Reviews of Black Dignity in a World Made for White
I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a Globe Fabricated for Whiteness
Published by Convergent in 2018
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk Nigh Racism
Published by Buoy Press in 2018
Rebecca C. Hong is Senior Manager of Educational Effectiveness and Assessment at Loyola Marymount University.
On September half-dozen, 2018, Bister Guyger, a white female off-duty Dallas police officer entered the domicile of Botham Jean, an unarmed 26-year-one-time black neighbour, and fatally shot him to death. Guyger testified that when she entered the home of Jean, she was "scared to expiry" and shot him with the intention to kill, believing he was a threat and an intruder in her dwelling. Jean was sitting in his apartment, on his couch, eating a bowl of ice cream when Guyger entered and fired two shots that fatally killed him. In recounting the night of the murder during the trial, Guyger became emotional and bankrupt down in tears several times, expressing how she hates herself, hates having to alive with this every solar day of her life, and asks God for forgiveness.
In White Fragility: Why It's And then Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo provides the historical properties of black men being tortured due to claims of white women. In the contempo murder of Botham Jean, the fear of an unarmed blackness homo in his own home led a white adult female to accept his life. Every bit an antiracist scholar, trainer, and writer, DiAngelo challenges white people on their discomfort and fragility in relation to confrontations or discussions effectually racism. She writes,
Whether intended or non, when a white adult female cries over some aspect of racism, all the attending immediately goes to her, demanding fourth dimension, energy, and attending from everyone in the room when they should be focused on ameliorating racism. While she is given attention, the people of colour are all the same once more abandoned and/or blamed. (134)
While Guyger did not explicitly mention in her bawling testimony that her fear of Jean was due to the fact that he was a black man, black communities and people of color take witnessed the repeated killings of unarmed black people at the hands of white police officers. This same script reinscribes the discomfort of white people and white systems around discussions of race. DiAngelo unapologetically calls out white tears used to halt progress on combating racism, tears that re-center whiteness, white guilt, white victimization, and white distress as forms of power and control of the situation. This discomfort is precisely what DiAngelo challenges her readers to confront in her book.
It is no wonder that Austin Channing Brownish states in her book I'm Withal Hither: Black Nobility in a World Made for Whiteness that white people can exist exhausting. Channing Brown weaves her ain personal story with the sober reality of the challenges of existence blackness in America when racism and white supremacy continue to undergird systems and institutions. While Channing Brown is clear that she is not condemning white people, she also conspicuously states that churches, schools, and institutions continue to operate under the assumption that white is not only right, but supreme, meliorate, holy, and even closer to God. She is vulnerable and raw in her writing, toggling betwixt promise and reality, all the while badly fighting confronting bitterness and cynicism that anything will alter in or outside the walls of the church, specially when Jesus is cool with racial diverseness, but America is not. As long every bit white supremacy undergirds the Church, the Church continues to exist the oppressor and complicit in perpetuating otherness and racism and in denigrating black and the personhood of people of color.
While Chocolate-brown offers readers a glimpse into her lived reality, her disappointment with the Church, her exhausting encounters with whiteness, and survival tactics for those navigating similar realities, white readers who are hoping for a how-to guide to be anti-racist or address racism in and outside the Church building will be disappointed. It is refreshing that this volume is non a step-by-footstep guide for whites and/or anti-racists. Information technology is all likewise common for anti-racist white people to expect people of colour to educate them. DiAngelo acknowledges the apathy of white people to do the hard work of agreement the history of racism and racial inequalities and provides a seminal reading for white people to have the initiative to do the work themselves. DiAngelo's White Fragility segues nicely to brainwash and offer applied solutions for white people. She writes things that people of color have been saying, accept grown tired of saying, or have been silenced for saying nearly racism because it has resulted in defensiveness, disengagement, disbelief, and divisiveness from white people. People of color are tired, and information technology is not their job to brainwash white people. This is precisely why DiAngelo'southward volume is a critical read for people desiring to disrupt racism by first doing the hard internal work of addressing white fragility.
As a white scholar and practitioner in antiracism, DiAngelo primarily writes to a white audience by intentionally using collective terms such as "we" and "us" to center the common white dynamic. She begins her book by defining white fragility as a process response that works to reinstate equilibrium to racial condolement and maintain say-so within the racial hierarchy. She asserts that white people have been socialized to believe that they are inherently good, moral people and that any attempt to challenge that internalized belief of superiority and entitlement triggers "discomfort and anxiety" (2). Throughout the book, DiAngelo draws from her own experiences every bit a diversity trainer, encountering the anger and defensiveness of white people, including her own confrontations of being complicit in racism. The careful deconstruction of how white people have been socialized to believe that they are inherently proficient and not-racist is grounded in understanding the white experience or white frame of reference.
DiAngelo does not mince her words and leaves no room for nuances. She confronts white people on their unchecked presuppositions virtually individualism and meritocracy that take led to a common script, a lens through which whites accept come to sympathise and interpret the world. This script has produced a white racial frame composed of unique individuals that is perpetuated by western gild's emphasis on individuality. Farther, this white frame has made it challenging for white people to see their collective identity with shared experiences, benefits, and privileges.
DiAngelo unpacks the social construction of race in the United states of america beginning with the historical and trigger-happy acts of colonization, slavery, internment, and systemic discrimination that non-white people have endured. These acts, stemming from racial prejudice and a belief in whites as superior, have been supported and perpetuated by institutions and ideologies that have benefitted themselves while decision-making and oppressing others. She asserts that "racism is securely embedded in the fabric of our order" and has allowed whites to have "commonage social and institutional power and privilege over people of color" (22). Naming and recognizing this ability and privilege that whites hold in the United states is to admit that whiteness is a position and a condition that has upheld white supremacy. This helps to accelerate racial conversations beyond individual complicitness to an "overarching political, economic, and social system of domination" that exists as a construction and non as incidences or events (28). These political, economical, and social systems dominated by white people are illustrated through representation in governmental positions, as determination-makers of the U.S. entertainment industry, equally educators, and as owners of professional sports teams. Systems and structures dominated by whites accept historically centered whiteness as normative, even after the Ceremonious Rights Act of 1964.
In the 2d 3rd of the book, DiAngelo explores how the socialization of whiteness results in patterns of behavior displayed when whites are confronted with issues of race. This socialization has benefitted whites and prevented them from breaking away from white solidarity that affords unspoken and unchecked advantages in forms of psychological and cloth returns (54). DiAngelo acknowledges that breaking away from white solidarity is to "break rank" and, therefore, expose white privileged positions, advantages, and capital used to keep whites in superior states (58). When talking to white people about race, DiAngelo exposes common "color-blind" statements, such equally "I was taught to treat everyone the same" and "So-and-so only happens to exist black, but that has nothing to exercise with what I'm about to tell you," or "colour-gloat" claims that prove they are free of racism, such equally "I have people of color in my family" and "I was on a mission in Africa" (77-78). These types of statements are fixed upon the notion that the white person cannot be racist if they run across themselves in a practiced/bad binary. Further, these statements demonstrate a lack of understanding of how deeply socialized whiteness is and the deep-seated racism that exists in lodge. DiAngelo views this good/bad binary equally a false dichotomy that makes it incommunicable to talk to white people about race and prevents critical conversations most personal, interpersonal, cultural, historical, and structural assay needed to challenge the larger system.
DiAngelo exposes racial triggers that cause whites to respond defensively when discussions about race illuminate the benefits that they reap in a racist system. From delusions that whites are objective individuals, fear and resentment against people of color (particularly when people of color are advancing in club), internalized superiority, or a level of investment in a organisation that benefits them but is interpreted by whites equally "fair," any claiming to these delusions causes racial stress and disequilibrium for white people. The effort and strategy to regain equilibrium is what DiAngelo calls white fragility, which is oft unconscious, but never beneficial.
The last 3rd of her book focuses on defining, describing, and illustrating white fragility in action. White fragility, as the response of white people when confronted with race and racism is the tool used to maintain white superiority, control, and advantage, contributes to the stagnation of systemic racial transformation. It takes a cocky-protective and defensive opinion that blames the victim of racism for their discomfort. The author provides examples of white fragility in activity and outlines feelings, behaviors, and claims white people make when their racism is showing. Drawing from her experience equally a diversity facilitator and consultant, DiAngelo has witnessed feelings such as anger, guilt, silence, and shame transpire into behaviors such as crying, physical and emotional withdrawal, denial, arguing, focusing on intentions, avoiding, or seeking absolution when white people are confronted with their racist behavior. The justification for these feelings and behaviors comes from underlying claims such as knowing people of color, feeling misunderstood, focusing on their intention versus the impact of their words or deportment, or being the victim of someone playing the race card. More securely embedded in these assumptions are the implications that good people can't be racist or that having friends of color means y'all can't be racist. These tactics, in improver to flipping the script and pointing out the other person as the wrong-doer, are tactics white people utilise to absolve themselves of being racist.
The interplay among feelings, behaviors, claims, and assumptions that DiAngelo asserts operates to forestall racial progress from occurring, protecting racism and racial command. She states that the only chance of offer feedback to white people on racism without triggering white fragility is "not to requite information technology at all" (123). DiAngelo acknowledges that offering feedback to white people to combat racism surfaces their white fragility and punishes "the person giving feedback and presses them back into silence" (125). For people of colour, offering this feedback has harsher consequences for playing the "race card" and may result in white tears, a common manifestation of white fragility, especially in women.
DiAngelo begins her book by unpacking what whiteness is and providing an account of how whiteness has been institutionalized throughout history and used every bit a form of supremacy. Throughout the capacity, she lays a foundation for how whiteness has been socialized into the American psyche as the norm. Challenging the norm is to be throwing off the social equilibrium of white supremacy. When whiteness is challenged, white fragility will emerge as a form of maintaining social say-so, power, and the struggle toward racial consciousness. Progress volition be interrupted and shutdown.
DiAngelo concludes White Fragility past offering a mode to disrupt the electric current racial image. This transformed prototype begins with how racism manifests, non if racism manifests (138). She challenges white people to respond to feedback on their unaware racist behaviors with humility, interest, gratitude, and a posture to listen, reflect, repent, believe, procedure, and seek more understanding. This paradigm is centered on openness and humility and holds the power to transform individuals and systems that have benefitted from systemic racism. It places the onus on white people to educate themselves, be uncomfortable, discuss their ain internalized racial superiority, and invest effort in interrupting their own white fragility. DiAngelo recognizes that in society to break from perpetuating racial inequality, white people need to have courage to intermission from white solidarity, a arrangement that has afforded them unearned privileges, and exist accountable for their own racial growth. This is non the responsibleness or burden of people of colour.
On Oct ane, 2019, Amber Guyger was plant guilty of murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison. While prosecutors idea Guyger deserved 28 years in prison house, corresponding to the historic period Botham Jean would accept been when Guyger was convicted, it took the jury two hours of deliberation to land on 10 years with eligibility for parole under Texas law after serving five years. The sentencing resulted in outrage and cries of injustice outside the courtroom, but what transpired inside the courtroom is what caught anybody'southward attention.
In his victim-argument, Brandt Jean, Botham Jean'south brother, extended forgiveness to Guyger, citing his Christian organized religion. Facing Guyger, Brandt Jean told her, "I love you every bit a person, and I don't wish anything bad on you." He then turned to the judge and asked if information technology would exist okay to hug Guyger, which Tammy Kemp, the blackness female judge, allowed. Guyger rushed toward Brandt Jean equally he stepped off the stand up, and the two hugged in a dramatic moment. Cries were audible in the courtroom. Judge Kemp also and then proceeded to hug Guyger and offering her a Bible.
What the public witnessed between Brandt Jean and Bister Guyger has been referred to as an act of reconciliation. Still, this is where Austin Channing Brownish'southward argument that racial reconciliation alone is bereft rings loudly. Racial reconciliation in the church building, besides as in Christian higher teaching institutions, often appears in the grade of tone-policed cross-racial dialogues. These forms of racial reconciliation come at the expense of people of color didactics white people about racism and supplant any true structural or systemic change. Channing Brown asserts that when Christians talk about love in relation to discussions around race, dear is translated past whiteness as the expectation for people of color to extend grace, patience, and niceness. But when do anger, transformation, and justice have a role in the chat? Is it no wonder that people of colour are wearied?
Endless viral comments surrounding Brandt Jean'south mettlesome act of love, forgiveness, and grace toward the person who murdered his brother quickly elicited a mix of praise, acrimony, and criticism from the public. Christians and non-Christians alike praised Brandt for extending an olive co-operative and demonstrating an extraordinary instance of love and forgiveness. Christians and non-Christians alike remained outraged that another black life was violently taken at the easily of someone who chose non to dignify his humanity. It is moments like these that point to the need for Chocolate-brown's powerful memoir as a reminder to the world that the imago Dei, the prototype of God, is reflected in black bodies. It is likewise in these glaring moments of unearned love and forgiveness that DiAngelo's accuse to white people to break from the apathy of whiteness and put in the work to demonstrate that yous care about the dignity of others is timely. DiAngelo reminds her readers that breaking away from white solidarity and interrupting racism comes at a toll to white people. However, the pick of white people to remain blah to racism and complicit in perpetuating systemic inequality has always resulted in a high cost to people of color, sometimes their lives.
The murder of Botham Jean is a reminder that racial progress still falls in the hoped-for and not-yet category, referred to by Channing Brownish equally a shadow of promise. Channing Brown reinforces this liminal reality in her letter of the alphabet to her unborn son enclosed in her book. While her letter is filled with hope and excitement, these words will band truthful until a transformational racial paradigm is a reality and until all humanity is valued equally: "Nosotros would rather wonder about your humanity than ruminate on the means the world will try to take that abroad from you" (163). Brownish'southward memoir closes with an elusive and prophetic hope for the world and for Christian institutions that merits to be anti-racist. She challenges u.s. to stand up on the side of justice and reconciliation, that is, the side of the Gospel.
Cite this article
Rebecca Hong, "Blackness Dignity / White Fragility —An Extended Review", Christian Scholar's Review, 49:3 , 281-286
cooneythujered1941.blogspot.com
Source: https://christianscholars.com/black-dignity-white-fragility-an-extended-review/
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