White Fragility

人種問題に対して、日本では戸惑っているのが実情でしょうか。変に意識しすぎると以下のような困った状況になりそうです。

人種問題にどのように振る舞えばいいのか、そんなヒントをくれる本として数年前にでたWhite Fragilityと言う本が米国でベストセラーになっているそうです。アマゾンのレビューが5000近くになっていますので話題の本ですね。近くの図書館にあったので読んでみました。

（アマゾンの紹介文）

Anger. Fear. Guilt. Denial. Silence. These are the ways in which ordinary white people react when it is pointed out to them that they have done or said something that has - unintentionally - caused racial offence or hurt. But these reactions only serve to silence people of colour, who cannot give honest feedback to 'liberal' white people lest they provoke a dangerous emotional reaction.

Robin DiAngelo coined the term 'White Fragility' in 2011 to describe this process and is here to show us how it serves to uphold the system of white supremacy. Using knowledge and insight gained over decades of running racial awareness workshops and working on this idea as a Professor of Whiteness Studies, she shows us how we can start having more honest conversations, listen to each other better and react to feedback with grace and humility. It is not enough to simply hold abstract progressive views and condemn the obvious racists on social media - change starts with us all at a practical, granular level, and it is time for all white people to take responsibility for relinquishing their own racial supremacy.

この本は、黒人の抱えている問題を理解して、より平等な社会を作るにはどのようにすればいいのかについて語っているのではないんですよね。白人の人種問題についての鈍感さを取り上げ、どのように振る舞えばいいのかという本に思えました。Matt TaibbiというジャーナリストはBLMを企業研修で対応できるものとして矮小化していると手厳しく批判しています。

On “White Fragility”

A few thoughts on America’s smash-hit #1 guide to egghead racialism

Matt Taibbi

Jun 29

For corporate America the calculation is simple. What’s easier, giving up business models based on war, slave labor, and regulatory arbitrage, or benching Aunt Jemima? There’s a deal to be made here, greased by the fact that the “antiracism” prophets promoted in books like White Fragility share corporate Americas instinctive hostility to privacy, individual rights, freedom of speech, etc.

Corporate America doubtless views the current protest movement as something that can be addressed as an H.R. matter, among other things by hiring thousands of DiAngelos to institute codes for the proper mode of Black-white workplace interaction.

If you’re wondering what that might look like, here’s DiAngelo explaining how she handled the fallout from making a bad joke while she was “facilitating antiracism training” at the office of one of her clients.

When one employee responds negatively to the training, DiAngelo quips the person must have been put off by one of her Black female team members: “The white people,” she says, “were scared by Deborah’s hair.” (White priests of antiracism like DiAngelo seem universally to be more awkward and clueless around minorities than your average Trump-supporting construction worker).