You’ll have to make the connection explicit because I’m not seeing how this is related to your previous comment.
I think the concept of white fragility gets pushback because it’s stupid and racist. If Asian people are touchy about the topic of persistent racism, and I label that, “asian stupidity”, that’s going to get pushback too and it has nothing to do with historical context. It would get pushback because it’s stupid and racist.
Huh, and just a second ago you were saying it was “meaningless”. I don’t think it’s either meaningless or “stupid and racist”. What I think it is is a way of describing a specific—and historically contingent—vulnerability that white people in our society tend to develop due to our socially privileged position in dealing with issues of race.
As I quoted from my cite back in post #7,
Saying that a group is sensitive about a sensitive topic is meaningless standing alone. That’s why I asked you to make the connection explicit. I am not sure if you are saying this sensitivity is particularized to a certain racial group because of their race and have labeled it in a derogatory fashion. Are you? Because your post #316 did not contain the term, “white fragility”.
I agree that it’s not the only one (I paraphrased an online dictionary, fwiw), but it’s the most valid. There’s a difference between a white guy who’s racist and refuses to let black people rent out his vacant apartment and a black guy who doesn’t like white people because he’s tired of living with the legacy of anti-black racism. They come from two entirely different places.
Not sure what your point is here.
Glad you acknowledge that but it didn’t end there - just so we’re clear. What does the Jim Crow era mean to you? What about black codes? Why didn’t professional sports begin to integrate even outside the American South until the late 1940s? Why didn’t the military integrate - again, outside the South as well - until 1948? Why did we still need special acts of congress in 1965, some 100 years after the end of the Civil War? If America had been an egalitarian and colorblind society of individuals all along, then how do you explain that history?
What on earth are you trying to demonstrate here?
What you are talking about is delusional because you are not taking the time to listen to the criticism of non-diverse workplaces. Instead, you seem to jump to conclusions like, “Well I watched that SNL where Eddie Murphy dressed up like a white man, and he got on a city bus and a white people party broke out when the black guy left, and then he went to a bank and a white banker gave him all the money he wanted; that’s never happened to me so racism doesn’t exist anymore!”
Critics of exclusively white boardrooms aren’t saying that CEOs are going to pick some random white guy off the street and make him COO. They are saying that exclusively white boardrooms will tend to perpetuate barriers that keep the boardrooms from diversifying.
No one has claimed that America was an egalitarian or colorblind society all along. America was a racist society for much of its history.
We needed those things because the vast majority of white voters were racist for long periods of time. They voted for racist rules and thus society was racist. Over time, fewer people were racist, the civil rights movement won, and people changed. As they changed society changed with them, and is no longer racist.
You are still eliding the question. What power do white people have over black people that enables only white people to be racist?
Racism actually has nothing to do with power, anyone from any race can be racist, and it does not matter if the person has any power or not. Racism is scorn for other people because of their race and can afflict the lowliest or the mightiest.
I don’t think it’s the most valid. You’ve also switched the example making it less comparable.
Is there a difference between a white guy who is racist and refuses to let black people rent out his vacant apartment and a black guy who is racist and refuses to let white people rent out his vacant apartment? That may not work because you haven’t acknowledged whether you believe a non-white person can be racist.
Maybe they are coming from different places, but they end up in the same one. The black guy doesn’t like individual white people because other white people presumably did something to him. The white guy won’t rent his apartment to black people because the last tenant was black and trashed the place. In both cases, people are being blamed for things they didn’t do because of the color of their skin. If you want to call one “racism” and the other “bigotry”, go ahead, but I don’t see how that helps anything.
How is it better if the black guy does it because there are only three black CEOs?
Regards,
Shodan
Imagine if there were only 3 white CEOs.
Would you feel exactly the same about the issue as you do now?
Well, I don’t think I’d agree that the term “white fragility” is “derogatory” of white people, any more than I would describe terms like “toxic masculinity” or “toxic femininity” or “fragile masculinity” as “derogatory” of men or women.
That is, the particular mindset thus referenced may be a bad thing in some ways, but that doesn’t mean that the people afflicted by it are necessarily bad people.
To be clear, I am indeed following Robin DiAngelo, the source I quoted in the cite, in using the term “white fragility” to refer to the heightened emotional vulnerability and defensiveness that many white people experience when discussing racial issues. To be clear some more, I am definitely not intending that term to be derogatory towards white people themselves (ourselves).
What difference does it make - I’m not getting the apartment either way.
Regards,
Shodan
If you don’t see the difference, then I can’t make you see it.
It really is unfortunate. We could make such progress as a society and as a world if enough people had the ability to see things from other perspectives. Lack of empathy is preventing humanity from improving ourselves. It is truly tragic the amount of potential we are squandering. Maybe after I’m long gone our grandkids will finally be able to figure it out.
Sure, in the same technical way that a gun without bullets is still a gun.
I’m not really worried about the number of guns floating around our cities that are never loaded.
Or maybe there is no difference between “I don’t like you because you are black” and “I don’t like you because you are white”. Disagreeing with which one shows a lack of empathy?
Regards,
Shodan
It’s lack of empathy to discount the life experiences of those that aren’t like you.
It’s wrong for anyone to be racist against any group. It’s also wrong to completely ignore history and to refuse to listen to anyone else’s experiences.