This week I finished:

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo: After watching the video I mentioned of DiAngelo speaking, I had to finish the book, not just skim it.

She doesn’t understand what causes racism so she can’t attribute it to its causes. Instead she grasps at what she can, no matter how inaccurate or how much she exacerbates the problems she purports to solve. White people can do no good in her view except to acknowledge they benefit from racism but can never understand it or overcome it. Black people can do know wrong in her view. Only they can truly understand racism, she implies. White people just can’t. I think she just wants white people to supplicate and apologize to black people. She wears her guilt with pride.

Reading the early parts of the book, I felt: she’s an intelligent human being. That she could come up with this book almost makes me embarrassed to be human too. I understand racism is hard to understand, but most people who don’t understand it don’t write books about it.

For a while I thought: at least she means well. As I read more, I questioned if she means well. I think she doesn’t. She just wants whites to feel bad and for blacks to approve of her.

Tragic, especially that she’s profited so much from spreading her gobbledygook that perpetuates the problems she claims to address, though I’m not sure she even thinks she’s trying to solve them.

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House Gods: Sustainable Buildings and Renegade Builders, by Jim Kristofic: It took me a long time to read this book, though when I finished, I reread it and got more out of it.

Sebastian Junger recommended it. He endorsed it. The context is humanity wrecking the environment and how we build housing playing a big role. It’s about people living in an area around Taos building more sustainable housing as well as society mostly treating them poorly.

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