The Racist Profiteer
I want you to think about the likelihood that some of the leading white anti-racist voices are using this unique opportunity in Western culture to simultaneously admit to being racist, to do so as a virtue and to profit from it.
Actual racists like Robin DiAngelo are making small fortunes — not in spite of being racist, but BECAUSE they’re very much, very racist.
I’ll come back to this point, but first, I have my own admission to make.
I admit it: when I was a kid, I was an arsonist. I never burned down buildings or hurt anyone, but I did set a lot of fires in abandoned lots and in the woods at the end of my street.
I look back at my time as an arsonist with deep regret. My not-good-enough-excuse is that I was young and bored. I can’t un-set those fires. But I can be a vocal advocate to call other people to confess their own arsonist tendencies.
Now that I’ve revealed my ugly past, I think we can agree that I’m in the redemptive phase of my journey. Of course, I’m still an arsonist! However, with my new status, it goes without saying that I am now in a position to directly call out every man: it’s time to admit that you’re an arsonist too, guys.
I think we can all remember times when we saw a pile of leaves and thought, “aw man, that will go up in flames so quick!”
Right?
Or remember stealing your mom’s hairspray to start a fire in the woods, and then throwing in the can to watch it explode? Exciting, maybe even arousing, for sure — but more importantly, we owe society the admission that we did these things.
I know some of you men aren’t ready to make this admission. You are emotionally and maybe even financially invested in keeping your arson a secret. But your reluctance to make this admission is proof that you are still very much an arsonist!
Every denial is a new injury against the victims of arson. The healing can’t begin until every man admits that when he was a boy, he lit things on fire and maybe even got some sexual gratification out of it.
If you’re saying that you’re not an arsonist, you fail to understand that it’s not enough to not be an arsonist. You have to be an anti-arsonist. Arson is a serious problem that causes destruction and death. If you’re not an anti-arsonist, and you’re not admitting that you are an arsonist, you are part of the problem. YOU are propping up arson. YOU are responsible.
Know who’s not responsible? People who have died or had their property burned by this society’s systemic arson problems.
Don’t forget: I am an arsonist. I will always be an arsonist. I know all of the lies and methods that arsonists use to deny and cover up their arson.
When men fail to admit that to their arson, it’s what I call “male-impotence.”
Men who can’t confess are showing the kind of weakness and powerlessness that made them light things on fire to begin with. You see, it’s all very neat and pathological. My own cathartic admission also requires that EVERY other man stand with me, and admit that they can only orgasm while knowing that something is on fire, and they lit that fire. Otherwise: they’re just showing their male impotence. Right?
DiAngelo’s Confession
If this seems like a weird, stilted and completely self-indulgent admission, then you’re not wrong.
Similarly, admitting that you’re actually a racist is not a virtue. But DiAngelo’s boldest admissions are shockingly racist and reveal that she is, indeed, not *just* the kind of generic, unavoidable racist that she asserts all white people must be, but an *actual* racist, who is fearful of black people in a way you might expect Emmett Till’s accuser to be.
This is a direct quote from DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility:
For example, I was invited to the retirement party of a white friend. The party was a pot-luck picnic held in a public park. As I walked down the slope toward the picnic shelters, I noticed two parties going on side by side. One gathering was primarily composed of white people, and the other appeared to be all black people. I experienced a sense of disequilibrium as I approached and had to choose which party was my friend’s. I felt a mild sense of anxiety as I considered that I might have to enter the all-black group, then mild relief as I realized that my friend was in the other group. This relief was amplified as I thought that I might have mistakenly walked over to the black party!
Reading this passage in conjunction with other parts of DiAngelo’s book — where she seems to exemplify the “struggle” of being aware of racism she would foist on everyone else, it becomes clear that she’s desperately hoping what she says is true: that every white person has the same ugly thoughts and beliefs as herself.
Admitting to her own racism is somehow all the proof she needs that every white person shares the same shameful discomfort of having to share the world with black people. Openly admitting her racist tendency is probably a fine thing, but the fineness loses some luster when it’s accompanied by riches and accolades.
DiAngelo is one of the top selling authors of the past couple years. She’s a millionaire several times over from book sales alone. She also engages in corporate diversity trainings — telling people from Exxon that they too are racist, like her, and getting something like $10,000 a pop for the privilege.
Would we be so congratulatory and financially compensatory of admitted arsonists? I hope not. What message would that send to would-be arsonists?
This admission is not much of a sleight of hand, but it seems to work among a certain socio-economic group of upper middle class, white baby boomer women who are probably just as racist as DiAngelo.
Zooming out further, it becomes clear that DiAngelo’s whole operating system, her career and her book are just band aids that quivering-lipped guilty-consciences can apply for a moment of self-soothing. If we’re all racist together, we can avoid being racist alone, I suppose.
For the rest of us who would be at most confused about a white, retirement-age coworker inviting us to a black bbq… this shtick is pure nonsense, and off-putting — and not for the reasons that DiAngelo would have you believe. It’s not out of fragility that we should be appalled at DiAngelo’s admitted inner racist.
No, reading DiAngelo’s casual admission of being an actual racist is jarring — and her admission of being uncomfortable or unable to, for instance, “hide my surprise that the black man is the school principal” is almost comical.
For all of DiAngelo’s posturing as a woke-interlocutor and race-expert, the persona that peeks out of the pages of White Fragility has the y’all stained, race-deafness of Paula Deen.
You can read many of her passages in Paula Deen’s southern drawl and the tone of the book comes across much differently, or perhaps more accurately. Would we heap praise on Paula Deen for making the same kind of admission that DiAngelo does? Of course not!
Is that because Paula Deen is an actual racist, and DiAngelo is a regular white person racist? You tell me. And then tell me again. And then explain the fucking difference.
No matter which racist white woman is the narrator, her book presents a false choice, of having to either join DiAngelo in the ranks of the racist, or to not admit being racist, and somehow therefore keep being racist.
I’m not joining DiAngelo, for obvious reasons. I won’t throw my hands up and cave into her naked demands to have company as a racist, and therefore give her comfort. She is a racist and I won’t kneel besides her. It’s not because I too am racist, but because I think she’s doing a great harm to black people while simultaneously enriching herself ALL while openly admitting and earnestly displaying her racist tendencies.
