“Y’know where God is in a cloud and there’s all these angels and He’s reaching out and He’s touching—I dunno who that is—David or something?”
Last month, a seemingly obscure podcast had quite a notable guest: Robin DiAngelo. Over the course of the interview, DiAngelo, well known for her books and lectures in which she posits that all white people, including herself, are racist, DiAngelo spoke incoherently at times, made bizarre statements that topped even the top tier of her usual race-baiting drivel, and behaved in a befuddled and bizarre way that rivaled the magnitude of endless gaffes and head scratchers that we have come to expect from Biden.
The most harrowing hint that something had run amuck with the author of White Fragility and Nice Racism came with DiAngelo explaining that when she does a presentation, "the single image" she uses "to capture the concept of white supremacy is "Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. God creating man. Y'know where God is in a cloud and there's all these angels and He's reaching out and He's touching—I dunno who that is—David or something?"
Thrusting her hands toward the camera and touching her fingertips together repeatedly to mimic what one can only assume is the iconic imagery of God reaching out to Adam, not "David or something," DiAngelo continues, "And God is white and David is white and the angels are white—like that is the perfect convergence of white supremacy, patriarchy, right?"
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1756029313562845285?s=20
The Sistine Chapel was created during the Renaissance in Italy, where Michelangelo lived, and it's a safe bet to say that he most likely didn't hop on many international flights during the time. If Michelangelo lived in Asia and was creating his masterpiece there, he might have depicted God and Adam with Asian features, as many artists in the region do.
While it is this clip that has surfaced within the last day or so, the entire hour-long interview, which is more of a monologue by DiAngelo with the host nodding from time to time, is a treasure trove of Dogface Pony Soldier Biden Syndrome.
Of the suffering she has endured as a result of picking up the collective cross for all white people and their deeply ingrained supremacy, DiAngelo laments that she's had her home vandalized, words sprayed on her walkway, death threats, and worst of all, as she explains, "I've had Tucker Carlson devote many minutes over time to me and the Trump Boys tweet my name out."
Who exactly "the Trump boys" are isn't clear, but viewers have no time to ponder as she continues. "Often, when there's just a bararge of hate mail coming into my email and it's always mixed in with misogyny, which I think is really interesting, I used to think, 'Oh, ok, y'know, somebody must've, y'know, CuTucker Carlson musta done another piece on me.'" It is believed DiAngelo was attempting to use the English word "barrage," not bararge and that she was attempting to say Tucker, not Cutucker.
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1756027274371965296?s=20
Later, DiAngelo explains, "I think people, white people who claim that the only message that they ever got was human equality, I call a word I won't say begins with a B." Chuckling, DiAngelo continues, "In fact, Erin Trent Johnson is a black woman I used to do a lot of coleading with and she'd say 'When I hear a white person say some version of that 'I don't see race,' she thinks to herself 'This is a dangerous white person. This is a white person that is going to deny my reality.'"
Erin Trent Johnson describes herself as a she/her, Ecowomanist Entrepreneur, Embodied Freedom Coach, Speaker and facilitator of such events as Beaucoup Hoodoo Fest in New Orleans. She also wrote extensively on how the Covid pandemic opened up a paradigm shift in which "a new world order" would override capitalism as well as the "over-valued bodies" of whites who profited from it through "good ole-boy handshakes." She often decries white supremacy and colonizer culture.
Echoing Johnson's push for the overturn of capitalism in her writing, DiAngelo follows with the assertion that individualism is inherently racist in the interview. Some examples of political models that curse capitalism and individualism are Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and Fascism.
DiAngelo herself does not use any of those words during her interview except one. She accuses white power of attempting to use race bait to divide people through universal healthcare and then somehow doubles down on whatever that hysterically amazing assertion is coming from her with "Look what Trump is doing with his fascist narrative – I mean he wouldn't be doing that if he didn't think it was effective. With his…what, what is it? The poisoned blood and the…oh my lord… Anyway…I guess we shouldn't talk about that."
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1756025637989445774?s=20
DiAngelo also describes how she was born into white supremacy before she was even born, while she was in the belly of her white mother. After a dramatic retelling of all the events that led to her racist birth in a white hospital where blacks mopped the floor after she was taken home because white supremacy, she says, "I was born into a racial hierarchy already in place, and I opened my eyes in it. So there's never been a space outside of it. And so it is deeply internalized."
In the same breath, she then says of the deeply internalized racism she has based this entire interview and her entire career on, "Uh, it's made up," laughing and flailing her hands about, "We're clear about that, right? That there's no real race at the biological level but wooooh it's a social construct right?"
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1756023374722068581?s=20
The conversation turns to George Floyd, and for the next ten minutes, one wonders if DiAngelo, a woman who has based a career on racial justice, who charges thousands upon thousands of dollars for speaking engagements and DEI policy-making for huge corporations, is, in fact, suffering from dementia or worse, that she is truly and completely stupid and has grifted her way this far by hurling threats of "White supremacist!" in every direction at the top of her lungs until everyone just agrees and desperately searches for ways to do better so she'll just stop it.
To understand the significance of the disastrous gaffes DiAngelo stumbles through next, one need only keep in mind simple facts that everyone living in the United States, and to some extent, on planet Earth, and who has not been in a coma since 2014 knows extremely well due to the years of large-scale rioting, violence, tremendous social unrest, BLM everything, and destruction of entire cities that took place as a result.
Eric Garner was a large black man who died while police attempted to arrest him in Staten Island, NY, for selling loose cigarettes in 2014. His size/weight was a noted part of the incident.
Michael Brown was a young black male who was killed when he refused to follow police instructions in Ferguson in 2014.
Kyle Rittenhouse, a young white male, shot three white men participating in race riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020 and was found not guilty as he was exercising self-defense.
George Floyd was a black man who was not overweight and died while police attempted to arrest him. All four officers involved in the interaction, two of whom were black and two, white, were found guilty and sentenced to prison.
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The interview turns to George Floyd, and DiAngelo is asked her thoughts.
DiAngelo says of Floyd, "To have him calling for his mom, y'know it just, there's alot of pieces that interrupted the narrative about black men because you see he's a large black man so as sweet as he might have been, um , white people just seeing him would not assume that sweetness, right? But to also have him crying for his mother, added to that humanization—it breaks my heart that that's what it took, right? But you put it all together. And then, and then, those police officers were held accountable for it? That's kind of incredible, but you know it doesn't end it. There've been many many things since then," DiAngelo chuckles, continuing, "that people haven't been, that police officers have not been held accountable, but, um, certainly more so."
The host then asks about January 6th and asks whether DiAngelo believes if the participants had been black the outcome would have been different but DiAngelo has more to say about Floyd.
"Yeah, let me just say one thing about what we were talking about with George Floyd and the question I would want to ask that white person who's like, y'know, 'Well he must have been on drugs', it's just 'Why is that important to you?' right? Like what is the investment in that not being what we witnessed? Is shoplifting an offense where one should be executed on the spot?"
An awkward pause follows as it seems neither the host nor DiAngelo herself is quite sure how shoplifting has just been introduced into a conversation about George Floyd, a case, the facts of which DiAngelo surely knows inside and out in her position of Racial Injustice Warrior.
DiAngelo continues, "Is selling cigarettes…is, uh," and she just stops talking. She looks like Biden as he struggles to get through an already mangled beyond repair statement. DiAngelo has mixed up George Floyd with Eric Garner. It was Eric Garner who was a very large black man selling cigarettes on the street in 2014 when police approached him.
DiAngelo seems to realize her fubar and somehow makes it worse, re-introducing the mysterious shoplifting theme into the Floyd situation, stuttering, "And I'm not saying that George Floyd shoplifted. He was, what he was accused of is passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Is that execut-able?"
The host ignores what has just happened and talks more about racism.
DiAngelo then goes back to January 6th, saying, "I patently unquestioned to me that if those people were black they would've been probably executed in the street like, I just I can't even imagine. Or they'd showed up with guns pretty much anywhere. Um"
Soldiering on, DiAngelo then looks down, pondering…something, and comes up with, "What can I say? I find it so upsetting that that young young boy came and shot people and is held up as a hero. That… Kyle Rittenhouse?"
Kyle Rittenhouse was not involved in January 6th.
DiAngelo seems to realize this and corrects herself with, "That was in, uh, Ferguson I think, right? Yeah. Anyway."
So, to be clear, DiAngelo mixes up Eric Garner and George Floyd. She then says that if black people had been involved in January 6th, they would've been executed in the streets. Next, she mutters something about "them showing up with guns just about anywhere". Who? We're not sure.
DiAngelo then mumbles about that young young boy who shot people and is held up as a hero in Ferguson. And in a feat that seems super-human, DiAngelo manages to combine Michael Brown (from 2014) with Kyle Rittenhouse (2020) and the events of January 6th.
She then sums it all up concisely with "Whoo. January 6th. I mean, confederate flag, it's just," she shrugs. "I mean, you know. It's just all connected."
The interview ends with the host asking DiAngelo what advice she would give to anyone dealing with racism. Her answer?
"You didn't choose this. You didn't have a choice. But you can't challenge it if you don't see it." She then says in a sing-song voice, "So come along, come along!" She giggles, "If I had a little flute!" DiAngelo holds an imaginary flute up to her mouth and makes a trilling flute sound while she plays her imaginary finger flute. "Come along with me! That's my new thing now! I'm gonna have to learn how to play!"