White Fragility As White Epistemic Disorientation

Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2020): 136-152

White Fragility as White Epistemic Disorientation

Stephen R. Calme

N HER BOOK WHITE FRAGILITY, ROBIN DIANGELO describes an odd phenomenon: white individuals sign up for her workshops on understanding, identifying, and working against racism; then the same individuals become defensive or withdraw when she at- I 1 tempts to help them understand, identify, and work against racism. DiAngelo (herself white) terms this phenomenon “white fragility,” the inability or unwillingness for whites to remain productively engaged in dialogue that would bring them to a deeper understanding of racism and a greater commitment against it. Her work highlights the ongoing racial disunity in the US, including that which arises amidst well- meaning attempts to discuss race. The goal of this paper is to clarify one aspect of white fragility, what I call white epistemic disorientation. A few preliminary notes are in order. First, as a white person who seeks to overcome racism but also finds himself frequently feeling defensive and hesitant in that en- deavor, my assessment of white fragility is influenced as much by my own experiences as by descriptions in the literature. Second, I begin with the presumption that people of color generally have an epistemic advantage over whites in understanding racial issues.2 That is, this paper presumes the accuracy of DiAngelo’s view of racism (influenced

1 Kelefa Sanneh points out that DiAngelo should not be quite so surprised, since her workshops are largely for “corporate clients [who] doubtless have their own priori- ties” beyond the pure desire to challenge injustice (“The Fight to Redefine Racism,” The Ne Yorker, August 12, 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the- fight-to-redefine-racism). Still, DiAngelo’s many anecdotes support her general point that even whites who demonstrate initial interest in discussing racism often revert to defensive maneuvers once they realize what that discussion entails. 2 Perhaps the most influential contemporary description of whites’ failure to understand racism clearly is Charles W. Mills’s concept of “White ignorance.” See Charles W. Mills, The Racial Conrac (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997) and Charles W. Mills, “White Ignorance,” in Race and Epiemologie of Ignorance, ed. S. Sulli- van and N. Tuana (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 13-38. On the epistemic privilege of marginalized groups and the active ignorance and epistemic vice of dominant groups, see also José Medina, The Epiemolog of Reiance: Gender and Racial Oppre- ion, Epiemic Injice, and Reian Imaginaion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27-48. White Fragility 137 by critical race theory) and adopts the goal of helping whites to recognize that truth.3 Third, my methodological presumption is that reaching a solution requires first clearly identifying the problem, and that encouraging individuals’ growth requires not simply teaching them the end point at which they are to arrive but explaining what they might experience on the path to that goal. Educational psychology demonstrates that when learners understand the learning process, they are better able to participate in that process successfully. This approach is particularly relevant for the disorienting dissonance that is key to significant shifts in understanding but which can also trigger fear and disengagement. I will examine white fragility precisely as a dynamic resulting from such experiences of psychological dissonance. My thesis is that one under-acknowledged element of whites’ difficulty in remaining productively engaged in their own anti-racist growth is the epiemic diorienaion caused by that engagement, and that Bernard Lonergan’s theory of human development provides a helpful lens for understanding this disorientation and pointing to a way forward. Further projects will have to outline any step-by-step process for reaching anti-racism; this paper’s scope is limited to describing the dynamics of that one aspect of white fragility. First, I lay out DiAn- gelo’s understanding of white fragility as rooted primarily in dissonance of moral self-perception. Then I propose that a complementary epistemic dissonance is also at play, and I draw out its consequences. Thirdly, I attempt to clarify these epistemic dynamics of white fragility by situating them within a framework of development described by philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan.

ROBIN DIANGELO AND WHITE FRAGILITY While scholars across various disciplines (education, psychology, sociology, etc.) have noted that whites often exhibit resistance when confronted with the topic of systemic racism and white privilege,4

3 To say that I presume the accuracy of DiAngelo’s view on racism is not to say that I believe her approach to be perfect. For thoughtful critiques of Whie Fragili, see Sanneh, “The Fight to Redefine Racism” and Lauren Michele Jackson, “What’s Miss- ing from ‘White Fragility,’” Slae, September 4, 2019, slate.com/human-interest/2019/09/white-fragility-robin-diangelo-workshop.html. 4 See, for example, Barbara Applebaum, “Comforting Discomfort as Complicity: White Fragility and the Pursuit of Invulnerability,” Hpaia 32, no. 4 (2017): 862- 875; Lisa B. Spanierman and Nolan L. Cabrera, “The Emotions of White Racism and Antiracism” in Uneiling Whiene in he Ten-Fir Cenr: Global Manifea- ion, Trandiciplinar Inerenion, ed. V. Watson, D. Howard-Wagner, and L. Spanierman (New York: Lexington Books, 2015), 9-28; Kim A. Case and Annette Hemmings, “Distancing Strategies: White Women Preservice Teachers and Antiracist Curriculum,” Urban Edcaion 40, no. 6 (2005): 606-626; Matt S. Whitt, “Other Peo- ple’s Problems: Student Distancing, Epistemic Responsibility, and Injustice,” Sdie in Philooph & Edcaion 35, no. 5 (2016): 427-444; and George Yancy, Backlah: 138 Stephen R. Calme

Robin DiAngelo’s explanation of this phenomenon as “white fragility” has found particular influence recently. She describes white fragility as “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress… becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, reinstate white racial equilibrium.”5 DiAngelo, a white woman, typically sees white fragility in the context of her antiracism workshops, and it is often triggered when she identifies as racist something that a participant says or does but which that participant denies to be racist. She writes, “My job is to help individuals and organizations see how racism is manifesting itself in their practices and outcomes. I am typically received well when speaking in general terms…. Yet when I point out a concrete moment in the room in which someone’s racism is manifesting itself, white fragility erupts.”6 DiAngelo argues that this denial of racism arises partly from whites’ failure to properly understand what racism is. Whites tend to associate racism with individual acts of prejudice-motivated discrimination. It is viewed as “intentional, malicious, and based on conscious dislike of someone because of race.”7 This understanding of racism keeps it closely connected to morality and leads to what DiAngelo calls the “good/bad binary.” Whites see racism as something a person either has or does not have; being racist makes a person evil, while not being racist allows a person to remain good. They thus see racism as an intentional moral evil such that any accusation of racism is consid- ered “a deep moral blow—a kind of character assassination.”8 In this view, “Nice people, well-intentioned people, open-minded middle- class people, people raised in the ‘enlightened North,’ could not be racist.”9 Therefore when whites are accused of any connection to racism they become extremely defensive in order to protect their moral integrity. In place of this binary of good/bad, DiAngelo argues for an understanding of racism as systemic. She quotes filmmaker and scholar Omowale Akintunde, who describes racism as “a systemic, societal,

Wha Happen When We Talk Honel abo Racim in America (New York: Row- man and Littlefield, 2018). 5 Robin DiAngelo, Whie Fragili: Wh I So Hard for Whie People o Talk abo Racim (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018), 103. 6 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 73-74. 7 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 71. 8 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 72. 9 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 71-72. White Fragility 139 institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality.”10 In this view, racism is inescapable for whites. Whites carry with them implicit anti-black bias that shapes their thoughts and decisions whether or not they realize it, and whites also cannot help but benefit from the way US society has been structured to see whiteness as the ideal and norm. As DiAn- gelo writes, “A racism-free upbringing is not possible, because racism is a social system embedded in the culture and its institutions.”11

Whie Fragili a Defene of Moral Self-Ideni DiAngelo, in line with political sociologist and critical race theorist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva,12 explains that all people acquire frameworks that make sense of their “social existence,”13 and that the white racial frame involves “racial messages that position whites as superior.”14 But this frame is unconscious to whites, who avoid acknowledging their racial filters in order to protect their “self-identity as good, moral people.”15 Therefore whites become defensive at the slightest sugges- tion that they might be implicated in racial injustice. They deflect the charge of racism in order to defend their moral integrity, rather than consider the possibility that they participate in racism in any way.16 The result is that moral disorientation and fears create an epistemic problem: “The good/bad binary [makes] it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand—much less interrupt—racism.”17 Critical race theorist Charles R. Lawrence III similarly argues that, because our society recognizes racism to be immoral, we cannot properly discuss our unconscious racism for fear of being called immoral or accusing others of being immoral: “We have internalized a set of beliefs about African Americans that has its origins in racist ideology—that black people are lazy, dirty, savage, impulsive, over- sexed, or any number of other scary things…. None of us wants to think of him- or herself as capable of this kind of thinking. So we deny

10 Omowale Akintunde, “White Racism, White Supremacy, White Privilege, and the Social Construction of Race: Moving from Modernist to Post-modernist Multicultur- alism,” Mliclral Edcaion 7, no. 2 (1999): 2, quoted in DiAngelo, Whie Fra- gili, 72. 11 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 83. 12 See especially Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racim iho Raci: Color-Blind Racim and he Perience of Racial Ineqali in America (Lanham: Rowman and Little- field, 2014). 13 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 21. 14 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 34. 15 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 47. 16 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 47. 17 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 72. 140 Stephen R. Calme these beliefs and thus the fear of blackness.”18 Indeed, social psychology shows that maintaining an identity that is aligned with one’s moral self-image is a key motivation behind how one interprets one’s behavior.19

Whie Fragili a Mainenance of Poer In addition to moral self-identity, DiAngelo also interprets white fragility in terms of function and power. Her approach is clearly influenced by Bonilla-Silva, who argues that racism is about power and social location, and who uses those lenses to analyze the way whites talk about race. For instance, whites often argue that they should not be responsible for paying racial reparations because they did not per- sonally own any slaves. While Bonilla-Silva explains why this argument is flawed logically (it ignores ongoing oppression and the ongoing effects of earlier oppression), his real question is “What is ideological about this particular story line?”20 He interprets this and other flawed arguments not primarily as examples of a (misguided) search for truth but as socially-constructed white narratives which serve to maintain the racial status quo. They are ideological acts of power, “in- rmen to object to blacks’ demands for compensatory policies.”21 DiAngelo’s analysis of whites’ defensive statements about race follows a similar line. She writes, “In my work to unravel the dynamics of racism, I have found a question that never fails me. This question is no ‘Is this claim true, or is it false?’; we will never come to an agreement on a question that sets up an either/or dichotomy on something as sensitive as racism. Instead, I ask, ‘How does this claim function in the conversation?’”22 Specifically, she asks to what extent whites’ claims serve to shield them from responsibility for racism. Un- derstanding white fragility requires examining how and when white discourse functions as a tool of power, whether consciously or not.23

18 Charles R. Lawrence III, “Forbidden Conversations on Race, Privacy, and Commu- nity,” in Criical Race Theor: The Cing Edge, 3rd ed., ed. R. Delgado and J. Stefancic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), 54 and 55. 19 See, for example, David K. Sherman and Geoffrey L. Cohen, “The Psychology of Self-Defense: Self-Affirmation Theory,” Adance in Eperimenal Social Pchol- og 38 (2006): 183-242; and Benoît Monin and Alexander H. Jordan, “The Dynamic Moral Self: A Social Psychological Perspective,” in Peronali, Ideni, and Char- acer: Eploraion in Moral Pcholog, ed. D. Narvaez and D.K. Lapsley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 341-354. Thanks to Elizabeth Flamm for these sources. 20 Bonilla-Silva, Racim iho Raci, 129. 21 Bonilla Silva, Racim iho Raci, 129, emphasis added. 22 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 78. 23 For a deeper examination of the philosophy that underpins this understanding of white language as discourse (an act of power) rather than representation (intentional communication of ideas), see Barbara Applebaum, “The Epistemology of Complicity: The Discourse of Not Knowing and Refusing to Know,” chap. 4 in Being Whie, Being White Fragility 141

Model of Eqilibraion One model for conceptualizing the dynamics of white fragility is that of equilibration. Social scientists explain that humans naturally desire to maintain a beneficial equilibrium in their lives. When something arises that threatens this equilibrium, they have two options: reject the new element in order to return to the status quo or find a new normal that accommodates the new element. This model of equilibration can focus on various factors. DiAngelo draws on the work of an- thropologist Pierre Bourdieu to frame equilibration in terms of what Bourdieu calls “capital.”24 When white attendees enter DiAngelo’s antiracist workshops, they have the capital of privilege, power, and a sense of moral purity. This initial equilibrium is disrupted when Di- Angelo points out a hidden manifestation of racism in white partici- pants’ comments or actions. Her identification of racism threatens whites’ sense of their own status as normative and morally pure. They respond with white fragility, defensive moves that reject DiAngelo’s allegation of racism, in an effort to escape the dissonance and return to the original social situation in which whites are dominant and good. In the process, they also reject an opportunity to grow toward a new, healthier equilibrium in which whiteness would not be centered and in which whites’ sense of moral purity would involve not denying all complicity in racial injustice but rather accepting responsibility for overcoming it. The important point is that, although DiAngelo sees whites’ reac- tions largely as a result of a false understanding of racism, one that equates it with malicious acts, she interprets that white fragility primarily in terms of whites’ desire to maintain the power equilibrium and their moral identity. Her experience leads her to interpret many white responses as defensive or resistant acts rather than acts of legitimate intellectual inquiry or disagreement. In this move, she follows Bonilla-Silva, Charles W. Mills, José Medina, and Barbara Ap- plebaum who point out that whites have been formed by a system de- signed not only to maintain racism but to hide that racism even from those who participate in maintaining it. Without denying the moral and power aspects of white fragility, I would like to complement them with the epistemic element. DiAngelo does occasionally point to this element, as in her call for increased racial stamina for whites: “To interrupt white fragility, we need to build our capacity to sustain the dicomfor of no knoing, the dis-

Good: Whie Complici, Whie Moral Reponibili, and Social Jice Pedagog (New York: Lexington Books, 2010), 91-117. 24 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 102. 142 Stephen R. Calme comfort of being racially unmoored, the discomfort of racial humility.”25 I want to draw out this “discomfort of not knowing,” and I want to push it even further to describe “the discomfort of not being a knower.” I would therefore supplement Bourdieu’s framework with a similar model that describes the cognitive side of this process. Jean Piaget theorized that people make sense of reality by constructing schemata, cognitive structures which they use to classify the data of experience. When a new piece of data arises that does not fit the existing schemata, disequilibrium results. Individuals must make sense of the incongru- ous information by rejecting it, distorting it to fit their current schemata, or modifying their schemata in order to account for the new information.26 I posit that white fragility also has a cognitive element such that a contributing factor to whites’ dissonance is that their schema for racism cannot make sense of DiAngelo’s assertions. This interpretation is likely closer to whites’ self-understanding of white fragility. They are simply confused by new information (which they do not yet trust) and are trying to make intellectual sense of it. One way of doing so is to push back against that information because it is so contrary to their understanding of reality. Specifically, when whites respond with arguments that they are not racist or that reparations are a bad idea, they recognize that moral issues and emotions are at stake, but their primary conscious understanding of their own response is that it is a matter of seeking truth. They experience themselves as criticizing DiAngelo’s assertions because they seem false and defending their own arguments because they seem true. Bourdieu’s model and this cognitive development model both recognize that humans seek to find equilibrium after dissonance. The dif- ference is which motivations each emphasizes. Bourdieu focuses on the desire for control and the maintenance of the social status quo (if one is in a dominant position of power), while the cognitive development model focuses on the desire to make sense of the world. Thus, what whites see as legitimate arguments questioning the prevalence of racism are received by DiAngelo as attempts to avoid engaging the question, consciously or not.

WHITE EPISTEMIC DISORIENTATION For whites, the result of this conflict of interpretations of white fragility is an added level of dissonance and disequilibrium, what I call “white epistemic disorientation.” When DiAngelo identifies whites’

25 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 14, emphasis added. 26 On Piaget, see Barry J. Wadsworth, Piage Theor of Cogniie and Affecie De- elopmen: Fondaion of Conrciim (White Plains: Longman Publishing, 1996). White Fragility 143 responses as anything other than valid intellectual retorts, they sense that they are being dismissed as non-knowers. The dissonance reaches another level, questioning not only whites’ knowledge, but their very ability to participate as knowers in discussions of race. Whites believe their arguments are being ignored or rejected out of hand, or they believe that their arguments are being rejected because of incidental aspects that are far from the point of their speech. Many whites in DiAngelo’s examples indicate that they feel blocked from participating in racial discussions. One individual ex- presses anger at the need to be “so careful” that he cannot “say anything anymore” because people of color had become “oversensi- tive.”27 A participant in a cross-racial dialogue complains, “I feel like everything I say is thrown back at me!... White people are being at- tacked and blamed, and we have to defend ourselves or just be used as punching bags. I give up! I am not saying anything else.”28 A frus- trated white woman in a small discussion group on racism finally ex- claims, “Forget it! I can’t say anything right, so I am going to stop talking!”29 DiAngelo’s anecdotes are supported by a 2005 study that examined white female education students’ common use of “distancing strategies” to avoid engaging in discussions of racism, despite thinking of themselves as antiracists.30 The study found that, among other causes, the white students’ silence was due to a lack of knowledge, a fear of being disapproved of by students of color, and an uncertainty of whether it was socially permissible for them to ask questions about race. As one student said in an interview, “I kinda feel ignorant to like how to approach things. Plus, it’s hard to ask questions about it because I want to know more about them [black students] and what they do, but it’s hard ’cause you don’t want to offend anybody.”31 Whites experience themselves as being stymied from having any control over the process of learning about racism. Their attempts to explain themselves and engage in arguments, so effective in other ar- eas of their life, here are dismissed as unacceptable or unhelpful. This doubting of oneself as a knower may be heightened even more if whites actually do dare to consider DiAngelo’s and other antiracists’ arguments. If they dip a toe in the antiracism waters, they realize that accepting DiAngelo’s argument will mean questioning much of what they know and also how they know it. As Mills and Medina argue, white ignorance has actively distorted whites’ approach to knowing,

27 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 105. 28 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 99. 29 DiAngelo, Whie Fragili, 107. 30 Case and Hemmings, “Distancing Strategies.” 31 Case and Hemmings, “Distancing Strategies,” 615. 144 Stephen R. Calme such that they cannot entirely trust their own framework for interpret- ing society, which centers whiteness and makes it normative.32

Self-Efficac White epistemic disorientation is connected to what Albert Ban- dura calls low self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is “the belief that one has the ability, with one’s actions, to bring about a certain outcome.”33 This belief has concrete consequences: “People with high self-efficacy for a particular action believe that they have the ability to exert control over their environment, at least in a particular situation. People’s self- efficacies will affect what they choose to learn, how well they will learn it, and whether they will stick with it. In other words, these self- efficacies will affect how people interact with their world.”34 Studies show that self-efficacy contributes to intellectual achievement. Chil- dren who have a higher sense of their own efficacy demonstrate not only quicker, more accurate thinking but also more perseverance in the face of failure.35 As Bandura writes, “When successes are hard to come by, individuals of high efficacy are persisters and those of low efficacy are rapid quitters.”36 Whites’ lack of felt agency in the midst of epistemic disorientation may account for some of their hesitancy and resistance to remaining in dialogue about racism. Increasing their self-efficacy in the realm of coming to know racism may be one way of decreasing white fragility and increasing racial stamina. The difficulty, however, is that one of the very things DiAngelo and other antiracists are trying to do is to move whites away from a place of centeredness and control. On the one hand, whites need to feel some control and agency in order to

32 Mills, “White Ignorance,” 25, and Medina, The Epiemolog of Reiance, 152- 153. 33 Edelgard Wulfert, “Social Learning According to Albert Bandura,” in Salem Pre Encclopedia of Healh, 2018. 34 George B. Yancey, “Self-Efficacy,” in Salem Pre Encclopedia of Healh, 2018. 35 Albert Bandura, Self-Efficac: The Eercie of Conrol (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1997), 214-216. Among the studies that Bandura cites are the following: Janet Lynn Collins, “Self-Efficacy and Ability in Achievement Behavior,” Pre- sented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, March 1982; Thérèse Bouffard-Bouchard, Sophie Parent, and Serge Larivée, “Influence of Self-Efficacy on Self-Regulation and Performance Among Junior and Senior High-School Age Students,” Inernaional Jornal of Behaioral Deelopmen 14 (1991): 153-164; Thérèse Bouffard-Bouchard, “Influence of Self-Efficacy on Per- formance in a Cognitive Task,” Jornal of Social Pcholog 130 (1990): 353-363; Dale H. Schunk, “Self-Efficacy and Cognitive Skill Learning,” in Reearch on Moi- aion in Edcaion, Vol. 3: Goal and Cogniion, ed. C. Ames and R. Ames (San Diego: Academic, 1989): 13-44; Albert Bandura and Dale H. Schunk, “Cultivating Competence, Self-efficacy and Intrinsic Interest Through Proximal Self-Motivation,” Jornal of Peronali and Social Pcholog 41 (1981): 586-598. 36 Bandura, Self-Efficac, 216. White Fragility 145 avoid being paralyzed by white fragility and white epistemic disorientation. On the other hand, in order to move toward antiracism, whites must learn to cede control and question their own normativity, and the dissonance that can lead to white fragility can also facilitate this letting go.

LONERGANS THEORY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan’s theory of human development can be helpful in addressing this challenge. His description of the process of development may help to orient whites to the situation in which they are feeling discomfort. Such an orienta- tion would not (and should not) eliminate that discomfort but rather indicate its cause and purpose so that it might be recognized as a nat- ural part of the process of growth rather than a sign of error. Central to human development is what Lonergan calls a “law of limitation and transcendence.”37 It is a tension between the subject as she is, and the subject as she would be when reaching a more authen- tic, responsible, developed state. On one side of this tension is the “self-centered sensitive psyche content to orientate itself within its vis- ible and palpable environment and to deal with it successfully.”38 This typically limiting pole includes acquired habits, which have inertia: “The whole tendency of present perceptiveness, of present affectivity and aggressivity, of present ways of understanding and judging, delib- erating and choosing, speaking and doing is for them to remain as they are.”39 On the transcendence side is typically the detached and disin- terested desire to know, that is, one’s inclination to seek knowledge whether that knowledge is comfortable or not.40 An important concept for Lonergan in the realm of human development is “genuineness.” He says that the tension between limitation and transcendence is “an nelcome invasion of consciousness by op- posed apprehensions of oneself as one concretely is and as one concretely is to be.”41 It is not pleasant to recognize oneself as imperfect, nor to accept the difficult work of change. “Genuineness is the admis- sion of that tension into consciousness,”42 and it is a necessary condi- tion of development. Genuineness is seeing clearly where one is, where one is to be, and the path for getting there.43 It entails the willingness to remain in and struggle with the painful and disorienting

37 Bernard Lonergan, Inigh: A Sd of Hman Underanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 497. 38 Lonergan, Inigh, 499. 39 Lonergan, Inigh, 501. 40 Lonergan, Inigh, 497-499. 41 Lonergan, Inigh, 502, emphasis added. 42 Lonergan, Inigh, 502. 43 Lonergan, Inigh, 500. 146 Stephen R. Calme tension inherent in that experience of development. Lonergan describes the challenge beautifully:

[Genuineness] does not brush questions aside, smother doubts, push problems down, escape to activity, to chatter…. It confronts issues, inspects them, studies their many aspects…. Though it fears the cold plunge into becoming other than one is, it does not dodge the issue, nor pretend bravery, nor act out of bravado. It is capable of assurance and confidence, not only in what has been tried and found successful, but also in what is yet to be tried. It grows weary with the perpetual renewal of further questions to be faced, it longs for rest, it falters and it fails, but it knows its weakness and its failures, and it does not try to rationalize them.44

The genuine person forges ahead along the upward movement of development, and Lonergan’s description of persistence and dedication to the truth can be a fitting call to overcome white fragility. And yet, he also indicates that genuineness is not a simplistic following of one’s desire to know; such a desire must be properly directed. Lonergan writes, “Without due perspective and discrimination, the exercise of genuineness, as described above, results only in the earnest person with a remarkable flair for concentrating on the wrong questions.”45 This may be exactly what is happening to whites: they believe they are entering into DiAngelo’s workshop with a commitment to grow in their understanding of racism, and yet the questions and frame that they bring with them leave their apparent earnestness misdirected and their motivations hidden even from them. An examination of Lon- ergan’s two ways of human development may clarify this hurdle to genuineness. Lonergan provides a heuristic of human development that can be used both to affirm white agency and to insist on the need for white humility and conversion. Particularly later in his career, he identifies two complementary movements in the person’s development toward greater levels of consciousness. The movement from below upwards provides a fundamental basis for human self-efficacy as knowers, while the movement from above downward recognizes that human development is not an individualistic, self-enclosed process. I examine each of these movements, as well as the vicious circle that can occur without the latter.

From Belo Upard The movement from below upwards in human development is based in an inherent desire to know. This desire naturally drives a per-

44 Lonergan, Inigh, 502. 45 Lonergan, Inigh, 502. White Fragility 147 son through the stages of the universal method of knowing, which involves 1. being attentive to data (experiencing), 2. having insights about the meaning of that data (understanding), and 3. asking questions that confirm whether or not one’s insights are in fact correct (judging).46 Lonergan asserts that this dynamic structure of knowing is immune to “radical revision” because any skeptic’s attempt to doubt this process would necessarily use the process in that very act of questioning.47 Still, although the knowing process is innate and fundamental, human persons have to work toward an explicit understanding of that knowing process.48 Therefore, a main goal of Lonergan’s Inigh is to lead persons to self-appropriation, which is to know oneself as a knower in order that one can distinguish true knowing from biased knowing.49 Happily, this process of self-appropriation is also in some way inherent, in that it consists in applying the process of knowing to itself. Self-appropriation involves being conscious of oneself as experiencing, understanding, and judging. It is experiencing oneself as experiencing, understanding, and judging; understanding oneself as experiencing, understanding, and judging; and judging oneself as experiencing, understanding, and judging.50 Lonergan’s assertion of the fundamental, innate structure of knowing and his confidence in the possibility of human persons self-appro- priating this knowing, offers an epistemic optimism that extends even to persons experiencing white epistemic disorientation. Being knowers is within their reach, because human persons are naturally oriented to the attentiveness, sense-making, and desire for confirmation that together constitute knowing. As Lonergan writes, a person’s “thinking as a whole cannot depend upon someone or something else. There has to be a basis within himself [sic]; he must have resources of his own to which he can appeal in the last resort.… The value of self-appropriation, I think, is that it provides one with an ultimate basis of reference in terms of which one can proceed to deal satisfactorily with other questions.”51 This movement of human development from below upward, as Lonergan calls it, can be the grounds of higher self-efficacy for those whites who feel disoriented by DiAngelo’s assertions about racism.

46 Lonergan, Inigh, 354-355. 47 Lonergan, Inigh, 353-357, 359-360. 48 Bernard Lonergan, “Self-Appropriation and Insight,” in Colleced Work of Ber- nard Lonergan, Volume 5: Underanding and Being: The Halifa Lecre on In- igh, ed. E.A. Morelli and M.D. Morelli (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 13. 49 Lonergan, Inigh, 13-14. 50 Bernard Lonergan, “Elements of Understanding,” in Colleced Work of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 5: Underanding and Being: The Halifa Lecre on Inigh, 33. 51 Lonergan, “Elements of Understanding,” 35. 148 Stephen R. Calme

The Impae As indicated above in the discussion of genuineness, however, this development from below can be coopted by biases that steer it into what Lonergan calls “a vicious circle” that must be broken.52 In fact, Robert M. Doran argues that, in Lonergan’s thought, this impasse is all but inevitable: “If the movement from below upwards in conscious development is not met by a movement from above downwards, development will almost inevitably fall victim to some blend or other of the biases.… For there is a vicious circle in human development that cannot be broken by human resources alone, even by a self-correcting process of learning.”53 This circle is described in several ways. It manifests in the fact that “we cannot become wise and discriminating without concentrating on the right questions, and we cannot select those questions unless we already are wise and discriminating.”54 It manifests in the tension inherent in development: “Present perceptiveness is to be enlarged, and the enlargement is not perceptible to present perceptiveness. Present desires and fears have to be transmuted, and the transmutation is not desirable to present desire but fearful to present fear.”55 It manifests in the relationship between willingness and intelligence: “Truth cannot be attained unless one is willing to pursue it; yet good will is precisely a willingness to follow the lead of intelli- gently grasped and reasonably affirmed truth. Without the appropriation of truth, good will cannot be effective; but without good will, the attainment and appropriation of truth are impossible.”56 In its general form, Lonergan and Doran describe the vicious circle this way: “‘How is one to be persuaded to genuineness and openness, when one is not yet open to persuasion’ because of the biases that have distorted one’s own development?”57 Lonergan’s description of the vicious circle provides a theoretical framework for explaining white fragility as white epistemic disorientation. It explains how, on the one hand, whites can believe themselves to be honestly engaging in intellectual inquiry that is aimed at finding truth, and yet, on the other, DiAngelo can rightly assert that whites’ “engagement” in the discussion is actually a dismissal of it. Whites may in fact be following their inherent desire to know, and they may even be questioning their initial understanding (“Am I actually exhib- iting racism in some way?”) in an attempt to know the truth. But as long as their “perspective and discrimination” are warped and their

52 Lonergan, Inigh, 502. 53 Robert M. Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 195. 54 Lonergan, Inigh, 502. 55 Lonergan, Inigh, 497. 56 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 195. 57 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 197, quoting Lonergan, Inigh, 647. White Fragility 149 understanding of what it means to be “open to knowing” is distorted, even this attempt at following the inherent method of knowing will remain a dead-end for their antiracist development. The vicious circle at play here has to do with self-appropriation. Lonergan writes, “We do not start out with a clean slate as we move towards self-appropriation. We already have our ideals of what knowledge is, and we want to do self-appropriation according to the ideal that is already operative in us…. In other words, the business of self-appropriation is…also a matter of pulling out the inadequate ideals that may be already existent and operative in us.”58 That is, there is a kind of circularity to self-appropriation. Because it involves applying one’s knowing process to one’s knowing process, one’s existing beliefs about knowing will skew attempts at self-appropriation. I argue that in white fragility, whites are sticking stubbornly not only to their ideas about racism (e.g., that it must be intentional and malicious) but to their understanding of self-appropriation (i.e., their experiential understanding of what it means to be a knower). When one’s sense of being a knower is wrapped up in the belief that one’s own experiences, philosophical outlook, and racial community’s per- spectives are normative, then even when one attempts to sincerely consider the validity of a truth that does not align with that normativity, the truth will not seem like knowledge. Note the distinction: on one level, a white person might dismiss DiAngelo’s ideas about racism perfunctorily because they conflict with that person’s own ideas about racism. On another level, a white person might attempt to give DiAn- gelo’s ideas a fair assessment but come to the incorrect conclusion that they are wrong, a conclusion reached not only because the data the person was using to assess it are wrong or incomplete but because the pre-conscious, experiential criteria that the person is using to assess whether or not that person has satisfactorily gone through the process of knowing are distorted. Lonergan concludes that escaping a flawed understanding of what it means to know may require a significant dis- ruption: “Spontaneously, naturally, your ideal of knowledge will gov- ern your attempts at self-appropriation, and unless your ideal is per- fectly correct before you start, it will prevent you from arriving. In other words, there is the need of some sort of a jump, a leap.”59

From Aboe Donard Doran explains that making the leap to escape this vicious circle requires that the movement from below upwards (following one’s in-

58 Lonergan, “Self-Appropriation and Insight,” 18. 59 Lonergan, “Self-Appropriation and Insight,” 21. 150 Stephen R. Calme herent desire to know through experiencing, understanding, and judging) be met by a movement from above downwards.60 This movement from above downwards originates with God, and its gift is a “universal antecedent willingness” that properly orients a person to make decisions that are in line with the moral good and God’s understanding of the order of the world.61 Of particular interest for our purposes, Doran asserts that this antecedent willingness “affects not only what we are open to do but also what we are disposed to kno.…Universal willingness leaves one open to learning even ‘all there is to be learnt about willing and learning and about the enlargement of one’s freedom from external con- straints and psychoneural interferences.’ In short, it is an openness to persuasion: to persuading ourselves and to submitting to the persuasion of others.”62 That is, a form of this willingness is necessary for the knowing process. Within the human subject, Doran identifies the dialectical tension between limitation and transcendence as the question of whether the intellect and imagination will repress a person’s pre-conscious psychic images and affects (“neural demands”) that are the necessary data for insight, because that insight would cause uncomfortable dissonance; or whether they will allow into consciousness those neural demands that will lead to insights.63 Essentially, the question is whether or not a person will be true to the desire to seek knowledge without allowing the undue influences of bias to cause that person to flee from unwanted insights, even unconsciously. The gift of universal willingness properly orders the relationship between the self-centered sensitive psyche and the detached and dis- interested desire to know, thereby allowing into consciousness the relevant psychic images that are necessary for insights. Doran writes, “[I]ntelligence and reasonableness depend upon the willingness to raise the questions that issue in answers worth implementing…. Intel- lectual integrity itself must be grounded in universal willingness.”64 Thus, while growing in antiracism will involve a willingness to act on one’s knowledge about racism, it will also require a prior willingness to go through the process of coming to accurate and complete knowledge of racism, regardless of the dissonance that knowledge causes one. It is not something whites can do on their own: “Only a

60 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 195. It should be noted that, despite the sequential presentation of them in this paper, the two movements in development are not temporally sequential. That is, one does not work halfway up the path of development, then wait for the movement from above downward to complete the task. Both movements operate simultaneously. 61 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 186, 196-197, 201. 62 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 197, quoting Lonergan, Inigh, 647, emphasis added. 63 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 182-183. 64 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 198. White Fragility 151 universal willingness of which we are incapable on the basis of our own resources can sustain the openness necessary if one is both to know and to fulfil one’s responsibilities as an originating value.”65 If the willingness that Lonergan and Doran describe must come from outside, doesn’t the necessity of this movement from above simply confirm whites’ low sense of self-efficacy? If one conceives of self-efficacy as believing oneself to be the sole initiator and controller of one’s development, then perhaps yes. Lonergan’s understanding of development also points to a self-efficacy that comes from an aware- ness of one’s true process of knowing. Whites can be set free by recognizing that the impasse in race discussions is not to be overcome by pushing ahead with the approach they are used to (as if their own brute intellectual efforts could get them there) but by being receptive to the gift of universal willingness that can open them to otherwise inacces- sible productive avenues of knowing. Fundamentally, this self-efficacy is an experienced “assurance that God knows our incapacity for sustained development and is doing something to meet the problem.”66 It is an inherently religious concept of self-efficacy, not because it can be developed only within a formal religion, but because it is rooted in an experience of “unrestricted love” and a cooperation “with God in love truly universal.”67 Still, there is something central to Christianity that promotes what might be called this relational sense of self-efficacy. For the universal willingness does not lead to a prideful assertion of the self; rather, it leads to a humility that seeks its influence by serving. It leads one to take responsibility for combatting the entrenched biases and injustices of society with “the attitude of a love that returns good for evil, a self- sacrificing love that converts the social surd into a potential good: the love, in short, of the Deutero-Isaian servant of God.”68 This self-efficacy recognizes that our agency reaches its potential in collaboration with God, that “this collaboration is primarily God’s work,” and that “our first task is to discern in its details the contours of what God is doing in the world.”69 Yet God’s action in the movement from above downwards is not only experienced as an unmedi- ated mystical gift, but also as “the transformation of falling in love: the domestic love of the family; the human love of one’s tribe, one’s city, one’s country, [hu]mankind.”70 In other words, God may give the gift of willingness through the people and community around us, and

65 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 197-198. 66 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 200. 67 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 204. 68 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 202. 69 Doran, Theolog and he Dialecic of Hior, 203. 70 Bernard Lonergan, “Healing and Creating in History,” in Colleced Work of Ber- nard Lonergan, Volume 16: A Third Collecion, ed. R.M. Doran and J.D. Dadosky (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 101. 152 Stephen R. Calme so we open ourselves to that gift through encounter. A renewed sense of self-efficacy for whites means recognizing that the perfection of our agency involves relying on others. That includes those who challenge us, like DiAngelo. It calls whites to recognize that the most effective way to develop our knowledge of racism is to probe for our own ignorance and to engage with others—particularly our brothers and sisters of color—who can help us recalibrate our knowing process.

CONCLUSION White epistemic disorientation often leaves those of us in the white community feeling we are unable to participate in discussions of race. That feeling has some truth to it. We really are unable to know racism through our current approach of focusing only on growth from below upwards, trying to use our existing intellectual resources and self- knowledge to come to a deeper understanding of racism. The problem is that the resulting low self-efficacy results in even less likelihood that whites will persevere in the uncomfortable (and seemingly fruit- less) engagement about race. Part of the solution may lie in finding our self-efficacy not in the confidence that we already have the resources necessary to be knowers of racism but in a humility that recognizes our need for assistance. Our agency is not primarily to be aimed toward using our current resources to assess claims about racism. Rather, the prior necessary step is to aim our agency self-critically at our own current resources. It is to learn from the self-efficacy of the kenotic Christ, who in confident obedience humbled himself, trusting that his self-emptying was paradoxically the most complete act of agency, for it collaborated with God’s free act of exalting him.

Stephen R. Calme is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at Marquette University. He has an MTS from Boston College and an M.Ed. from the Univer- sity of Notre Dame.