White Fragility

If one wants to be "up to speed", one needs to know what "white fragility" is about. There is a bestselling book by that title, by Robin DiAngelo. Another minister asked me for comment. I replied, "I know ... what she's talking about, in the sense that there is a deeply ingrained racism that people will deny ... Many people are humbled when they realise it, but many not." At the same time, "We minister. We don't sniff out weakness as often happens in this area or debate. So if there is fragility of any kind, we are sympathetic towards it, and work with it lovingly. For us, it is a pastoral issue first, rather than academic." I said, too, though, that this book was not rigorous enough, and masked a racism of its own. I have been vilified for that. But see yesterday's The Atlantic: The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility, by a Columbia linguistics professor. I have joked that it's hard to be before one's time.