Dear Ms. Ungar-Sargon, thank you for writing this. I am a 65 year-old gay male and have read significant excerpts, and reviews, from "White Fragility".
And from those excerpts it became quickly clear to me that "White Fragility" is in so many ways a racialized version of gay conversion therapy/psychology's pathologizing of homosexu…
Dear Ms. Ungar-Sargon, thank you for writing this. I am a 65 year-old gay male and have read significant excerpts, and reviews, from "White Fragility".
And from those excerpts it became quickly clear to me that "White Fragility" is in so many ways a racialized version of gay conversion therapy/psychology's pathologizing of homosexuals: the methodology, the pedagogy, the accusations, the shaming. And especially, the intratextuality. So let give you a specific example.
You will recall that to question white fragility as a concept and book's precept is to be the dreaded "fragile". BTW, so what if you are fragile?
And how did the field of psychology justify in part its diagnosis of homosexuality as illness? Well, a big one was from interviews/treatment of homosexuals.....who were drawn from clinical practice. And wouldn't that make that population suspect? I remember reading that in fact, according to many, drawing from that clinical population painted a healthier picture of homosexuals than the non-clinical population. Why?
Because it postulated that the ones in therapy had the moral probity and presence of mind to understand their depravity, hence "healthier". The ones that felt it was ok to be gay? Those were the real sick ones.
In other words, a non-falsifiable proposition bathed in recursiveness. Precisely the type of claim implicit in DiAngelo's notion of fragility.
Thank you for the insight, dd, connecting conversion therapy to the white fragility type of "diversity" training. It seems very apt, and powerful, and I will be thinking about this one some more.
Dear Ms. Ungar-Sargon, thank you for writing this. I am a 65 year-old gay male and have read significant excerpts, and reviews, from "White Fragility".
And from those excerpts it became quickly clear to me that "White Fragility" is in so many ways a racialized version of gay conversion therapy/psychology's pathologizing of homosexuals: the methodology, the pedagogy, the accusations, the shaming. And especially, the intratextuality. So let give you a specific example.
You will recall that to question white fragility as a concept and book's precept is to be the dreaded "fragile". BTW, so what if you are fragile?
And how did the field of psychology justify in part its diagnosis of homosexuality as illness? Well, a big one was from interviews/treatment of homosexuals.....who were drawn from clinical practice. And wouldn't that make that population suspect? I remember reading that in fact, according to many, drawing from that clinical population painted a healthier picture of homosexuals than the non-clinical population. Why?
Because it postulated that the ones in therapy had the moral probity and presence of mind to understand their depravity, hence "healthier". The ones that felt it was ok to be gay? Those were the real sick ones.
In other words, a non-falsifiable proposition bathed in recursiveness. Precisely the type of claim implicit in DiAngelo's notion of fragility.
I will stop there, but could keep going.
Thank you for the insight, dd, connecting conversion therapy to the white fragility type of "diversity" training. It seems very apt, and powerful, and I will be thinking about this one some more.