There is not much white people can do right in Robin DiAngelo’s humble opinion. Even when white people have legitimate political grievances, white people exhibit racism by not directing their political frustration at the appropriate target. This is how Robin DiAngelo explains the 2016 election where Donald Trump built a coalition among working class white people to win and unlikely election.
Robin DiAngelo states that working class whites should have directed their anger at the elite whites, in a class warfare like manner. This criticism is levied on Trump voters for not embracing classical Marxism, just as the Soviet Union had done. It essentially states that working class whites should have realized they were part of the proletariat.
Instead, working class whites, who tend to work more manual jobs decided that importing foreign labor, especially illegal immigrants, was a good way to suppress their wages, which is what the (mostly white) elite want. In other words they understand economics better than Robin DiAngelo.
There’s a lot of content in this chapter, but I wanted to highlight this partisan section because her criticism against working class white people is that they do not embrace Marxism like she thinks they should. Robin DiAngelo is very open about this.
Other criticisms of this chapter are the view that black people are these mysterious others that you must have in your life. Robin DiAngelo is a complete racist with how she wants white people to view nonwhite people.
Operating Definitions
Modernism – the belief that man can achieve his own enlightenment
Postmodernism – the denial of absolute truth in favor of personal experience
Marxism – the social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx, which examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism. (Investopedia)
Critical Theory – a social, economic, political philosophy that applies the bourgeoise vs proletariat dynamic in Marxism to every cultural dynamic.
Synonymous: Cultural Marxism
Critical Race Theory – the application of Cultural Marxism as it relates to racial dynamics, disparities, whereby an oppressor vs victim relationship is created among racial or socially-constructed racial lines.
Intersectionality – the navigation of postmodernism where personal experience is given hierarchy depending on the lens of the individual. The more intersections of oppression, according to Critical Theory, an individual has, the clearer the more valuable their experience is.
Social Justice – the remedying of perceived oppressor versus victim dynamics according to Critical Theory
Standpoint Epistemology – the belief that a person is limited in their understanding of Scripture according to their Intersectionality