Geography aside however, the book makes some really specious arguments that at least once, I literally asked "wait, what?" I'm going to sum up these trains of thought here:
1) Racism is everything and anything. There's a lot of hub-bub about the definition of racism being changed, but here, there's no ambiguity. diAngelo states early on that she's using a different definition of racism for the purpose of her argument. Now, that by itself should trigger an alarm bell in your mind, if your argument relies on special pleading, but it goes on to present the argument that if all human beings are equal, then any discrepency in outcome is due to racism. No ifs, no buts, racism. If the argument was that racism or prejudice could have an effect on some groups getting into certain areas, then that isn't too unreasonable a claim, but nup. Racism. Nothing but racism. I'm not sure how this accounts for areas where minorities are over-represented (e.g. Asians are over-represented in US universities, Black Brittons are overrepresented in UK media, etc.), but nup, racism. By the book's argument, any society where the occupancy of groups in that society doesn't match the dynamics of said society is, by definition, a racist society. To be frank, I find this horribly reductive, because it more or less espouses the belief that all humans are the same across cultures, with identical interests. That personal choice or cultural norms count for nothing, but in fact, all differences in society is down to racism.
And look, you might even own the argument. You might truly believe that any group in a society whose demographics don't match that of the society at large is, by definition, racist. You might even extend this to other stuff, such as sexism, or classism, or anything else (if that's true, I've clearly operated in sexist environments all my life, because my first job was predominantly male, and my current jobs are predominantly female). You might say that this is a truth, because as the book reminds us, there's no such thing as objective truth, because every human being is prejudiced, and ergo, there's therefore no one singular truth (is this post-modernism?) Unfortunately, the book goes a step further.
2) White supremacy. Like racism, the book redefines this to be anything and everything. The book's actually a bit more specific with this in a sense, in that it generates some stats. As in, X% of Congress is white, ergo, white supremacy. Now, if you want to make the argument that that white Americans are over-represented in Congress, that's an argument that's statistically true (even if the book never pvovides comparative statistics). However, this isn't the argument that the book is making. The argument it actually makes is that "most people in Congress are white, ergo, white supremecy." As in, most people in Congress are white, ergo, white supremacy. Most people in the US are white, ergo, white supremacy. This argument is independent from actual white supremacy (as in, the belief that people of European background are superior to non-whites), its definition of white supremacy is redefined (again, by the writer's own admission) to state that as long as whites are a majority in a society, the society is, by definition, white supremacist. Y'know, should I even bother asking whether China is by definition "Han supremacist" or Japan is "Japanese supremacist," or any Middle Eastern or African country "Arab supremacist" or "African supremacist," then by the book's own logic, the answer must be yes. Any society of any country, no matter how free of biases they are, would, by definition, be supremacist. And again, you might even own this philosophy. But you'd have to concede that by this definition, all these "forms of oppression" cannot, by definition, ever be removed from society. Like, if I extend it, hetro-supremacy will always exist because there will always be more hetrosexual people than homosexual people, regardless of the presence of absence of homophobia. Again, if the book was making the argument that whites in the US are over-represented in certain groups, that's fine, but this isn't the argument that's being made.
3) The book directly interrogates the reader. Again, this isn't a problem, but the book is clearly expecting answers to be given in order to prove its point. Like, say I accuse Bob of stealing. Bob asks me "well, have YOU ever stolen anything?" Bob, in this context, is clearly expecting the answer to be yes. The book takes this same approach. I can't remember all the questions, but here's some:
a) When did you first encounter POC in school?
b) When did you first have POC teachers?
c) How were you able to go through school without discussing racism?
d) When did you have POC friends?
e) What did you do when your POC friends tried to discuss racism with you?
To which, my answers are:
a) At least by the age of 5, if not earlier
b) At least by the age of 5/6
c) ...are you high? FFS, I don't think how anyone could study history or literature without being exposed to these things.
d) At least by the age of 5, if not earlier
e) They didn't. It never came up.
Of course, these claims wouldn't change the paradigm the book operates under, and you could shift answers a-d to "why not earlier?" and change answer e to "well, obviously they knew it was a waste of time" (again, this is an argument that the book more or less makes). I know the book isn't directed at me directly, but when the book is addressing the reader directly, then all I can do is directly respond.
4) The book uses specious reasoning. The example that most people have cited is Jackie Robinson. Because I don't know anything about the history of baseball, I can't claim whether diAngelo's claims are right or wrong. I CAN however, point to an example that's used.
In this example (all hypothetical), a young girl with her mother in a shop says "look, a black man." The mother hushes her child up. In contrast, the book maintains, if the girl had said "look, a white man" or "look, a handsome man," the mother would say "yes he is, dear." Ergo, the mother is racist, and the child is being raised in a white supremacist environment, because in this case, "black" is something to be ashamed of, while "white" is a mark of pride, akin to "handsome." I...no. Just no. Maybe there's some level of precedent for this, but all I can say is that if any child pointed at me and said "look at the man (attach a descriptor if you want), I'd be uncomfortable, even if the descriptor was a compliment. And I imagine the mother would too, because generally, it's considered impolite to point at people and make exclamations. But no. This is racism. Same as meritocracy and individualism (as the book explains, these are racist ideologies, as in, not that these ideologies may not take into account disadvantage, but the very idea of these ideologies is racist. Individualism is a racist idea, because everyone is a product of their culture, and individualism doesn't take this into account. Ergo, individualism is racist).
The book has other examples of this kind of reasoning, and some I'm more sympathetic to, but even so, looking at the above example...well, you tell me.
At the end of the day, despite all this, I kind of reccomend reading this book. Sort of. It does have some good points that I think people should be exposed to. However, there's far too many faulty arguments for me to actually give it a positive rating. Of course, all my criticisms could just be my white fragility showing, so hey, what do I know?
