This is a topic I’ve wanted to cover for a while, but with the shitstorm of everything going on in the world, I had to put this one on the back burner.
There’s a new epidemic loose in the world, one that is worse than COVID, SARS, and Dylan Mulvaney getting a Broadway gig combined. It’s…whiteness. And it’s not some weird Bluesky bullshit either; it’s coming from the University of Minnesota. (Great. As if having Governor TIMMAH! wasn’t enough of an embarrassment.)
Little did I know my skin color was such as contagion! But if I had to learn about it as part of my research for this week’s Lexicon, you have to! (Don’t blame me. I don’t make the rules.)
whiteness epidemic
What the Left thinks it means – the widespread proliferation of white culture and its negative implications
What it really means – another attempt to make white people feel guilty for something out of their control
Much like Hunter Biden at a crack dealer’s convention, there are some things in life you cannot control, and skin color is one of them. Of course, that doesn’t stop Leftists from trying to make whites feel guilty about it. This is because white Leftists already feel guilty about it and they love to share their misery and expect everyone else to carry the cross they’ve put on our collective backs.
The thing is they’re not completely wrong. Whites have been utter pricks throughout world history. For every Issac Newton or Jonas Salk, there’s been an Adolph Hitler or agent who told Johnny Knoxville he could act. And to be fair there’s been more of the latter than there is of the former.
Now, having said that, unless we are the pricks in the aforementioned paragraph, we don’t have to share in the guilt by default. Last I checked, we haven’t invented a time machine that allows us to go back and prevent bad things from happening…or maybe somebody did and it fucked up the space-time continuum…
That would explain everything post-2020.
Or have I said too much?
Never mind.
The point is we aren’t responsible for the bad shit our ancestors did anymore than they’re responsible for the bad shit we do. Great Grandpa Zeke didn’t invent dub step, after all. That’s on us, and more specifically, the person who invented dub step.
The Left doesn’t see it that way. (White guilt, not necessarily the dub step thing.) To them, anything our ancestors did has to be atoned for right now, regardless of our family history. For example, I have two ancestors who fought for the Union in the Civil War, so that should exclude me from having to feel white guilt, right?
Nope!
Because as the University of Minnesota puts it:
Race matters in the United States because racism still exists and young children perceive much more than we usually realize. When parents and other adults are silent around race, it communicates apathy or approval of racism even if this is the opposite of what adults intend. On the other hand, parents can push back against racism through their words and actions, sending a powerful message to their children.
So, it’s not enough not to be racist anymore. You have to be anti-racist, as the Left puts it. But even that’s not enough unless you do everything the Left tells you to do, and even then that can be undone with an insensitive comment (that only the Left can determine because they’re aware of all the racism out there).
I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. If Leftists are the ones hearing all the racist “dog whistles” that the rest of us can’t, wouldn’t that make them the racists?
I saw something similar to this during my college years at the University of Bedrock (Go Brontosauruses!) with Political Correctness. The Left attempted to change the culture through changing the words people used. On the surface, it was okay because it was sold as being done to raise awareness and be more respectful to others.
Then, everything went banana-shaped.
Once people bought into the idea of Political Correctness, the Left started holding us accountable for the rules they made up, which gave them a lot of unearned power. Then, the rules would change and those who weren’t using the “right” terminology anymore were shunned like a hooker in Amish country.
So much for inclusion and respect for others, amirite?
Although Political Correctness has gone the way of Crystal Pepsi (and thank God for both being out of my life), there are still remnants of it today. Remember how the Left insisted Latinos and Latinas be called Latinx to be more inclusive? Same principle, and same outcome in that it was resoundingly rejected by anyone with a lick of sense.
Eventually, the whiteness epidemic is going to wind up the same way, but it’s going to take some time. And in the meantime, there are some things to consider for our Leftist friends out there.
1. The whiteness epidemic is designed to address racism, yet by definition racism involves either the denigration or elevation of one race over another. So, how does it address racism when it’s racist by its very nature?
2. This is going to be a “whataboutism” but fuck it. Take everything you attribute to the whiteness epidemic and insert any other race or creed. Now, imagine you saying that to a member of that race or creed. More than likely, you’re going to get looked at funny at the very least. You know why? Because it’s fucking bigoted.
3. If whiteness is an epidemic, what is the cure? On the website, you say you want “to better understand the culture of Whiteness and support parents to challenge it, which motivated the Whiteness Pandemic Project, a research study in Minnesota.” If the cure is anti-racism, how will we know we’ve achieved the end of the epidemic?
4. Along those same lines, the way most epidemics are dealt with is through quarantine. How will you separate the parts of white culture you find objectionable from the other parts of white culture that help society? Is it going to be an all-or-nothing approach? And how will you separate white culture from human culture as a whole?
5. And while we’re here, what exactly is “white culture”? It wasn’t that long ago that the Left was calling George Zimmerman a “white Hispanic.” So, would that include him, even though his life choices would repulse a number of whites, including Leftists? What about people of different races who don’t think whiteness is an epidemic or who think white culture is okay? What role do they play in the “whiteness epidemic” and how will you deal with them?
6. Just how far up your ass does your head need to be to think like you do?
Okay, that last one is just for me.
The point is this idea hasn’t been fully fleshed out enough for it to accomplish anything. That may be by design in order to keep money flowing, but from a practical standpoint it’s a not-even-half-baked solution looking for a problem that may not even be a problem for most people. If you want someone like me on board, I’m going to need some more data.
You know. Follow the science?
Or pseudo-science as the case may be.
Tag: whiteness
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
I know this is going to come as a shock to many of you, but I have a confession. I…am a white man.
And I’ll bet a number of you reading this may also be white. With that skin color comes a lot of baggage according to the Left. We have privilege (although I’m still waiting for some of that privilege to kick in because I want a Dodge Charger), but we’re also pretty protective of that privilege and our egos. The Left has a general term for the various aspects of being white: whiteness.
Better grab a lunch, folks, because this one is going to take a while to unpack…
whiteness
What the Left thinks it means – the condition white people have that makes them hypersensitive to legitimate criticisms about their socioeconomic status
What it really means – the oversimplification of white culture to justify racism against whites
The Left accuses America of being a racist country, and there is merit to that position. The problem is the racism isn’t solely going in the direction the Left wants us to think. When you really look at this country objectively, there seems to be one group of people who can always be seen as racist, but never be seen as the victim of racism. That group is whites, or as I prefer to be called Honkey-Americans.
Look at the application of hate crime laws, for example. In case after case, there is reluctance to apply these laws when whites are the victims, even when Stevie Wonder could see the crimes were racially-motivated. But when the criminal is white, law enforcement immediately looks for racial motivations.
Of course, Leftists will brush this criticism off as “white fragility” or justified by pointing out white criminals who have gotten more lenient punishments than others, but it’s deeper than that. The same Leftists who decry the lack of “all people are created equal” when it pertains to justice for people of color want to make some people more equal than others. In a related story, the George Orwell estate is suing the Left for copyright infringement.
It should be pointed out, however, the Left has its own issues with whiteness, but in a different way. Instead of being overly sensitive of their privilege, they exercise it to the point of absurdity. The Wall of Moms in Portland (or as I call it San Francisco North) has found itself in the center of controversy, not because they’re grown women trying to defend spoiled brats throwing the worst temper tantrum in history, but because they’re a) primarily white, and b) taking over a movement started by Black Lives Matter. And this isn’t some white male outsider’s position; the blacks on the ground in Portland are saying it.
To borrow a phrase from that great philosopher Tom Jones, it’s not unusual for Leftists to do this. They see themselves as virtuous souls taking up for the causes of people of color, all while saying they want to get more people of color into positions of leadership. (I wonder how many of these Leftists supported Mia Love or Tim Scott because it would be really inconvenient if they chose not to support people of color for leadership positions on the basis of partisanship. But we know that never happens, right?) These folks see themselves as literal and figurative white knights, but the problem is they’re not helping anyone but themselves. Ditto with those on the other side of the equation who are prostrating themselves to blacks to show how “woke” they are and to apologize for being white. Nothing is gained by either speaking for blacks or bowing down to blacks except making white Leftists feel better. They see their skin color as a curse, but not so much of a curse as to prevent them from taking their self-righteous place as heroes and spokespeople for blacks.
Which, not surprisingly, is racist as fuck on multiple levels.
Which, also not surprisingly, makes them not that different from white supremacists, who are also racist as fuck on multiple levels.
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t see why a person’s skin color is a reason for pride or shame. You can be any color under the cultural rainbow and still be an asshole (See: Rev. Al Sharpton and the late Fred Phelps). Contrary to what Rachel Dolezal, Michael Jackson, and Shaun King tell you, you can’t choose the color of your skin. What makes someone worthy of praise or contempt is what he or she does. White Leftists are at cross purposes with their race, which makes their contempt of whiteness all the more humorous to me and frustrating for blacks in particular.
The Left wants everyone to be ashamed to be white because most of them feel ashamed and they feel anyone who is proud to be white is racist. (Of course, they already believe anyone who doesn’t think the way they do is racist, so it’s not much of a stretch for them.) The way to counter this is to focus on personal elements that have nothing to do with skin color. Be the best person you can be and you’ll never have to bother with the Left’s attempts to make you feel inferior. Remember, the Left wants to make everyone as miserable as they are, so if you take their comments with a grain of salt the size of, oh, the Great Salt Lake, you can rebuff their advances.
Better yet, you’ll confuse and annoy Leftists, which is fun in and of itself.