Philip Bump Goes Full Robin DiAngelo on America

Philip Bump had a column yesterday at the Washington Post titled “The triumph of anti-identity-politics identity politics.” That really does sum up his point pretty well. He’s seeking to claim that the anti-identity politics backlash on the right is just white identity politics. He’s using Robin DiAngelo’s one trick on the whole country as we’ll see in a moment. But first he walks through the last 15 years of political history, framing all of it as an ongoing struggle focused on race.

The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement a decade ago (in part a function of omnipresent, internet-connected cameras) elevated awareness of one particular disadvantage — police killings — which then expanded into a broader conversation about this systemic racial bias…

…this preceded 2020, the pandemic-disrupted year in which the killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police sparked widespread protests. Major corporations and prominent cultural voices endorsed the BLM movement. There was a push to implement programs at businesses and other organizations that addressed racial disparities. And then there was another backlash.

I’m not sure what he means by “another backlash” because this is the first time the word appears in his column. In any case, he has at least described the order in which this happened correctly. A movement led by self-described communist organizers spent years elevating a handful of incidents of police violence into a cause, often by misleading people about the particulars of the cases being discussed. 

Remember the claim that George Zimmerman had used a racial slur to describe Trayvon Martin? Remember the phrase “Hands up, don’t shoot” which stemmed from a false report about the death of Michael Brown? Remember the claims that Sandra Bland was murdered in jail by police? Remember the claims that Jacob Blake was unarmed? These are just a few of many such examples of how BLM manipulated the country into anger over things that didn’t happen.

They also misled people about the scale of the problem. Many Americans, especially on the left, were convinced this was the norm, that 1,000 or more unarmed black men were being shot by police every year when the actual number was closer to 10.

2022 Survey: “How many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2021?”

The Washington Post’s police shooting database says 11.

40% of “Very Liberals” (least accurate) estimated 1,000+.

16% of “Very Conservatives” (most accurate) estimated 1,000+. pic.twitter.com/P96LzYH0s7

— Skeptic Research Center Team (@SkepResCenter) April 4, 2023

And in 2020, the death of George Floyd escalated all of that tension into riots which did around $2 billion in damage nationwide. So, yes, there was eventually a backlash to this culture war push which started on the left.

Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, prominent right-wing voices began railing against “critical race theory,” an abstract academic field that was (willfully) used as a much broader descriptor for any perceived effort to address systemic racism — or, in the framing of those right-wing voices, to disadvantage White people. CRT became the bogeyman for a wide range of demonstrations (and not always willful ones) of American diversity, from complaints about (purportedly) indoctrinating school curriculums to other (purportedly) anti-White, “woke” efforts.

Here’s another game the left has been playing for years now. Pretend that CRT is an obscure academic field and not directly connected to the identity politics being promoted by bestselling authors like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram x. Kendi, both of whom are being quoted in newspapers and being paid exorbitant sums to lecture large corporate gatherings about white supremacy. This was not something happening on the fringe after 2020, it was very mainstream. It was the dominant political message in the culture for a time which is how stupid ideas like “defund the police” were briefly considered a very bright idea in places across the country. Even Bump admits some of this stuff was nonsense, though he won’t say what in particular.

The backlash got traction. Conservatives began targeting diversity programs, seeing even more success. Some of what was targeted was low-hanging fruit, sloppily implemented or demonstrably ineffective responses to the 2020 focus on race. But they were victories for the right nonetheless.

Much of the DEI gunk adopted post 2020 is “sloppily implemented or demonstrably ineffective.” That’s why major corporations and even some very pro-DEI universities are backing away. They can’t justify it because it doesn’t work. 

But in the end Bump is still determined to claim some kind of moral victory for the left’s culture warriors. They may be losing. Their claims may be false, misleading and fruitless. But the fact that people objected to this proves the proponents were right.

Most of all, though, we should recognize that the hostile response to the emergence of acute questions about race was not some sort of white blood cell-type counteroffensive against the infection of a healthy host. It was a recognition, even if a sometimes exaggerated or overstated one, of how the host was already ailing.

This is Robin DiAngelo’s “white fragility” party trick applied to the whole country at once and it’s a farce. If Americans object to mandatory DEI trainings at work, that proves they need them! If Americans object to BLM lying about police, that proves they can’t handle the truth. Any response other than abject apologies and acceptance that the left is correct is proof that America is a deeply racist place.

Sorry but that’s not how this works. It’s a free country which means the left can make their push for (to choose one obvious example) criminal justice reform and defunding the police. But it also means, the right and center can say, Hey, this isn’t working or Hey, this seems like a bad idea because crime is up. 

Those reactions don’t prove the left was right all along or that the people responding are too racist to adopt the correct (leftist) view. Frequently they prove the opposite. Frequently, the backlash happens because the left’s promises don’t pan out as promised. It turns out that a relentless focus on DEI and hundreds of millions spent has not made the University of Michigan campus into a utopia. Saying so isn’t a racist backlash, it’s just true.