In a previous blog post I commented how the feminist activist Thomas Smith, in a debate against Carl "Sargon of Akkad" Benjamin, essentially stated that if people's freedoms were maximized, if everybody were treated equally and given the same opportunities and freedoms, white people would naturally raise to the top and take all positions of power, and thus the only way to stop that from happening is to limit the freedoms of white people and discriminate against them.
This is not liberal rhetoric. This is not humanist rhetoric. This isn't even leftist rhetoric. This is pure white supremacist rhetoric. This is something that bona fide white supremacist say and believe. (When Carl called him out for being "a white supremacist with a guilty conscience", he was baffled, as he couldn't understand what Carl was saying. He was being a white supremacist completely unwittingly.)
In another post I commented how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unwittingly stated that all industrial and technological progress, all the technology, all the inventions, all the manufacturing processes, all forms of transportation, is the exclusive work of white people, and thus the ensuing pollution and climate change is the fault of white people. Apparently no non-white people have had any influence on this.
Again, this is not liberal rhetoric. This is white supremacist rhetoric. It's the rhetoric that white people have invented and developed all the technological progress we have (and thus can be assigned blame for it).
But not to be outdone, recently the National Museum of African American History & Culture in the United States took the cake by publishing a pamphlet about "aspects & assumptions of whiteness & white culture in the United States".
There are many things that the pamphlet attributes to "white culture" that one would not be surprised to find in social justice rhetoric, like "the nuclear family", "husband is breadwinner and head of household". However, there are also many things that go egregiously into pure white supremacist rhetoric. Among other things, it attributes these things to "white culture":
- Self-reliance
- Independence & autonomy highly valued + rewarded
- Children should have own rooms, be independent
- Emphasis on Scientific Method
- Objective, rational linear thinking
- Cause and effect relationships
- Quantitative emphasis
- Hard work is the key to success
- Work before play
- "If you didn't meet your goals, you didn't work hard enough"
- Plan for future
- Progress is always best
- Follow rigid time schedules
- Time viewed as a commodity
- Written tradition
- Avoid conflict, intimacy
- Be polite
I especially like how they attribute "objective, rational linear thinking" as an integral part of "white culture" and "whiteness" that even many "people of color" in the United States have adopted. As if that were somehow objectionable.
Also notice how pretty much the entire pamphlet (with perhaps the exception to the allusion to the English language) describes Japanese culture even more accurately than any western culture. Yet they nevertheless attribute it to "white culture".
Almost nothing of what that pamphlet lists is something that pretty much anybody would object to, and in fact most of those things are integral properties and beliefs of most cultures, yet this pamphlet attributes it to white people. The implication being that white people developed and invented these things. It's "white culture" to be scientific, rational, self-reliant, independent, polite, and to work hard for your personal success. The pamphlet heavily implies that this is not the way of the culture of "people of color" (that the "people of color" in the United States have "internalized" these things, but it's not part of their own culture).
Consider what the pamphlet is implying: If all those things are "white culture" that people of color have simply "internalized", ie. it's not part of their own culture, what does that imply about the actual culture of people of color? That they are unscientific, irrational, impolite, seeking conflict, not good at following time schedules, not hard-working, never planning for the future, not self-reliant nor independent...?
In other words, this is pure white supremacist rhetoric.
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