Returning to “Allyship”: theorists rely on the mutability of language. Words are not hard, unchanging nuggets of meaning, they are cloudy penumbra of associations. Or perhaps they are like the type of firework known as the “willow” or “falling leaves”: when somebody says a word it triggers an explosion of associations that drift slowly down through your mind^[1].

I suspect very little racist behaviour is motivated by a sincerely believed in system of racist ideology (at least in Britain.) Conscious acts of racist cruelty are acts of bullying and oppression, using whatever vulnerability the chosen victim has; unconscious bias is a product of this word-cloud of associations. ^[2]

However, some associations are more prominent than others. The more one string of ideas is dwelt upon, the more easily it will come to mind and the more it will dominate your thinking. It’s straightforward neural reinforcement. If the emphasis of a word shower begins to shift, the whole network of associations will migrate. This is how words change their meanings. 

Traditionally, this would take decades or centuries of slightly altered usage – millions of repeated utterances. Nowadays, the internet can so amplify your message that this shift can be effected in a few months, if you have the authority and hence the receptive audience. 

Critical race theorists exploit this flexibility of meaning. They worm their way into the gaps and try to push the meaning in a particular direction, using the internet’s enormous power to multiply messages.

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^[1] These associations can be very random and idiosyncratic. This morning, I had to turn a yogurt pot sideways to get it out of the fridge between two other items. It reminded me of the Millennium Falcon turning sideways to escape down a trench in the Death Star. I realised that my brain has made this association a lot!

^[2] Systemic racism, though very real and very iniquitous, need not concern us when dealing with individuals. It is a numbers game, relevant when we are trying to improve society’s systems. It is an issue of policy and law.

A favourite Critical Race Theory term is “Allyship”, a word that embodies a lot of what is problematic about these theorists’ approach. 

To start with, it is a neologism, so new, in fact, that my edition of Word is still underlining it in red, as an error. We should ask ourselves who coined the term, and to what end, because those who define the terms of a debate control it. 

Who has the authority to coin new words? Many of them seem to originate in Social Science departments of universities. “Micro-aggressions”, the most unhelpful, or misused term in the race debate, was coined by a Harvard University psychiatrist^[1]. Professor DiAngelo is keen to state the academic position of the commentators she quotes. White Fragilityis full of phrases that begin, “Scholar Marilyn Frye uses the metaphor…”, “Reflecting on the social and economic advantages of being classified as white, critical race scholar Cheryl Harris coined the phrase…”, “Ruth Frankenberg, a premier white scholar in the field of whiteness studies, describes whiteness as…”, “Critical race scholar Zeus Leonardo^[2] critiques the concept…” (my italics)

Commentators who feel they are part of the same campaign, can reinforce each other’s authority, and give credence to their spanking new coinages. Diangelo always foregrounds her comrades’ academic credentials. This is, of course, a mark of respect for their achievements, their industry and their great knowledge and wisdom. However, it also emphasises their authority, their superior social position. 

But such authority relies on hierarchical power structures and hegemonies that are just as anti-egalitarian as any others in our societies. Academics can mint neologisms to their hearts’ content, and have them taken seriously, a privilege denied to guttersnipes like you and I^[3].

And, of course, the most prestigious universities are mired in exactly the same iniquitous histories of subjugation and tyranny as any other of society’s structures. Who are the alumni of these bodies? Who endowed them and where did this wealth come from? Was it blood money? Arms? Slavery? Exploitation of the developing world? Eco-system-destroying, climate-change-causing consumer capitalism?

Prosperity breeds prosperity; wealth allows investment and attracts talent, which attracts investment and further endowment, which attracts further talent. Surely, anyone who has benefitted from these, by education and opportunity and prestige is just as privileged as anyone else, irrespective of their racial background. Two of Britain’s most prominent racial activists, Afua Hirsch and Otegha Uwagba are graduates of Oxford university^[4], an institution infamously endowed by the uber-imperialist Cecil Rhodes^[5]. 

We all have blood in our hands, just by living in a morally compromised society, with a dubious past, merely by benefitting from what it has to offer in political stability or healthcare or infrastructure because all of that has been under-written by the head-start a prosperous past has given it. And that’s before we get into who was exploited in making your jeans or how much CO2 you’ve helped produce by your holidays and your commute and your Peruvian coffee, or how much rubbish you produce, and how many people died to get you your cocaine. So perhaps the idea of anyone’s guilt or conscious complicity is unhelpful. We should focus on thoughtful alterations to our society and to our own behaviours and attitudes without getting all self-righteous and blamey and judgey. 

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^[1] Charles M. Pierce, in 1970, According to Wiki. It would be nice to think we’d moved on a little, since then, so that the word has less relevance. 

^[2] Fantastic name!

^[3] Nobody is going to write, “Serial Complainer Xan Nichols has coined the phrase ‘Grumblebunkum’ to describe the collective texts of critical race theory and its opponents.” 

^[4] Which may explain their fury. Oxford University, in my limited experience, is horribly retrograde and classist. The Postgraduate common room of one of their colleges remains the only place I have heard the terms “oiks” and “plebs” used in anger. (Admittedly that was in the late 90s. it may have changed.)

^[5] Figures like David Olosuga (respect) and David Lammy (oodles of respect) also have highly respectable academic pedigrees, but they occupy different, even more institutionalised positions and are thus, perhaps, compromised in the eyes of social scientists. And they may have benefitted from “Male Privilege” (if such a thing exists!)

Much of the metaphorical language, in the struggle for racial equality, is that of violence, confrontation and conflict. There’s the language of argument: “speak out”, “Stand up to”, “challenge”, as well as the militaristic vocabulary of “struggle”, “campaign”, “resistance”, “strategy”, “Fight.” “Get angry. Anger is useful. Use it for good”, Reni Eddo-Lodge exhorts us^[1]. 

These terms promote the idea of fighting the good fight, that it is your duty to confront and challenge, head on. When applied in practice, though, it is individual members of your own communities that you are confronting. They are likely to feel personally attacked and condemned. They are likely to be deeply wounded by the impression that you dislike them, personally, that you blame them, personally, for your misfortunes and this will make them resist your message. It will also encourage them to attack you, personally, for if you are an idiot, they can assume your accusations are nonsense. This will wound you, in your turn.

This is no way to persuade people, so your challenge must have some other goal. Presumably, this is to, somehow, utterly defeat them, to destroy their resistance so that they come over to your side as a sort of intellectually broken prisoner of war.     

This choice of vocabulary, then, continues deep hegemonies of tribal division, that are much older than racial theory^[2]. They foster mind-sets and expectations that value conflict and destruction, victory and defeat, dominance, oppression and suppression: deep, ancient ur-narratives that may even bridge the gap between natural urges and social constructs – tales of single combat of triumph, dominance and power: the black-hatted gunman murders your wife and children, so you hunt him down and shoot him and all his allies, in revenge. And that gives you closure, and a happy ending, because, ultimately, Might is Right. 

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^[1] Why I’m no longer Talking to White People about Race, 2018, London: Bloomsbury, p221

^[2] See Robert P Baird’s article in the Guardian, “The Invention of Whiteness”, 20/04/’21. He quotes WEB Du Bois, saying, “The discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing – a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed.”

The internet has ushered in an age of strange quasi-intellectualism. Theories and concepts that might, in previous times, have remained confined to the ivory towers of the universities, and their alumni, have percolated through the general population by means of online conversations^[1].

We are so overwhelmed by information that we can give each idea only a brief, impatient glance before we rush into the fray, waving it like a weapon. These days, most topical issues are laced with a strong dose of simplified, half-understood theory, often used to accuse!^[2]

Theorising seems to encourage people to use metaphors. It’s a similar process, I guess: correlating one thing with another, without substantial links. Social activism borrows from several lexical fields, including militarism and violence.

It’s mostly the language of grievance, though –  the “trauma” and “pain” suffered – or unsubstantiated statements of the “structural” and “systemic” nature of racism^[3]. Personal experiences of slights and insults are described in detail, but in the brief chapters that follow, vague and doubtful suggestions are often made; abstract generalities and advice about types of actions or behaviours without any specifics. 

I think this focus on the grievance is because the social activist movements, fostered by the internet, are unsure what to do once they have “spoken out”. They air their grievances; they start the conversation, they demand to see the manager, and then, as you might expect from a disempowered population whose only purpose is to consume, to make consumer choices, they wait for it to be sorted out for them, before they take their custom elsewhere. 

This mirrors our reliance on computer algorithms that seem to reliably do our bidding while we have not the slightest sense of how or why they work. You protest, or, at worst, you riot, and then you wait for something to be done.

There is an assumption that inviable codes underpin the very substance of existence, so that no matter how much we disrupt our world, our “natural rights” will still robustly exist. When they are not being manifested, they are being actively thwarted, we think. That leads to accusations of complicity from innocent passers-by, of “white privilege” against people who have experienced no privilege.  

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^[1] And the proportion of the population doing 3^rd level courses has increased. 

^[2] Otegha Uwagba points out that these scraps of theory are often employed by the privileged, “eager to demonstrate their own lack of racism by positioning themselves against” their peers. (Whites : On Race and Other Falsehoods, 2020, London: 4^th Estate, p32) 

^[3] Actually, I don’t doubt that racism in our societies is likely to be systemic – a malign co-incidence of disparate factors, largely to do with people trying to preserve their advantages rather than crushing others – but leading to a tendency for some groups to be disadvantaged. But activists rarely substantiate these claims. I guess it would take too long.

Modern discourse has been profoundly conditioned by social-media. Users are protected by the armour of their physical distance and inaccessibility. They can dismiss the common humanity of their interlocutors and indulge in brief, single combats. It reminds me of the way battles are described in The Iliad: individual heroes encounter each other in the general hubbub and melee, exchange insults and boasts, then set to, in a flurry of exchanges that will leave one utterly crushed while the other crows in triumph. Or so each hopes. 

Bolstered by the sense of being part of a righteous crusade, that it’s their duty to challenge and confront, social activists can carry these practices into their journalism and books, their conferences and debates and talk shows^[1].

These are not mutually constructive explorations of a topic. What’s important is how these exchanges make you feel, not what your interlocutor intended or the content of the conversation itself. The only important thing is your own internal state. You don’t share an experience with the other person. 

This emphasises differences and antagonisms, and exacerbates schism and a sense of disconnection. Furthermore, by responding aggressively to other people’s irritating behaviours, you are likely to make them feel even more awkward about interacting with you and confirm any underlying prejudices they may have about how “difficult” “You People” are. 

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^[1] It seems that an increasing number of writers on social issues start their careers online and then move into more traditional formats once their reputations have been established. Reni Eddo-Lodge, Author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race ( Bloomsbury, 2018) being a prime example. 

Social media has become such a central part of how we conduct our relationships that its Consumerist-identitarian values, with their promotion of self-absorption, are bleeding back into the general discourse of activism and Social Justice, as I’ve said many times before.

Modern activists seem to thrive on conflict. It allows them to demonstrate their courage. If they’re not involved in an almighty row, they don’t think they’re doing their jobs. They are not “interrupting”^[1] the easy habitudes of our unjust and unequal societies. They see reluctance to offend people as cowardly, as social conditioning designed to keep us all in our place. I suspect this attitude is a combination of the “no pain, no gain” principle combined with some form of Marxist belief that elites will always fiercely defend their privileges. (A fair assumption, I think)

Marginalised groups need to be more assertive than the majority, so they can be heard. However, self-assertion has become its own purpose. Activists are turning inwards, to assess their own performances, rather than outwards to evaluate their success. Robin DiAngelo is quite open about this, and advances an admirable reason for it. In the final, inspiring chapter of White Fragility (2019), she points out, “In the end, my actions are driven by my own need for integrity, not a need to correct or change someone else.”(p151) This comment exhibits an unusual humility for an activist^[2], but it still demonstrates the awful isolation of modern life, and, in practice, the activists’ tendency to solipsistic cruelty and aggression. 

In the scenario I outlined before, Robin Diangelo seemed most concerned with successfully testing herself and her integrity. A communal experience was conceived of as one of individuals in contest, of dominance and defeat. Diangelo interrupted the woman and successfully over-rode a number of counter interruptions to hold the floor, eventually driving the woman to leave the workshop. DiAngelo seems to see this as a successful exchange, presumably because she has stayed true to her values and has triumphed, even though she has probably made this woman feel more vulnerable, humiliated and thus probably more resistant to her messages. 

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^[1] Note how “interrupting” has been changed from a rude demonstration of selfishness, to a noble duty.

^[2] Although DiAngelo still knows best.

My father used to sing a song that went like this:

            “Two Lovely Black Eyes – 

            O! What a surprise!

            Only for telling a man he was wrong –

            Two lovely black eyes.”

The joke wasn’t on the ape who did the punching, but on the indignant, self-righteous creep who got punched. The nasty, morally-superior little bollocks got exactly what he deserved^[1]. That was the problem with disagreeing with people face to face! 

Lockdown has reminded us that there is no substitute for the physical presence of another individual, if you want to communicate. Humans have spent millennia becoming attuned to each other’s unspoken signals and cues – body language, half-smiles; eye-line. A look of surprise and confusion can inhibit our most undignified childish tantrums. 

That friction and dismay is profoundly unpleasant, although, being profound, we may not be consciously aware of how much we dislike it. Adjusting for it is part of what makes us members of a community, rather than a collection of atomised individuals, tormented by their isolation. Another part is putting up with each other’s insensitive bullshit. 

The young, in all their glorious solipsism, can tune out the distress emanating from their companions. They can view them merely as opponents, revel in the excitement of furious political debate, and triumph in their defeat. But this begins to pale as you get older. It becomes exhausting and upsetting. Or you become aware that it always has been. 

Now, however, social media insulates both trolls and activists from all that because they no longer meet the people they disagree with. Not only are they physically safe, they are protected from the anger of those they attack and insult by their translation into pixels and graphemes. Trolls and activists^[2] can be incredibly rude without fear of the consequences. They can destroy an opponent and walk away without ever having to acknowledge their dismay and wounded resentment. They no longer have to grow up. 

The internet fosters a lonely, childish misanthropic solipsism.

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^[1] This reminds me of the old joke: “What do you call a guerrilla/ gorilla/ terrorist with a gun?” “Sir”. Similar point.

^[2] Act-trolls? Tractivitists? 

Robin Diangelo gives a perfect example of how antagonising people makes them resist your message. In a workshop, a white woman teacher mimics a black mother’s accent while telling a story. Professor Diangelo takes her to task in a manner that so upsets the woman that she leaves the group. (pp74-5) I assume the Prof wasn’t hired to make her clients walk out, yet she made no attempt to take the woman aside to explain, confidentially, why her accent was inappropriate, or to flag up the problem in a light-hearted manner or come back to it, as a general point, later on. 

Diangelo seems proud of her conduct – this woman was to be made an example of. Any reluctance to humiliate her in front of her colleagues would have been a weakness, on Diangelo’s part, that would have allowed racism to flourish and thus must be overcome. Kindness is a flaw!^[1]

Robin Diangelo’s career as a diversity trainer presumably relies on the openness of people and institutions to addressing their prejudices. That’s why they hired her, right? However, her experience of her clients’ constant indignation makes me wonder if she needs to exercise a bit more tact. But, rather than addressing her own part in these exchanges, and thinking, “perhaps my teaching method is a little too antagonistic”, she has come up with the concept of “White Fragility” to explain why she is right and they are all a bunch of whining white bastards.

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^[1] If I’d been asked to evaluate Robin Diangelo’s workshop, I’d probably have said, “You could have handled that a bit better. Pick your battles; don’t get distracted from the workshop’s main goal – you can’t address everything at the same time.” Of course, I would have taken her aside to give her this feedback, confidentially! (I might even have used her own language: “I am offering you a teachable moment…and I am only asking that you try to listen with openness”, although I’d be risking a punch in the eye.)

Robin Diangelo and I are on the same side. I, too, want to live in a multicultural society that promotes diversity in unity. I want to become someone who celebrates and respects everyone else, no matter what their colour, creed, gender identity or sexual-orientation. 

However, I also agree that we are animals that generalise, and that our societies encourage us to have certain culturally constructed expectations about certain types of people, no matter that these types are also cultural constructs.

It is impossible to be completely without prejudice, so we must be constantly vigilant and self-critical, expecting to make errors and being open to having them discovered, without that revelation destroying our sense of self-worth. I am an opinionated, ignorant and un-empathetic bigot, but I desire to be less so^[1] and I want to be loved despite this. 

Professor Diangelo presumably paints an accurate picture of US society, which is clearly very messed up. She mentions a study which found that white Americans mistakenly associate high populations of colour with high crime rates^[2]. Judges and others in the legal system are also more likely to attribute criminal behaviour to bad circumstances if a defendant is white, but bad character if they are black or “Latinx”. An astonishing 2016 study found that “half a sample of medical students and residents believe that blacks feel less pain” (p63) (For fuck’s sake!) A 2009 study found that “suburban parents” say they select schools on test scores, but are really more influenced by the racial mix.  (p67)^[3]

So, White Fragility provides us with a perceptive analysis of the racial conflicts and tensions that plague the modern USA. However, it’s difficult to assess how practical, accurate or reliable her revelations would be when dealing with real people in real situations. This is because, in the way of theory, incredibly complex, often contradictory situations are reduced to single causes that lead to single, universal effects. 

Diangelo breezily admits this early in the book. On page 12, she says, “as a sociologist, I am quite comfortable generalising”. I expected her to point out the ways she would address this vulnerability in her method. Instead she simply dismisses the problem and moves on: “social life is patterned and predictable in measurable ways. But I understand that my generalisations may cause some defensiveness for the white people about whom I am generalizing, given how cherished the ideology of individualism is in our culture.” (ibid) 

I agree totally with the Professor about the damaging influence of the culture of individuality. However, I’m uncomfortable with the claim that white people are simply defensive, and deluded by false consciousness, because their objection that she is generalising unfairly is entirely valid and needs to be addressed. In fact, generalising about individuals that you don’t know is the fundamental operation of prejudice, something that Diangelo admits but then simply fails to address. (P13)

The obvious response would be NOT TO accuse individual people of committing intentionally racist acts because this will make them highly resistant to your message. Instead, admitting that culture is pervasive and makes us internalise its constructs allows you to address injustices as systemic and societal without blaming and antagonising people, and so bring them with you. 

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^[1] The closest I can come to a definition of a good person is somebody who sincerely wishes to be better than they are, even if they fail. Catastrophically. Every day. And cause terrible harm in the process.

^[2] Perhaps, rather than naked racism, this could be an indignant condemnation, by white people, of their capitalist, racist society that forces people of colour into poverty and then forces the poor into criminal activity while simultaneously criminalising their behaviours? No? Dammit! 

^[3] The UK is very different, in this respect. Here, white working class boys achieve the lowest exam results, on average, of any subgroup of the school population. Parents have little choice and usually have to make do with their nearest state-funded school, irrespective of class or race. British schools are also funded centrally, so can request funds according to need and school size, and so on, whereas, in the USA, I believe schools are funded by local taxes, so a poor area will have less money available for education. Thus, if racial minorities are denied financial opportunities, they will collect in poorer areas with less well-resourced schools. When suburban parents reject these schools because of their poor attainment levels, they are continuing racial segregation. 

I’ve been reading White Fragility by Robin Diangelo (Penguin, 2019, in the British edition), a wise, perceptive and compassionate book that expresses the author’s sincere desire to teach us all to be better people. It’s eye-opening stuff, when it comes to US culture and society, a country that seems catastrophically divided along racial lines. I hope to god Britain and Ireland (and Europe) aren’t as bad, although Diangelo attempts to attribute US style discrimination and inequality to “the Western context, generally” (p51) and to associate the term “white” with “European”.  One of the myriad injustices of the British empire was that it outsourced its racial tension and guilt, by establishing a slave trade and agrarian economies that depended on it, and then piously abolishing that trade^[1], leaving America to pick up the pieces. 

I’m reluctant to accept all the conclusions she comes to, though, precisely because of this tendency to overgeneralise and to simplify everything to single causes. By doing so, she creates crimes of categorisation. In other words, how she categorises social phenomena allows her to blame particular actors in those situations. 

Injustices that result from multiple causes are misfortunes because no one is directly to blame. But if there is a single cause, racism, sexism, misogyny, transphobia is infused with agency. It becomes discrimination by individuals’ decisions, and that is criminal; inexcusable. 

Robin Diangelo is eager to persuade us to join a just cause. It is very easy, if racism is a misfortune visited on other people, to just sit on our arses, ruefully shaking our heads and doing nothing. However, if her model of society is applied to Britain, it presents such an inaccurately simplified picture that she gives the far-right an opportunity to wholly reject what she has to say and carry on as normal. The UK has a largely white, largely conservative, moderately patriotic population. Telling them they are racist scum is unlikely to persuade them to change.

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^[1] It’s unfair, though, to talk about this issue as if the empire made voluntary decisions, and thus to blame all its millions of subjects equally. The slavers, their supporters and the abolitionists all made their own decisions, as far as they were able, within the context and limitations of British imperial culture. The abolitionists fought hard and long in a just cause against powerful opponents.