Whether woke or malicious, race essentialism brings you to the same bigoted, ahistorical conclusions: that non-white people don't really deserve their accomplishments, they're not naturally capable of scientific or rational thought, that they're chronically late etc.

We live in a world profoundly shaped by Western imperialism, but also one shaped by thousands of years of collective human discovery. This stuff flattens that all away, centers Western Europe as the only thing, the exact nonsense white supremacists want you to believe.

The end result of this is what you have in former Yugoslavia, where groups with a shared history and culture magnify small, even trivial differences into the basis of ethnic division, competition and eventually conflict. I hope people in the US don't internalise the worst of this

A fascinating read either way: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/magazine/white-fragility-robin-diangelo.html

I wish DiAngelo had used her audience with Dem leadership to tell them to make serious police reforms, push for economic protections during the pandemic, provide health care etc., instead of this. Ah well.