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Actually, you may well be right. The infographics didn’t explicitly judge “whiteness”. I may indeed have brought the idea with me given how whiteness is used and connotated nowadays.

I hope I’m totally wrong about my interpretation about the infographics and I hope my frustration is unsubstantiated.



The logic of the page containing the graphic is this:

1. "Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard..."

2. "Whiteness (and its accepted normality)... communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages." [ed. because whiteness causes microagressions.]

3. "Racism is perpetuated by deeming whiteness as superior and other racial and ethnic groups as inferior."

4. "White supremacy is an ideology where white people are believed to be superior to nonwhite people."

5. "[I]nternalized racism, [] happens when an oppressed group believes the racial views that society communicates are true, and they act as if they were true."

So, if the graphic isn't clearly critical, the page is. If you hold the "white" ideas in the graphic as "superior," that is to hold "whiteness" superior. Holding whiteness superior is the definition of "white supremacy." If you hold these "whiteness" views as a minority, it is because you have internalized racism -- the "whiteness" has colonized your mind.

Families. Science. Christianity. Hard Work. Democracy. If you think any of these are superior, it's "white supremacy." If it's not properly nuanced, this is how it's being churned out for the masses.


It's frustrating because the style of the entire page is completely consonant with the thing that it is trying to describe.


By calling it whiteness, it implicitly discourages "brown" people from adopting the enumerated values.


I am unsure how else to parse it, too. Is this infographic telling black children that "doing science" is "acting white?" This entire infographic reads like white supremacist rhetoric. What the hell...


White nationalist Jared Taylor has repeatedly stressed that the woke left is doing his work for him.


Why? I don't think that it's really even speaking to the individual values. My interpretation is that it's making the (unsupported) assertion that the entirety of those values represent the pinnacle of what appears to be normal or culturally appropriate, from the perspective of typical white Americans. So for example, if you say to a white American, "tomorrow will be better," that's an uncontroversial position to take. Or, "my kids each have their own bedroom," seems like a fairly normal and uncontroversial expectation. Whereas if your behavior goes broadly against these norms, say, "My kids all sleep in the bed with me," or "I just go with the flow, professional advancement doesn't interest me," then you will seem out of step with what (white) society deems as most appropriate. It's not saying that all of these values are exclusively the purview of white Americans, nor is it saying there's anything wrong with these values. To the extent that anything is implicitly discouraged, I would venture that it discourages taking for granted that cultures that diverge from this specific value set are inherently defective.

Also, this comes from 1990. A lot has changed since then. Maybe it's not quite as controversial to be non-Judeo-Christian, for example.




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