My thoughts on the white fragility are pretty similar. It would seem to be a flawed concept.
If you criticize just about any subset of people, a subset of them are going to take offense.
When Obama said "if you've got a business you didn't build that, someone else built that for you", that wasn't 'business owner fragility' that popped up there, it was instead a normal human reaction.
So human fragility would be a better term, but then were talking psychology probably specifically Freud, and that's not nearly as edgy as saying that white people have some things to work on.
I mean if DiAngelo at least gives some lip service to Freud in her formulation of the concept (Bobo or people who have read it?) then she's probably off the hook.

Her book is based on this.


She provokes those behaviors/reactions and she wants to provoke them more, so they build up stamina to it. The woman is brain dead when it comes to psychology.

An overwhelming amount of psychological literature tells us those behaviors/reactions are strongly correlated with causing depression, suicide, anxiety, and....wait for it....

VIOLENCE.

JFC.

This.

If you've done well in life you are prone to believe we live in a meritocracy and you have earned your reward.

Also, in reality, an advantage isn't a free ride. You still have to work hard. It's just that your odds are significantly better than the disadvantaged person.

Every CEO making 300 times what his average wage slave makes will be happy to tell you how hard he works. That's not usually the point though.

To be fair to the white devils, the system does rely on the myth that we are all masters of our own destiny.

The Epistemological Problem of White Fragility Theory

This is an argument that DiAngelo presents-- that it's the pervasive ideology of individualism that contributes to the problem [which I'm quoting from this article only because I just finished reading it]

The absence of statistics in DiAngelo’s work is also astonishing considering how she handles an objection she frequently encounters in interactions with white people: that she is prone to generalization. She argues that this objection stems from the pervasive ideology of individualism in American culture. This belief, she argues, presents an obstacle to understanding racism because it cultivates the erroneous perception that the contingencies and vicissitudes of experience for each individual are sufficiently unique to make one immune to racialized conditioning. Given their belief in the singularity of experience, white people refuse to accept the proposition that they can be pigeon-holed as racists, who reinforce white supremacy by virtue of their complacency about a status quo characterized by racial privilege.

This was explained in the 538 article I've posted.

I've pretty much never heard woke used non pejoratively in my circle including this forum.

Yes but what is a term that we can use instead, if 'woke' and all concomitant terms are too soiled to use?

Maybe the terms people unironically use to describe themselves? Black lives matter, social justice reform advocate, progressive etc. If you're looking for a more broad term so you can strawman the people you disagree with, woke is perfect.

Are the ordinary uses of words really this confusing?

We Need to Take “Woke” Back From the Judgmental
Here is a piece arguing that woke should be 'taken back'-- although it's ironically not to be taken back from social conservatives, but from liberals who she claims have appropriated the term from black Americans.

Except Obama didn't say that. "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that.

Clearly "that" in his sentence refers to roads and bridges. The outrage to Obama's statement wasn't normal or even from business owners. It was performative outrage from people who already didn't like Obama in the middle of a presidential campaign.

That doesn't seem to apply to 2+2 as no white liberals refer to themselves as woke to begin with here.

Ok-- I'm going with Social Jusitice Reformism...or just SJRism.
Bolded seems ironic given your persistence on bringing up in this thread what conservatives think fwiw (which tbf is more an attempt at guilt by association than strawmanning).

No I haven't been confused at all. I was using 'woke' and 'wokeism' just fine and thought I understood the meanings just fine.
Escriture has called these terms pejorative and so I'm seeking something that won't hinder future discussion.
I think there are serious issues calling it "BLM", "progressive" also has problems I think...but "social justice reform advocate" is just fine...although rather long and unwieldy.

It's the most ironic thing. Those on the left who endorse identity politics, refuse to be labeled, as any label is often described as a pejorative, and not an accurate representation of the group. Consequently, they argue any term you come up with to be meaningless. Those who endorse identity politics on the right, are racist, and we all accept that term to describe them.


I know why they do this... They don't want their political identity be associated with anything negative.

They're right to reject labels, and broad generalizations about their group.

In other words they want to be treated as individuals with individual thoughts and perspectives.

kkk guy--it's time to wake up white people!

no not like that

If even pipes don't want labels, not sure why anyone else would-- although that's likely the individualism that white supremacy culture has inculcated in me.

it's also an issue because the term "white privilege" was bastardized by the conservatives to try and turn it into a discussions like these..

the "privilege" part of "white privilege" just means that your life is never made worse off specifically because of your race unlike it may be for other races.

Lol read my edit.

Taking Back “Woke”: Surviving Anti-Intellectualism in an Apathetic World
Another piece on the need to take 'woke' back. A much better one than the one I found earlier.

Woke. It is a word that started as a call to justice in oppressed communities, but is now rampant in digital spaces as an identifier of people practicing “cancel culture.” This verb-turned-adjective’s once noble power has now become corrupted, trickling down to the recesses of meme culture to describe the caricatured versions of “social justice warriors,” “liberals,” or the equally perverse “snowflakes.”

Regardless of the bolded or any psychological reactions-- it's also a smart approach politically and rhetorically. I mean I think it's also a bit intellectually dishonest to resist all labels, but as long as you can resist labels then generalization becomes impossible and criticism becomes a lot more difficult.

Which is why you don't label the person, but the ideology. That's also problematic because then they feign ignorance about the ideology, but they give themselves away. if you acknowledge them as individuals, and not part of any particular group, with their own thoughts and perspectives, you can then label them as white supremacist (because black people don't have that benefit to be seen as individuals), and accepting an individualist view of society, is actively furthering white supremacy.


reductio ad absurdum

This is a pretty good analogy. Right now most liberals favor fiscal stimulus. But ihiv's cousin would say

"Ha! fiscal stimulus is a tenet of Keynesian economics which also advocates paying people to dig holes then paying people to fill them back up!!!'.

The liberal stimulus proponents would just say

"Yeah, I don't support that".

And the real answer that most liberal stimulus proponents who've barely heard of Keynes can't explain is that Keynes wrote about hole filling when critics of stimulus said it's a bad idea because government can't efficiently allocate the resources. Keynes was saying that doesn't matter in deflationary environments because even in the ludicrous case that the government purposely wastes the money you're still better off because the hole diggers can make rent and go buy things which prevents land lords and shop owners from having to under consume.

Lol... you knew they were pejorative when you used them. Nobody with this many posts in a "CRT" thread would be unaware of the primary derogatory use of the term which has been used 100s of times itt always with that meaning. Just obvious bad faith.