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I was
interested in Picking Cotton for several reasons. As a
psychologist and researcher I have helped people deal with interpersonal
offenses for over 45 years. My focus has been on forgiveness and reconciliation.
But there are more lessons in this book. In view of recent events the book
serves to illustrate social injustice and racism. In addition, we see the serious
problem of faulty eyewitness testimony evident in the experiments of Elizabeth
Loftus. So for these reasons, I recommend this book to a broad spectrum of
readers. And would especially recommend it to my colleagues in counselling and
mental health.
The book
opens with the horrible account of Jennifer’s rape. She’s a young white college
student in bed in her own home. Somehow she concentrated on his features—then,
when the opportunity arose, she ran to a neighbor who called the police. As the
story unfolds, Jennifer is examined at a hospital and eventually reviews a
lineup of seven black men. She identifies Ronald Cotton—hence the title, Picking
Cotton. Jennifer was a confident witness but she was wrong with devastating
effects.
In Part 2,
Ronald Cotton tells his story. He borrowed a neighbor’s car for his required
appearance at the Burlington Police Department. It was the last time he would
be a free man for eleven years.
The details of Ronald Cotton's struggle for justice reveal the horrors systemic injustice and prejudice. Ron’s path to freedom is long and
tortuous. Eventually, Ron is released following the identification of the man
who actually raped Jennifer. We learn how Ron and Jennifer meet and later work
to address injustice. Their meeting also led to forgiveness and reconciliation.
Stories
like Picking Cotton have brought to light the importance of
psychological science work on the limitations of eyewitness testimony and bias
in police lineups. (Read more about memory and the misinformation effect). In the aftermath of Picking Cotton, much of the focus has appropriately been
on the problems on eyewitness testimony and social injustice. However, the
importance of forgiveness and reconciliation to wellness adds additional value to Picking
Cotton.
White Fragility is a best seller with a surge in
interest during this 2020 springtime of protests against racism. The concept, white
fragility, is now a part of everyday discourse—at least among those who
endorse the concept. Even if you disagree with most or all of DiAngelo’s ideas,
I think it worth reading or listening to if you live in, or are part of, the world where white
people are, or were, oppressive in their actions toward black people.
The path to white fragility in America begins a
few centuries ago. DiAngelo does not dwell on the past but draws back the
curtain on the historic wasteland so we have a context.
“Claiming
that the past was socially better than the present is also a hallmark of white
supremacy. Consider any period in the past from the perspective of people of
color: 246 years of brutal enslavement; the rape of black women for the
pleasure of white men and to produce more enslaved workers; the selling off of
black children; the attempted genocide of Indigenous people, Indian removal
acts, and reservations; indentured servitude, lynching, and mob violence;
sharecropping; Chinese exclusion laws; Japanese American internment; Jim Crow
laws of mandatory segregation; black codes; bans on black jury service; bans on
voting; imprisoning people for unpaid work; medical sterilization and
experimentation; employment discrimination; educational discrimination; inferior
schools; biased laws and policing practices; redlining and subprime mortgages;
mass incarceration; racist media representations; cultural erasures, attacks,
and mockery; and untold and perverted historical accounts, and you can see how
a romanticized past is strictly a white construct. But it is a powerful
construct because it calls out to a deeply internalized sense of superiority
and entitlement and the sense that any advancement for people of color is an
encroachment on this entitlement.”
Naturally, DiAngelo focuses on racism in America.
She’s consulted with various companies and organizations and tells tales about
how white people demonstrate their fragility—crying, denying, expressing anger,
and so forth. Psychologists understand tears can be a way of escaping
responsibility. DiAngelo knows that too.
“Tears
that are driven by white guilt are self-indulgent. When we are mired in guilt,
we are narcissistic and ineffective; guilt functions as an excuse for inaction.
Further, because we so seldom have authentic and sustained cross-racial
relationships, our tears do not feel like solidarity to people of color we have
not previously supported. Instead, our tears function as impotent reflexes that
don’t lead to constructive action. We need to reflect on when we cry and when
we don’t, and why. In other words, what does it take to move us? Since many of
us have not learned how racism works and our role in it, our tears may come
from shock and distress about what we didn’t know or recognize. For people of
color, our tears demonstrate our racial insulation and privilege.”
Can immigrants like me escape? No. She tells the
story of a European who claimed to have grown up in a nonracist society. She’s
angry when DiAngelo confronts her. I think DiAngelo is right on two counts. First,
European nations, like my own, participated in the American slave trade and
racist empire building. Second, after being in the US a while, it is easy to
slip into the way society operates. Racism is systemic.
I consider myself to be socially progressive. But
that concept has little meaning unless the features are detailed. What I mean
to say is I favour equality of opportunity for all and I believe we have a
responsibility to promote this type of equality, which includes being
antiracist. The trap, as I understand DiAngelo, is thinking we progressives
are superior to other whites because we smugly and inaccurately believe we understand the black experience and
promote ourselves rather than continuing the struggle against racism. Here’s
what DiAngelo says about progressives:
“White
progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the
degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure
that others see us as having arrived. None of our energy will go into what we
need to be doing for the rest of our lives: engaging in ongoing self-awareness,
continuing education, relationship building, and actual antiracist practice.
White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but our
defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us how
we do so.”
Sometimes DiAngelo comes across as harsh as if she
needs to hit some whites over the head. At other times she reveals a humility such
as the time she made a racist comment about a black colleague’s braided hair
and needed to apologize.
DiAngelo is at her best when she tells stories to
illustrate important points like receiving feedback from people of colour.
“In my
workshops, I often ask people of color, “How often have you given white people
feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism? How often has that gone well for
you?” Eye-rolling, head-shaking, and outright laughter follow, along with the
consensus of rarely, if ever. I then ask, “What would it be like if
you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and
work to change that behavior?” Recently a man of color sighed and said, “It
would be revolutionary.” I ask my fellow whites to consider the profundity of
that response. It would be revolutionary if we could receive,
reflect, and work to change the behavior. On the one hand, the man’s response
points to how difficult and fragile we are. But on the other hand, it indicates
how simple it can be to take responsibility for our racism. However, we aren’t
likely to get there if we are operating from the dominant worldview that only
intentionally mean people can participate in racism.”
White Fragility can feel depressing because she
gives us white people the sense that we cannot escape our dilemma. The system built by white founders looms large and insidious. She does offer some examples of how to develop an
antiracist stance through education, listening, and accepting feedback.
**********
DiAngelo approaches her project like an apostle
writing a gospel that cannot be challenged unless you want to be identified as
a heretic and burned for eternity. However, she has an important point. We white people
are people of privilege in the United States. That’s been clear for some time,
but DiAngelo does offer additional examples of how that privilege has become
covert in the wake of various laws and policies designed to address overt
discrimination in employment, housing, and the like. Racism continues to exist
and it can be difficult to recognize. Hence the need for books like White
Fragility.
What DiAngelo misses is a critical perspective on
her all-encompassing concept of white fragility. In her black-white view of
American culture she misses important nuances that can evoke a rejection of the
very goal she wishes to accomplish. She’s on message when she talks about white-black
racist language. But she sometimes switches the conversation to write about
people of colour. On the one hand, some of the attitudes and actions of white Americans
toward people of colour are similar, but on the other hand, white oppression toward the
descendants of American slaves is different than the oppression of Native
Americans, people of colour from south of the border, and people from other
ethnic groups. And we should not ignore the complexity of racism and sexism as seen in the tension between white women and black women in pursuit of the right to vote (See PBS).
Another criticism is the fuzziness of the white
fragility diagnosis. It’s like a disease every white person has. This is not
unlike new clinicians who attend a workshop on ADHD and go away discovering
everyone has ADHD and needs the latest medication touted by the omnipresent
pharma-giants. To be sure, the concept of white fragility is somewhat useful, but it is
not like a disease that one has or does not have.
White fragility is more like a hedge of thorny
vines protecting the historic domains of whites who forced people of colour to proceed carefully as they
attempt to find the way toward the promise of America that all have unalienable
rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In my view, we white Americans would be better off
identifying and cutting the overgrowth of these racist vines and creating one
broad path to equality. Each thorny vine is a behaviour pattern that when
identified can be viewed on a sliding scale to assess where we are in making
progress toward antiracist thoughts, feelings, verbal statements, and nonverbal
behaviour. We can evaluate the possibility that we are in denial or avoiding an
uncomfortable truth. We can learn how to apologize, seek forgiveness, attempt
reconciliation, and take action to remove a thorny vine or create an inclusive
pathway.
My last criticism is that the concept White Fragility is an offensive an errant concept not likely to win converts from those most likely in need of confronting their racial prejudices and listening to the ways whites have oppressed people of colour. DiAngelo's message is often on-point. Perhaps the title will sell many books to moderate and left-leaning Americans. The white leaders who hold the power to create America's laws, the military power to destroy the planet, and the financial wealth to own large swathes of the globe hardly seem fragile to me. But many of them, and we less powerful whites, do need to confront our racist attitudes and policies and exert whatever influence we have to create a more equitable and just society if not because we feel a moral obligation to do so, at least from the perspective of enlightened self-interest.
Finally, my experience as a psychotherapist and a
consumer of psychological science argues against the value of books alone to change
behaviour. If self-help books were so powerful, many of us would be fit, healthy,
wealthy, and wise. Nevertheless, White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo is a good read with some useful lessons. It
is also an important reminder that those of us in the majority have a
responsibility to weed out the thorns that choke the flourishing of so many.
