Episode 17: "White Fragility" Is A Completely Bizarre And Pernicious Book And It's A Terrible Sign That So Many Americans Love It
Blocked and Reported
Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal
4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 June 2020
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(UPDATE, 6/21/2020: Replaced the original file with one that has a new intro from Katie about some violence that took place in the CHAZ. This is the version we'll be posting on the free feed tomorrow, but everything is otherwise identical. -Jesse)
In the intro, Katie regales Jesse with tales from the CHAZ. Then, in part because Jesse is obsessed and desperately needs to get a lot of vitriol surrounding this subject out of his system, the deeply masochistic hosts devote the entire rest of the episode to a dissection of one of the strangest books you will ever read about race, Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility." Does Robin DiAngelo know any black people who aren't antiracist educators? Or any other humans in general? What are the details of her segregated-crying policy? Are there better explanations than "white fragility" for why someone dragged into a mandatory training at work and called racist by a weird lady might respond negatively to such an experience? So many questions! (CORRECTION: In this episode we wrongly state that a definition of 'racism' favored by DiAngelo was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. As Snopes explains, this is not the case: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/merriam-webster-definition-racism/.)
New Yorker: The Fight To Redefine Racism - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-redefine-racism
Chapo Trap House: No Crying In Raceball - https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/428-no-crying-in-raceball-feat-jen-pan-61520
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, this is Katie and just a quick note before we start. |
| 0:03.8 | At the beginning of this episode, we talked briefly about CHOP, |
| 0:06.8 | the autonomous zone in Seattle formerly known as CHAS. |
| 0:10.5 | After we recorded the episode, there was a shooting at CHAS that left a 19 year old man dead |
| 0:14.6 | and another man injured. That story is still developing. As of today, Sunday, |
| 0:19.5 | the police haven't arrested anyone and it's not clear that the shooting was connected to CHAS, |
| 0:23.8 | but we felt like we should at least mention it. Our condolences to the victims and their families |
| 0:28.2 | and to the nation of CHAS. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:32.3 | Katie, my friend, how goes it? Pretty good, Jesse. I got a question for you. Are you familiar |
| 0:37.2 | with the nation of CHAS? Sounds like it might be related to the CHAS, autonomous zone thingy? |
| 0:44.2 | Yes, yes, yes, yes. So CHAS has actually been rebranded. It is now known as CHOP, |
| 0:48.5 | but I'm going to continue to dead name CHAS because CHOP just doesn't have quite the same. |
| 0:53.2 | Reng is CHAS and I'm also opposed to revisionist history. So CHAS, as our listeners might be aware, |
| 0:59.3 | stands for the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. I believe we've talked about it a little bit on the |
| 1:03.2 | podcast before. This is a six block area in Seattle where protesters took over this area after the |
| 1:12.1 | police abandoned their police station and this came after days of unrest and lots of tear gas and |
| 1:20.0 | rubber bullets and shit like that, just like this like street battles essentially between |
| 1:25.3 | police and protesters. And this was also where someone profited the name of our intern, Katie |
| 1:30.6 | Herzl, right? Right. So my former office is in the CHAS. It has been a requisition that is |
| 1:38.8 | known all year in Seattle. It is in the nation of CHAS or CHOP. So I wanted to check out CHAS |
| 1:45.7 | for myself because I live on, as you know, I live on an island surrounded by a private island |
| 1:52.2 | surrounded by like alligators and trucks and shit. But so I decided I would leave my island and |
... |
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