'Nice Racism': A review

"If you want to get beyond feeling defensive and increase your capacity for effective anti-racist action, do yourself a favor and read this book!" ~Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

I agree. White people should read this book.

It is, in many ways, a field guide to "nice" white racism. DiAngelo lays it all out, step by step, in her unflinching, analytical style, sparing no one.

At the same time, Nice Racism has its limits.

I've never made a secret of my ambivalence about Robin DiAngelo as an expert on racism. I became acquainted with her work through one of the scores of YouTube videos featuring her talk about white fragility. As it happens, I agree with her 100 percent: White fragility is a significant barrier to becoming genuinely anti-racist.

But at the same time, I found her lecture almost completely white-centered. I kept thinking, "Where are all the Black people in this equation?"

In essence, there's a whole lotta white navel-gazing going on....

I don't consider white introspection to be enough of an answer. What good does it do to recognize a fault in ourselves — unless we figure out how to overcome that fault?

DiAngelo's intention is to make sure we understand the role we — as white anti-racists — play in perpetuating the very racism we despise. But even in her post-chapter exercises, she focuses on recognition of our failings. There's no advice for how to stop failing.

And for all I know, there are no answers.

Certainly, there seem to be fewer answers in DiAngelo's chosen teaching environment. As a lecturer, her work is conducted primarily in diversity workshops and lecture halls. Some of her presentations are interactive. Some are not.

In chapter 9 of Nice Racism, "The Moves of White Progressives," she describes an especially problematic session, in which the white participants locked themselves behind a wall of silence. Silence is a power move, she observed.

In this particular incident, the participants — 15 of whom were white, and four of whom were BIPOC — were all interns who’d been reading and discussing anti-racism for several months.

"After some brief remarks on white socialization, I opened the floor to questions. I soon noticed a pattern in which the same few people were speaking, but the majority of the group — and the white people in particular — remained silent.

"I named this pattern and invited the white people to show themselves.

"After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, a woman of color who had been sharing previously began to speak again. I asked her to hold back and let the white people feel the pressure and struggle through their silence.

"This prompted a white woman to voice a concern that I had just silenced the woman of color. She was confused about why I would do this, given that the focus of my talk was on anti-racism.

"I explained that while I recognized that I had risked the woman of color feeling silenced, my strategy was to interrupt the power dynamics by pressing the white people to take the same risks of vulnerability that the people of color in the conversation were taking. I acknowledged that it might not have been the best decision, but I did not make it unaware.

"I then checked in with the woman of color about the impact of my asking her to hold her comment. She said that she felt relieved and energized by the shift in pressure onto the white people and the exposure of the racism inherent in white silence. It was the first time for her that white people's patterns in these discussions were named and white people were being called in.

"She shared that in her academic program, she dreaded these conversations because of the exact dynamics that were happening here, wherein people of color were expected to be vulnerable and expose themselves — to do all the 'race work' — while white people sat back and observed, taking no risks themselves. None of her white professors had the skills to interrupt these patterns.

"Another person of color agreed that she also found my move empowering.

"With some relief that the risk I took was helpful, and that she and another woman of color had not felt silenced, I returned to my pressure on the white participants.

"I explained how silence from a position of power is a power move.

"I urged them as white people to take risks and make mistakes in the service of learning and growth.

"I explained that we needed to show vulnerability and humility in order to build trust across race.

"I pointed out the BIPOC people in the group had just shared how unsettling it was for them not to know where white people were coming from, and that regardless of our intentions, the impact was a climate that could feel hostile.

"Still, not on e white person who had not already spoken stepped up.

"I was quite simply stunned that they could remain silent when the hurtful racial impact had been clearly laid out for them by their guest speaker — a white person with years of experience facilitating these dialogues — and several people of color. Stonewalled by the lack of participation, I ended the meeting [15 minutes early]." (pp. 104-106)

I don't question any of what DiAngelo writes here.

Indeed, as a whole, her chapter on "white moves" includes her strongest, most revealing explorations of white "niceness." If for no other reason than this chapter (pp. 56-110), you should track down a copy of this book. (Pro tip: I checked it out at the library.)

In particular, I don’t doubt what the Black participants said. They offered a rare, valuable insight that all of us should take to heart.

It's the venue itself that I question.

In saying that, I’m not discounting the appalling incidents in which white people paid good money to attend one of her diversity training sessions, only to walk out in a huff because they didn't like the message.

And perhaps group sessions — in which a bunch of white folks sit in chairs, audience-style or around a conference table — are the only realistic means of conducting anti-racism training.

But all the same, they discount human nature. I don't mean "white human nature." I mean human nature.

When I ran all of this past my therapist, she responded with this reminder: "When you have a heart attack, it's better to do it with just one or two people nearby. People in a larger group tend to stand back and wait for someone else to take action."

I've had almost seven decades in which to observe human behavior. None of what I've seen leads me to believe DiAngelo would have gotten anything but silence out of this particular group. Go back and read her own words: "I ... invited the white people to show themselves." "I returned to my pressure on the white participants." "I urged them as white people to take risks and make mistakes...." "I explained that we needed to show vulnerability and humility...."

She was speaking to a group of interns, which implies that the white people had their jobs to consider, along with any revelations which might be repeated to their colleagues. For that matter, DiAngelo was urging them to speak up amongst their colleagues. That alone could have had a chilling effect. If they said anything beyond parroting the lesson she'd just taught — anything deeply personal and revelatory about their own racism — what kind of repercussions might they face later?

You hear those kinds of revelations in group therapy, where everyone gets dragged, kicking and screaming, into the conversation — and then they all go home to people who will never know what they talked about.

DiAngelo herself is a somewhat distant figure, less than approachable, and based on her own anecdotes, she has a problem reading the room. She writes repeatedly of mistakes she's made because of missed social cues. Her method of calling out the white participants was clearly not working, and yet, she kept trying.

In other chapters, she writes of her previous, dogged efforts to keep pushing, despite social cues that indicated she should have changed course. Inevitably, those missteps led to a missed opportunity — or worse, racial harm to the BIPOC participants in the room.

In that regard, she has my sympathy. For some of us, missed social cues lead to frequent mishaps — and when I say "for some of us," I include myself. I know too well the lasting regret that comes from inadvertently harming another person because I was either too focused or too clueless. DiAngelo reflects with obvious sadness on the harm she's caused without meaning to.

But in terms of diversity training, it could have been a factor. A lot of trust is involved in revealing one's personal failings in a group settings. When the subject is racism, the defensive reluctance to speak would increase exponentially. No amount of cajoling and exhortation would change this; if anything the cajolees would set their heels even deeper.

And, in fact, that's exactly what happened in this instance.

As I write this, I'm not excusing the white participants for their silence, nor am I any less disturbed by their halfhearted participation in diversity training. Their behavior reminds me of certain narcissists in my personal life, individuals who used silence as a way of exerting control. It's been too easy to paste their faces on the bodies of DiAngelo's white participants. The resulting vision is as ugly as it gets.

But at the same time, I don't think anti-racism training should be handicapped by ignoring the human factor.

Human beings are gonna human, even in the most dire circumstances. And in this instance, where overcoming their humanness could have made a difference — to their BIPOC colleagues and to themselves — it's disappointing that the white people retreated into a power move, even after the power move was identified as such.

DiAngelo herself acknowledges that she has no training or expertise in psychology. I believe that's to her detriment — and worse, to the detriment of her work.

On the other hand — and much to her credit — she has a gift for objective analysis, even when discussing her own failings. This gift is part of what makes her work so valuable — if only white readers will, in turn, be objective about their own private (and public) failings.

I began this review with my recommendation that white people need to read this book. So, why am I taking such a critical stance regarding DiAngelo and her work?

I’ll acknowledge that it requires a wealth of temerity for me to critique the methods of a world-renowned diversity training expert with decades of experience.

But I do so because my reaction to her words began with the first chapter. It only intensified as a read further.

"Something is missing here," I thought. The question of "what" became a constant, nagging sidebar to her thorough, revealing exploration of what white people do in the name of being nice.

Nice Racism is not the whole picture.

White readers who tackle this book must deal with challenging information. But once you pass page 181, it's going to be tempting to skip the belated collection of post-chapter exercises.

It will be even more tempting to say, "job done," and go on with your life.

You'll read the things white people do in the name of being nice. You'll make note of the group setting and recognize that white-and-Black encounters are different, one-on-one and in the day-to-day. You'd never behave that way in a store, or at the ballpark, or in a PTA meeting.

Maybe you'll sit back and relax in the comfort of knowing "that's not me."

Or maybe you'll cringe, recognizing an episode from your own past and wishing you could forget about it.

Maybe you'll make the effort to change something that you realize you're still doing. Maybe you'll even succeed, if only for a while.

One way or the other, you're likely to find a way to dismiss most of DiAngelo's lessons as irrelevant to your own life and experiences.

But I repeat: DiAngelo's book is not the whole story. It's only part of the story. She points out how white people behave in group settings, among their colleagues, with very little nuance. There are only her analytical observations, filtered through between-the-lines revelations about her own demeanor.

She's the most visible, highly-praised anti-racist of our time — and potentially, the most controversial. But it's vital to recognize that her work is not the only work being done in this field.

Upon closing her book for the last time, it's time to figure out how to apply her lessons to our own lives, one-on-one, in our day-to-day lives.

That's going to take reflection — a lot of it — and the kind of private honesty too many of us keep trying to avoid.

I'm going to close with a bit of repetition:

If you're white, you need to find a copy of this book. Read it carefully. Look between the lines for the information DiAngelo herself keeps missing.. Read with an open heart. Be prepared to absorb important lessons.

More importantly, put aside your urge to say "not me."

Recognize that your own white niceness can be problematic.

Regardless of the setting.

Figure out what you need to change in yourself. Do the work to make those changes.

And don't stop reading.

There's a hell of a lot more to learn.

Originally posted Jun. 5, 2023.