A juggernaut of cringe
Matt Taiibi has a hilarious piece on a new book by Robin DiAngelo.
Nice Racism, the booklike product released this week by the “Vanilla Ice of Antiracism,” Robin DiAngelo, begins with an anecdote from the author’s past.
I just have to interrupt to say how much I love “booklike product.”
She’s in college, gone out to a dinner party with her partner, where she discovers the other couple is, gasp, black. “I was excited and felt an immediate need to let them know I was not racist,” she explains, adding: “I proceeded to spend the evening telling them how racist my family was. I shared every racist joke, story, and comment I could remember my family ever making…”
Ah the origin story. She was a jackass therefore she gets to patronize the rest of us from now until forever.
No shit, the reader thinks. Instead of trying to amp down her racial anxiety out of basic decency, this author fed hers steroids and protein shakes, growing it to brontosaurus size before dressing it in neon diapers and parading it across America for years in a juggernaut of cringe that’s already secured a place as one of the great carnival grifts of all time. Nice Racism, the rare book that’s unreadable and morally disgusting but somehow also important, is the latest stop on the tour.
Another love-object – “the rare book that’s unreadable and morally disgusting but somehow also important.”
Reading DiAngelo is like being strapped to an ice floe in a vast ocean while someone applies metronome hammer-strikes to the the same spot on your temporal bone over and over. You hear ideas repeated ten, twenty, a hundred times, losing track of which story is which. Are we at the workshop where Eva denies she’s a racist because she grew up in Germany, or the one where Bob and Sue deny they’re racist by claiming they think of themselves as individuals, or the one where the owning-class white woman erupts because no one will validate her claim that she’s not racist, because she’s from Canada?
She’s good comedy-fodder, if nothing else.
The impression I’m getting (I am NOT going to read this book) is that the criticism that people like DiAngelo are all about making white people feel guilty and bad about themselves is a little off the mark.
Instead, it seems to be more about making white people feel guilty and GOOD about themselves; the “guilt” part is almost a formality, a bit of ritual that entitles one to feel that “I’ve done the work” and am now “one of the good ones.” Why. even Robin DiAngelo was once a Clueless Person, and look at her now!
It reminds me of how some Christians approach the concept of sin: that once you embrace the concept that “we’re all sinners,” then you are one of the redeemed ones and can feel good about yourself. You don’t even necessarily have to actually DO anything differently. After all, it’s not like Robin DiAngelo is stepping aside to let nonwhite voices carry on the conversations about race — she’s making a very nice living for herself being a very prominent voice on the subject.
Screechy, I think that’s on the mark, but I think the only one DiAngelo wants to make feel good about themselves is her. It’s a festival of righteousness, showing us how much better she is. She would like to make us feel bad about ourselves, because that makes her even better. She can transcend whiteness and soar above us, looking down on the awful Karens. (To be honest, I don’t know if she has ever used Karen; that’s more ain interpretation. I also haven’t read her books; I am going only on excerpts.)
Yes. Wallow in guilt for the good feelz.
I found White Fragility in a Little Free Library the other day and I am going to read it, or at least some of it, to get a more detailed picture of how bad it is.
We have this little ritual in our organization in which we “acknowledge” the tribes whose land our buildings sit on at the beginning of all-staff presentations. It’s always bugged me for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, but I think the issues I have with it are twofold: first, while it’s certainly important to understand what white people did to Indians, and what the current consequences are, the “acknowledgement” seems performative, and doesn’t do anything to help people today; and second, by talking about certain specific tribes as the “original” inhabitants of the land, it infantilizes the people in the tribes by ignoring the fact that they had a history that goes a long way back before white people barged in–tribes merged, split up, warred, intruded, made and broke alliances, just like people everywhere have always done, even if most of that history is lost.
Interesting. There are billboards and signs and such around here (Seattle) acknowledging that this whatever it is is on land that originally belonged to whoever it was, and…while I don’t disagree with the content at all, the billboards and signs put me off in some way. I think “performative” is probably the way.
I wonder if there’s a better way to do it. Maybe substantive information installations? Genuine history lessons instead of a slightly glib slogan? History written by the descendants of the displaced people for preference.
I always feel slightly guilty for feeling slightly put off.
iknklast: For even more specificity, I’d say that it’s not precisely trying to make herself feel good by having everyone recognize her virtue. Rather, it’s reducing her own guilt by making literally everyone else guilty of the same sin. That way she’s normal. Racism has to be inevitable, because that way she’s not at fault. You can see this manifest in her repeated claims that knowing that one is a racist shouldn’t cause discomfort. She needs to believe this of herself. Of course, she also craves acknowledgement from everyone else that she’s normal and not a racist racist, so she evangelizes original sin.
It’s a very Christian neurosis.
Yeah, and I think with an emphasis on what people need today, and why the US government owes it to them. Like this.
Well put.
Something I learned from reading the New York Times is that any story about something enlightening that happened at a dinner party is in fact fiction.
As are most reported conversations with taxi drivers.
@WaM #4
Similar in Australia, where we have a “Welcome to Country” ceremony, where Aboriginal elders welcome us onto their land. It is a sort of cringy sharing, but what blew my socks right off was I recently visited my Granddaughter’s Primary School and each day begins with a video “Welcome to Country”. I thought once I had been welcomed, that was it. If you immigrate here I may say “Welcome to Australia” on our first meeting, but why would I repeat that every time we meet, for as many years as we meet?
Many meetings now also begin with these, or similar words:
‘I would like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we today, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.’
Again, performative feel good words that have done nothing to overcome the inherent bias of the system.
I think I wise person once said “Actions speak louder than words”.
There’s also a failure to acknowledge many indigenous peoples displaced and murdered earlier displaced peoples (humanity has been doing this forever)… “Noble savages” do not and never have existed; it’s only now that we’ve decided this is a bad thing and we need to stop doing it.
That moral technology is one of the greatest innovations of the past four centuries.
Interesting discussion, but I’m going to comment on WaM @4 onward.
I’ve attended a smoke ceremony in Australia where a local tribal elder lit a fire and encouraged us to waft the smoke over ourselves as part of a welcoming and cleansing ceremony. While we did this, she talked about the history of her people in the area, focusing largely on the negative effects of colonisation it has to be said.
In NZ I’ve attended a ceremony on a Marae as well as many smaller ceremonies involving Maori customs as part of conventional conferences or meetings. Practices and intent have changed over the course of my life. As a general rule, in my early life any involvement or discussion of Maori culture, history and involvement in society was generally tokenistic, patronising and performative. Wheel out a Kapa Haka group to sing a song or two and maybe perform a haka. But give Maori real time? Actual say in events? yeah, nah. More recently, and at an accelerating pace, it has become routine for a large number of meetings or events, including those with no specific Maori involvement, to have a welcome, or Mihi, conducted in Maori. Often this is done by a Pakeha (non-Maori – usually white) person. public and private buildings or facilities are increasingly routinely given primary Maori names and local Iwi or Hapu are consulted about the design and name. I’m sure the quality of that consultation varies in quality – but it is happening, and less of it is nakedly performative. Maori is increasingly spoken on certain broadcasters, notably Radio New Zealand National.
This is all against a background of very real change in how the Treaty of Waiting is now regarded. Increasingly, legislation has required specific consideration of Treaty obligations that apply to Government Departments and more generally under legislation governing planning and resource management. We have a long running quasi-court like body, the Waiting Tribunal, which can hear grievances relating to current and historic matters and make non-binding recommendations to the Government for action and redress.
All of this has been, and to an extent still is, controversial. It has had the effect of mainstreaming not just performative nods to Maoridom and Maori culture, but also vey real positive action and movement of attitudes. There’s a long way to go to even come close to ‘making things right’ though. Frankly I don’t think it’s possible to ever entirely do so. I’m not one for wallowing in white guilt – personal or collectively. I didn’t invade the country, do the bad things, and I have nowhere else to go. What I can personally do is agree that there are substantive (and yes, performative) things that I can do to improve matters.
Without substantive action, the performative means nothing and is just horrible and cringeworthy.
Some other cringe-worthy things: The British government is now trying to get schoolchildren throughout the nation to sing an excruciating (both verbally & musically) song entitled ‘One Britain, One Nation’, which includes the line “We are British and we have one dream / To unite all people in one great team,” and has its burthen “strong nation, great nation”. This shortly after the government published a thoroughly dishonest & shoddy report on race in Britain which pretty well denied the existence of institutional racism.
My father, late in his life, became a registered member of a Native American tribe. I don’t remember which tribe it was; there were two potential groups of tribes that were applicable. He may have gone to one powwow, open to the public events, but maybe not. It is possible I could also become a registered member of the same tribe.
It was, for most of my life, a curiosity, something interesting about me, but not something important. I knew nothing about the tribe or its history or current status, nor even the correct name. It’s just something on a genealogy chart.
More recently, I’ve been bothered by the whole “bloodline” and “blood quantum” concepts in making statements about identity. I don’t think identity is very important anymore, and Native American identity has become a mess of laws and rules and tribal regulations that do little to help the people they were intended to help. Lots of people in certain parts of the country claim Native ancestry, but it’s just a curiosity, like a claim that an ancestor fought in some war.
It bothers me that someone with the “correct” bloodline can produce “authentic”, “certified” art, but someone without that bloodline, but who has studied the art and the traditions for years, creates work that is not officially “authentic”. It bothers me in general that ancestry trumps knowledge. I don’t know what the Right Thing is for attempting to make amends for the treatment of the Native population, but the existing mechanism really seems to have gone off the rails.
@Roj, Rob,
Thanks for the perspective. I was thinking of New Zealand as a possible model, but I have a very superficial knowledge of what happens there (having spent all of two weeks in country three years ago). We have (mostly unfulfilled) treaty obligations in the US, and those are supposed to be the law of the land. I wonder now if the performative is a useful (though not necessary) precursor to the substantive.
Jeeeeeeez. Just imagine being that black couple!
Seconding Roj #9. Reminds me of The Chaser on the topic of homeowners making performative mentions of aboriginal ownership of land but doing nothing about it… And this is where I’d link it if I had found it.
“the “acknowledgement” seems performative”
So perhaps we now have a new woke art-form “Performance Guilt”?
As in “The National Council of Wokey Virtue Signalling” has acknowledged this sign as “PG Sufficient”
WaM @ 14, That’s an interesting question and one I’ve pondered from time to time. I’ll say yes and no. There are individuals and organisations that just want/need to be seen to be doing the right thing. They’ll do the bare minimum they can in an utterly performative way and it will never connect with how they actually think, feel, or act. An example that springs to mind was a company down in what will soon be my new home town that asked a local Maori Hapu to come and take part in an event they were running. The group agreed and said they would need $600 to cover costs. Remember, these people don’t do this sort of thing for a living. they have jobs and lives, they provide their own original garb, take time off work, arrange child care if needed and pay their own petrol. That’s on top of the hundreds of hours a year of practice and preparation. The fee is a token. The company went shopping around to see if they could find a Maori somewhere who would put on a song for free.
On the other hand, when the door is opened just a chink to allowing Maori language and customs into wider circulation, that exposes more people to it and it has undoubtedly sparked interest amongst others who then do take it seriously. There’s a seed that creates real change. The garden might grow slowly, but with tending it does grow.
Resurrecting a language and culture takes an enormous amount of time and effort. It takes sustained political and social will. The irony in New Zealand is that at a time when Maori is more widely spoken than it has been in the last 40 or 50 years, it’s actually quite endangered. The really fluent and knowledgeable speakers are getting old and dying off. Many young Maori and some Pakeha speak less fluent and deeply. Many more speak only a few words and even more (like me) can speak most place names and manage to handle a few isolated words such as colours, numbers and a few nouns or verbs. That’s not language though.
It’s complicated as well by the fact that many people (including some Maori I suspect) don’t want to wholesale accept all aspects of traditional Maori culture. For me, the religious and spiritual/superstitious beliefs are a no go, as is the practice by some Iwi that women cannot speak at certain times and places. That may all be traditional, but times and cultures have to evolve and abandoning Gods and giving women equal rights doesn’t mean you’ve abandoned your culture or sense of being. Not to me anyway.