The Road to Hell

Intentions, gentility, niceness, and white supremacy

Pictured: White People’s good intentions. Kidding. I’m kidding. This is one of Turkmenistan’s fire craters which were caused by Soviet era drilling mistakes. Literally these pits which are called “doors to hell” were created with good intentions. Sort of. (Copyright belongs to Elliott at earthnutshell.com: http://www.earthnutshell.com/the-door-to-hell-turkmenistans-crater-of-fire/)

This is not the first time I’ve written a thing or another thing or this or that on racism as a general topic. There are authors and other authors and professors and activists who can tell you about this much better than I can. But I’m white and I know where the scary scary pitfalls are. Being white I also know that you’ll listen to me before you’ll listen to Prof. Cooper. So listen to me, get your mad on, and then go listen to her.

White Fragility

White fragility is where white people employ all manner of defensive techniques in order to avoid realizing that we’re doing damage or taking things that do not belong to us. One of my medium posts I linked above is entitled “I’m not racist, you are,” and I did that because blaming the other party of racism when called out on racism is a pretty standard white supremacist deflection. Yeah, I said white supremacist. Other deflections include feigning ignorance, claiming the other party is oversensitive, tears, and reactive anger. Some of these are just annoying, but some of these like the tears and police calling can result in all sorts of mayhem.

White fragility shuts down the discussion about racism. It is a technique of reinforcing white supremacy by ensuring that white people do not have to evaluate their own privilege or the societal and…