WEIRD, White Ideas

What DEI and Critical Theorists Get Wrong About “Whiteness”

From The White Card: https://www.thewhitecard.co.uk/press/why-talk-about-whiteness

What is a “white idea”? What exactly is “whiteness”? Well, as silly as it sounds, Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) organizations that help to form policy for governmental and private organizations have often framed certain personal characteristics as being forms of “whiteness” or even “white supremacy.”

Originally produced and displayed by the Smithsonian Institute

This is what they’re doing and what they think: Whiteness is the cultural framework for white majority societies characterized by expectations that are culturally specific to success for white people. So any non-white people living in a culture dominated by “white ideas” are at an automatic disadvantage. Those who are successful in those societies are internalizing whiteness or white supremacy to win the game of whiteness. Or as Michael Eric Dyson says, “they are internalizing white racism.”

But people who think like this are making the same mistake their gender ideology comrades are making when they tell us that gender is a social construct. What they define as “whiteness” and gender are social constructs, but they’re tied to underlying realities which produce those constructs. They’re not the arbitrary brain child of people who seek to oppress others. You cannot simply wish them away or even force people not to produce and live amongst those constructs.

What people identify as “whiteness” is truly the characteristic of any Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) society. “Whiteness” is the consequence of being WEIRD.
(Joseph Henrich’s book on this psychological evolution details this beyond the primary paper linked above.)

Most people properly grimace at the idea that “whiteness” can be described as punctuality, scientific reasoning, hard work, the focus on the family and other seemingly normal or virtuous characteristics. It obviously has racist overtones. But there is a second group of people who have suspended disbelief and taken it as the proper framework within which to view and act in our world.

Convincing the second group that they are incorrect is not going to happen. Anyone who thinks like that is tied up so deeply in it as a moral compass that convincing them of anything else is like asking them to switch religions, because in a technical sense, it is their religion.

But for the first group, those that grimace when reading ideas like this, I’d like to help you understand the truth and have some foundation for how to dismiss such a silly and racist idea out of hand. Or, at the very least, help you understand that you’re neither crazy nor racist.

So here is the truth:

“White ideas” are neither white nor ideas. They are the consequence of cultural evolution in societies that are literate, monogamous and don’t marry their close relatives.