Book Review - Nice Racism: How White Progressives Perpetuate Racial Harm By Robin Diangelo

The nature of racism, and white supremacy has changed over the decades, evolving and taking on subtler forms as our society has grown more, (on the surface at least), inclusive. The mainstream view of racism for the most part doesn’t seem to have changed much to reflect that. A lot of people still seem to hold a view of what racism is by focusing on the intent of the perpetrator than the impact on the victim. This definition of racism seems to have grown so narrow that anything other than shouting the worst racist slurs imaginable can be hand waved away as being ‘just joking’, or dismissed because the perpetrator was ‘having a bad day’, and ‘that’s not who they really are inside’. It is a definition that conveniently means the majority of people can hide behind a shield of niceness, or politeness so the subtler racism does not ‘count’ for lack of a better term. Many books have been written by many people working hard to dispel these notions over the years. Nice Racism: How White Progressives Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin Diangelo is one such book written by a white writer, specifically addressing people who identify as white progressives who may not even be consciously aware of the pain they can cause.

When you distil it to its core Nice Racism’s central point is straight forward. People can be bad at taking criticism, and confronting the uncomfortable and can attack as a result, and when White progressives are bad at taking criticism, and confronting the uncomfortable they can attack in ways that are harmful to BAME people, due to the racial dynamics involved. “Nice racism” as Diangelo puts it is the niceness, or politeness that well-meaning white progressives use, in many cases unconsciously, as a shield behind which they can hide from accusations of racism. As Diangelo writes “Niceness does not indicate a lack of racism and is not the solution to racism.” This book goes deep in analysing, and understanding the mechanics involved in this nice racism, how strong of an impulse it can be among white progressives who want to be one of the ‘good’ white people who ‘get it’, and how scratching it even a little can cause white progressives to lash out. Nice racism doesn’t stay nice for very long when its actually challenged in any meaningful way.

Understanding the mechanics of nice racism is important as with greater understanding comes the opportunity to disassemble them. Often we don’t notice our patterns and thus can’t do anything about them until they are pointed out to us. As such nearly a third of the book is devoted to a chapter detailing what Diangelo terms ‘white progressive moves’ that white progressive people can make in response to being called out for more subtle forms of racism. These moves include credentialing, which is the tendency among some white progressives to jump to prove they are not racist when the subject comes up, or in response to criticism. An example of credentialing would be a statement like ‘I have lots of black friends’, as if proximity to black people means racism is impossible. Statements like this reduce BAME people to props used by white progressives to hide behind, and take further discussion of racism off the table. There are many more examples of white progressive moves given, and Diangelo goes into detail on each using examples of herself engaging in these white moves in the past, and interactions she has had in her work. These anecdotes from her anti-racist workshops do a good job illustrating these moves in action, and highlight the damage they can cause alongside the obliviousness of the well-meaning white progressives who enact them.

Credentialing, and other moves like it, according to Diangelo, act to preserve racial comfort for white progressives when addressing race and racism. Avoiding white guilt is usually prioritized over BAME people’s pain. I will admit as a white man I have felt the sting of white shame, or white guilt, and while I have in the past tried to make the conscious effort to examine and reflect on it, I can understand the impulse to retreat from it. Diangelo addresses this differentiating between white shame, and white guilt saying white shame is feeling bad about what we are, and white guilt is feeling bad about what we’ve done. She points out that white shame is slightly easier for white progressives to admit to as it absolves us of the need for change or growth. It is in effect saying “I’m bad and there’s nothing I can do about it.” She is critical of this impulse too, saying that retreat from and avoidance of white shame and guilt can lead to apathy, and going the other way and wallowing in white shame can lead to inaction. White shame, and guilt can be part of the tool kit of nice racism in this way as Diangelo writes that apathy and inaction can cause harm just like more overt attacks and hostility.

Here, and elsewhere in the book it can feel like Nice Racism is saying white progressives are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If we shy away from the shame, and guilt, and the pain it brings we can cause harm. If we indulge in it too much we can also cause harm. To an extent the book presents a no win scenario as even we white people who are trying to be part of the solution can in reality be part of the problem. The truth is there is no simple solution to a problem as all encompassing, and deeply woven into the fabric of our society, and culture, as racism, and white supremacy. Diangelo emphasises that to be a true ally, and to avoid falling into the patterns of nice racism requires a lifetime of self-reflection, humility, learning, and self-awareness. Diangelo when writing draws upon and references the work of BAME writers like Ibram X Kendi, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and of course Martin Luthor King Jr to give but a few examples. All of whom should be on the reading list for any white progressive interested in further self-education on the nature and insidiousness of racism and white supremacy.

To conclude this piece on a more personal note I have read several books on the subject of race and racism while doing these reviews, and while as I have noted in previous reviews they have made for difficult and uncomfortable reading I have managed to maintain a certain distance from the material. I was able to separate myself from the subject matter as in my mind I could tell myself this book is about racism but I am not a racist, therefore this book is not about me specifically. As a White person who would like to think he was progressive however Nice Racism is explicitly about me, and others like me in a way I can’t mentally separate myself from as easily. I now recognise that this was arrogance on my part, an arrogance which this book thoroughly dispelled. As noted above this is not a book that goes easy on the white people like me who make up its target audience but it is still a book that white progressives especially should read. It doesn’t offer any quick fix solutions or easy answers. There is no cheat code we can use to make racism, and white supremacy disappear, and it won’t go away if we hide behind niceness, or a desire to be polite. As this book demonstrates that is not true niceness, but a smokescreen for complicity which enables the very racism we are against.

You can buy this book here: https://tinyurl.com/wnx4n5xx