“Once and for all”? Where should we send the flowers and thank-you cards for your selfless public service? You may just find, as the smoke clears, that Robin DiAngelo is still standing.
The brilliance of the phrase “white fragility” is in its efficiency and its devastating accuracy. I think it could correctly be described as performative: it describes the behavior as it conjures up the behavior.
I found DiAngelo's presentations that I've watched on YouTube to be informative, illuminating, thought-provoking and, believe it or not, positive. I even found them an absolute pleasure to watch and ponder.
And as I took this new pair of lenses out into society, I witnessed incident after incident illustrating the very points she makes, starting of course with the comments under the YouTube video itself.
I wasn't "triggered", I didn't "cry", and I wasn't "insulted". I gasped with recognition, experienced a rueful "oops" moment or two and was grateful for this new perspective.
Your characterization of her general thesis, which is based on what appears to be a lifetime commitment and extensive research, is extremely biased and ignores not only the cartload of statistics she has at her fingertips to back up her assertions, but also her very present good humor, wry self-observations, and obvious empathy. She’s as hard on herself as she is on her audience, if dead-on accurate descriptions of observable behavior even count as “being hard on people.”
Chill, dude. Arguably, one person’s observations can never provide a complete overview of, let alone solution to, any problem, and it’s unrealistic to expect this; but everyone engaged with the same problem approaches it from a unique perspective. Taken together, a full concept can emerge.
What’s important is that she has started a new discussion about racism that invites white people to reflect deeply on behaviors that we probably wouldn't have noticed, which frankly takes the burden off POC for a few minutes. ANYTHING an expert can bring to the table in the fight against systemic racism is welcome, at least to me - as long as it doesn't translate into more inaction.
Valuable critiques can only come from a serious engagement with the ideas and are more than just a knee-jerk, negative reaction. Just calling someone "toxic" is an opinion, which you're as entitled to as anyone, but does nothing to back up your thesis.
Try to approach with the frame of mind that there might be even a grain of truth in what she suggests. The fact that you want to grind her into dust and blow her away speaks much more about you than her. Male fragility, maybe?
