White Fragility with Dr. Robin DiAngelo

good afternoon i'm ralph newell and welcome to in in the margins today's guest is dr robert d'angelo affiliate associate professor of education at the university of washington and also author of white fragility why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism which was released in june of 2018 and debuted on the new york times bestseller list where it did remain for over three years so before we get into things robin i i wanted to uh sort of play a word association game ask you a question okay would you hear this this this was a new word new new series of words i'll say that i just learned uh or heard about last week and i just wanted to get your reaction to it so what do you wanna want a one word response or do you want me to like riff a little bit hey whatever hits you all right um and i'm assuming you've heard this if you hadn't i'll i'll definitely give you the background um but what do you think when you hear the words involuntary relocation oh well there's an immediate that you saw it like the eyes roll i i i think it's profoundly profoundly minimizing i think it's a perversion of history and reality uh i think we need to just call it what it is um it's gaslighting it's dishonest it's disingenuous um and i i've heard it it's just it's um suggested that we use it in place of slavery and i actually think enslavement is preferable to slavery or an enslaved person versus a slave that is not inherently your identity and enslaved is active this is this thing that is happening to you that is being perpetrated on you yeah no it it you know you're right and um i had the same eye roll and expression and um when i first heard it and then i was i was out with some um some friends yesterday fourth of july um mixed group of friends when i say mix i mean in the sense of racial identity and it came up and i think we had different reactions but i felt like um [Music] just our tolerance level for it was different if that makes it makes any sense it does make sense yeah um and it was just like you know and i was like you no you just got to call it what it is i mean why why why give it a new name is it doesn't change history well yeah even that's what you're trying to do yeah i mean ibrahim kindly makes a really great point when when people ask them well won't learning about enslavement cause white children to feel uh guilt and you know he poses this question why do you assume the white child um can only identify with the with the slaveholder right why what i mean slavery couldn't have ended without white people ending it so there are abolitionists for us to identify with why don't you teach about um you know all of the effort it took and all of the um alliances from white people that it took no that's a very good point and um you you brought up the hebrew um you know we are diverse i could take credit for even he did his internship with us and even oh sweet so i'm just so proud of you know how far he's he's coming and working but um you know for for our listeners you know who listening week after week you know last week we talked with jacqueline dr jacqueline about the lore about how our forefathers through laws policies and practices and their attitudes you know set out to divide and conquer blacks and lower class whites and so i'm reading you know you say about yourself that you grew up poor and white so and that you felt your class was more visible to you than your race at least initially so tell me how that manifested and when did you start realizing being white was different than being black or brown you know even though i grew up in poverty um and knew the humiliation of poverty the shame of poverty uh the hunger of poverty um i still racially swam with the current not against it uh when you swim against the current you're acutely aware that the current exists it's like a fish right and when you swim with it you're working you're struggling but your efforts are not facing the resistance of the current and really nothing about the trajectory of my life would have me understanding um the the power of my whiteness except that i fell into a job that i wasn't qualified for that i was very naive about um a diversity trainer i i saw an announcement for a diversity trainer back in the 90s that's the language we used at the time and i thought well of course i'm qualified for this i'm so nice i'm so open this is just a matter of being open-minded and i was in for the most profound learning of my entire life that's that's when i really realized oh you know your experience of poverty would have been profoundly different uh if you were not white i don't know how any white person can look me in the eyes and say to be black and poor and white and poor are the same experience and so i i get frustrated with this move over to oh you know the real oppression is class and let's talk about class and then everything else will um you know go away and i think that's disingenuous i think that's a way to get race off the table uh white people do tend to have an urgency to get race off the table and whatever works we'll use it but even if you think of the of the of the lowest of the of the low in terms of hierarchy of status in employment which for in my mind would be a coal miner okay well who got the most dangerous positions in the coal mine the black coal miners right any any um form of oppression you're going to also have racism cutting across it so which queer people are the most susceptible to violence uh black and you know black queer people black trans women and so forth [Music] yeah so i mean how do you think though um it would have been different for you growing up poor if you were not white i mean what do you see as the differences yeah um well first of all um my efforts to overcome poverty uh paid off in the sense that i wasn't also dealing with racism and so at least i belong racially in virtually any setting i was in so i was what you would call a non-traditional student i graduated with my ba as a 34 year old single mother um i felt like an imposter and an outsider class wise but but race was just a non-issue nobody standing in front of that classroom looking out would have singled me out as somebody lower than anybody else based based on my class right um a student of color i mean you could be oprah winfrey and go to hail a cab you could be one of the richest people in the world and go to hell a cab if you're black you you know you can expect to be discriminated against um it doesn't i mean it helps you i suppose navigate racism if you have some economic resources for sure but it doesn't render it moot right right no it's interesting i mean because honestly um the way i grew up i honestly thought i grew up poor um and i think it was because my parents always said we were poor you know but in hindsight i realized um we were not you know we were probably were you know at a minimum a middle class family but so but they always say we report every time we ask for anything they've said we can't afford that we can't get that you know so i'm just thinking about my childhood girls okay so i thought i was poor um and then i'm reading um where you talk about um uh i'll say white people if you will growing up racially illiterate and i'm also like well how could that be i i mean race was always in the forefront in my home and i don't mean that in a negative way you know you know my parents didn't talk about you know white people this from latinos that it's just you know it was just always in the construct you know just with wages life is way society but bombards us with imagery the news information like that i'm just wondering how how can you grow up in a racially illiterate home like how does that happen oh i mean i mean i think it's it's a hallmark of of white homes um is that we well we certainly are not educated on our racial history we know that and uh the efforts that are at play today will make it uh literally illegal for us to be educated on our racial history so we don't learn anything in school except the most simplistic romanticization of rosa parks and ruby bridges and so forth right martin luther king would i have a dream there are taboos about talking about race uh in white culture um for most white people it's just a non-issue that might be almost incomprehensible for you but it's just a non-issue and everywhere you look you might you might be poor as a white person but everywhere you look your image your racial image is reflected back at you i mean i'm just gonna say it god himself is represented as white uh jesus is white uh all the heroes and heroines are white the books you read and if it isn't white if they aren't white they're always marked as not white so the default is so deep and so taken for granted and all of these things and this is harder to admit to but there's not any way you can not internalize a sense of superiority i mean i mean we might have been racially illiterate but we knew it was better to be white who doesn't know it's better to be white come on i just don't buy that anybody doesn't know on some basic level it's better in society to be white um and so all of those things allow us right we we look at inequality and um how do we make sense of it well we make sense of it as we have what we have because we deserve to have what we have right um and they don't right i was talking about last night since the folks that i was hanging out with here my neighbors um you know waiting on fireworks et cetera um mixed group i'm trying to think it was one asian lady two black men a korean woman no so those two asians two white women um and we got into this conversation about the things we talked about growing up in our homes because uh the conversation uh actually was based on the uh started up on the um now i got the term already uh involuntary relocation yeah that's where the conversation started about you know okay this is the fourth of july what does freedom mean you know um and all of this and but what was common and you said it just a second ago um between my friends that were white talked about in their homes growing up they said it was they didn't use the word taboo but they basically said to a person oh we just didn't talk about that we did not talk about it anything about race just it was almost as if if we don't talk about it then we don't have to deal with it that was my take on it and so what does your research say that absolutely it serves us to be illiterate this isn't a benign or neutral this isn't an innocent illiteracy it takes some effort to to push it away to work to not see um and and there's another piece here which is the power of segregation segregate we live segregated lives you know most white children grow up with no authentic relationships across race and no one conveying to them that there's any value to me actually the deepest message of white superiority that that i can access within myself is that there's no loss to me and not knowing or loving black people that i could go from cradle to grave as most white people do with no authentic relationships with black people and not only have i never been given the message there's anything lost in that but in fact i gained status the whiter the space the more value it has i mean what is a good school anyway come on what is a good neighborhood where are we when we're shocked that happened here these are really powerful messages and what does it mean for my parents to tell me everyone's equal if they did i didn't actually have that kind but let's say i did have that kind to say everyone's equal but live separate there's a lot going on under the surface and now add your psychosocial development and my psychosocial development in the context of all of that going on for me and for you not you see you have to see you actually have to know my reality from a very early age and navigate my reality in a way that i can be seen as qualified to do or lead anything with no understanding of your reality and no interest in understanding your reality that that's some deep stuff it is um you know i'm sitting here as we as we're talking i'm just reminded of the book to kill a mockingbird right i i read it in school i thought it was great if you will you know in other words it was one of the books that we had to read that when i finished it i wasn't like you know this was just terrible so um the play um to kill a mockingbird is um live here and now at the kennedy center in dc um you know starring richard thomas so i knew my daughters had read it in school and i asked him hey do you guys want to go see it at the theater and they both resoundingly know like no and i was just like what are you talking about this is like an american classic blah blah blah and you know they really got into explaining to me you know that they felt this was um you know a white savior yeah yeah you know and just you know people putting this person on the pedestal to get rid of guilt et cetera et cetera so um i i you know i did not refute that what they said at all and i actually thought about so it was a different thing for me and i'm saying all this to say you you're talking about growing up white you know how of course you know everything white is good that's what you are taught but not only what i'm saying is not only are you as a white person taught that me as a person of color and other people of color also taught those same things you know those sort of you said it a second ago uh good neighborhood or bad neighborhood right you know that that's a cold word sometimes for black neighborhood but um when it's bad oh yeah and so i as african americans have gotten caught up with some of those things in life you know of telling the taking what the media tells us and making it the reality and so if i can succumb to it if you will i i see it being very easy for someone yeah and once you internalize that which and how could you not um you don't really have to do anything um aggressive to keep you in your place right i mean we all play our parts i mean this is all forms of oppression uh women have that internalized at a very early age their place right i'm sure you've seen women who resist feminism and um yeah it's uh it's it's a parallel process no one messaged the message but the impact of that message is really different right the impact on me is is at least by race i can do anything i want go anywhere i want say anything i want i and and you probably have a constant be careful watch out where am i is it safe here um so i'm gonna i'm gonna move myself forward and you you may move and i don't mean that you're holding yourself back please i hope nobody misunderstands that um but this is how we get set up into our places yeah yeah no no no you're absolutely right um i was thinking about that privilege you know that there's things that i have privilege in as a man you know versus you as a woman but overall i you know it was interesting to hear you say that you feel like you can go anywhere do anything uh again i keep going back to this group outlet last night and we kind of were talking about the gender side of it where um it was different my uh chinese friend who woman was talking about places she felt did not feel safe going as a woman and the white woman said was almost like why would you not feel safe going there i'd go there you know and but i didn't think about it until just now um listening to what you were saying that you know it's just just a different mindset yeah notice i put the qualifier racially right but but i think one of the most nuanced and comp complicated uh intersections is um white women and black men so you may have sex you know you're sexist and you're domineering in your home but on the street i actually think black men are are among the very most vulnerable as we see in the shooting again yet again that just happened so it's not parallel that you're a man so you have male privilege you're a black man and so it's contest to contextual where you have privilege oh absolutely totally yeah totally agree um yeah um moving on i just want to talk about some things you know again to help educate our audience here um you've been credited i'm not sure um but i'm going to give you the credit as i read it we're coining the phrase um white fragility so i've heard many people define it so i would like to as they say get it from the horse's mouth you know what what does white fragility mean and why is it important for us to talk about it and understand it oh i appreciate you asking and and i did coin the term um and originally in an academic article back in 2011 so uh over 10 years ago and you know in academia you have to do academia speak so you make it as difficult to understand as possible i i know how to do it i've been trained in it i don't enjoy it um so i always cringe when i see people define it because they're pulling from that that article and i don't think it's as clear as then i tried to move it over and make it in the book so basically the fragility part is meant to capture how little it takes to cause white people to just melt down in defensiveness or anger or denial um for their you even said you you kind of put a qualifier around white people if i can say that right even saying white people will get some white people extremely upset right um and so the for it doesn't take much i mean please really that's going to cause a meltdown but it does it's not fragile however in its impact because behind that defensiveness and that hurt and that anger and those tears is marshaled the entire weight of the institutions uh which backs that white person if there's a dispute between us and i'm crying i mean this is what amy cooper was depending on and in a rare situation it didn't happen for her um but same with derek shovin right behind them is the expectation that's a pretty bald those are pretty bald moves they're making because on some level they're relying on a very um predictable reliable um dynamic which is the the institutions are going to be behind you and so it functions really powerfully to deflect the the challenge right so you challenge me in my position you suggest that my being white has meaning you suggest that i have advantage and i get very upset until you back off and you do back off probably more often than not why because things tend to get worse not better when you challenge me it's almost like a form of bullying seriously it doesn't have to be conscious but that's how it functions i'm gonna bully and punish you back off so we can get back into what's comfortable and familiar to me my racial equilibrium can you you've thrown it off by by piercing the veil if you will and i that's intolerable to me and so i'm going to get back in my place and you're going to get back in yours have you seen it have you felt it i i i really have and i was talking to you know dr valor about this just literally just last week um the night before she and i talked um i had a neighbor that was over and we were talking and she was telling me and she knows you know the work i do with diverse and that i do um diversity training things and she was saying that she went to one in her at her at her organization um and it was voluntary so it wasn't like it was even um you know mandated by the organization and so um she's not a person that i would have ever labeled as defensiveness of whiteness or racist or anything like that um you know one of the most open people that i know but she came out of that training upset angry you know like the whole night the whole nine yards she i mean when i finished talking with her um i i realized that she felt misunderstood and attacked in that training um and i couldn't say anything about it because i wasn't there but i know people who do this work and i was like well did the trainer say you did this i mean i was really trying to you know get to the core of where you were feeling miss angst and where i could ask questions i really didn't good didn't get good answers so um now i'm talking i'm thinking about this so where do you think this defensiveness or this response you know comes from you know i know she wasn't attacked but she felt yeah i think okay and of course i i also acknowledge i wasn't there so we're not talking about this individual person but this is a familiar pattern and often the expectation that she has is she's going to be affirmed she's going to go in there and feel real good about herself and how open she is and she's not one of the bad guys so what i call that good bad binary which is how most white people learn to understand racism it's very simple you're either racist or you're not and if you're racist you're bigoted and prejudiced and mean you intentionally seek to hurt people and if you're not racist you're good and you would never hurt anybody um and you're not part of the problem okay so i don't know that you could have set up a more effective way to ensure not only that rate the system of racism is protected but that white people are going to be defensive right so she probably saw herself as one of the good ones if you will progressive and open-minded and they probably pushed they probably challenged they probably said things like everybody breathe all white people have institutional power all white people have absorbed a racist ideology that says they're superior i would say the same thing there's no way you can miss that message and she just felt profoundly challenged in her identity because her identity rested on a very different framework um and it was intolerable right she she didn't have the capacity or the skills or the framework and and you know 25 years ago if you'd said to me well robin i think you're racist or what you just said to me was racist or had a racist impact or however he wanted to say to me i would have freaked out i would have heard you you basically saying i'm an immoral person and and at a conscious level there's just no way i would see myself that way um or even understand why what i said was racist and sadly many of us are not very curious right instead of saying oh help me understand how that was racist because i i don't i didn't understand that yeah what we do is just like absolutely not we we said our this is the irony we set ourselves up as the arbiters of whether racism is real or not and we are the least qualified to understand it where they're least motivated to understand it especially if it implicates us so you know look i'm in this field uh i've been to some trainings i think are terrible um and yet it you know i still try to find something of value and something that i can um you know make sense of and use uh and if nothing else um i learned how i don't want to do it but you know it was interesting um you know in my conversations you know not to belabor her but we were talking about this uh because she was wanting to be an ally right you know how can i you know what how can i play my role what can i do so that was the goal objective if you will going into it now coming out of it i almost felt like you know now she's kind of going to be standoffish you know i mean like that that's not as important to me as it was before because now i feel like i'm being attacked but i was saying here i said in order for you to do this i said i think you are going to have to go through that some type of self-examination you know to see why you felt that way i said you know i i can't speak as to how you were misunderstood or attacked because i wasn't there but i said to me just because you felt that way and me being familiar with this work i think you took it personal so yeah and that's that's the humility piece right like like what if she wasn't misunderstood at all she doesn't understand why what she said or did was racially problematic and and what she doesn't have is the humility to try to even even a basic kind of curiosity like um [Music] what if they understood me perfectly they even understood what i meant but i don't understand how i was drawing from a fundamentally kind of racist paradigm that's such a different orientation and and even the ally see i do think she wanted to be affirmed as an ally but ally is not a fixed position and i am the least qualified to determine myself as an ally like that's for you to decide i often use this example um if you've ever seen a man wearing a shirt a t-shirt that says this is what a feminist looks like you know not very often but i have seen it before yeah i know you're talking about yeah and i i have two thoughts one wow that's pretty brave you know that's thought one thought two is yeah i'll be the judge of that buddy right right because you know there are people men who call themselves feminists who i do not think are feminists so that's that's something in any given moment um and sometimes i i am more allied and and others less and so she's it her framework i'm wondering if she read white fragility or if that would be a good one for her uh no she has it um but i i was actually going for the tour um you know you you talk about being racist i mean do you think um that all of us have have racist racism in us or biases or tendencies um i well there is no human objectivity so absolutely everybody has socially learned biases by social about social others so if you and i were in a workshop and we were doing an exercise we had these categories um indian indian woman chinese woman asian man uh gypsy which is not a good word but roma but you and i we could we just fill in the chart right we'd brainstorm all the stereotypes we'd have no problem understanding them we'd you know what i mean we don't absorb that and the irony is that while you can't help absorbing it refusing to look at it can only keep it in place you can't resist it if you won't acknowledge it right so so we've all absorbed the messages of white superiority right but the impact in the position is so different that i reserve the word racism to talk about white people's racial bias your racial bias i just call racial bias you could on-site dislike all white people until they proved you different and that would be biased i think it actually be kind of smart right i mean given our history how about we earn some trust here but nonetheless we could technically say that's biased you know you don't know me um but even it doesn't it doesn't hurt me it can't hurt me in the way that my bias towards you can hurt you because there's a deep history and legacy and all of the institutions are going to back my bias um and we just if if we don't reserve some language to acknowledge the profundity of that difference in impact um then i think we just triplize it and the example i i often use is women's suffrage i mean women could hate men in 1919 but they couldn't systematically deny them their civil rights across the entire nation but men who could also hate women and could systematically deny them their civil rights what was the difference they both hated each other well this group had control of the institutions and could disseminate their hatred or bias whatever in profoundly different ways wow well that's interesting i mean just as a sidebar did you talk about suffrage um you know we're here in northern virginia right outside dc and like literally not even a mouth from my house the uh suffrage memorial just opened up so um it's it's um and i was walking by there yesterday and they were pro i shouldn't call them protesters but you know there were women out there um you know holding signs of saying you know basically we're going back to this suffragette you know with some of the um you know supreme court well that that's true but but i always think it's important for me to acknowledge which women were granted access finally in 1920 by which men so white men basically granted white women right right and it wasn't until the voting rights act so so you know white women don't have a white suffragettes don't have a great history oh yeah across race you know themselves um it's funny you say that because when they were building that i i had a similar conversation with someone about that you know but they're being so close we're always you know it's front and center but um but anyway we digress so i was um reading um on your website um for our audience here which is um robindangelo.com i was reading your accountability statement and there were two areas there that that really piqued my interest now and i'll start with the first one um we talked about forming white affinity groups and i was like well they already have a clan what's she talking about um but i know that's not what you meant so um can you can you talk to our audience about the importance and why you want to form um white infinity groups yeah i'm so glad you brought that up i don't think anyone ever brings that up but um and i just finished co-writing a handbook for leading white affinity groups and a colleague is writing a handbook for leading people of color affinity groups comes out in july so the ultimate goal is that we come together across these divides but white people are not in great shape to do that um we we're racially illiterate most of us can't even answer the question what does it mean to be white and then you throw us in a room together and say you know let's talk about race and racism and a lot of damage gets done i i've just heard countless people of color just say those are those are awful discussions and you know white people are are fragile and they're saying ignorant things and people of color are being subjected to it or having to teach so white affinity group um is is just one tool in the toolbox you know you notice how i'm being really careful because white people this is the irony white people for the most part live segregated lives every day but it's sick not remarkable at all just just happened to be but the moment you say we are going to separate intentionally by race in order to work on our racism what why are we separating you know right right but it's a tool in the toolbox to to get us in better shape to come back together to to do that the personal work um and the kind of work that people often don't want to be subjected to right like like you're glad we're having insights and breakthroughs but sometimes they're so basic and simplistic that it's even it's frustrating to think oh my god that's like a huge breakthrough for you where uh where are we if uh that put the light bulb on right so we we do that separately um and then come back together make sense yeah yeah um and the other area and you alluded to this earlier um and it it was it was i don't say it was eye-opening like i didn't know that but it was just sort of confirming i'll say that it was confirming and that was building authentic relationships um you know you were talking about you know the dynamics of you know are you really a friend or do you really have a relationship when there is a there's an imbalance in the roles you know if you are the employer versus an employee you know kind of thing so um because you hear a person oh i have this great friend you know that's black you know but but their roles are so different as how they're together do they really in fact have an authentic relationship right so um talk about that and what it means to build an authentic relationship and then how it would help in this work well an authentic relationship is one sustained two within the context of structural racism you're still within that context on equal footing so i'm not your boss i really don't think authentic relationships can happen when i have that direct power over your life um so we're not in that relationship you don't work for me um and and it's sustained over time and and we do talk about racism and you you can challenge me and give me feedback and i don't go away and give up and and just say you have a personal issue right um so it's personal what you just told me but it's not personal in the sense that i'm a product of my culture so we're in it for the long haul and and we don't avoid talking about race when you have a cross-racial friendship and you never talk about race i i just wonder about that i wonder about um the consciousness or awareness of both those parties and look not all people of color have a critical consciousness i mean clarence thomas excuse me i had something in my throat um all right not all people of color have a critical consciousness but maybe we're not talking about race because you don't i've given many signals to you that you can't go there or you went there once and i didn't respond well and so you don't go there again if that's the case on some level it's not authentic because you're you're not going to really show yourself to me or be vulnerable with me yeah so those are some of the criteria i think that that allows authenticity i think about children like i think about my own children early on in their k-12 life you know i felt like they had some authentic friendships and i say that i mean across race and [Music] they really didn't you know see color but you know they started to later um and you know and i think about how many of those have survived that they still have and i think about my myself and how many of those relationships that i had i mean i mean when i went to school schools were integrated um but very few of my white friends let's say k through five it's interesting some of my best friends in k through five you know were you know some white boys that by the time we got to middle school in high school we were total at the opposite ends of the spectrum yeah i don't even know how it happened i mean i know how it happened but what i'm saying there was nothing on my part to change that i just realized we were no longer together if you will yeah and i'm thinking of two books one of course is beverly tatum's classic why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria but also you know ibrahim i just happened to i just saw him in town um how to raise an anti-racist even his new book where he looks at the different developmental stages and he does talk about um the research it shows you know by three by three they they see it they're aware of it but they're they're learning not to talk about it right um what i notice and this isn't based necessarily on research it's just something i've noticed in my years of doing this work that when you get closer to dating age that's when it starts to change that's also when parents start to get a little more uncomfortable it's very sweet when they're little and then it gets a little more threatening in a different kind of way so i just wonder how much of that is in there yeah yeah no yeah you're right um and good segway you're talking about how many years you've been doing this work and um you know you've been studying researching you know uh this topical area for you know well over 20 years and you know and just reading gosh you seem to be a lightning rod uh to me you know i mean even even has gone you've gone as far as to uh i'll say and i don't think you needed to defend yourself if you will on your webpage but you know you had people from the far right try to discredit you and then you had people who you would think your allies with who you know want to say that you're a profiteer so how do you respond to that criticism and continue to do this oh man i mean let's just start with anyone who's up out front on race is going to is going to um be a lightning rod in this country right um i absolutely expect it from the right um while it can be threatening because i have had my home vandalized i've had death threat yes all of that um it doesn't hurt me it does hurt me when it comes from the left because that's kind of where i see my alliance but um my accountability statement is is me speaking to it i i think that with social media people be i'm not a real person to them i i represent something and i think a lot of pain and resentment and is is projected onto that thing um if you knew my history if you saw how long i've been doing if you read my publications i've never written about anything but either racism or social oppression you know a lot of people you notice that are famous that are starting to be famous on this and you look at their cvs they have no history of being committed to this it's just now they are and i've been committed to it long before i was paid for it i've given my work away for decades i've taken a lot of of crap um and i got because of that i got very effective and i do bring something that's different i don't think white people will ever understand racism if we're not listening to people of color and black people we couldn't but i have a piece you don't have i'm an insider and you you just can't know what that is anymore then i can know what is to be an insider to masculinity right right right and and i can name it in a way that's harder to deny right and and i i and so the goal isn't that you only listen to me the goal is that i open you up so they listen to you and i think i've been really effective effective at it um but you know there's a lot of um social media just people enjoy being critical too i mean this is not to say that i can't do better let me just say one last thing and then i'll see what you're smiling about i love loretta ross she's a professor at smith she's a black woman and she says we need to do better at differentiating between a problematic ally and an adversary all allies all allies are problematic i'm problematic i'm not the enemy right sometimes i think to myself why aren't you going after tucker carlson really right right no no i i i totally hear you and what i was smiling about when you were i think i thought you were searching for a word i was going to say oh you mean the haters uh yeah there you go that's you know i don't care what your walk of life is when people reach you know a higher standard you know than the others and separate themselves from the crowd you're gonna have haters you're gonna have the crabs in the barrel and all that so you know um you know it was not my form here today to try and criticize you but to to elevate what you're doing so that we can have you know the critical conversations that need to be had on campus um you know in this topical area and some of the things that i get from institutions that bring us in or that we talk to um some of the problems probably maybe it's not the right word but let's just say an issue is getting white people on board you know um whether it's um they don't they just haven't had skin in the game some i'm not saying at all not kind of blanketed but you know some we can't get them to the table and some of those people you need at the table to get change um and so you know they're looking at ways to do that so from what i've read and some of the things that i've seen you know um i wanted to talk with you because i think you have some tools and answers and resources that people can put in their tool belts to use so thank you i appreciate that i didn't feel at all criticized i mean you gave me an opportunity to speak to it you know um oh yeah no i definitely wasn't i'm trying to put this aside but um we are here um at the end of time here so just a couple things i wanted to end with um you know we started doing this in the last couple of podcasts of having you complete the sentence so i got two sentences i want you to complete um sort of in regards to what we've talked about uh first one is it's not a white person's fault that society is unequal by race but it is a white person's responsibility to address it right right okay and um this is very generic um you know where you want but just uh white people need to be blank way more humble and open and curious and much less apathetic and resentful and silent and complicit okay all right again thank you so much for your time dr deangelo do you have uh any any other closing thoughts yeah you know if you if you google me you'll come across all kinds of controversies right and there was one that happened where coca-cola took a a sound bite out of context i saw that it went crazy on the right and it was be less white and i was saying be less white and so but let me let me add the part they took away right and so that doesn't mean be more italian or german be more ethnic to be less white simply means be less oppressive in the way that whiteness is oppressive so be um less apathetic and silent and complicit and be more open it's another way of saying be less white again in the ways that white whiteness is oppressive so no i i saw that and i didn't want to bring it up as a you know i didn't want us to go down a rabbit hole with that but i do appreciate you bringing that up and clarifying that and and to be honestly that was my assumption of where you were going with that when i read that um but again you know when you take things out of context um you know it just oh yeah actually in in in the social media era era that we live in um it can just get the legs of its own it's like toxic masculinity if i said be less masculine i'd be i would mean in the ways of that it can be toxic right right well it got me uh marjorie taylor green tweeted me and so did um don junior so hey i've made it good i don't say good company but you you okay all right thank you again you

Channel: Diverse Issues In Higher Education

Views: 3,175

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Id: BF5oFm8PM1Y

Length: 50min 2sec (3002 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022