How to thoughtlessly consume whiteness

A SYTYCB entry

Is your complexion fair or pale? Do you check the box that says “Caucasian” next to race when you fill out your demographics? Do you, like the vast majority of people who answered yes to both of those questions, just not think any deeper about whiteness? Well here’s a helpful list of tips for you to keep that up!

1. Be Intellectually Dishonest With Yourself

Lack of critical self-reflection is step one in any successful attempt at brain-washing – it closes your mind so that criticisms from other people can’t get in there and plant ideas. So it only makes sense that you just don’t think about what the word Caucasian means (don’t you dare go look that up now), or about the vast array of cultures across Europe and even parts of Asia from which white people came. This is especially true if you are located anywhere in North America, where we are all spoon-fed a melting pot version of white culture, regardless of our ethnic background, from the time we plant our first steps on this stolen land. But the key to being intellectually dishonest is to forget, deny, and plead ignorance. This is especially critical whenever you’re facing yourself in the mirror. Just occupy your thoughts with manufactured concerns about whether you’re thin enough, instead.

2. Be Intellectually Lazy, Too

In keeping with the tradition of not thinking critically at all about whiteness, this is your first real step into thoughtless consumption. Since we’re already spoon-fed, we don’t need to think about any other ways of achieving nourishment. For that matter, we don’t even need to worry momentarily about whether we’re actually enslaved by a system of cultural indoctrination that infantilizes and disempowers us all, by forcing our compliance with regulated intervals of a fake white culture pushed into our faces and crammed down our throats. Just chew and swallow like a good little whitey. Whether it’s history written exclusively by the hands of white men (especially in public education), or the homogenous imagery of whiteness plastered across every billboard, newspaper, and television screen, the point here is to just eat it up. Oh yeah – and guilt-trip and/or terrorize anyone who doesn’t, by calling them racist (this is a trump card).

3. Laugh Carelessly About White Stereotypes

God, is this list of tips ever getting long! Well, it’s time to crack a joke that diminishes a white person’s heritage (even your own). And since white people aren’t allowed to acknowledge their own heritage without being called racists, it’s even a good ice-breaker at a party. Everyone loves a good ginger joke, and that’s always a good warm-up, but Viking jokes – now there’s a rich source of punchlines. Everyone can laugh at their baby-eating, village-raiding, woman-raping, genocidal stereotypes! You’ll get the whole room going! You can top that up with slanderous remarks about trailer trash, rednecks, and honkies. I mean, people who actually come from that background will just laugh, too, right? Ooh! How about Hitler jokes while you’re at it? And why stop there? You’ll still have time to joke about pedophiles in the Roman Catholic church, and when you’re done with those, you can joke about Soviet Russia. And if anyone tries to be a wet blanket, just tell them everything is funny and they’re just being over-sensitive.

4. Arbitrarily Decide That Whiteness Is Superior

The last tip I have to offer you is to develop and embrace a superiority complex over your pale or fair complexion. You can do this by rejecting anything that’s non-white as “savage” or “barbaric”, and then stealing bits and pieces of “savage” or “barbaric” non-white culture and showing them how to do it better. Like by making your very own authentic Native American war bonnet out of chicken feathers from a Michaels craft store, and then giving yourself a hip new Native American tribal name. You get extra bonus points for calling it “art”, “ironic”, or a “political dialogue”, or for doing it for an outrageous Halloween costume. Or you can dress up in a tunic and a turbin on International Blasphemy Rights Day, and carry a toy machine gun around with you. If you can, convince one of your female friends to show up wearing nothing but Victoria’s Secret underwear and a facial veil, call it “Reverse Sharia Law”, and laugh about terrorists. And again, if anyone gets angry, just find a race realist near you to help you out of it so you can go back to boozing.

If you follow these tips, you’ll be well on your way to being complicit with systemic white supremacy. Good for you!

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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