I understand your points of view here, I think. When we speak in blanket terms about the social, political, and economic structures around us it often comes off as empty rhetoric. Even opportunistic rhetoric. And no doubt some ‘woke’ people are empty and opportunistic.

When you listen to some of the black people who talk about what it’s like to be black in the US, though, they talk about how they’re not allowed to forget their skin color, from birth. It comes from their community, from the media, from their schools and teachers, from their peers, from white people and culture. I think it’s a bit disingenuous for you to say that anyone wants black people to be defined by their skin and history forever, and ignore the material reality of now. Not to mention the fact that everyone is at least partially defined by their history; how could you escape it completely? I might want to define myself and my life 100% on my own, based solely on my own merits, but how realistic is that?

I don’t say this to dismiss my own role in being who I am. Like I said at the top of this comment—I don’t know where the line is, and how much I should blame myself for not being who I want to be. But I definitely believe that it isn’t at either extreme.

I dare say some dark skinned folks perpetrated some pretty racist atrocities long before they ever set eyes on a fair-skinned human being. But as with all Orwellian adventures, history can be very selective when it needs to be.
I overheard a remarkably intelligent person say not so long ago that mischief walks the land when racism is used to combat racism, sexism is used to combat sexism, and ignorance pursues the illusion of intelligence. It can take a lot of hard work to wind up as a non-racist – after which it becomes an astonishingly easy thing to sustain. I couldn’t say I understand how racists actually feel about that, but I could take a good guess that jealousy and envy enter the mix somewhere.
Anyhow, human psychology remains pickled in the lust for revenge, which is why I’ve smelled a rat ever since this abomination of CRT got started. I’ve been critical of white history since middle school, and it never made me want to crawl outside of my own skin. The object in life is to figure out how to be comfortable in the skin you’re in. And there are far too many fine, wonderful and decent things about the human experience that own no particular color at all, which is as it should be. My tribe is non-existent, my identity group owns the greatest majority there is: the human race. Anyone trying to convince me otherwise leave me deeply suspicious of their respect for humanity. For of course any fool knows that the process of de-humanization paves a greased quick road to hell. Which is where we’ve gone before often enough. (But that particular history is conveniently ignored by those whose pride doth indeed, goeth before the fall. Verily. Religion? Some devils do indeed, claim their due.

Your analogy literally blew my mind and added perfectly to this review.

But the good news is, like the spiritual forebears whose mentality she’s tediously re-packaged, Robin DiAngelo and her adherents will go down in history as joyless, self-righteous bigots who actively made the world a worse place to live. The issues they purport to care about *will* get better with time, but it’ll be through the hard work of others who care about material reality, not simply cleansing their own guilt-riddled conscience. And I think we can all say amen to that.