Receiving hate-mail and death threats from an angry mob, 54-year-old Tim Scott shows that African Americans need to read Robin DiAngelo’s book “White Fragility,” not to get in touch with white people but to come to grips with their own bias, prejudice and hatred. Calling Scott, the only black U.S. senator, an “Uncle Tom,” Scott was blasted for disagreeing with Black Lives Matter [BLM] and other groups responsible for the street violence that’s swept the country over the last month since the May 25 chokehold death of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis. “Uncle Tom” refers to a character in Harriet Beacher Stowe’s March 20, 1852 book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a character symbolizing black submission to white society. Death threats to Scott show that black extremism doesn’t reverse White Privilege or White Fragility defined by DiAngelo trying create an anti-racist culture.
Scott’s the lead author of the Republican Party’s police reform bill called the “Justice Act,” banning the use of police chokeholds unless the life of the police officer is at stake. Black activists, especially BLM, wants all police chokeholds banned, period, end of discussion, no exceptions to the rule. Scott’s role as a black U.S. senator infuriates BLM that sees him as a turncoat, betraying the cause of black revolution or liberation. Educators specialized in White Privilege or White Fragility training like DiAngelo focus on working with white people to accept their racist ways, regardless of all the excuses, justifications and denial. Scott’s considered an “Uncle Tom” because he’s hasn’t stepped outside the system to question racism, social injustice or equal opportunity in America, something BLM rejects precisely because it doesn’t go far enough to pull up racism by its deep roots.
After Scott received death threats, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) suggested that Scott receive a security detail in case radical groups trying to harm him or his family. Collins received temporary security protection for threats made against her for failing to support confirmation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Floyd’s chokehold death by 44-year-old Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin erupted in riots, looting, arson and anarchy around the country. BLM demanded de-funding of police departments around the country, because one sick Minneapolis cop murdered an unarmed black man. Floyd’s murder was a tipping point to open up a national debate about racism and police brutality. DiAngelo’s specialty deals with systemic racism, something she wrote about in her 2018 book, White Fragility. DiAngelo contends that racial progress can only be made cracking out of a state of denial.
Scott represents everything that black power groups hate, an African American that worked his way up the racist system. Scott was appointed to fill the seat of Sen. Jim DiMint (R-S.C.) when her retired from the Senate Dec. 17, 2012 by Gov. Nikki Haley. Scott ran and won DeMint’s seat in November 2014, eventually running and winning a full six-year-term in 2016. South Carolina voters of all racial and ethnic backgrounds voted Scott into office, proving systemic racism didn’t exist in South Carolina. Yet since Floyd’s death, the talking points of BLM and other radical groups has been about “systemic racism,” something stressed by BLM. When 58-year-old President Barack Obama was won two terms in 2008 and 2012, it was hard to argue that America suffered from “systemic racism.” Yet educators like DiAngelo make the point in “White Fragility” that the structure of white society makes every white person, whether admitted to or not, racist.
Black accomplishments in white society don’t invalidate DiAngelo’s argument that all white people are racist. “The simplistic idea that racism is limited to individual intentional acts committed by unkind people is at the root of virtually all white defensiveness on the topic,” DiAngelo said. To create anti-racists or an anti-racist society, DiAngelo believes white people must accept, and stop denying their racism. Whether or not white society cites more black employment or success stories, at the highest levels in white society, like President, U.S. Senator, Corporate CEO, doctor, lawyers any other professional group, doesn’t mean that whites don’t suffer from White Privilege and White Fragility. “The social contract underwriting all other social contracts in the Western world is white supremacy,” DiAngelo says, drawing gasps from white people still denying their racism.
When Scott experienced reverse-discrimination from the black community, not to mention death threats, it requires blacks, like whites, to acknowledge their own prejudice against white people and society. With so much history of abuse by white society, BLM doesn’t want lectures by DiAngelo about “Black Fragility,” the same problem as “White Fragility” but in reverse. DiAngelo asks white people to admit to their racism, a byproduct of Western society, a necessary first step in becoming anti-racist. “If we can start our work by reflecting on our own experiences—specifically as white people—and not only as objective individuals outside race, there so much insight to be gained there . .” .DiAngelo said, asking white people what does it mean to be white? Only by cracking through racism-denial does DiAngelo believe that whites can gain the empathy needed to understand the black experience.
