Big Think Interview With Amanda Congdon | Big Think.

Big Think Interview With Amanda Congdon

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All that racism needs to keep going is for white people to keep being nice, says Robin DiAngelo. Being nice is better than the alternative, of course—but ask: What else am I doing to end racial inequality?"But I have friends of color" is a deflection device, not a real way to engage in productive dialogue about systemic racism.It's difficult for white people hear and, in DiAngelo's experience, many people will reject the idea of systemic racism and how they may benefit from it simply because it is too uncomfortable.For the white people who want to push through this issue, the biggest thing they can do is recognize internalized superiority.

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ROBIN DIANGELO:

Dr. Robin DiAngelo is Affiliate Faculty at the University of Washington. She is a two-time winner of the Student's Choice Award for Educator of the Year from the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. Her scholarship is in White Racial Identity and Race Relations. In addition to her academic work, Robin has extensive experience as a workplace consultant in race relations and racial justice. Her book White Fragility: Why It's So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism was released in June and debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list.

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TRANSCRIPT:

ROBIN DIANGELO: After several decades of doing this work I feel like I know my people fairly well, and most people, most white people are not going to do anything different. Most white people that attend my workshops will say, "Wow, that was really interesting or provocative," if they're open. If they're not open they'll just have their reasons why they have to reject what I said. But even those who are open to the message, if it is not sustained it won't make much of an impact.

I often say when I'm in front of a group, "Everything outside of this room will compel you not to see this anymore." The forces are incredibly seductive. The forces of white solidarity, the forces of keeping other white people comfortable, the forces to not see or name any of this. And if you don't put some kind of structure around yourself to keep you focused there, you're going to slip right back into the status quo.

For so many white people, we think that the answer to racism is friendliness. If you notice the evidence that most white people will give for why they're not racist, one of their top pieces of evidence is, "I know people of color. I have friends of color." If we look at that evidence as a way to understand the deeper structure of meaning, right, it's actually quite revealing. So in order for a claim like that—"I know people of color, I have friends of color"—in order for a claim like that to be good evidence of my lack of racism, a racist can't be able to do that. Otherwise, it's not good evidence. "This is what distinguishes me from a racist. I have people of color in my life. I live in New York City. I was in Teach for America. I went to a diverse school." These are all the claims that white people will make for their lack of racism. Well, that must mean a racist cannot live in New York City, could not know or speak to or be friendly to people of color, could not be in the Peace Corps, et cetera. And I'm hoping you can see right now how ridiculous that evidence is. Because even in an avowed racist can do all of those things. So most white people believe that niceness is all it takes, and the status quo of our society is the reproduction of racial inequality. That's what it does. It's a default of all of our institutions, our norms and our policies. It's what our society does, it's what it's always done.

Our outcomes are not improving. By many measures, our outcomes of racial disparity are increasing. And all this system needs to keep on keeping on reproducing racial inequality—with whites benefiting from it—is for white people just to be really nice. Be really nice. Go ahead. Smile at your coworkers of color, go to lunch on occasion, and do nothing else. And you will uphold that system because niceness is not courageous. Niceness is not anti-racism. Niceness will not get racism on the table and it will not keep it on the table when everyone wants it off the table.

I suppose it's better than not being nice. But it takes strategic, intentional anti-racist action—it is a lifelong process that I will never be finished from.

The mainstream definition of a racist is an individual—always an individual, not a system—who consci...

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