The pedigree of that image is that it started as a list created in a facilitated focus group on race and race relations. It assigns no positive or negative connotations to those items; they're things people said off the top of their head when they were asked "What does 'white culture' mean to you?"
Later, it was shared with the inaccurate description of being a list of negative aspects of white culture.
It's kind of funny really; the pedigree of that list being considered a list of negative things is white people making assumptions about the intent of a list assembled of things white people self-attributed to white culture.
Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
> It assigns no positive or negative connotations to those items; they're things people said off the top of their head when they were asked "What does 'white culture' mean to you?"
The result is the same, the subconscious associations between "white" and "whiteness" and those traits has been strengthened. The meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. By increasing the amount of things people associate with the word "white" the definition is expanded.
No negative connotations have been assigned by the document. But "white" and especially "whiteness" has very negative connotations. I've never come across any text or material suggesting "whiteness" is a good thing. Its always stuff like this: https://news.csusm.edu/ask-the-expert-the-problem-with-white... (That alone is already pretty fucked up when you think about it for more than a second) Furthermore, the meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. But "white supremacy" has extremely negative connotations, and so all those normal things get tarred by association with imagery of the Nazis and the KKK.
>Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
Of course not, those are the actually bad things that are used to tar the "perfectly normal and valuable things". If the iceberg picture only contained good things, it would associate positive valence with the term "white supremacy" rather than associating negative valence with the normal things as the picture was designed to do.
To take specific examples, "Calling the police on black people". This is a perfectly normal thing to do if your being robbed or harassed and the perpetrator happens to be black. Doing so does not mean your promoting white supremacy. Now if you're doing it because they're black, thats a bad thing, but the image makes no destination, so the normal thing is tarred by the bad thing. There are also some supper egregious ones, things like "White parents" and "there's only one human race/We're all one big human family". These are actually anti-racist perspectives that are now being associated with one of the most racist and destructive ideologies in history. Another one is "All Lives Matter", this is an explicitly egalitarian message that is now viewed as racist by association.
I can keep going through the list but then my arguments would turn into a gish-gallop.
This kind of rhetorical tarring has been going on for so long that certain kinds of explicit institutional racism is now viewed as not racist (affirmative action), and explicitly anti-racist and unifying statements "All lives matter/there's only one human race" are viewed as racist.
Litterally the picture I linked, would you like more examples. Here's another where they redefine the "white" in white supremacy to mean more than having white skin. https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2020-07/whiten...
I can keep going if you want me to.
The pedigree of that image is that it started as a list created in a facilitated focus group on race and race relations. It assigns no positive or negative connotations to those items; they're things people said off the top of their head when they were asked "What does 'white culture' mean to you?"
Later, it was shared with the inaccurate description of being a list of negative aspects of white culture.
It's kind of funny really; the pedigree of that list being considered a list of negative things is white people making assumptions about the intent of a list assembled of things white people self-attributed to white culture.
Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
> It assigns no positive or negative connotations to those items; they're things people said off the top of their head when they were asked "What does 'white culture' mean to you?"
The result is the same, the subconscious associations between "white" and "whiteness" and those traits has been strengthened. The meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. By increasing the amount of things people associate with the word "white" the definition is expanded.
No negative connotations have been assigned by the document. But "white" and especially "whiteness" has very negative connotations. I've never come across any text or material suggesting "whiteness" is a good thing. Its always stuff like this: https://news.csusm.edu/ask-the-expert-the-problem-with-white... (That alone is already pretty fucked up when you think about it for more than a second) Furthermore, the meaning of words comes from what people think about when they hear it. But "white supremacy" has extremely negative connotations, and so all those normal things get tarred by association with imagery of the Nazis and the KKK.
>Regarding the previous "iceberg" image---that's a lot of words to go looking through to try and pick out the items you're describing as 'perfectly normal and valuable things.' Can you highlight which ones you were referring to? Assuming good intent, I assume you didn't mean "Racial profiling" or "Fearing people of color."
Of course not, those are the actually bad things that are used to tar the "perfectly normal and valuable things". If the iceberg picture only contained good things, it would associate positive valence with the term "white supremacy" rather than associating negative valence with the normal things as the picture was designed to do.
To take specific examples, "Calling the police on black people". This is a perfectly normal thing to do if your being robbed or harassed and the perpetrator happens to be black. Doing so does not mean your promoting white supremacy. Now if you're doing it because they're black, thats a bad thing, but the image makes no destination, so the normal thing is tarred by the bad thing. There are also some supper egregious ones, things like "White parents" and "there's only one human race/We're all one big human family". These are actually anti-racist perspectives that are now being associated with one of the most racist and destructive ideologies in history. Another one is "All Lives Matter", this is an explicitly egalitarian message that is now viewed as racist by association.
I can keep going through the list but then my arguments would turn into a gish-gallop.
This kind of rhetorical tarring has been going on for so long that certain kinds of explicit institutional racism is now viewed as not racist (affirmative action), and explicitly anti-racist and unifying statements "All lives matter/there's only one human race" are viewed as racist.
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