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A review by thedeightonator
Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin DiAngelo
2.0
This book claims to be about how individual white progressives perpetuate the very racism they strive to destroy by being patronising and dismissive of racialised people. However when these claims come from this very type of person it becomes a bit hard to take in. Especially since a lot of the text covers the systematic racism that plagues our society rather than the casual and subconscious racism that the book is supposedly about. Admittedly the author does show humility at points to say that she can be a part of the problem.
This book is enjoyable to read as it very well written and concise for the most part but it lost me when Robin DiAngelo claimed that racism isn’t simply prejudice based on race, it’s actually a system created by white people to oppress other races - this means that only white people can be racist, people who aren’t white can only be biased. She goes on to say that when people debate this point with her and simply show the dictionary definition of racism she’ll rebut that with a claim that essentially dictionaries aren’t the be all and end all of finding a word’s definition. You know, those books that are there to tell you what words mean. This reminded me of a Stewart Lee joke where he debated someone and they fought back with “well you can prove anything with facts can’t you?”
This book is enjoyable to read as it very well written and concise for the most part but it lost me when Robin DiAngelo claimed that racism isn’t simply prejudice based on race, it’s actually a system created by white people to oppress other races - this means that only white people can be racist, people who aren’t white can only be biased. She goes on to say that when people debate this point with her and simply show the dictionary definition of racism she’ll rebut that with a claim that essentially dictionaries aren’t the be all and end all of finding a word’s definition. You know, those books that are there to tell you what words mean. This reminded me of a Stewart Lee joke where he debated someone and they fought back with “well you can prove anything with facts can’t you?”