Like most antiracist literature, White Fragility spends considerable time telling white people that they’re racist, but with a crucial twist—it’s not their fault. “A racism-free upbringing is not possible,” she writes, “because racism is a social system embedded in the culture and its institutions. We are born into this system and have no say in whether we will be affected by it.” For DiAngelo, white supremacy is like the English language. If you’re born in America, you learn it without trying. Racism, in her view, transforms from a shameful sin to be avoided into a guiltless birthmark to be acknowledged and accepted.
As for the riots of the late 1960s, progressives should not praise them for shocking Americans into action without also noting that they helped elect Richard Nixon president, which progressives certainly did not intend; that they directly decreased the wealth of inner-city black homeowners; and that they scared capital away from inner cities for decades, worsening the very conditions of poverty and unemployment that the rioters were supposedly protesting.
But isn’t this the price of progress? Isn’t there a long tradition of using violence to throw off the shackles of white supremacy, going back to the Haitian revolution and the American Civil War? Didn’t the urban riots of the late 1960s wake Americans up to the fact that racism did not end with the Civil Rights Act of 1965? To start, any analogy to slave rebellions or justified revolutions can be dismissed immediately. Taking up arms directly against those enslaving you is one thing. Looting clothing stores or destroying grocery stores is something else entirely. We must be careful not to confuse the protesters with the rioters. The former are committed to nonviolence. The latter are simply criminals and should be treated as such.