A lot of shock being expressed at the Museum of African American History & Culture describing objectivity, rationality, the work ethic, as ‘white cultural’ traits. Unfortunately, nothing unusual about it. It’s where the ‘whiteness’ industry leads to. https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness">https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/tal...

The irony is that every white supremacist group insists on the same - that rationality, hard work, etc, are ‘white’ traits, and that’s why whites are ‘superior’. This is how ‘anti-racism’ helps legitimise what would normally be recognized as straightforwardly racist assumptions.

Two of my articles this week that relate to this: From Anti-racism to Psychobabble: https://kenanmalik.com/2020/07/14/from-anti-racism-to-psychobabble/">https://kenanmalik.com/2020/07/1...
And The Rise of White Identity Politics: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/white-identity-politics-black-lives-matter-race-kenan-malik">https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/...

Ought to add that it would make sense to argue that this is how white people are often *presented* – as the ones with objectivity, rationality, the work ethic etc. That these are the presumptions of the racists.

But once you start defining the world in terms of ‘white culture’ and & #39;white& #39; cultural traits, then it’s all too easy to see these as aspects of white culture rather than as racist presumptions of what constitutes white and non-white culture.