Critical Race Theory, White Fragility, and Oligarchy Conceits
I am reminded a couple times a day, if not more often, that I am racist, a “systemic racist” the worst kind on the planet. So I decided that before taking on Critical Race Theory, I’d read some books of theirs. No fair criticizing books one hasn’t read.
I was, to say the least, surprised to learn many proponents of Critical Race Theory have apparently neglected to read the books from which they quote. I started out with Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist.
I tried to keep an open mind. Turned out I didn’t waste my time.
Ibram X Kendi
Let me start by stating my opinion. (You are free to disagree.) All of us of every race to some degree are racists. We’re like that story of two wolves battling within us. I have a racist wolf inside me and an anti-racist wolf. Which wolf wins? The one we feed, said Billy Graham back in the day. We get to choose. But let’s stop acting like we’re saints, because we aren’t.
I was surprised Ibram X. Kendi would agree with me on this. I’d been informed Critical Race Theory taught only whites are racist. But Ibram X. Kendi, one of the luminaries of Critical Race Theory, seems to think blacks are racist, too, against blacks and against whites, the same way whites are. Kendi isn’t anti-white; he’s anti-racist. I might have walked away impressed had Kendi not wandered off-topic from Critical Race Theory to Critical (Marxist) Theory. The two don’t need to go together. Kendi isn’t an economist. George Floyd’s murder doesn’t prove we need Karl Marx. Marx was white and just as racist as the rest of us. How to Be a Communist would be a different book. Ibram Kendi’s at his best when he’s on topic.
Anti-racism can be a useful topic even for racists.
Because as racist as I am, Blacks have enriched me, and I owe them. I’m not saying this to be woke. I’m only sharing my experience. It’s more than basketball and blues. Blacks know how to battle oligarchies. Here white people are amateurs compared to Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Toni Morrison or Martin Luther King. Even Black fiction — Richard Wright and Walter Mosley have much to teach us, not to mention they write pretty darn good stories. They teach me things white people can’t. And that is why I love to read them. Call me selfish. But their works have left me stronger.
Which leads me to another book. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility,
the tone of which was also a surprise. She seems to have more of a problem with the whites who think they’re woke than with we Neanderthals more willing to acknowledge imperfections. Ms. DiAngelo has a point. Sit through Diversity Training classes. It’s rarely blacks who are annoying. It’s those uppity white Scissors People telling me how every single problem in America is my fault but never theirs when they are just as white as I am. I’d like to hear some nonwhite viewpoints, but white male and female drama queens keep hogging the attention with their all-signal-no-virtue virtue signals. I walk away, and I remind myself who’s paying for these seminars; the oligarchies hire Scissors People, paying to divide us for our failures to go back and change a past oligarchs created. The lesson is oligarchies good; lowly working people bad. None of this does squat to combat racism.
Robin DiAngelo
I set DiAngelo aside, because, for starters, she is white and begs the question when pretending to know how Black people think. But she makes one terrific point. We can benefit by listening, by reading books written by Blacks who understand their situations. We won’t be woke. I’m not sure woke is a desirable objective, but we’ll be smarter. We’ll empathize when empathy’s appropriate. And we’ll know how to put the Scissors People back where they belong while we encourage non-white Rock People and Paper People to flourish.
Racism preserves oligarcies.
To close, we need to revisit the word “racist” itself.
because the word has taken on so many meanings.
The Sixties told us we were “prejudiced.” During the Clinton years, the word morphed into “racist.” Today the mot du jour is “white supremacist.” The problem is that oligarchs and Scissors People serving them excuse themselves and pick and choose the words for their convenience. Thus Rock People are “white supremacists,” Paper People may be “racist,” and Scissors People years ago might have exhibited some prejudice. The oligarchs, of course would never dream they might be prejudiced. They have progressed beyond “woke” and are now massively enlightened, cramming their case for systemic racism and white fragility down our throats. Our plantation-owner oligarchs need a tool to keep us down. They divide us based on race to keep control of their plantations. Racism preserves oligarchies. Most of us deserve better. For our own good, we need to find a way to me more antiracist when we find so many oligarchs annoying.
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DJ Phinney is novelist who writes what he calls Red Car Noir, suspense novels steeped in history we would often rather forget. Phinney is also a civil and mechanical engineer, a Vietnam-era Air Force veteran, a Catholic by faith, and an historian in his free time. Politically he is a centrist who subscribes to neither party, although he likes Ike, and he really-really likes Harry Truman. www.dennisphinney.com
