Racial Shaming and the Decline of Intellectual Honesty

Richard Gale and Gary Null, PhD

Progressive Radio Network, September 10, 2021

To state that an unknown evolutionary principle for the survival of the fitness imbues us with a hardwired negative predisposition towards inherent racism is not only false but has enormous adverse repercussions to social order and personal well-being. It fuels what one of the greatest western minds ushering the birth of modern science, Francis Bacon, identified as the four idols of the mind. In her book White Fragility and subsequent publications, author Robin DiAngleo has fallen to worship each of these idols. On the one hand, DiAngelo sets up invisible barriers of division by reifying the “idol of the tribe” — the perpetuation of inbred tribal, family, racial and group identities based upon survival characteristics pitted against other groups who are imagined to be either competitors or enemies.

Second she embraces the “idol of the cave” – the self-idolization of her own passions, enthusiasm and ideology that is diametrically opposed to a deeper understanding about the true nature and psychology of the human being. Consequently DiAngelo doesn’t venture outside her comfort zone, which is none other than the arena of academic intellectual foreplay and skewed scientific conjecture. Referencing the Greek philosopher Heraclitis, “men look for science [and here we would suggest the fundamentally materialistic backbone of modern academia in general} in their own lesser worlds,” Bacon writes, “and not in the common and greater world.” In other words, the overly intellectual dramatically fails to perceive reality as it is, a discovery now postulated by the distinguished neuroscientist Dr Donald Hoffman in his laboratory at the University of California at Irvine.

Third, DiAngelo seems to cherish the “idol of the marketplace”, which Bacon associated with the perversion of discourse and the misapplication of words. The consequence is that discourse is thrown into confusion and leads others into “numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.”

And finally, she embraces the “idol of the theater.” Bacon defines this idol as a kind of infection of the mind by memes of dogmatic philosophies based upon erroneous laws. Yet the theatric idol holds true for all fads or what Bacon called “systems now in vogue.” And today the most popular fads being promulgated originate from the camp of rigid scientific materialism as genetic determinism and the absolutism of evolutionary biology.

We only have to observe how in just a short period of time that the viral DiAngelo meme — that all Whites are born racist — has become a fad and infected the minds of millions. “Yes,” DiAngelo writes, “all white people are complicit in racism.” In this narrative your brain and genes are absolute. Any sense of yourself as a unique and sentient individual with a mind and consciousness, with the capacity to exert free will to love and respect all races and ethnicities, is only a derivative of physical biological properties. In this materialistic view there is no accommodation for anything one would consider as divine and sacred. Therefore, for Bacon, the only solution is to smash the intellectualized idols of the mind for what they are, and then the biases that give rise them.

We may better understand DiAngelo by placing her in a long chain of intellectual chicanery that has dominated much scientific speculation and methodology for the past 110 years. Aside from the hard sciences, the life sciences and humanities attempt to study a subject by turning their back on the actual object of inquiry. All neuroscience, brain research and behavioral and cognitive psychology today continue in the shadow of John Watson’s behaviorism starting in 1910. Watson, a true card-carrying scientific materialist, is credited with killing and burying the introspectionist movement pioneered by by America’s great early psychologist William James. Watson’s behaviorism swept through early psychology like a tsunami. It was so thorough, we can no longer even find introspectionism’s grave site. Therefore for over a century, scientists have been trying to study and understand the mind by not looking directly at it. It is like trying to study a sunrise on the horizon by turning West. Certainly, you can learn something about the sun by observing its reflections, the appearance of shadows, the color changes in the clouds, and a dark sky turning blue. But this is knowledge acquired solely through inferences instead of direct observation. You are only observing manifestations, reflections, displays and correlates of the sunrise. At the end of the day you know a lot about clouds and almost nothing about the sun because you are looking West. This is what medicine, genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology and the pretenders in the humanities are doing. Simply looking at people’s behavior and brain states. These are inferences DiAngelo applies similarly to derive her opinion about inherent racism. It is based upon inferential assumptions, none that have been proven factual.

In DiAngelo’s strange and absurd Byzantine universe, if you have lived your life as an abolitionist defending the lives of others, including people of color, you remain a racist. As many of her critics have pointed out, she can be correctly accused of basing her hypothesis on a Kafka Trap – a no win scenario because anything said in one’s defense, no matter how true, is still an admission of guilt. It is a Stalin show trial where guilt is predetermined. Pursuing higher humanist and spiritual values of compassion, loving-kindness, joyful empathy and equanimity, the fullness of the human capacity towards goodness and genuine well-being, are not qualities found in the woke lexicon. DiAngelo’s own view of wokeness speaks to the heart of our culture’s mediocrity. To recast philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s axiom that “the medium is the message,” the masses who embrace White Fragility’s superficiality also have the tendency to focus on what is most obvious while simultaneously ignoring or missing altogether the deeper and more subtle changes happening over a period of time. On its surface such superficiality may appear to be correct and proper; however, what lurks behind the mere appearances and display of images in DiAngelo’s message is deleterious and carries the potential to unfurl catastrophic and unintended consequences.

Now we observe White Fragility’s influence spreading throughout academic institutions, indoctrinating younger adults and teenagers, and without doubt subjecting these young minds to bouts of depression and existential angst. It is adversely damaging the most pliable, impressionable and easily influenced minds and guiding them to believe in illusions without a credible scientific basis. The current younger generation is being brainwashed to believe in this pathological illusion now touted as an absolutist proclamation. Those seeking power will use it for their own ends, as we are already witnessing in university freshman curriculums. It has long been an American habit to succumb to brainwashing and then be persuaded to purchase junk they have no need for. This has been our culture’s most effective remedy for temporarily relieving mental anxiety, pessimism, and hopelessness. And the mainstream media is all too willing to spoon-feed us with its noxious elixirs daily.

This is a message that is highly toxic to others’ sense of self worth. Imagine the child in grade school learning about the courage behind Martin Luther King, the leaders of the civil rights movement and the many thousands of Blacks and Whites who marched hand-in-hand to oppose the very racism that DiAngelo wants us to believe is hardwired, and then being told, “tough luck kid, you are born a racist and so shall you be in your grave.” We might excuse DiAngelo’s lightweight intellectual acumen, but her responsibility for the injured psyches her books and lectures are leaving in their wake must be taken to task and exposed for what they are: an amateurish, intellectual sham.

But it gets worse. DiAngelo’s theory is has been hoisted high on the flagpole of a zealous doctrinal crusade. Her banner is carried within the ranks of faux liberals, progressive wannabes and pseudo intellectuals. Writing for the Daily Signal, Jarrett Stepman described her books as “miserable self-help guides for upper middle class, white, deeply committed progressives who are desperately searching for a way to not be racist in a world where denying your racism is an example of racism.” No doubt, the White Fragility doctrine tells us more about DiAngelo’s own mental state and her sense of self-worth rather than offering a critical review to better understand systemic cultural racism. The book should not be read objectively as a point of fact – nor should any book for that matter – but as a product of the author’s own self-delusions and mental afflictions.

Sadly, the White Fragility meme is being supported and dispensed by the so-called media savants crowding the mainstream. It has been encoded into the definition of being woke. Those who have far greater intellectual integrity than DiAngelo, and who unveil her theory’s inherent flaws, are labeled racist and cancelled. They are the enemies of wokeness. At its furthest extreme we can envision it having the potential to inflict violence and conflict between clans, races and ethnicities.

In short, DiAngelo’s maladaptive theory suggests inherent racism is a birth right and conflates this with the conditions of socialized psychological development and behavior. Unless, we can suppose there is some kind of “racist” gene that has been inherited in the Caucasian race across the centuries, this is a futile mental exercise in metaphysical realism. The jingoism behind the movement supporting her is determined to make her fictions more public and infiltrate our school systems. It’s anti-scientific premises, masquerading as empirical facts, betray legitimate scientific inquiry. A bedrock principle in scientific methodology, both basic and applied, is to first make every effort to deconstruct your own theory and observations. Then present your findings to your peers so they may evaluate and deconstruct them if flawed. If one’s peers are able to show the theory’s weaknesses and contradictions, then accept them and return to the drawing board. Yet for several decades this long held and acknowledged principle has been absent from the life sciences. The situation is worse in the humanities, including DiAngelo’s own field of sociology, where academics hoodwink themselves into believing they represent science. Today scientific integrity is almost non-existent except in the fields of mathematics and theoretical and quantum physics. If a belief, which portends to be an absolute truth, is susceptible to being politicized, weaponized or monetized, we can be certain there are those who will use it to their advantage. And as we are seeing White Fragility is no exception. In fact DiAngelo herself has monetized her pet beliefs as a highly sought out speaker and lecturer. According to the Free Beacon, she can earn upwards to $40,000 per event. We can only imagine how much she received from Coca-Cola for leading a “try to be less white” training to company employees.

Democracy depends upon sustaining an open society that can provide a safe accommodation for many diverse voices. Certainly DiAngelo should have a place in this arena. But equally she should stand disarmed and receive her detractors’ criticisms about her tragically dehumanizing perspective that is condemning millions to unjustified ridicule by other races. In a single stroke her views have metastasized into red-baiting countless civil rights and anti-war activists who were color-blind and devoted their lives to a better world. Is DiAngelo contributing anything constructive to improve racial strife and conflicts between tribal idols? Only a maladjusted person would believe she is, and she has plenty of such fans in the woke class who in turn populate the media’s airwaves.

Ultimately, in the final analysis after all is said and done, White Fragility should have been tagged as a flawed and mean-spirited diatribe upon publication. It would have certainly freed us from the eye sore of seeing her follow up Nice Racism appear front and center on bookstore shelves. The blame should properly be laid at the feet of our decrepit media and academic institutions — the cathedrals of academic group think who have been complicit in what the Black theologian and civil rights activist Cornel West calls “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy.” Indeed, today America is spiritually impoverished. For West, white people have always been part of the black freedom movement. And we should add other humanitarian voices for racial justice such as Gandhi, Lydia Maria Child and many other Quaker women, Cesar Chavez, and the Dalai Lama. And since when has the mainstream media been correct about anything that could fundamentally change social perceptions for the better? Without the media and Wall Street veterans turned parasitical college presidents, the fate of DiAngelo’s self-induced apparitions may have rightly been a free ticket to oblivion.