Jonathan Church: Getting to the Bottom of the Robin DiAngelo Craze

“I go through a whole analysis of that and why—statistically speaking—you’re basically making a very broad statement about white people in general based on one observation in one Jeopardy! episode.”

On January 29th, Merion West editor Erich J. Prince was joined by Jonathan Church to discuss his recent book Reinventing Racism: Why “White Fragility” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Racial Inequality, which was released in December. Mr. Church is a contributor at Merion West, as well as at a number of other publications, and he frequently writes about economics, as well as about issues dealing with race. During the interview, Mr. Church discusses how he first became interested in the topics that would eventually give rise to his book, precisely where he believes Robin DiAngelo’s 2018 book White Fragility goes awry, and why so many corporations and cultural institutions appear to have embraced critical race theory despite numerous and persuasive objections to the discipline.

To start off, Jonathan, can you talk about how you got interested in this topic and when?

I would say there were two steps or two developments. In 2016, I started writing a weekly column for The Good Men Project, a very progressive outlet. I was writing about various social justice-type issues. I don’t really consider myself totally Right or totally Left, and even the center is problematic. But I certainly was sympathetic—and I am sympathetic—to various social justice causes. I had written articles about paid leave, about discriminatory job advertisements, a very long essay about #MeToo, and how men should be thinking more about what they’ve done wrong rather than what they’ve really done right.

I was thinking about various issues in social justice, and a couple of articles dealt with white privilege and whiteness and allyship. I’ve actually sort of been going back to them recently, reading them over, and realizing that I had made intermittent references to “white fragility”—not knowing at the time that I was ever going to make anything of it.