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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
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/
And The Rise of White Identity Politics: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/white-identity-politics-black-lives-matter-race-kenan-malik
And The Rise of White Identity Politics: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/white-identity-politics-black-lives-matter-race-kenan-malik
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 'white' 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.
