> The entire article is based on online group dynamics over people trying to figure out how to come to grips with historically ignored problems.

You have to ignore quite a lot of history to come to the conclusion that these problems were historically ignored.

> I fail to feel outraged by this process.

Maybe if you end up on the receiving end you'll feel differently?

> Is "White Fragility" without criticism? Probably not, I think it is a fantastic book, but it scares the bejeebers out of some people and we get instagram drama and articles like this which I interpret as another attempt at purity (trying to outsmart "wokeness").

Robin D'Angelo has made some deranged, outlandish assertions, and instead of defending them she simply follows up with more outlandish assertions. I had the pleasure of having a non-white person explain things about "white people" that she'd learned from that book that were patently false.

> Unfortunately it is going to require people to sit with feeling uneasy

People throw around this phrase, but it always strikes me as nonsensical.

There's a lot of stupid opinions that can make people feel uneasy, so unease is not some magic barometer of truth.

People are going to feel really uneasy if they are listening to you defend your appreciation of child pornography, but that doesn't mean you have struck upon some deep uncomfortable truth.

You fail to feel outraged by terrible behavior because it’s ostensibly in service of your ideological aims.

That says a lot about your ideology’s consistency when it comes to how we should behave individually, and treat others, now, in our present.

I hear what you're saying, and I think it's true that some people react with hostility when confronted with some of this stuff, but separate from the actual values, this article describes a destructive and unproductive social dynamic. I think the most interesting bit is that the author describes similar cannibalistic dynamics happening in neo-nazi subcultures. Whether the values here are worthy is beside the point.

Questioning the moral standing of those who would criticize the dynamic itself isn't useful or worthwhile. It conflates interpersonal confrontation (useful, good, corrective, it's how we build each other up) with a zillion passersby hurling invective at a guy who, in this case, found it so troubling to have a mass of people condemn him on a moral spectrum that is very dear to him that he ended up suicidal.

White Fragility is an awful book. Even as baby's first guide to thinking about how you treat POC, it's a net negative and that role would be better filled by something like Ibram Kendi's books. Still fluffy and lightweight, but at least not as harmfully neurotic.

That being said, you've hit on the actual shortcoming of "woke culture" these handwringing articles miss. It's admirable, not outrageous, that white people becoming conscious of racism feel compelled to do whatever they can about it. But most people (in the US at least) are so depoliticized that their ability to effect systemic change is virtually nil. The project of rebuilding the necessary political capacity is hard, boring work and we probably won't live long enough to see its fruits. If you want gratification, making some rando on the internet bend the knee is much easier.

One definitely gets the impression from critics like the author that they're less interested in seeing that energy redirected than in it dissipating entirely.

As a black person, I'll say this new crop of books like White Fragility on one hand aren't great, and in the long run some will probably seen as outright bad, but I'm still glad they exist?

It's kind of an Overton Window thing for me. I'm just very used to the 90's, where you couldn't even come close to saying anything like this out loud in, e.g. an academic setting because you know what you would set off.

I'm glad it's out there to at least be reckoned with as a theory.

(Relatedly, this is why I have zero respect for the suggestion that a new form of "censorship" is taking place when people talk about e.g. "cancel culture" and whatnot. This has always been around, the only thing that's new is that it can now come from e.g. both the left and the right)

It has always been around, but it is fundamentally opposed to any intellectual exchange. And we slowly improved here. Yes, freedom of speech does require freedom from consequences. That is also true for the author of said book. I don't think ridicule is prohibiting speech, it can be, but this is not the case here.

I'm not quite getting at what you're saying here? What is the "it?" I ask because the old-school "cancel culture" that didn't go by that name frequently employed bad intellectual exchange.

Put differently, "White Fragility" is intellectual exchange, so was "The Bell Curve", so was "Phrenology" and a lot of other things?

>> people trying to figure out how to come to grips with historically ignored problems

I very much agree that many people have limited knowledge of the history of the last six hundred years, but I believe that sharing the cold hard facts from history (that aren't taught in schools) has a better chance at opening up a person's viewpoint rather than criticizing their behavior.

> Unfortunately it is going to require people to sit with feeling uneasy

You can only make an omelet by breaking a few million eggs. If you chair is uncomfortable I would suggest a cushion. There isn't much more to discuss here I guess. There are people without too much self-reflection but you are not making a good case. Get some distance if you need it.