Race-hate huckster Robin DiAngelo, the white author of White Fragility, has come out for racial segregation, but don’t expect her to become the object of moral indignation and start getting canceled everywhere. DiAngelo supports the separation of the races in a way that our self-anointed moral superiors on the Left find acceptable: she says it’s necessary to protect poor “people of color” from dangerous white people (which would include DiAngelo herself).
Robin DiAngelo sounding like an old-line segregationist: "People of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other."pic.twitter.com/HJFQcGejuo
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 20, 2023
DiAngelo was appearing on a webinar entitled “Racial Justice: The Next Frontier” that was hosted by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, which Breitbart described Tuesday as “an independent publisher that markets DEI literature to businesses.” DEI is, of course, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Left’s latest rebranding of what is actually coercion, socialism, and poverty. Appearing along with DiAngelo were two “DEI consultants,” Mareisha N. Reese and Mary-Frances Winters.
In that woke company, DiAngelo declared that “people of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other.” Referring to racial segregation as “affinity,” she said she was a “big believer in affinity space and affinity work.” DiAngelo added that she wanted to “create a culture that actually spits out those who are resistant, as opposed to what it does now, which is spit out those who want to break with white solidarity.” In reality, we already have a culture that “spits out those who are resistant” to her message of racial hatred and resentment, but DiAngelo, in saying this, revealed yet again the Left’s authoritarian heart. In a Leftist perfect world (think Stalin’s Russia of the 1930s), “those who are resistant” are crushed: hauled before disinformation governance boards, de-platformed, banned, and silenced — and then come the criminal penalties.
We saw this recently with the mass cancellation of Scott Adams’ comic strip Dilbert over remarks that were actually quite like those that DiAngelo just made. Adams notoriously said that it was “OK to be white” and “based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people.”
The uproar against Adams was intense. Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, called Adams’ statement “hateful and racist.” He added, “We are not a home for those who espouse racism. Adams’ reprehensible statements come during Black History Month, when The Plain Dealer has been publishing stories about the work being performed by so many to overcome the damage done by racist decisions and policy.”
Not to be outdone, Therese Bottomly, editor of The Oregonian, said defensively of her decision to drop Dilbert, “Some readers will no doubt deride my decision as an example of ‘overly woke’ culture or as a knee-jerk politically correct response. What about free speech, they might ask. Isn’t this censorship? No one is taking Adams’ free speech rights away. He is free to share his abhorrent comments on YouTube and Twitter so long as those companies allow them. This also isn’t censorship; it’s editing. Editors make decisions every day about what to publish, balancing the need to inform against the possibility of offending reader sensibilities.”
Yet what Adams said is just what Robin DiAngelo said, only from the other side. Will Quinn, Bottomly, and the others who denounced Scott Adams now denounce the author of White Fragility and restate their abhorrence of segregation? Of course not, and the reason is obvious: Adams said that white people should protect themselves by getting away from black people, whereas DiAngelo said that black people should protect themselves by getting away from white people.
In the Left’s universe, you can say that black people need protection from whites, but you cannot say that white people need protection from blacks. Therefore Scott Adams is racist while Robin DiAngelo is enlightened, even though the net result of following their recommendations would be exactly the same. DiAngelo will continue to be feted and celebrated on the Left, while Adams will continue to be excoriated and treated with utter contempt.
Related: Journalist Challenges ‘White Fragility’ Author to Explain Her Racist Worldview
City Journal’s Christopher Rufo observed that DiAngelo was “sounding like an old-line segregationist.” News analyst Allie Beth Stuckey remarked on the double standard: “When Robin DiAngelo says it, it’s inspirational and she gets paid $20k. When Scott Adams says it, it’s racist and he loses his job.” About the Left, Stuckey pointed out, “It’s because it’s a legalistic, unrelenting religion with no redemption or grace, no chance of salvation. The rules aren’t even consistent. People will play along with the ‘do better’ trash for a little while, but eventually the sanctification-without-justification stuff gets old. And it’s not even real sanctification! No matter how many books you read, how many times you ‘repent,’ you’re never considered any ‘holier’ or more anti-racist. Tell me, what’s the point of ‘doing the work’ if the queen of anti-racism, DiAngelo, still considers herself racist?” Indeed.
Meanwhile, the desire Martin Luther King enunciated so long ago, that people be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, recedes ever further into the distance.
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