a mystical möbius — curating facts, ideas, text, and media to create a contemplative space.

.

.

Epistemology [how we know stuff]

Truth, as it relates to any shared understandings of how different groups experience ‘race’ in America, is, at best, the result of argumentation and is consensual (and provisional).

We live in a free country. Therefore, I’m free to express erroneous thinking. I’m certain I do express error at times. I am bringing that up now, not because I’m feeling I’ve recently expressed error; rather, because I wanted to point out that John McWhorter is also free to express error—as here, in this NPR story from a year ago: Linguist John McWhorter Says ‘White Fragility’ Is Condescending Toward Black People.

.

.

After agreeing that there is a pervasive system of racism in America, McWhorter wonders if Robin DiAngelo’s approach in her book, White Fragility, is helpful with regard to ending racism:

“But my question is, is it necessary for every good white person to walk around feeling uncomfortable about themselves as abstractly complicit in a racist system before we see political change?”

I surely don’t hear DiAngelo saying that. Her critics’ characterizations often make me wonder: ‘Are they even talking about the same book I read?’

Of course, we are now working as hard as possible politically to dismantle the systemic and institutional artifacts of White supremacist ideology. However, this is not a binary; I’m not sure why McWhorter feels the need to make it one with that straw man.

.

.

Curious critique

McWhorter’s curious reading of DiAngelo is one ungenerous mischaracterization after another. The really striking thing, though, is McWhorter’s apparent tone-deafness to our context that is a product of the entry of DJT and MAGA. I don’t think DJT ever meant to do it—witness his banning of anti-racism/sensitivity training; however, I do give him credit for blowing the lid off the ‘race in America’ discourse. I’m not sure who/what else could have done that so quickly. Some very ugly stuff surfaced, demanding our prompt attention. 

.

.

We live in a time when some significant percentage of Americans do not feel the Civil War was decided properly, and they would like to restart it to produce a different outcome. These days are so fraught with division and negative partisanship that it has become possible to produce a political coalition made up of ordinary Americans, militant White power segregationists, and White Christian nationalists (who served as proxy for millions of White Evangelical Christians), to form MAGA. DJT gave us MAGA‘s idea of ‘America First’ inclusiveness: Richard Spencer and David Duke along with Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Oath Keepers, The Proud Bois, et al.

In saying that, we’re not just talking about the systemic artifacts of racism anymore. No, we’re talking there about the extant forms of White supremacist bigotry/hatred alive and virulent in American society today (e.g., internet radicalization). We’re also talking about a nation willing to play nudge-nudge wink-wink with the ugly and dangerously anti-democratic MAGA phenomenon.

Shadows

I’ve suggested that the racial strife we’re seeing now is the necessary result of failing as a nation to authentically deal with our history. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racism and inequality BAD[!]. Sadly, we never honestly embraced a national process of truth and reconciliation to face and heal from our history. We are, therefore, doomed to continue to suffer from it until we do. 

.

.

Standpoint epistemology [first person experience]

Critical Race Theory uses a powerful tool to help center marginalized voices in the discourse, e.g., story telling, or standpoint epistemology. This tool works in relation to all groups, including whites. While McWhorter stops short of calling DiAngelo a racist, he calls her book racist, claiming it dehumanizes Blacks by somehow making them incapable of dealing with racism themselves, reducing them to helpless children. I don’t know if McWhorter’s error is a product of this fact, but DiAngelo is writing from, and about, a standpoint epistemology that he doesn’t share.

It’s richly ironic that my ‘racial’ group—the group whom CRT correctly claims to have made its experience central in creating ‘Western civilization’—wants nothing to do with being placed in the center of any twenty-first century truth and reconciliation discourse regarding race in America. 

.

.

There are two common themes I find among those who are basically arguing that it’s time to move on from discourse regarding race. First, the arguments all overlook trauma and its role in Americans’ experience of race. The second flows from the first: critics fail to understand DiAngelo’s important point.  

.

tl;dr

I don’t think many people would try to argue against the idea that Whiteness* (and its subsequent White supremacist ideology) has historically traumatized Black people. In her book, White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo indirectly shows that Whiteness has also traumatized white people. The book exposes unaddressed trauma as a part of what prevents collective national reconciliation and healing on the issues of race in America. 

*Whiteness is a modern theological construct (cf. J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account). 

NOTE: This post has an addendum (here).

~~~~~

Next week: more post-truth. Come and see. 

[this post approx. 850 words (3 min. read)]

Your thoughts? 

I never know what I’ve said until I hear the response. 

.

~~~~~