After reading a recent piece in the Atlantic taking one of several popular negative views on Robyn D’Angelo’s work, I had a few thoughts.
First of all I will get it out of the way: the author John McWhorter seems to have lived a somehow magically isolated experience as a black man in America. “In my life, racism has affected me now and then at the margins, in very occasional social ways, but has had no effect on my access to societal resources; if anything, it has made them more available to me than they would have been otherwise.”
Of course if that’s true, and even the inherited lack of resources and hiring biases have not affected him, more power to him. But certainly this experience and belief colors the article.
I do understand his desire to not be infantilized as somehow weaker and needing special care. Just to give one example, however: at least in my personal experience, I have never met a person of a non-dominant group in America who was excited about being a personal educator and soul representative of their group for coworkers on top of their already demanding workload. Those that have been willing to take on this role seem, unsurprisingly, to prefer choosing when and where they take that on. So I take no issue with suggesting that it’s OK to give people a break and go read a book or go to a lecture by someone who has chosen to be an educator before burdening a coworker or friend.
McWhorter also seems to take one section of the book out of context, claiming that D’Angelo is telling us that “thou shalt not utter” a list of phrases from the book. What he doesn’t include is that these expressions are merely pointers to assumptions the speaker may be making that are worth addressing. D’Angelo then lists the potential underlying assumptions. I don’t see an issue with offering an opportunity to explore what might underlie our language. While perhaps one could infer that she is saying that one must never speak these words, I don’t read that as her intent, although given their relationship to underlying assumptions there are certainly situations where that could seem prudent. The problem is not here in the details. The trick is that, taken as a whole, a much more important issue emerges from her work.
Sin
Of McWhorter’s criticisms there is one in particular with which I strongly agree. I was already struggling with this in the spaces where I discuss or facilitate discussions about race.
Many religions maintain the concept of original sin. Roughly: You are born a bad person. If you ever hope to escape your depravity, you must suffer in precisely the right way. If you suffer in the wrong way, you got no points. If you suffer not enough, you are still a bad person. I have seen all too often the deep wounding that this produces. The Dalai Lama even spoke in puzzlement about Westerners who use a term he could not comprehend: “self-hatred.” The practice of Tonglen had to be re-designed for Westerners because they so frequently struggled with self acceptance that they had to trick themselves by loving someone else first.
This original sin-based approach winds throughout D’Angelo’s work. This is where that leaves many of the white people who are willing to even listen to and consider the effects of racism:
Of course there are plenty who, to avoid this fate, simply wrap themselves in the robes of the persecuted in response to stories about race and talk about how white people are the ones under attack, raging and posturing beside those who self flagellate. Producing either of these effects does not seem particularly helpful.
There is certainly value in, no, for real, facing the results of un-repaired damage to large groups of people based on race. And facing those realities is painful and difficult. It is also easy to avoid if you are in the dominant group (which includes myself). Is there a way that we can grieve together to process the pain and then move on to take action instead of beating ourselves for what hasn’t been done yet? Given that the people who have the most power to actually make change also have the option of ignoring the whole thing, it seems like it would be helpful to create a movement that expresses a positive goal beyond a lifetime of shame.
Grief and shame and other emotions are also legitimate. When D’Angelo turns real displays of emotion and pain into a pathetic weakness in white people, she makes it extremely difficult to join her cause or feel empowered to move through those feelings. It is true that in mixed groups the rage and tears of white people distracts from the conversation at hand and directs support away from black or brown people. However, D’Angelo takes it further: “tears that are driven by white guilt are self indulgent. When we are mired in guilt we are narcissistic.” While it’s true that this processing is best supported by fellow white people, it is equally true that it must be a welcome part of the process. Expressing and deeply experiencing these emotions is an essential first step to transcending them. If we don’t take the time to build a capacity to handle greater levels of emotionality we cannot face difficult realities and without being able to face those realities we cannot change them.
I’m glad more eyes are open. Let’s not waste this moment. Let’s accept that it’s part of the process, take the time to move through the guilt and and pain, and when we’re done hitting ourselves with stone tablets, rejoin the larger group and use those rocks to rebuild.
