In case the name Robin DiAngelo doesn’t ring a bell, she’s the author of the 2018 bestseller “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” It’s one of the most-read books in the genre of “anti-racism,” and there are plenty more in the pipeline from publishers who know a stream of income when they see it.
In a piece for Bitch, Katherine Morgan asks, “How long do we have to wait for white women to learn?” How is it that so many women purchased and read anti-racism books like Ijeoma Oluo’s “So You Want to Talk About Race” and then voted for President Trump in 2020?
Ultimately, for many, the act of purchasing these books was performative. Instead of being read, these books decorated coffee tables and bedspreads for Instagrammable shots. Meanwhile, the sudden, explosive demand in many bookstores was overwhelming. One employee told Bitch, “We had at least [two] weeks of waiting on more than 100 orders of mostly How to Be an Antiracist and White Fragility, and it led to multiple customers complaining about how long they waited.” Christian Vega, the events coordinator at Astoria Bookshop in Queens, said that it often felt like a case of, “‘Look at this on my bookshelf, I’m a Good White™.’” He added that, while many of the actions this summer felt trendy, “More people felt like they were genuine this time around than other times, but only a little.”
Jesse Singal sees an easier explanation:
The simplest, most obvious explanation, "White women who vote for Trump are not the same white women who buy Robin DiAngelo books," is simply ignored because racial essentialism is now the dominant mode of progressive analysis, making everything dumber.https://t.co/uFAoEq787E
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) November 21, 2020
2/Once this ideology has wormed its way into your brain, points that are obvious and basic to other decently informed people – "American whites are an extremely heterogeneous group" – become incomprehensible. It sets you back as a participant in every conversation about politics.
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) November 21, 2020
So many words have been wasted in trying to explain the “problem” of conservative white women who seem perfectly happy to do their part to maintain the white male patriarchy.
I thought that then read the piece, thinking there must be evidence these *were* the same women, and even then told myself, no, there must be some stats confirming this. Felt like I was going mad!
— Victoria Smith (@glosswitch) November 21, 2020
No there absolutely is evidence, as long as you keep in mind that such women are "Karens." Explains 100% of everything.
— Ophelia Benson (@OpheliaBenson) November 21, 2020
I don’t know what’s more cringe-inducing, the demographic reductionism, or the tone of ‘My anecdotal experience didn’t match this data, so there must have been deception!’
— Disintegrator (@Disintegrator) November 21, 2020
I think if I had managed to get to the end of that book I’d have voted for Trump in a fearful psychopathic fury
— David ?? (Vive la République!) (@mrhorsdusujet) November 21, 2020
It’s also failure to grasp basic math, and the idea that everything in life is an election where the only thing that matters is who gets the most people.
Even if Trump took the white female vote 65-35, 35% of American white women is a hell of a lot of people to buy a book.
— Fiddle Elphier (@FiddleElphier) November 21, 2020
I just wasted 2 minutes of my life reading a rant from a “bitch” who is “filled with rage”. Btw I would like to remind everyone that there are public libraries if we want to read stuff like “White Fragility” but not support sales. Great audiobook for running. Fired me up bigly.
— Karin Steinbuegl *lemonade maker* (@KarrinkaS) November 21, 2020
Among people who shop at book stores in Astoria Queens and Clinton Hill Brooklyn, Trump got ~0% of the vote. I'm very confident in saying that.
Maybe 1 stray finance bro in lives in Downtown Brooklyn and reads fantasy novels voted for Trump and buys books in Brooklyn.
— MALARKEY DELENDA EST ⚔️ (@Alex__Katz) November 21, 2020
This makes absolutely no logical sense. Robin DiAngelo wrote a book full of bias while touting herself as an "anti-bias expert" what a horrible person who only thinks of things in terms of race… "majority vs minority" (but only in the Western insulated echo-chamber perspective)
— Counter Tyranny (@TyrannyCounter) November 21, 2020
The main failure of wokeness is that it sees people as parts of groups, rather than the individuals we are. There's no such thing as a group of white women, or black men, or anyone else who all think and vote the same way. There never will be.
— Paul Weeldreyer (@paulweel29) November 21, 2020
Yup.
Progressives think in terms of racial groups.They look outward and impose expectations they are baffled never seem to manifest the way they assumed.
They refuse to imagine 'white women' do not think as a group or have group identity or loyalty the way they assume. https://t.co/iYpAgoPVF0
— Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) November 21, 2020
Uhmmm… there’s another simple and plausible explanation. White women who voted for Trump may have bought Robin DiAngelo’s books and may have thought the books were total crap!!! Because her books are indeed total crap.
— Game Theory (@MsGameTheory) November 21, 2020
So you're saying the problem is that only some and not all white women read White Fragility? We need the corporations to step up and use their leverage to compel intractable employees who won't read it on their own
— [email protected] ???? (@whitefeeIings) November 21, 2020
I am asking critical theorists to please learn some basic statistics
— Free to Choose (@econ_is_awesome) November 21, 2020
Yet they want to teach this garbage instead of math in California.
— ZetaDavis (@ZetaDavis1) November 21, 2020
I expected more from bitch media.
— Brain Richards (@brainrichards99) November 21, 2020
The author hasn’t written anything else for the site, and the site itself is sponsored by “sex toy collective” and “doctor climax.” Is this a respectable site? pic.twitter.com/uvu5eLdltG
— Boomieleaks (@Boomieleaks) November 21, 2020
Doctor C? He’s legit bro, cured my wife of her hysteria.
— Tardigrade Bio Diversity Advocate (@ManofillRepute) November 21, 2020
We hope one of the many things Joe Biden forgets is to rescind President Trump’s guidance to pull critical race theory workshops out of government offices.
Related:
Jesse Singal offers up just three paragraphs of ‘White Fragility,’ which if you disagree with you are only proving your fragility https://t.co/l9OPkda0VU
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 20, 2020
Join the conversation as a VIP Member