In my own circles, white, middle class women in particular almost seemed to think it was their moral duty to flaggelate themselves with DiAngelo’s book to raise their moral consciences, or perhaps punish themselves for their security and affluence. This instinct seems stronger among the women than the men. But women have always had a strong tendency to organize themselves collectively around social moral causes. That’s one of the wonderful things about women, but it also makes them vulnerable to those who might seek to exploit their guilt, solidarity, and compassion.

Since the book is so popular, I suppose something must be said. Most of what needs to be said has already been said by many people. I can’t add much to what people like Glen Lowry and John McWhorter have said. So I think it’s really only worth stating what I personally find in her ideas that gives me pause. Or more accurately, sends me running for the door.

The two things that bother me most about her theses are this: that virtually none of her findings would survive a factor reduction, and that it’s intellectual tyranny.

The factor reduction issue is more technical and less personal, so let’s start with that. A factor reduction is an analytical tool you use to make sure that the thing you’re detecting in your study is actually the thing that matters, and it isn’t some other underlying factor that you’re really detecting that’s doing the work.

Robin’s book is all about white supremacy and racism, specifically inherent white racism. Her version of it is very structural and cultural. I’m not sure whether to list all her contentions here or just say you should read the book, which you clearly shouldn’t. I think I’ll cheat and just leap to the end. The problem with the data points that she identifies and then uses to make her case of inherent racism and white supremacy is that the supposed “white privilege” she identifies cannot easily be separated from majority privilege.

If you go through her list of all the hidden and taken for granted “white privileges” she suddenly discovered in her life, and then ask yourself, do these same privileges exist in other social groups that are not white, suddenly the whole argument comes apart. All she has really discovered is the existence of majorit privileges, which exists in every culture, and is the underlying factor doing the actual work, not “whiteness” or even racism, and has no connection to the American slave trade. In fact, it even exists in subcultures within white and non-white societies. All these things are a natural structural function of living in any society composed primarily of similar folk. And that’s what societies are. Groups of people who find a broad commonality and unite as a collective for mutual benefit and protection.

I can’t blame DiAnglo for not thinking to do this kind of analysis. Possibly she doesn’t have much experience of other places and other cultures and so imagines her own situation to be unique. She thinks there’s something special about white people or America, and in this sense at least, there really isn’t. She’s not an academic, not an especially rigorous thinker or brilliant writer, she operates more in the sphere of contemporary popular rhetoric. So she doesn’t know logic or analysis or argumentation well. And she seems to be skeptical about objectivity in general, in which case you can’t really expect her to be more than merely rhetorical.

And that brings me to my more personal objection to her writings. They’re a rhetorical trap. Her whole argument is a rigged game. There’s no way out. She’s constructed her arguments so you have to submit to them, and if you don’t you’ve simply proved her point. Either way, she wins. Disagreement is not possible. Even my wife, who is very generous and sympathetic when it comes to what others have to say, upon reading her book, very hesitantly described it as “the definition of fascism”.

And I will not be told what I have to think and have to believe and have to agree to. I will not be forced I to any position by rhetorical trickery or moral-emotional blackmailing. I do not accept her “admit you’re a racist or be proved a racist” argument. Particularly from her. Because I do not trust the motivations, ends, or means of someone who would try to use such arguments in this way. Someone like that can’t mean you any good. I don’t know if they can mean anyone any good. Except maybe themselves, as the prophet who cannot be denied and must be submitted to and to whose irresistible ideas you must do obeisance.

Maybe it’s just the contrarian in me that fought with my church, with my school, with my political party, with my family, with my friends, with my teachers, and with myself. But I will not be forced by a false dilemma constructed by an untrustworthy prophet into submission to a belief system I do not believe captures the truth or solves the problems it proposes to solve. How can it solve problems when it can’t even correctly identify them? DiAnglo doesn’t even know enough about people or about the world to recognize the universal phenomenon of majority privilege when she sees it!

How could she possibly hope to address its problems when she doesn’t even understand them? She’s off chasing white people and imagining qualities distributed magically by skin color and missing entirely the real forces that underly our real problems. And her proposed solution is to reeducate and restructure all of society, based on her “insights”. That’s like letting a doctor who thinks you have a skin condition do a major operation on you, when what you really have is a heart condition. Not only will she not cure what sickens you, she will likely harm you in the process and make your condition worse. Unfortunately, like many intellectuals, she will likely not have to bear the real consequences of the application of her own ideas and will merely profit from the notoriety and popularity they enjoy (particularly among other middle class white women like her, who buy a lot of books).

For me at least, those two problems were obvious right from the start. One advantage of being a natural contrarian is that I’m always wary of being led into a compulsary thought trap that tries to take away my ability to reason and to argue and forces me by other means to submit my mind. And I’m always quick to ask the question, does that actually prove the thing you say it proves or might there be another explanation? After having those two red flags go up, it’s a fairly simple process to run the simulations and realize that the arguments in this book are a one ended trap designed to catch you by exploiting your guilt and sympathy (noble and useful things to have, but dangerous as foundations for complex arguments about society). And a basic peer review of her data fails to find a novel result, as studies of other samples easily yield the same factors as those she identified as unique to “white privilege”.

Is she on to nothing? Of course not. Has she correctly identified and prescribed a solution for the problem? Not in the slightest. She sees shallowly. Like I said, like someone who hasn’t seen much of the world or much outside her own skin. And so to her skin seems like it’s everything. She’s a dermatologist diagnosing a world sickened by heart disease. Not only here, among her favorite pale subjects, easy to burn as they are, but everywhere.

If I had to suggest a curative to her work, it wouldn’t even be a critique of her ideas. It would be White Guilt by Shelby Steele. If you really feel the need to indulge your confession of your sins to ablate your guilt as a white person and patronize black narratives, he certainly offers an opportunity. He will flagellate you. But he won’t offer such shallow analyzes or skin deep prescriptions. He won’t ask you to be a good white person or become this or that adjacent. He offers no easy paths to redemption for whites or blacks. And he certainly won’t indulge your white privilege. In game that only runs skin deep, the solution is to dispel such shallowness by exposing the human heart. And Shelby Steele does that unmercilessly, showing how even our best efforts to justify ourselves only reveal our shallow, self serving myopic outlook. He gives what DiAnglo promises to give and fails at. And I only wish people would at least keep the debate lively by reading his book after reading hers, and then choosing which explanation seems the most plausible.