David E. Burke’s essay The Intellectual Fraud of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”, exposes the intellectual fraud in Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility.
Burke summarizes DeAngelo’s argument as follows:
First, DiAngelo argues that white people are inescapably racist, writing, “All white people are invested in and collude with racism,” and that “The white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: that we are capable and guilty of perpetrating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others.”
Second, DiAngelo argues that any white person who does not admit to their own racism is blinded by their “white fragility.” In DiAngelo’s words, because white people are, “Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race.” This fragility purportedly explains why, “people who identify as white are so difficult in conversations regarding race.”
According to Burke, “White Fragility is religion masquerading as knowledge. […] It’s an unprovable and unfalsifiable theory, deceptively framed to convince readers of their own guilt,” and that the entire “theory of White Fragility is unfalsifiable. It is impossible for someone to prove that they are not fragile, just as it is impossible for someone to prove they are not possessed by a demon.”