So in any case, this is discourse analysis.
This is a famous event in American history.
She's talking about the narrative that we put on that and the one that she just described, which centers the athlete in question, who broke the color line and his bravery, etc., is not a good narrative, I suspect.
Correct.
Yes, so let's set aside some of the other things that she says everybody agrees about that event, but here's how she would portray that story differently.
So imagine if we told a story like this.
Jackie Robinson, the first black man that whites allowed to play Major League Baseball.
And I want you to notice the difference in that story.
One, that's the truth.
It didn't matter how exceptional he was, and I actually don't believe he was the first most exceptional.
But if we didn't say he could play, he couldn't play.
If he walked out onto that field before we said you can walk out on the field, the police would have removed him.
It wasn't up to him.
Now the reason I want us to tell the story the second way is one, because it's true, and two, because I need role models.
How did white people get organized?
What did they do behind the scene?
What barriers did they face?
What challenges?
What strategies did they use?
And could we use any of those today and adapt any of those today?
It's not about me wanting to point out how bad white people are.
Matt, I've detected subtle racism.
Warning, warning.
I have something to tell D 'Angelo.
Well, luckily, Chris, she's very receptive to these accusations, so she will embrace it when you bring it up with her.
So, what she said there, right, was like, we should focus on the fact that, like, of course...
There were black people before Jackie Robinson who were good enough to compete with white players.
And that had always been the case.
So what was in their way were these institutional barriers that were removed by other white people to allow him on the field, right?
He wasn't arrested by the police.
He was allowed to go on.
And she says, let's focus on that.
And then she says, as she goes on, because she needs...
Good role models of white people who challenge the status quo and are willing to push back against these boundaries.
But in so do it, she completely removes the agency of a black person and suggests that we should ignore their achievement, their bravery, and instead focus entirely on the white people in the story so that a white person can feel Better and have role models that they might look up to.
So take away the black person's agency because it is more beneficial for you to have a narrative that centers white people.
I think that's a fair summary, Chris.
That's a fair summary.
And the fact that she doesn't detect any issues with this and gives this alternative reading so confidently.
It is telling and it fits perfectly with the entire narrative arc of this lecture, which is very much focused on white people, despite her making a big song and dance about how white people need to not make it about themselves.
Really, it is.
This is the contradiction that I think we've been struggling with, this whole decoding, which is it really is all entirely about an internal psychodrama that's happening in these white progressive.
Yeah, and again, I think we're winding the corner.
The themes are clear, but just to return to the point about the kind of...
I'm sorry, but it is religious dynamics, and it is, in the worst case, kind of like...
The same dynamics that you see in manipulative cults.
And, like, listen to this clip.
Confusing not agreeing with not understanding.
Is it possible that you're not actually informed enough to disagree?
Have you ever had somebody say, no, you misunderstood.
No, you misunderstood.
What if the person understood you perfectly, in fact, they even understood what you meant, and you don't understand how what you meant comes from a racist framework?
A need to maintain white solidarity, right?
That's the unspoken agreement amongst white people that we'll keep each other comfortable around our racism.
Highest priorities, saving face.
I always like to say, you know when I do a caucus group or something and the white people are afraid I might think they're racist?
I think you're racist.
I think I am too.
But let's be done with that.
And actually your carefulness and your hiding yourself and your not contributing to the conversation won't actually change that assessment at all.
So, you know, I think it's clear, Matt, right?
But the reason I relate that to what I observe in other gurus and certain religious communities and whatnot is that there is a premise that cannot be denied.
It's all about whiteness and racism and that kind of thing.
And that if you don't understand how that is the case, it is purely that you have not grasped the theory correctly, right?
It cannot be that it doesn't apply in a particular circumstance or there are other factors that need to be considered.
It is that you have not done the necessary work to see how that this applies to everything.
That your objection to it in any specific circumstance is a moral feeling on your part.
And I swear to God, everyone would understand this in the context of Scientology, in the context of any fundamentalist religion.
Or psychoanalysis, just reminding people.
That's a great example too.
Yeah.
So that rhetorical technique...
Is manipulative.
Even if the actual thing that you're arguing for is correct, this would still be a manipulative technique whereby it's illegitimate to do anything but endorse whatever D 'Angelo and her fellow trainer is telling you.
For me, Chris, this is just an aside, but I think it's interesting these sort of Catch-22 or self-sealing beliefs where they're sort of self-justifying, that there isn't a legitimate way.
I don't think people usually invent them or construct them on purpose.
I don't think Freud came up with the idea of repression just so people couldn't refute his theory.
I think he came upon it in good faith.
Yeah, so I just think it is interesting how people stumble into these sort of self-sealing, self-proving theoretical or ideological frameworks, which end up having a real power to them.
But I don't think...
People really did it on purpose, and I don't think they really reflect on how they got themselves into this sort of intellectual snake-eating-your-own-tail type scenario.
No, but again, I can't help illustrating this point into the ground, but here's another clip that kind of speaks to that Catch-22 nature of D 'Angelo's approach.
Racism is a multi-layered system infused in everything.
Whites have blinders on racism.
I have blinders on racism.
Racism is complex.
I don't have to understand it in order for it to be valid.
White comfort maintains the racial status quo.
Discomfort is necessary and important.
I must not confuse comfort with safety.
I am safe in discussions of race.
The anecdote to guilt is action.
I bring my group's history with me.
History matters.
I might see myself as just an individual.
The people of color in my life see me as a white individual.
The question is not if, but how.
Nothing exempts me from the forces of racism.
Whites are unconsciously invested in racism.
I am unconsciously invested in racism.
She's reading out these statements here, right?
But the tone there, like, come on!
Come on!
You see the parallels to religious confessions and stuff, right?
Surely it's obvious.
And this is why I do have some track for the people that argue this, at least this kind of component of the Anti-racist perspective that D 'Angelo represents does have religious overtones.
I feel that they're very evident, and the notion that racist systems are all powerful, all surrounding us all the time, they permit everything, and whether you acknowledge them or not, they are there.
There's an obvious parallel, right?
I feel that while people definitely do go to town, On that comparison, it doesn't mean that there are no legitimate parallels to draw, because there are.
Yeah, also with the unobserved and unobservable phenomena, like stuff that's going on in your subconscious, it makes it all pervasive and something that is undeniable.
But, you know, it's important to emphasize that this style of anti-racism is not universal amongst the...
Ultra-progressive or hard-left, there are many people that do have a genuine focus on, say, systemic factors, you know, do have a focus on legislation, various types of actual concrete, big-picture stuff going on in economy and society.
The interesting thing about D 'Angelo's brand of it is that it is based on this kind of pseudo-religious but also pseudo-psychoanalytic.
An internal journey that white people make so as to become increasingly more sensitive to sort of the subtle interpersonal actions and that that is the instrumental driving force.
There isn't much agency left for people of colour, as we saw in that example.
It's centred not only in white people who attend these seminars, but also centred in their subconscious.
In their spirit or something like that.
And it's odd.
It is odd.
Yeah, and I guess this is a distinction that I don't think people fully appreciate because in Kendi's content, at least the content that we consumed and that I've seen him talk about elsewhere, although he does apply the same binary of racist and anti-racist,
he does have this focus on Policies.
Like, he's very clear that he wants to make it about the voting systems and what kind of things we should put in.
And I'm sure people can find quotes where he's doing the same kind of rhetoric that D 'Angelo is doing.
But to me, it does feel like there's a difference in focus where there are people who have maybe, in many respects, a similar ideology, but are much more heavily emphasizing policy remedies.
Above the psychodrama aspect.
Yeah, I found Kendi, just in terms of a visceral reaction, I found him far less irritating than Robin DiAngelo because, as you said, he's got actual concrete policy prescriptions that he's arguing for.
They could be quite radical ones.
He argues for them in a sort of a reasoned, logical way, and you can dispute.
Some of the premises, you can dispute some of the connections and implications that he's drawing, but at least there's something there.
There is an argument that is being carefully laid out.
In terms of form, this lecture from D 'Angelo really relies on a lot of eye-rolling.
I keep saying this, but she spends most of the lecture just enumerating cringy things that white people do and rolling her eyes at that.
And then moves on.
And just the tone of it as well is...
Yeah, so there's just not a great deal there.
And the upshot is, I think, unless you're fully on board with this agenda, it's pretty irritating to listen to.
Yeah, though she would highlight that as you've just been...
That's right.
It irritates you because it's upsetting the racial status quo that you buy into.
Yeah.
And there's two...
Last clips I want to play for you that just relate to her nature as a guru character in the traditional sense of the people that we usually cover.
So the first clip, Matt, see if this rings any bells with past gurus and how they have described the way that they think about things.
We present before know that I use this metaphor, and I do tend to think in metaphors.
And as I do the work that I do, and I talk on a daily basis to white people, I literally got this image in my mind of a dock or a pier.
And what it signifies for me are two things.
One, how surface or superficial our narratives are.
But also, the dock, if you look from above, appears to be floating on the water.
But it's not.
There's an entire structure submerged under the water that props that dock up.
It rests on literally pillars anchored into the ocean floor.
And everything I do in my work is trying to get us off the top of the dock and under there to examine those pillars.
Yes.
You know, Chris, there's a nice little diagram they like to put in psychology textbooks sometimes when they're talking about the conscious and the unconscious.
In Freudianism, the superego versus the id, and it's like an iceberg.
We had this little tip above the surface, but underneath the water, going deep, deep down into those depths, that's where the bulk of stuff is going on.
You have to dig deep to find out what's going on down there.
I seem to remember James Lindsay or one of those chuckleheads sharing that, and it was like...
You know, maybe it had CRT or something at the top, and then it was just a giant Mark's head underneath the surface as the iceberg.
Well, of course, the sense makers and such like love them.
The Weinsteins.
The Weinsteins.
You know, if you get a good visual image that's evocative, then that pretty much proves your point, I think, is the rule.
I don't know if this is too extreme, but maybe we should ban people who think in metaphors.
Maybe they gotta go.
Like, I'm fine with people using metaphors, but if you primarily reason metaphors, maybe, I'm sorry, maybe we've seen what happens.
I just, look, it's fine.
It's fine.
People use metaphors, but I think that we should be a little wary of people who are so attached to metaphorical thinking.
Just...
Because it can be useful, it can be a nice way to illustrate things, but it can also be this thing where you lead yourself down a garden path and you're so into describing the metaphor that you take the metaphor as a substitute for the actual thing you're supposed to demonstrate.
Yeah, look, I think the golden rule is a visual metaphor or any kind of metaphor is a vehicle for expressing a point, but it's not...
In itself, any kind of rational grounds or support for the point that you're making.
Maybe we could limit them, like you're allowed three metaphors.
Three strikes and you're right.
Yeah, I don't know.
We need to workshop it.
But anyway, she thinks in metaphors and she has this metaphor of a pier with a big structure underneath that is just lurking below the surface.
And that speaks a little bit to the all perversive nature of the discourse that she wants to identify in the structures that she wants to discuss.
This similarly, we talked about it a little bit earlier, but this notion about how people react to being told about that.
So I saw some parallels with other gurus here.
So here's another clip about.
What interrupts our racial equilibrium?
Well, if you challenge objectivity, if you talk openly about race...
If you challenge white entitlement to racial comfort.
If you challenge the expectation that people of color will serve us and do our work for us.
If you break with white solidarity.
If you challenge white racial innocence.
Oh, and by the way, you can download all this on handouts from my website.
Oh, oh, wait a minute.
And it's in the book.
All right.
Challenge to individualism.
Challenge to meritocracy.
Challenge to white authority.
Challenge to white centrality.
Challenge to universalism.
Suggesting that maybe, in fact, we don't speak for all of humanity.
We speak from a particular perspective.
And it's deeply limited.
So this leads to white fragility.
The point for me there, Matt, is that equating any negative reaction with feeling to have the requisite insight, we've kind of mentioned it, but it's also just linking it to your output and products.
If you don't really get how this is you...
You should study my material a bit more and you will begin to get there.
And that's what a lot of gurus do.
They have these courses and they have these endless episodes of podcasts where they outline their worldview and more study, more consumption of their material will lend themselves to a better understanding of how their worldview is actually valid.
I hear this all the time in Weinsteinian content.
I think it can be valid.
You know, if you take a course, like introductory course in physics or whatever the case, you'll understand better how things apply after you've taken the introductory course or in statistics, if you want.
But even still, I'm a little bit wary of that notion that there's eternal...
Work to be done and I have a bunch of products that will help you get there.
I don't know.
Am I being overly sensitive?
No, I mean, that's a fair point, I think.
That's going on there.
I mean, the other thing that I just keep noticing throughout this lecture is that she's referencing a lot of more general ideas around structural racism and whiteness and so on that I'm familiar with from...
more academic sources.
But she's relating it all back to the white fragility and the kinds of things that she encounters
I don't think that's an accurate thing to do.
On that subject of continual work, here's a clip, I think, which puts a fine point on that.
White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us how we do so.
So I'm pretty sure I'm speaking to a room filled with white progressives.
So let me just be clear.
You are not the choir.
There is no choir.
I am not the choir.
When I say there is no choir, it's because my learning will never be finished.
Yeah, learning will never be finished.
Yeah, our work will never be done.
So just thank you guys all.
Our work will never be finished.
Which is the same with psychoanalysis and other spiritual journeys that one might be on.
It's a process.
It's something you embrace and take for your entire life.
It's not really about...
And she criticizes quite explicitly as one of the problems that white people have is this attempting to identify a problem and to fix it.
Yeah.
That's not the way.
The way is a...
There isn't really, I think, something that can be identified and fixed.
It's a lifelong journey that really doesn't end.
Yeah, so I think we should turn to her issues with colorblindness, which is an approach which maybe a lot of people hold.
It's an approach that many people would probably intuitively seem to endorse, probably on the liberal side, but she outlines why there are issues with that.
But before that, Matt, just one other point.
That I noticed, which I think reflects a certain lack of self-awareness.
So just listen to this clip.
So I'm not the 1%.
I've never even been a manager.
But I can control the people of color in my orbit through white fragility.
And so I also think of it as a form of everyday white racial control.
You can be in my orbit.
And I'll use you as diversity cover, as long as you keep me comfortable.
But if you challenge me, you're going to become a personal problem, and you're going to be ejected.
And boy, do we see this in the workplace.
So, I'm not talking about the...
The point about, you know, response to people of color who challenge you or that kind of thing.
It was more at the beginning of that clip where she denies being in the 1% because she hasn't held a management position.
And granted, this talk was a couple of years ago.
But I hope that that talking point would be exercised because as has been readily documented across mostly the right-wing media with some glee.
She charges reportedly around 14,000 per talk and just doing quick Googling was reported to be making around 730k a year, a couple of years ago.
So if that's not the 1%, Matt, like, you know, I don't know.
Maybe the 1% is like only millionaires, but like...
In one year, that's approaching millionaire level.
So I don't know if you could claim to be, you know, I'm just like you guys.
I'm not a manager.
I'm only making three quarters of a million a year.
Yeah, point taken.
I think there is a sense, though, in which her position is extremely consistent there because she does position herself generally as someone who's a wealthy, highly educated, you know, middle class progressive.
White person talking to other people who are in the same group.
And her role is to conduct this in-group therapy, I guess you would call it.
Yeah, yeah.
But in that case, I feel like if your emphasis is on owning your own, you know, what's it called?
Your own privilege or your own positionality.
I don't know.
Nobody seems to want to be in the 1%.
There's probably only Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
There's probably about 20 of them.
Chris, don't think I haven't noticed you positioning yourself as a victim of white settler colonialism rather than a perpetrator, just because you're Irish.
I've seen it.
We've all noticed.
Poor oppressed people.
I think that, you know, that's one of the things I think Irish people get away with.
I've heard Irish people claim not to be white in various contexts.
I've, like, heard that.
And, you know, that seems somewhat suspect to me.
Also, I'm pretty sure that the Irish were involved in colonial culture, you know, serving as the four men on various diamond mines.
So, my people don't get away scot-free just because of the famine and our mistreatment by the evil English for hundreds of years.
Like, they're villains, granted.
The English are a real villains, but I'm just saying our hands aren't clean.
You know, it's just a comparative purity.
Big of you, big of you.
Good to see such self-awareness.
Yes, it is.
Out, damn spot, out.
So, Matt, on colorblindness.
Now, let's let D 'Angelo outline the issues here.
So, let's start with the first set.
Colorblind.
Probably the number one colorblind racial narrative is, I was taught to treat everyone the same.
Anybody ever heard that one?
Okay.
Let me just tell you, when I hear this from a white person, and I hear it frequently, there's a bubble over my head.
And it has a few things in it.
The first thing is, oh, this person doesn't understand basic socialization.
This person doesn't understand culture.
Ooh, this person is not particularly self-aware.
And I need to give a heads-up to the white folks in the room.
When people of color hear us say this, they're generally not thinking, all right, I am talking to a woke white person right now.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Usually some form of eye-rolling.
And actually I recently co-facilitated with a black woman who said, that is the most dangerous white person to me.
So the fairly consistent theme that the progressives are actually the most dangerous, causing the most harm.
But how about the rest of it?
Well, the other aspect of it is, this is the theme that she hits many times, which is that the most dangerous people, the worst thing you can be, is to be someone that is unaware of your own racism.
And, you know, this is important because in her framework, there is no way not to be a racist.
She will loudly admit, confess to being a racist herself, will say that everyone else is a racist as well.
But the difference is, is that the people who can embrace that and accept it and work on it, as opposed to the people that are in denial.
Yes. So a little bit more on this topic.
Yes, but at the human level...
When we make that move, right, get race off the table, and let's position some kind of shared universal experience.
There isn't one in this physical plane that we live in, in a society deeply separate and unequal by race.
So I call these colorblind because they basically say, I don't see it, and if I see it, it has no meaning.
So, you know, one thing I will say in defense here is that It is true that there are various people who will identify as rationalist,
as non-tribal, as non-partisan people.
And often when you see those kind of signifiers in somebody's bio, they are the most partisan in seeing anti-rational people that you will ever come across.
I can imagine that given D 'Angelo's job, that there are plenty of people that she has encountered where they espouse, you know, to be enlightened on issues of race and turn out to,
you know, be extremely reactionary or to be touting various standard talking points.
So I can imagine encountering that a lot would make you cynical.
Right?
And if there are people declaring that, like, for example, civil rights has passed, so America does not have any real issues on race anymore.
Issues on race.
Obviously, that's not true.
Obviously true.
So, in that respect, I can kind of have sympathy for the approach.
Yeah.
There's an element of truth in all of these things that she talks about.
The issue, though, I guess, is that there is no way to disconfirm her...
Point of view.
She goes into a great deal of detail about how any kind of perspective other than embracing your racism is invalid.
All of the defences are not valid defences.
And yeah, it seems like it's very much setting up a catch-22.
Which is not to say that those...
Those things don't exist at all.
Yeah, just in terms of how, you know, she talks about she's interested in how things function.
And that's how this setup that she has, that's how it actually functions.
Yeah, I have that outline here.
The question that has never failed me is how do these narratives function in the conversation?
How does it function?
And...
If we ask that question, we can see that all of these narratives function to exempt the person from any part of the problem.
All of them take race off the table.
All of them close rather than open the exploration.
And in doing that, all of them protect the current racial hierarchy and the white position within it.
It doesn't have to be your intention.
And I'll just be blunt.
I'm not interested in your intention.
I'm interested in how this functions.
What is the impact of these narratives?
They are closers, not openers.
Yeah, so one issue I take with this argument is that, like I just talked about, I can imagine that there are people who use this in a rhetorical fashion, and they are doing what she's saying, just trying to basically sweep off any uncomfortable questions and move on to another topic,
or even doing it for their own.
On the other hand, I do think it's possible that people, reformers, even activists, could hold the goal of colorblindness as a target, something that they want to apply in their life, and still recognize that there are various institutional forces,
societal structures that prevent that from being achieved, and that they act to overcome it, but that they are taking the goal, Of achieving, you know, like a colorblind society and trying to put it into practice in their life as far as is possible as,
you know, like a positive motivating factor.
And that is what people point to when they selectively, admittedly, but quote Martin Luther King and the I Have a Dream speech because that speech seems to be...
Appealing to universalism, a desire that we can reach a goal where race doesn't matter.
That position has become slightly, not slightly, in progressive spaces seen as idealistic and, if anything, naive, right?
Because in the face of oppression, you do need an ethnic or racial solidarity because even if race is a construct, society treats it as a reality, so you need to act.
In a collective way in order to counter that.
And I kind of take it, but the way that the approach is characterized by D 'Angelo seems to me as it's presented as completely invalid and just like she says, a closer of the be it.
And I'm not sure that has to be necessarily so.
I guess it's kind of one of those situations of where the perfect can be set up as the enemy of the good.
You work in Japan at the moment, Chris, so probably you don't work in a very...
It's not very diverse, maybe.
Except for you.
You're diverse.
You're contributing to it.
I'm not that diverse, but by Japan standards, I'm very diverse, yes.
But I think to some degree, when you've got a friend or a colleague or whatever, that is of the opposite.
Sex from you, or could be a different sexuality, or could have a different ethnic background, or just whatever.
Even a cultural background.
Then it's probably impossible for the way you relate to them to be completely untainted by any kind of awareness of those differences from yourself.
Oh sure!
But it seems like you can get pretty close.
And at some point...
You know, maybe men interact slightly differently with women and women interact slightly different from men compared to when they're dealing with their own sex and that might not ever change.
But, you know, you can get pretty close to the ideal, I think.
And at some point, doesn't it become, I don't know, like a kind of neuroticism or a paranoia that, you know, like I guess I'm just agreeing with you that universalism, I think, is a good goal.
I don't think it can be perfectly achieved.
But at some point, you know, the imperfection might be okay.
Yeah, and I do think that there's an issue that on the opposite extreme, you can, you know, become very fixated on racial differences and solidarity in a way that is pathological, which can lead to,
you know, separatist movements or that kind of thing.
And I do not accept...
The definition of racism that basically means it cannot apply outside of certain groups.
Some people do.
I don't find that argument convincing.
And what you said about being aware of things like how your ethnic identity gives you advantages or how you're interacting with people who come with different backgrounds and won't have had the same experience and stuff.
Like, that is important.
If you don't want to go around being a rationalist bro, right?
And declaring that you don't see color and all that kind of thing.
But there is another side where that becoming everything that you interact with.
I mean, like an example where nobody would take issue with it is in Japan.
And Japan is a society in many respects.
So it's legitimate.
But there is also the case of expats.
Coming to perceive every interaction as being around the access of their ethnicity.
And I think either way can lean into an extreme, right?
Denial of it as a factor or overemphasis on it.
Both can lead to extremes.
I don't know, Matt.
We're staking out a case for moderation.
Is that a shocking decision for us to be advocating?
It's just common sense, Chris.
Just common sense.
We're the voices of Matt.
To give an example, I've had a couple of colleagues that happen to be young, female, Iranian women.
Female women.
Yeah, who kind of differed on every dimension you can think of.
And it would be kind of obtuse.
To just assume that there would be no potential scope for misunderstandings or coming across the wrong way and stuff like that.
And I remember I was not walking on eggshells, but I was just cognizant of that in a way where I wouldn't have those concerns if I was dealing with someone who was extremely similar to me on all those aspects.
And I can imagine...
Putting a foot wrong.
I get what you're saying, Mark.
If you were talking to another whitey, you'd be saying, that area, it's a bit dangerous.
A few too many ethnics in there.
That's right.
D 'Angelo's right.
She's got it right.
But the funny thing is, actually, I mean, this is a very personal example, but I remember I was a bit concerned for a while.
And then once we got to know each other better, actually those concerns kind of evaporated.
You know, like once you actually do have a good, authentic, you know, just normal human relationship, then it's okay if somebody does a microaggression or whatever, because, you know, you can figure it out and people understand there was no harm meant.
I do worry with D 'Angelo's thing, and she gave those examples of how she deals with these things, which, as you said, they feel very synthetic and inhuman.
Alienating.
And it feels like the kind of thing that is not going to contribute to an authentic human relationship.
Do you mean the kind of confessional interaction where please give me the opportunity to repair the damage done by my micro-racism?
Yes.
Highly scripted and formalized.
And it doesn't feel...
To me, that doesn't feel like the way.
Doesn't feel authentic.
No.
So, I think with the colorblindness...
Ideal.
Again, often when I get into debates with people who are progressive, I'm sometimes unclear if the long-term goal of colorblindness is actually a goal in modern progressivism, or whether it's not regarded as just naive silliness.
I think someone like D 'Angelo would say that it is not really achievable.
The way she frames it is that it is so deep-seated that...
The work will never be done.
And so we're never going to get to that place.
Yeah.
Well, that's a cheerful note.
But yeah, I guess you're right.
So basically, we're a fact.
Well, you know, it's probably if I was betting.
But this is why, you know, like in the same way, I don't think we're ever going to get to a society where people are...
punished and rewarded in the exact way to the amount of effort and struggle that they have in life.
But it's good to have that as a goal that we want to strive to.
Oh, you're referring to the meritocracy?
Oh, God.
Did I invoke the baritocracy?
I didn't mean to.
I mean it in a religious sense.
I want the just world.
That's your wetness showing again, Chris.
It's karma.
I want karma.
How's that white?
Karma happens in the next life, mate.
Yeah, well, so there we go.
So, let's see.
Is there anything that we haven't covered on D 'Angelo?
Anything that you think, Matt, that you wanted to get off your chest and we feel to bring up?
Okay, well, let's take turns.
I might tell you my first take and then...
I don't have any.
You can go for as long as you want because I only have a kind of global...
I only think in metaphors, Matt.
I just have a globalized understanding of the crystal structure.
I'm not that organized.
All right.
So my first big picture sort of academic problem with her is that she definitely defers to the academic critical theory of race literature a lot.
And that emphasizes the systemic causes of racism.
And it doesn't really focus on this Freudian psychological subconscious factors, this group therapy that she does.
So she leans very heavily on the idea that this process of introspection and self-interrogation Into those unconscious influences and implicit biases and so on, unexplored motivations.
That's the key to dismantling systemic racism and the inequality that it produces.
So that's wildly incongruent, it seems to me, with any description of systemic racism that I've come across.
it emphasizes like material systemic impersonal factors not internal psychological ones.
She just conflates those two things and makes out that what she is doing is anti-systemic racism but it's
Yeah, so I guess my...
Main issues is the rhetorical-laden aspects of it, the rhetoric-laden aspects of it, where any criticism of it is demonstrating the correctness of the approach and that the solution to societal problems is more people like D 'Angelo,
more trainings, more time spent invested on these kinds of courses and the notion of working in wide affinity groups to process your racial background
What I know about psychology suggests that a lot of the things that she's arguing are the way forward, even if they're dealing with structures that are correct and need to be addressed.
It's the wrong way to go about it.
And I think that the dynamic that we see in this talk of the people kind of cheering and self-flagellating and her becoming more energized by that response, it just really turns me off.
I don't know if that's the right way to put it, but it makes me feel like there's an aspect of this which is performative and that this constant refrain that...
The most progressive liberal people are the biggest obstacle.
When you're talking in the context of American society and you have an entire right-wing ecosystem which is trying to reduce the amount of votes that minority people can cast and which is denying outright with these very strong partisan ideological figures that there are any such issues.
It just doesn't strike me as realistic that they're the main problem.
So, like, in terms of her key intellectual contribution, it's this idea of fragility and the lack of self-awareness and the wanting to sort of psychologically protect yourself that is instrumental in perpetuating inequality and racism in the United States.
As we talked about, there's elements of truth to that, but it's so easily turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Instigating those negative emotional reactions and then working through the fallout is like a key part of her process.
And then she sort of turned that into a whole philosophy of white fragility.
It's this lack of awareness of your own deep moral flaws and an unwillingness to plead guilty and give excuses is itself the proof of how deep-seated and problematic they are.
Yeah, though her examples about her are more to do with micro-aggressing about hair than saying she didn't want to live in a black neighborhood.
In any case, Matt, did you ever hear about this puppet musical called Avenue Q?
I don't know if it's still running or not, but it was kind of like an adult Sesame Street.
And they had a song in it called Everyone's a Little Bit Racist.
It was a really good...
I enjoyed it.
I've seen it in London.
The song was very funny, right?
And it was true.
It was talking about how basically everybody has these biases within them that make them a little bit racist.
Sure.
And it was, they were living in the scenario in Avenue Q is like a multi-racial kind of Sesame Street neighborhood, but they're talking about how all the characters have their own prejudices about different nationalities and this kind of thing, right?
And I think that insight is the kernel of...
Truth, as well as the systemic factors of racism that are in play in various societies and that still have an influence.
I think that those parts I don't have an objection to, but I think that the whole package that D 'Angelo attaches to that isn't the only framework to address those realities, but it's presented as if it is, and that's my issue.
So again, I think we're nailing the coffin on this specific point, but it's just that...
Your political position on these topics, it can be whatever you want it to be, but when you outline that any deviation from your preferred approach to things is invalid and inherently reflects a feeling on a fundamental level,
that's an incredibly self-serving position to take, whether you're a moderate centrist or you're a progressive liberal or you're a right-wing conservative, like whatever the case might be.
If everyone except you has a deep feeling or, you know, who refuses to acknowledge your particular political agenda, I don't know.
There's just an element of that seems self-serving.
So that's my issue with it.
The other way in which I think she did hit the nail on the head and she's tapped into a deep vein of insecurity and unresolved issues is with the hypocrisy of white, wealthy, educated, progressive liberals.
And I think that, in a large way, explains her appeal and the reason why she attracts an audience that is wanting to do this kind of soul-searching, right?
Scratch that scab.
But I guess, for me, that hypocrisy is in no way simply restricted to race.
And, like, it exists in so many different ways.
Where there's a correlation with race, as there often is in places like the United States, it could be something like disliking a questionnaire that you subsequently find out to be made by a person of colour, or it could be the phenomenon of middle-class people sending their kids to good schools that might also have a lower percentage of people of colour in them.
She presumes in every single case that it is racial anxiety that is the driving factor, when obviously it clearly isn't in the case of the questionnaire.
And given that wealthy people send their kids to fancy schools all over the world and have always done so, I think it's fair to say that there are other factors driving that apart from just not wanting their kids to mix with people of colour.
So the part where I agree with her is I think that there's a huge disconnect with the high-minded opinions of wealthy liberal people and the self-concept they slash we would like to have of ourselves and our behaviour.
Which is typically self-interested.
So there's a strong desire to feel good about yourself without actually doing anything of material substance.
I think engaging in this navel-gazing and this self-fagulation.
Is a way to do that.
So, in as much as that's true, I think she contributes to those psychological band-aids rather than really confronts them.
Those scripted and artificial struggle session style interactions that she encourages actually works against authentic and genuine relationships between people of different backgrounds.
When she talks about finding your white affinity group and, you know, basically treating people of colour differently, she can tell a white person that she doesn't like their questionnaire.
She can't tell.
A black person.
It is a focus on treating people differently.
I think those sorts of things can backfire quite badly.
And the very final point that I'll make is that, as we saw with her anecdote about the first black major league baseball player and the narrative that she preferred to put over that, she centres white people and this sort of overwhelming agency in a way that's kind of ugly.
And it's kind of revealing that the reason she gives for doing so, which is that she wants to give herself a role model, that it's for sort of personal psychological reasons.
So, you know, to make herself feel better or give herself a path towards salvation or something.
So anyway, I don't like that either.
So all in all, Chris, I don't find it very good.
Even though, you know, some of the things she's talking about, the defensiveness of people, for instance, the way people will...
Make excuses and things.
She hits on some things that are true.
She's tapping into psychological insecurities and paranoias amongst people.
So I can understand the success, but I don't think the approach that she provides is a good way forward.
I understand, Matt.
You're basically saying you're pure, without prejudice, and that all the progressives are deeply racist.
I understood.
In my case, Matt, unlike you, I repent.
I acknowledge all my racial biases and I'm doing the work.
I'm going to take time to reflect, so just leave me alone.
But if not, I recommend also that people check out a paper by Liam Kofi-Bright, former guest on the show called White Psychodrama, which he published recently and talks about.
These three character archetypes that are prevalent in discussions around race, particularly in the culture war and American spheres.
And he talks about people identifying as repenters or repressors or people of color intelligentsia.
We are definitely not in the third category and you can choose for yourself which one of the other two archetypes we fall into.
Yeah, that's a very good paper, and I think it outlines some of the issues with this debate and the tropes that are part of it.
But maybe we've said enough.
Maybe we're done decoding D 'Angelo, and she'll need to take us apart.
I wonder if she'll take up our right to reply.
I don't think so.
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
But there we go, Matt.
It's done.
I guess as a pair of milquetoast liberal types, we were never going to like D 'Angelo.
But it was interesting to just delineate exactly.
Exactly why.
That's right.
We're now cancelable, but I don't think D 'Angelo motivates that much interest in defense.
So there we go.
So with the decoding done, Matt, what we usually turn to is our feedback, our reviews that we've received, various things like that.
And I do have one point that...
I received an email and they asked me to call you out on publicly.
It's not about RoboCop, although he does come up in the reviews again.
It's not about race.
It's not about race.
Well, in a way it is.
So how do you just name the...
What do you call the guy who is the main character in Black Books?
The comedian, the Irish comedian.
What do you call him, Matt?
Oh, so not the character's name, but the actor's name.
Yeah.
I've forgotten his name.
Dylan.
Starts with Dylan.
Oh, Dylan Moran.
Yeah, it's alright.
Wait, have I got his name wrong?
I thought that's his name, Dylan Moran.
You can't get his name wrong.
You've got the right ethnic background.
I defer to your...
Well, you just said to me that's right.
Dylan Moran.
Dylan Moran, yeah.
I mean, I know I have a slightly different tang to it, but I'm saying it like...
Well, who gave that feedback?
You've just landed me in it.
Matt, you seem fine.
Yeah, that's right.
Good job.
Moving on.
Maybe you said it weird, like the Matrix or whatever at one point.
Dylan Moran?
I don't know.
I said Matrix.
Matrix.
No!
You said the Matrix.
Did I?
Matrix.
Yeah, like your name.
Oh, I switched.
Good!
You switched to the correct pronunciation.
So look, you're improving in so many ways.
You're becoming a better person day by day on the podcast.
So the question then, Matt, is do the reviewers agree with that?
Let's see.
So I promised you that we would get RoboCop mentioned.
And Griffin Mills has updated their review, their one-star review.
It's now five stars.
Yay!
So, to remind people, it said, I was reminded by that one-star review that Matt slagged off Robocop.
He didn't even make a good case or defend himself when confronted.
Now there's three stars, and it said, updated as of episode 56. Matt apologized and said, apology has been accepted.
In solidarity, I too will flip-flop and go to five stars.
Good on ya.
Nice.
See, this is Robin Diall and Jillo's playbook.
You just immediately accept your guilt, confess, And flip-flop.
I promise to do better, which I will.
I will.
All 80s movies are great.
I'm all for them.
Yeah, so I've got...
That's a positive review now, but I'm still going to give us one more positive one because I liked what this person said.
So S9 Chroma from Germany.
The title is Robbed Me of Entertainment.
It said...
Eric Weinstein was a genius at constructing conspiracy theories, the quality of which is unmatched, and YouTube bullied him off the internet.
The recent group of global elite conspiracists aren't that talented.
We did not bully Eric off the internet.
He's still tweeting out and threatening to release more podcasts in the future.
But he did stop making podcast episodes, didn't he?
Not because of us.
Because of Daniel Gilbert.
Bad stats.
And his cadre of PhD 4channers.
So it was them, Matt.
They did it, not us.
That's true.
That's right.
See them.
Yeah, see them, Eric.
I know you listen.
Okay, so now I got two negative ones, Matt, to balance it up.
So the first one, a sad one from GoldFroggy.
Good news, Liam.
Good username.
I wish the hosts all the best in their future endeavors.
Uh-oh.
I used to look forward to this show, but the recent episodes on sensemaking and the Constantine Kissen were completely unlistenable for very different reasons.
On the latter, Chris, please re-listen to the Knowledge Fight episode on how not to interview Alex Jones.
Oh, so his issue is that you platformed Constantine Kissen?
Too softly.
Too softly.
Too softly, right.
My questions were, you know, like I didn't challenge him in all the things that he said and so on.
And some people have that view, Matt.
You know, people are entitled to their opinions.
I think that I challenged an appropriate amount to keep an interview going and that the kind of advice that I get given from people often is like, Why don't you ask him to elaborate on why he doesn't trust the Guardian?
And you're like, do you understand what would happen there?
You're just asking someone to trot out a large number of examples that you probably don't know and, you know, elaborate on their grievances.
So, anyway.
You know, Chris, we criticise good old Lex Fridman for his interviewing style.
You get criticized for your interviewing style.
I take the feedback.
I'm not defensive at all.
It's difficult.
Everyone should just leave interviews to, especially, you know, what is it?
Oppositional or confrontational interviews.
We should leave them to the professionals.
Just get a proper journalist to do them.
You're an amateur.
You shouldn't do it.
Nor should Lex.
Fuck you, man.
Don't join in.
Don't join in.
But yeah.
And to show the flip side.
Love that.
So we got a new review from DKTAKAKS.
I don't know how to pronounce his name.
The title is Garbage Blind and Biased Interviewer.
Garbage Blind and Biased Interviewer.
Oh, Garbage Blind and Biased Interviewer.
And it's just, don't waste your time.
Now, I would hazard a guess that might be from a trigonometry fan.
So I don't think they enjoyed it in the way that Goldfroggy, Might have anticipated.
But in any case, there we are.
Everyone who doesn't agree with me is in Bad Face, Volume 1,000,000.
7,000.
Yeah, that's it.
Well, okay.
So, Matt, the last thing to do before we're off out of here is thank our lovely patrons.
And courtesy of a very kind listener, Martine Wesselis.
I hope I've got that right.
We have new clips for our conspiracy theorists, our conspiracy, sorry, sorry, conspiracy hypothesizers, our revolutionary thinkers and galaxy brain gurus.
So a treat, a treat to be had for all.
They've been in need of updates.
So I'm going to shout out our conspiracy hypothesizers first.
And they are Chelsea, Steve Dierlem, Jacob Romer, Those are our conspiracy hypothesizers for this week.
Thank you very much.
Thank you one and all.
I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions.
And they've all circulated this list of correct answers.
I wasn't at this conference.
This kind of shit makes me think, man.
It's almost like someone is being paid.
Like when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
I enjoyed that.
So, you know, thematically linked.
So, now we have our revolutionary thinkers.
And there we have Jane Lenting, Tim Bednell, Benjamin Cooper, Daniel Zux, Peter Martin, Nathan Addy, David...
And Tracy McFarlane.
Oh, and Enchantomatic.
So they are our revolutionary thinkers, Matt.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time.
And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm.
I'm someone who's a true polymath.
I'm all over the place.
But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.
Now, that's just a guess, and it could easily be wrong.
But it also could not be wrong.
The fact that it's even plausible is stunning.
I love these new clips.
Thank you so much.
Can we shout them out again, Chris?
Who is the wonderful person who made those for us?
Martin Wesselus.
Martin Wesselus.
Prince amongst men.
Brilliant.
Yeah.
I also enjoy that quote from Peterson and Weinstein.
Good old Brett.
Okay, so lastly, Matt, the galaxy brain gurus, those who shine so brightly in the gurus' constellation.
Firmament.
Firmament constellation, insert your cosmological verbiage in there.
Jason Truck, Shane Gronholtz, Adrian Camilleri, Janet Uter, David DeGee, Justin Kitchen, and Paul Hahn.
Fantastic.
Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it.
We tried to warn people.
Yeah.
Like, what was coming, how it was going to come in, the fact that it was everywhere and in everything.
Considering me tribal just doesn't make any sense.
I have no tribe.
I'm in exile.
Think again, sunshine.
Yeah.
I do feel bad for Sam.
But it does feel like Jordan is responding to his claim.
So I approve of that.
I like how Martin largely chose new clips, but he held on to that dark, dark chuckle by Scott Adams.
He had to keep that one.
I respect that artistic choice.
I agree.
I agree.
And so our next episode, Matt, I think we're going to round off the guru tech season.
We have Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or one of those figures to round things off.
So look forward to that, I guess.
Yeah, that'll be something.
That'll be something.
Yeah.
And as always, Matt, note the gated institutional narrative.
Accord, the distributed idea suppression complex.
I do.
I do.
Every day in every way.
I'm keeping those things in mind.
I'm on guard.
Against them.
Well, I'm glad to hear that.
Glad to hear that.
Maybe make you a little bit racist if you do it.
Maybe.
We can all only hope.
But he'll do the work and we will see you next time.
