Not Everyone is Agog about "White Fragility"

It's been refreshing to discover that not everyone out there is on board with Robin DiAngelo's best-selling, Must-Read, Very Important Book, White Fragility. 

Though it goes without saying that people on the right, particularly those who are, well, white, might be critical, I was surprised to see that not everyone on the left is on the bandwagon (Matt Taibbi), nor are all DiAngelo's critics white (John McWhorter).

Linked below are their reviews, each followed by a few excerpts that stood out to me:

On White Fragility, by Matt Taibbi 

Favorite lines: 

DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory.

DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly. 

White Fragility is based upon the idea that human beings are incapable of judging each other by the content of their character, and if people of different races think they are getting along or even loving one another, they probably need immediate antiracism training. 

(White priests of antiracism like DiAngelo seem universally to be more awkward and clueless around minorities than your average Trump-supporting construction worker). 

Most disturbing section: 

People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of “anti-black racism” to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other’s careers before they’ve even finished growing?  

“People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I don’t want people like that to keep getting jobs,” one 16 year-old said. “Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives… I love twitter,” wrote a different person, adding cheery emojis.

The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility, by John McWhorter (The Atlantic)

Favorite lines: 

I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract.

The problem is that White Fragility is the prayer book for what can only be described as a cult.

By the end, DiAngelo has white Americans muzzled, straitjacketed, tied down, and chloroformed for good measure—but for what?

A corollary question is why Black people need to be treated the way DiAngelo assumes we do. The very assumption is deeply condescending to all proud Black people. 

In 2020—as opposed to 1920—I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me. Nor do I need wider society to undergo teachings in how to be exquisitely sensitive about my feelings.  

Best lines: 

I cannot imagine that any Black readers could willingly submit themselves to DiAngelo’s ideas while considering themselves adults of ordinary self-regard and strength. Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome.

The sad truth is that anyone falling under the sway of this blinkered, self-satisfied, punitive stunt of a primer has been taught, by a well-intentioned but tragically misguided pastor, how to be racist in a whole new way.

***** 

For more on John McWhorter, here's an interview he did with NPR on the same subject. 

Hamilton Live: Two Questions and an Epiphany

I watched Hamilton Live.

I had never seen the play, so it was all new to me.

I loved the play! I laughed! I cried!

I also had two questions and an epiphany.

My first question was: why did Eliza gasp at the end.

I realize I'm arriving to the party late, so probably most of you have already figured this out. But here's how I'm working it out:

It seemed to me as if that final scene, where everyone was looking back on Hamilton's life, that we were well into the future. At least, that's how it seemed when Elisa was speaking. Her recollections were those of an old woman, looking back.

As she was speaking, Hamilton appears behind her. When she turns to leave, their eyes meet, they smile. He takes her hand and leads her to the end of the stage, facing the audience.

She gasps.

End scene.

End play.

Actors bow.

What did she see? Why did she gasp?

I asked my kids.

One of my daughters Googles it. A suggested answer is that the 4th wall was "sundered."

What's the 4th wall?

I ask Alexa.

She answers (reading from Wikipedia): The 4th Wall is an "invisible, imagined wall that separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this 'wall' the actors act as if they cannot."

Ah. The 4th wall. Sure. Theater people already knew this.

So the 4th wall was sundered. Eliza saw the audience.

But she gasped. Why would she gasp at an audience?

Here's my take, my "epiphany": She gasped, not because she saw an actual audience. That's not worthy of a dramatic gasp. I think what she saw when the "4th wall was sundered" was centuries worth of audiences, of audiences yet to be born, hearing this story. That was a recurring theme during the play--who will tell your story?

I think that's what she saw. I think that's why she gasped. The revolution was not for naught.

The second question: Why was John Adams not included in this telling?

***** 

A brief follow up. Apparently I'm not the only one who has questions about the gasp. After I posted the above reflections on Facebook, a friend sent me the following article from Slate.

"Looking into the Light: Hamilton Movie Ending Explained" 

It's a good theory, but honestly? I like mine better. As one of my friends put it, "a bit more complex and ethereal, transcending time." Well put!