“The second unstated assumption in White Fragility — and this is where the book borders on actual racism — is that black people are emotionally immature and essentially child-like. Blacks, as portrayed in DiAngelo’s writing, can neither be expected to show maturity during disagreement nor to exercise emotional self-control of any kind. The hidden premise of the book is that blacks, not whites, are too fragile.”
“In 2020 — as opposed to 1920 — I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me.” McWhorter writes. “Nor do I need wider society to undergo teachings in how to be exquisitely sensitive about my feelings. I see no connection between DiAngelo’s brand of reeducation and vigorous, constructive activism in the real world on issues of import to the Black community. And I cannot imagine that any Black readers could willingly submit themselves to DiAngelo’s ideas while considering themselves adults of ordinary self-regard and strength. Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome.”
As so many on the Left and in academia dogmatically yield to DiAngelo’s spurious notions on race and racism, it’s imperative that we remind ourselves that her absurd assessments are, in fact, racist.
Not only are whites monolithic in all manner of thought and experience, so too are blacks and other minorities, according to DiAngelo. Needless to say, such vapid generalizations are the hallmarks of bias and prejudice.
Rutherford echoed Kendi almost word for word in her Instagram post: “It’s not enough anymore to just be like, ‘I have good intentions. I’m not racist.’ You need to actually take the time to educate yourselves to be antiracist. And that’s where white people are falling short right now,” she told her followers. “Antiracism is the name of the game right now. And that’s it.”
In a recent piece for City Journal, Coleman Hughes argues that DiAngelo’s work is “zealotry disguised as scholarship,” and treats people of color as “a homogenous mass of settled opinion with little, if any, diversity of thought — a kind of CRT-aligned hive mind.”