Nice Racism

The introduction gave me a brief hope that Diangelo had taken her critics to heart and strove to do better. Alas, halfway through, and all of the same problems that plagued White Fragility are evident here. I will give her credit for explaining how many white progressives are doing a lot of damage without realizing it, but I will immediately subtract those points for not including herself in that list and continously virtue signalling about how she is so much better. I also rolled my eyes at her break down of “discourse” and how things like debate are used to minimize issues that POC have. I think I understand her point here, but it is so broadly used as to mean nothing at all.

My chief complaint with DiAngelo is that she structures her books in a way where if you disagree with her, you are proving her point. That is not the way things work. And hand-waving anybody willing to debate an issue as perpetuating the status quo or minimizing suffering is infantiziling black people and removing agency from everybody in the world. We are allowed to debate and discuss issues. The problem arrives when white people start a debate about race without including POC voices or assuming their voices aren't as heavily weighted. That is definitely problematic behavior. But no distinction is made here.

In general, DiAngelo quotes from a whole bunch of books I've already read that are much better, and I would just suggest you read those instead. The rule of thumb here is, if DiAngelo quoted it, it's probably a better book/article, and you would gain more value from just reading that instead.