“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public,” Booker T. Washington famously observed over a hundred years ago. “Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Sadly, this problem is as virulent today as it was in Washington’s day, yet with one caveat: Many of these race hustlers fomenting the grievances of identity politics aren’t black. There’s good money to be made in peddling the Left’s narrative of “white privilege,” and whites are eagerly forking over their money for the privilege of being told just how racist they are.

A case in point is “critical race theorist” Robin DiAngelo, a white woman whose book White Fragility is responsible for the ludicrous and grossly racist “white privilege checklist.” Recently, DiAngelo gave a guest lecture on racial justice at the University of Kentucky, a two-hour event for which she billed the school $12,000 — not counting her food, travel, and lodging expenses. At the event, DiAngelo promoted her latest “woke” work, the obtusely titled “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” (Apparently, no one ever told DiAngelo that racism has been one of the most widely and repeatedly discussed issues in this nation since the civil-rights era of the 1960s.)

The only difference today is that social-justice activists have found great success in convincing leftist whites, especially white women, that America is systemically racist to its very core. And, again, people pay good money to hear this drivel. As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice notes, “In February, the Guardian reported that woke white women, who seem to be leading the recent mob protests gripping the nation, are dishing out upwards of $2,500 a night to host a pair of activists to tell them how they’re all racist. The service, titled ‘Race to Dinner,’ was co-founded by Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who is Indian American, for the sole purpose of informing white women of their inherent racism. People can also consult with either Jackson or Rao for $300 a session to be told how they hate minorities.”

In a nation beset by white guilt, racism has become a runaway bestseller.