I am officially white in the US. Never mind that none of my diverse ancestors were when they arrived here. All of them got promoted by Whitey later on, with a plan to make the Irish and so on enemies of Blacks. Fie on Whiteness, especially White Fragility, the inability to discuss white complicity in systemic racism, in any but abstract terms.
I have refused to be co-opted into oppression thus, but I cannot stop passing, nor can I undo my privilege on my own. I can only resist, and try to interrupt Whitey's narrative when I can, as in this Diary series and supporting our recently-established anti-racist majority.
Race is the fundamental koan of US society, pervading absolutely everything for centuries. Before there was a US, it was fundamental to all of the European empires in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific.
Do not be proud of yourself and devalue others.
Every Buddha and every Ancestor realises that he is the same as the limitless sky and as great as the universe. When they realise their true body there is nothing within or without; when they realise their true body they are nowhere more upon the earth. There is nothing to be proud of and nothing to be devalued.
Kyojukaimon, Giving and receiving the Precepts of the Buddhas
Denial of your complicity just makes it that much worse.
All the evil committed by me is born of greed, anger, and delusion, which have no beginning. All the evil is caused by my body, mouth, and mind. I now confess everything wholeheartedly.
I live within the system, but I do my best not to be part of the system.
We live in the world as if in the sky, just as the lotus blossom is not wetted by the water that surrounds it.
Truth is the fundamental koan in Buddhism. Non-duality is the fundamental koan. Each of the Precepts is the fundamental koan. We claim to have 84,000 versions of the fundamental koan, like a jewel cut with 84,000 facets (a physical impossibility, not to be taken literally) such that looking through any one of them reveals the same heart of the jewel. For today's purposes, the most fundamental koan is
I could be wrong.
This is also the most fundamental principle of the scientific method. You must say
I could be wrong.
about your most cherished conjectures, and work not only to support them, but to falsify them in every way imaginable.
For example, we still have no idea what dark matter is, having falsified every testable conjecture on it. We continue working on how to test some others, or possibly to invent new ones, like Max Planck solving the Ultraviolet Catastrophe by positing emission of discrete photons, the first hint of quantum mechanics. We have falsified every aspect of "race science" and of the "Curse of Ham" theology once used to justify enslaving human beings as property, and along with them every element of Creationism or Intelligent Design, and also racist Starve the Beast economics and Global Warming Denial, after the whole long string of self-serving corporate lies from lead poisoning denial to Global Warming.
Denying the Buddha Nature in others is the greatest cause of karma in the world—poverty, oppression, lack of health care, tyranny, civil wars, and all the rest. Consider this modern version of the Parable of the Burning House.
Does Donald Trump have the Buddha Nature? If you say Yes, the house is on fire. If you say No, the house is still on fire. What can you say?
Oh, Yes. The Book
White Fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism, by professional diversity trainer Robin DiAngelo.
Years ago DiAngelo was flummoxed by whites who could discuss systemic racism in the abstract, but who seized up as soon as any of their own behavior was mentioned. She has learned not to take it personally, and has found out about a lot of what is going on with most whites who think there is nothing racist about them. These are not the overt racists like the Klansmen we looked at last week, but those brought up in a pervasively racist culture and legal system, who feel entitled to deny any responsibility whatsoever for any of it, to be angry and offended when their own behavior is even mentioned politely and with empathy and concern.
She wants to teach whites to be willing to falsify their assumptions, starting by not taking it all personally. This is going to be a huge part of our long-delayed conversation on race, and a critical one.
An essential part of science is defining your terms as you will use them in your investigations, regardless of what the same words might mean elsewhere. An essential part of science denial is not doing so, a process known in science as "hand-waving". It is not enough to have abstract definitions, like in the beginning of Euclid.
A point is that which has no part.
What counts is behavior, as mathematicians have been finding out for millennia. The essential things about the behavior of points in Euclid are constructions, of line segments, circles, and intersections.
This can be called the Feynman Principle, after Nobelist Richard Feynman's father, who taught it to Richard when they were observing bird behavior.
So let us look at some behavioral definitions.
White Fragility
A range of defensive responses to the mere suggestion that being white has meaning, and all attempts to call attention to every white person’s share in systemic racism. Worst of all is asking them to examine themselves for such feelings: anger, fear, guilt,argumentation, silence, withdrawal.
White fragility functions as a form of bullying...White fragility keeps people in line and “in their place”...It may be conceptualized as the sociology of dominance.
Identity Politics
The focus on the barriers specific groups face in their struggle for equality. We have yet to achieve our founding principle, but any gains we have made thus far have come through identity politics.
All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been accomplished through identity politics: women’s suffrage, the American with Disabilities Act, Title 9, federal recognition of same-sex marriage. A key issue in the 2016 presidential election was the white working class. These are all manifestations of identity politics.
Prejudice
Opinions about groups of people based on partial, often incorrect, information.
Discrimination
Overt harmful actions based on prejudices.
Racism
Systemic racism
a carefully interlocked but adaptable construction defined in law and custom to keep Blacks down at all times, together with whatever segments of society have attracted the ire of the racists.
NOT simply intentional acts of racial discrimination committed by immoral individuals.
White Women's Tears
This term refers to all the ways, both literally and metaphorically,that white fragility manifests itself through white people’s laments over how hard racism is on us.
White women’s tears in cross-racial interactions are problematic for several reasons connected to how they impact others. For example, there is a long historical backdrop of black men being tortured and murdered because of a white woman’s distress, and we white women bring these histories with us.
Trust
I have asked many colleagues just exactly what my fellow white people mean by the call for trust...I believe that what it comes down to is this: need to trust that you won’t think I am a racist before I can work on my racism.
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Don’t judge
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Don’t make assumptions
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Assume good intentions
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Speak your truth
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Respect
In the white fragility discourse, none of these terms is defined,so in practice fragile whites can claim violations whenever they get upset about anything.
Ideologies
Good-Evil Binary
Only bad people are racist.
So you can't talk about my racist behavior without implying that I am evil.
Meritocracy
Anyone can succeed via hardwork and dedication. Racism does not hold blacks back; only lazinessand stupidity do.
Entitlement
Michelle Fine: Whiteness accrues privilege and status; gets itself surrounded by protective pillows of resources and/or benefits of the doubt.
Individualism
Each of us is a unique individual, and our group memberships, such as race, class, and gender, are irrelevant to our opportunities. Failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character.
This means no personal responsibility for anything to do with systemic racism.
Objectivity
It is possible to be free of all bias.
Racists then claim that they are free of bias, and that their prejudices are simply observed facts.
We can only observe the world through our cultural lens. An objective lens tells us that we could be wrong; the prejudiced lens claims to be absolutely, necessarily correct.
Excuses
Whites are the norm; everyone else is deviant. Somebody’s race matters, but not ours.
Racism needed to be reduced to simple, isolated, and extreme acts of prejudice. Southerners were evil, ignorant hating segregationists. Northerners were not. Then pointing out complicity in a racist system is an attack on personal morality that hearers feel they must defend themselves against.
The good/bad binary makes it nearly impossible to talk to white people about racism, what it is,how it shapes all of us, and the inevitable ways that we are conditioned to participate in it. The good/bad binary made it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand—much less interrupt—racism.
If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I place myself on the “not racist”side, what further action is required of me? This worldview guarantees that i will not build my skills in thinking critically about racism or use my position to challenge racial inequality.
“Color-blindness” is a copout meant to end any discussion. So is “color-celebration”, the pretense that having black friends or any other tenuous link to minorities of any kind is enough. DiAngelo dissects many more.
But all is not lost. There are ways in past these defenses.
In my work to unravel the dynamics of racism, I have found a question that never fails me. This question is not “Is this claim true, or is it false?”...Instead I ask, “How does this claim function in the conversation?” These claims exempt the person from any responsibility for or participation in the problem.
None of this fools the victims of racism.
The feedback I have heard repeatedly from people of color is that when they hear a white person claim to have been taught to treat everyone the same, they are not thinking, “All right! I am now talking to a woke white person!” Quite the opposite; some version of eye-rolling is taking place as they sign the white person off as unaware and brace themselves for yet another exchange based in white denial and invalidation.
The worst is “Focusing on race is what divides us,” so we mustn’t have this long-suppressed conversation.
I have heard this response many times in the context of cross-racial discussions, most often at the point in which white racial power is named. Many whites see the naming of white racial power as divisive. For them, the problem is not the power inequity itself; the problem is naming the power inequity.
Doing the Work
People who do not identify as white may also find this book helpful for understanding why it is so often difficult to talk to white people about racism.
People of color cannot avoid understanding white consciousness to some degree if they are to be successful in this society, yet nothing in dominant culture affirms their understanding or validates their frustrations when they interact with white people.
It was one of Hegel's few valid insights that masters care nothing about the feelings of their servants, but the servants have to be aware of everything going in in the minds of the masters. (Herr und Knecht/Master-Slave Dialectic)
When white people ask me what to do about racism and white fragility,the first thing I ask is, “What has enabled you to be a full,educated, professional adult and not know what to do about racism?”It is a sincere question. How have we managed not to know, when theinformation is all around us?
Next, I say, “Do whatever it takes for you to internalize the above assumptions.” I believe that if white people were truly coming from these assumptions, not only would our interpersonal relationships change, but so would our institutions.Our institutions would change because we would see to it that they did.
The final advice I offer is this; “Take the initiative and find out on your own.”
Break with the apathy of whiteness, and demonstrate that you care enough to put in the effort...Consider racism a matter of life and death (as it is for people of color) and do your homework.
Say you're sorry when you make a mistake. Not
I'm sorry if…
or
I'm sorry but…
and then ask how you can do better.
We are never finished.
Always we must be disturbed by the truth.
The journey is hindered by arrival but definitely not hindered by non-arrival.
Dogen Zenji
Strengthening ourselves and becoming less fragile
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Racism is the norm rather than an aberration. Feedback is key...How you give me feedback is irrelevant—It is the feedback I want and need...I am perfectly safe and can handle it.
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Thank you.
Moving Forward
White suburban women, we are told, got a kick in the face this year, after decades of believing that racism was over. Then they saw police murders on TV with their own eyes for the first time. For others, it was some particular cruelty of the Trump Maladministration, like kids in cages or covid. So this particular facet of fragility is beginning to break down in real time. If they voted for any part of it, this is on them.
I am so glad that Joe the President and our mixed-race VP Lotus Blossom Harris and Dr. Jill and all the rest of us are taking the lead in the long-delayed but now-expanding conversation about race in the US, and in the dismantling of systemic racism, delayed by Republican Expanded Southern Strategy intransigence and minority rule based on our intentionally gerrymandered Constitution.