This deliberate and fraudulent mis-definition of critical race theory serves to elide the true source of Republican discontent: the work of influential white women in the economy of antiracist, diversity, equity inclusion training. The right-wing crusade against critical race theory and honest racial instruction in our schools has always sought to identify CRT with all brands of antiracist doctrine, including DiAngelo’s decidedly white-centric version. This whitening of antiracist thought and practice also serves the bad-faith agendas of the defenders of unalloyed white privilege on the right. And this trend marks a reversion to a very well-worn mode of white liberal discourse: the tactical reformulation and repackaging of Black Americans’ experience of racism in a brand of cultural aesthetics earmarked for white consumption. In the recursive confines of self-help culture, much of the post-Floyd reckoning among guilt-prone white Americans tended to train the bulk of attention on white people problems, via unsolicited confessions of white privilege, acknowledgments of white fragility-and even baroque self-critical discussions of how, say, punctuality and the enforcement of workplace deadlines are telltale signs of a white rage for order.įor a large swathe of white liberals, it seems, this is how an antiracist politics takes shape: through the ministrations of self-styled white identity gurus such as DiAngelo, Tema Okun, and Peggy McIntosh, who work in the traditionally female-identified sphere of service-minded corporate management. Rustin’s vision of structural change tends to get crowded out amid the confessional rigors of white self-examination. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate.” Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. In a talk before a gay student group at the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, civil rights leader Bayard Rustin said, “our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. It’s worth recalling that these notions were never among the principal aims of civil rights reformers as they tackled the institutions, laws, and social practices that shored up American apartheid. This reflex has gained additional traction from the broad consensus in centers of white discourse that self-help is a corrective for structural racism. The impulse behind this refrain comes in good faith, but it reflects a larger problem: the need among white people to center themselves in public discussions of race. “It is me” is a mantra among white DiAngeloites. “For all the white people listening right now, thinking I am not talking to you,” DiAngelo said to the caucus, “I am looking directly in your eyes and saying, ‘It is you.’” After George Floyd’s death, sales of race-related books increased by as much as 6,800 percent, and DiAngelo was in high demand. Ten days after George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, Chairman Hakeem Jeffries and Vice Chair Katherine Clark convened a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus designated as a “dialogue about race in America.” One of the speakers was Robin DiAngelo, best-selling author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.
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