On the Fragility of Racial Discourse (among white people)

    The world, which is to say, the internet, has been awash these last few months with resources on learning about, addressing, and talking about racism. In the years since Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri, more and more white people are finding themselves able to recognize the persistent nature of white supremacist culture in the United States and its institutions. George Floyd’s murder in MInneapolis was a catalyst that reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement and led many white folks to want to better understand this world they live in, and to figure out what they can do to make a difference.

    As this new energy has sought ways to express itself, on the streets and on the internet, the challenges of performative allyship have been brought to many people’s attention. Ally is not a word I generally use, for a number of reasons not central to this post. But I do engage in careful discernment around how I show up and represent myself, and try to avoid jumping on any bandwagon without seriously considering what it means to me, how it will be perceived by others, and what the depth of my commitment really is. I’ve been a part of institutions that proudly wave their Black Lives Matter banner, while Black lives within the institutions have felt diminished. And I’ve been a part of institutions that don’t think it matters if they say anything about Black lives mattering. As a queer white person, I’d rather be part of the former, with a recognition that I generally have power within such an institution to hold at least some space for the discomfort and the work of radically transforming our institutions in life-affirming, justice-seeking, counter-oppressive ways. We’re all, as institutions and individuals, at different places on this journey of dismantling white supremacy, and all white people and traditionally white-led institutions are to some degree racist. (As a white person I am choosing to refrain from making generalizations about people of color - and I think it is important to acknowledge that racism is not simply a black-white issue and is very often internalized much as homophobia and sexism are.) The question is not about being a good (non-racist ally) white person or a bad (racist) white person; the question is, are people with white privilege willing to engage in the process and do the work of recognizing and dismantling white supremacy culture so that we can live in a world where Black lives do truly matter?

    

    One of the more popular, and perhaps controversial, books at this time is Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. I think DiAngelo’s book offers a powerful analysis and naming of a dynamic that others have been observing for decades. Reading it helped me clearly see and understand some problematic dynamics that I had engaged in, dynamics grounded in my socialization as a woman. Although I have long been driven by a sense of collective liberation (my liberation is tied up with your liberation), in internalizing White Fragility, I recognized a way that patriarchy had made me more complicit in white supremacy. All the more reason to smash them both!

    Reading White Fragility also gave me a lens through which to notice what I might call “heterofragility,” (though I welcome a better term) when I shared with someone how they had harmed me by diminishing my homosexuality, and they responded with, “But that wasn’t my intent!” And yet, in that moment, being able to recognize the dynamic didn’t help me in any way. Robin DiAngelo’s book may explain why it’s hard to talk to white people about racism (and actually it would be enhanced, I think, with more psychology explaining what is going on in the human brain and body in those moments), but as I recollect, she doesn’t then go on to offer suggestions on how to talk to white people about racism. The book may be better for including that content, but perhaps that’s not Robin DiAngelo’s part to play in this world. The problems arise when we expect her to be the person who can teach us how to talk about race.

    Criticisms of Robin DiAngelo and her work have been floating around since the time her book was published. I agree with those who say that her work centers white people, and in so doing reinforces elements of white supremacy. I have read many books where I think it would behoove the author to do more to acknowledge their identities and those of their intended audience; White Fragility is clearly about whiteness, and DiAngelo, like many of us, is still learning how to use her existing privilege to help create a world in which that particular privilege doesn’t exist. This essay, too, centers whiteness, and I certainly hope no one takes me to be an anti-racism expert!

    I would love to see more respectful and considerate critique of DiAngelo’s work, the kind of deep engagement with the issues that allows us to reinterpret her observations in terms and experiences that resonate with us. For example, the one time I quoted DiAngelo in a sermon, I named her, affirmed her overall project, and then said, “I disagree with her understanding of the concept of ‘assuming good intentions.’” DiAngelo thinks that concept privileges intent over impact. I agree that in practice that can happen, but I believe that to truly assume good intentions, we can go straight to attending to impact because we’ve already assumed that the intentions were good and thus don’t need to discuss them.

    But the problem I’m noting, what inspired me to actually write this essay, is when people I respect start sharing articles that attack DiAngelo personally. (If someone has a personal experience of being hurt by Robin DiAngelo, then I welcome a criticism of her person and not just her ideas. Otherwise, why are we throwing her under the bus?) In this particular case, she’s accused of being a grifter because of how much money she makes off of talking about anti-racism. But DiAngelo’s popularity is the responsibility of the people who have been eating up her words. If people are paying her ludicrous amounts of money to speak, it is because they are so desperate for a solution, for a balm, for a cathartic confrontation with their shame that will release them from its grasp, that they will pay this calm white lady anything to call them out.

    The problem here is not one white woman managing to capitalize on white guilt. The problem is white supremacy culture that thinks we can buy indulgences in order to become ‘not racist,’ that looks for a savior in one white woman (or anyone, really) who has never claimed to be such. There is no quick fix to racism, and no one voice (of any race) that is going to have the answers. White fragility, unfortunately, leads some with skin like me to feel the need to step on others with whom we disagree, rather than engaging with and improving upon their ideas, or directing attention instead to better concepts.

    It’s interesting, even as I write this, to see the traps I’m falling into: I’m spending my energy critiquing white people for wasting their energy critiquing white people, and I somehow think that I’m a better person for it. This is a deadly spiral to be stuck in, driven by feelings of anger and fear, by a desire for respectful (but not necessarily rational) discourse around emotional issues. But is there a way out without first acknowledging the obstacles in our way? This, I think, is the purpose of Robin DiAngelo’s book, to illuminate one of the factors that impedes real anti-racist transformation, so that we white folks might find our way around it or through it or whatever it takes to get past this fragility, so that we can move on to the real work. To expect Robin DiAngelo and her work to guide you through all of the necessary transformation of anti-racism is ungrounded, but her lens just might help free someone from a snare that has been holding them back.

If you are looking for some books on how to talk about race and address racism in real life, here are some great recent books by Black authors: Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want To Talk About Racism, Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be An Anti-Racist, Crystal Fleming’s How To Be Less Stupid About Race, or Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.

One Voice

 And once again, our world is burning. I’m almost overwhelmed with the numbness I feel, yet I know this feeling well enough to know that it means I am in fact full of feelings but they are more than I am capable of facing right now.

One thing I am not feeling is powerlessness. I write because I know my words have power; I’m still very much struggling with what to say and how to say it, but I saw things today that need to be said.

I was privileged to attend a Black Lives Matter march in Manchester, New Hampshire today. Privileged to be healthy and low-risk for COVID, privileged to work a job where I don’t have to come into close physical contact with people AND I can miss a meeting to go to a rally, privileged to have the means to get there and to feel safe. I went wearing my clerical collar, which I have so far only worn for public protest or ordinations. I went thus dressed with the belief that as visible clergy, my presence carried more power than it would otherwise. By marching in my collar with my “Black Lives Matter” sign, I imagine I am saying that God believes that Black Lives Matter.

Having seen footage from Ferguson and elsewhere of clergy standing between cops and other protestors, changing the tenor of a protest about to get violent by linking arms and singing songs, I went aware that I may be called upon to be a protector or a peacekeeper. I also went aware that I wasn’t prepared to be arrested.

What I found in Manchester, a city I do not know but which was less than an hour’s drive from where I’ve been staying for the past two months, was a spirited and peaceful gathering of about 1000 people (my estimation, supported by some press coverage), led by young black people. I arrived to find a crowd gathered - somewhat though not perfectly socially distanced - in Veterans Park. Someone was speaking into a megaphone words I couldn’t understand, and then the crowd opened and organizers started marching, past me into the street. “Well, I may as well join at the front,” I figured, and started walking. Tears filled my eyes seeing these young black folk proudly asserting the value of their lives, a thousand people marching behind them.

Ahead of the march was a single cop car, slowly escorting us along the approved route. I stayed toward the outside of the crowd - sometimes on the sidewalk, sometimes on the street - so that I could have a large bubble of personal space. I stayed silent, for the most part, aware of how projecting your voice puts more viral aerosols into the air around you, but held my hastily scrawled sign up with pride. I was very aware of how little I know about race relations or the police department in Manchester, to give me local context for the experience.

After a loop along the permitted route we returned to the park. As the park filled we moved towards the street to be more visible. I perched myself atop a granite fence post, which allowed me to see over the crowd. The young organizer wondered, into the megaphone, if a single loop was enough, if maybe we needed to do another, but we were only permitted to do one. His voice sounded curious and casual. I wonder what he was thinking in voicing that; I wonder how he felt about the response. From my perspective he remained calm. But in response to the idea that we should march more than we had a permit for, a couple white people started up a chant that raised the anxious energy of the group. I don’t remember the exact words, something along the lines of “It’s not right! Let us go!” I could feel that the potential was there for the energy to build and the crowd to pour into the street, possibly provoking trouble. This wasn’t what the organizer had in mind. “Black Lives Matter,” the organizer called out, trying to regain control over the crowd that was clearly falling into mob mentality. At first, the other cry of impatient anger continued to drown out the organizer. But by the second or third time he called “Black Lives Matter,” I and a few other voices across the park called back “Black Live Matter!” And the crowd quickly shifted to join in, and the energy settled back down.

That's me in the pink pants and black shirt. Photo from NHPR.

This is where my voice matters, I realized. It doesn’t matter who I am or what I’m wearing. What matters is that I listened, that I have trained myself - in this moment at least - to pay more attention to black pain than white anger. It was my job to amplify the voice of this young man when it was being drowned out. That’s what I was there to do, from my granite perch - help maintain the peaceful protest by affirming the leadership of the black organizers over the dangerous entitlement of white anger and anxiety.

While all this was happening, one of the organizers had gone off, likely to converse with the police about the possibility of another loop. After a number of peaceful chants - “No Justice! No Peace!” “This is what democracy looks like!” - she returned, with the information that we could go around the block as long as we stayed on the sidewalk. And so we did, though there was definitely spillover into the street. Again we gathered in the park by the road; again I found myself a granite pillar upon which to perch.

This time, instead of just leading us in chants, the organizers each shared some words, hard to hear across the crowd but from their hearts, expressing their pain and their gratitude and the need for justice and for white people to do more than show up at marches. Between the speakers there would be chanting, and it was often a bit of a challenge for the organizers to regain the attention. One particular moment stands out. A young white man started an anti-cop chant - “All cops are bastards,” perhaps, though I don’t remember for sure. Maybe it was something less insulting of persons and more critical of institutions, such as “No good cops in a racist system!” Regardless, the angry energy rose — or maybe it was just my discomfort? The organizers were trying to give their megaphone to a young woman, but she couldn’t be heard over this chant. I yelled towards the man - “They’re trying to talk!” - but wasn’t heard in the crowd. I tried to start a counter-chant, hoping that might disrupt things enough to hand off to leadership, but no one responded to my “Black Lives Matter!” “She’s trying to talk!” I cried out towards the young man again, hoping that might be heard. Eventually, some folks near him brought it to his attention that it was beyond time to stop his chant so that we could listen to a black woman.

I’m reading that they are starting to attribute a lot of the damage being done in Minneapolis to white supremacist outside agitators. I believe it, and that may be the case there.  Later that day two white men were arrested in Manchester on felony riot charges, after they disrupted some Black Lives Matter protestors outside the police station. But to attribute all violence and destruction to either a) the police, b) outside agitators, c) white supremacists, or d) black pain, is a gross oversimplification that denies the responsibility of liberal white folks, the kind of people who would genuinely go to a Black Lives Matter march because we believe that Black Lives Matter. What I observed in Manchester was white participants, quite likely “liberal allies,” pushing the crowd towards chaos, towards violent discord, towards potential confrontation with the police.

If I am going to give people like that white young man the benefit of the doubt, then I might say that it’s not that they have their own axe to grind with the police but that they are so genuinely enraged at the violence being done to protect their privileges that they can’t contain it, that they are so hurt at the loss of black lives that they must scream out. But regardless of their motivations, they put their need to speak, to lead, over the invitation to listen. As a white person I go to a Black Lives Matter march as an act of solidarity. I follow the lead of the black people and do what I can to support and amplify their voices. If my pain and anger still need an outlet, I find it elsewhere. White people have a lot of privilege to feel safe challenging the cops, to insult and belittle them and call it justice. But it is the black protesters who are more likely to get hurt or blamed. So check yourself. What are you fighting for? And listen.