Should Catholics Be Against Whiteness?

Should Catholics be against whiteness? We Catholics should be against the word “Whiteness” because we should be against the ideology of “Whiteness.” We should NOT be against Whiteness the way its proponents want. They want us to believe Whiteness is real and then be against this “unjust reality.” Just as “Whiteness” is a made-up word, Whiteness is a myth. It is a muddled myth.

Catholics should be against racism because racism, accurately understood, contradicts Catholic Doctrine and because Catholics should assent to all Catholic Doctrine. Those who oppose racism should oppose the myth of Whiteness.

I aimed my previous columns on racism, systemic injustice , and White guilt at those who consider themselves moderates and are well-intentioned, and so I was sometimes indirect and left it up to readers to draw conclusions. In this column, I will be more direct and complete my line of thought since this is the last column I plan on writing about racism—not because I am “fragile” or “uncomfortable,” but because there are other issues (and it is not racist to think there are other issues besides racism).

Whiteness

One presentation of Whiteness Ideology is on the website of the National Museum of African American History and Culture:

Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of [sic] are compared. [There was no object of the preposition of on the NMAAHC website as of the writing of this column.]

I will take the NMAAHC at its word. Notice it does not say “some white people” or “when white people.” As written, it lumps all white people together as having the same customs, culture, and beliefs. This is incredibly out of touch with reality. How hard is it to think of two white people who have different customs and beliefs?

Lumping all white people together is not only false, it is also racist, bigoted, and prejudiced. It commits one of the fallacies (when the premise does not support the conclusion) that is essential to racist thinking: Because some members of a group are X (the premise), therefore all members of that group are X (the conclusion). (Logicians call this the Fallacy of Composition.) As a result, the group is considered to be a monolithic, uniform group. Whiteness thinking has the same pattern or form as KKK thinking, even though Whiteness ideologues and Klansmen use different content or matter in their fallacies.

We are also told by the NMAAHC:

Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America’s history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

Racist practices, such as Jim Crow, were normalized. But for the Left in general, and for the NMAAHC in particular, it is always 1953. According to them, we are to believe the falsehood that over the last sixty-some years there has been no progress in providing opportunities to black people. Furthermore, Whiteness Ideology ignores that the progress which has occurred was only possible due to the support of the great majority of white people who have, for example, cooperated with affirmative action and trillions of dollars in government aid (reparations completed, in my view), provided much of the fan base for black celebrities, elected a black man President of the United States, and allowed their taxes to fund the NMAAHC.

The claims of systemic racism are based on a simplistic view of equality and a simplistic use of sociological percentages, e.g., because black people are 12% of the adult population, and because blacks are 33% of the sentenced prison population, therefore there is systemic racism—as though any inequality between races is automatically racist. But as Heather Mac Donald has written,

The prevalence of systemic racism in the U.S. is far from an established fact, however. Other credible explanations exist for ongoing racial disparities, including family structure, cultural attitudes, and individual behavior. To declare . . . that racism is the defining and all-explaining feature of American society is to adopt a political position, not to state a scientific truth.

Racism which is disparaging others of another race and discriminating against them just because they are of another race, might be pervasive; but there is a difference between systemic and pervasive. The true pervasiveness of racism is not only the racism of some white people to people of color, but also the racism of some people of color toward white people and toward other people of color. Whiteness Ideology does not admit that everyone can be racist. Whiteness Ideology insults white people by viewing only white people, and all white people, guilty of racism until proven innocent (by bowing to Whiteness Ideology).

Identity Politics, which limits politics to seeking power for the group with which one identifies, only makes racism more pervasive. The obsessiveness of making racial identity one’s primary identity, on the part of anyone, only makes racism more pervasive—and does an extreme injustice to those who are of multi-racial heritage.

Western, Not White

Another failure of Whiteness Ideology is that it confuses “White” values with historically Western values that transcend (and are available to) all societies and cultures.

A chart on “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness & White Culture”, posted (and then, to its credit, taken down) by the NMAAHC expressed this confusion. Here are values which are actually good for all human beings but were listed by the chart as “White” and therefore oppressive: “the nuclear family”, “objective, rational linear thinking”, “cause and effect relationships”, “the primacy of Western (Greek, Roman) and Judeo-Christian tradition”, “hard work is the key to success”, “work before play”, “respect authority”, “plan for the future”, “delayed gratification”, justice “based on English common law” that “protect[s] property and entitlements” and where “intent counts”, competition which has a “winner/loser dichotomy”, “master[ing] and control[ing] nature”, “decision-making”, “‘The King’s English’ rules”, “written tradition”, and “be polite.” (The chart also listed as “White” values, some concepts rejected by Catholicism, e.g. “rugged individualism” and “wealth = worth”.)

The amazing thing is that the transcendent values most needed by the human race were discovered in the West. Ancient Israel gave us Faith in the Revelation of the One True God, e.g., there is no equivalent in ancient societies to the Prophets’ call for the justice demanded by God. Ancient Greece gave us Reason, especially in the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. If nothing were known about the Ancient Celts and Slavs (my peoples), Teutons, East Asians, Asian Indians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, sub-Saharan Africans, or any other ancient people, the contemporary world would not be significantly changed. The world would be drastically, unimaginably worse without Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece. Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” The original giants were Jewish and Greek.

Far worse would be the world without Catholicism, which has synthesized Faith and Reason better than any other intellectual tradition. As Thomas E. Woods, Jr, has written, “Western civilization stands indebted to the Church for the university system, charitable work [such as the invention of the hospital], international law, the sciences [and mathematics and thus technology], important legal principles, and much else . . .”  Thus the entire world stands indebted to the Church since these are fruits of the Catholicized West. Of incomparably more value is the Church’s offer to the world of the fullness of the means of eternal salvation, which She alone possesses (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 816).

Throughout American history, there have been white people who have wrongly “normalized Whiteness” by asserting that people of color could not be as civilized as White people and therefore only Whites should have power. That is what “White Supremacy” really is. Whiteness Ideology absurdly considers White Supremacy to exist whenever there is a majority of people with European roots. Whiteness Ideology makes the mistake of rejecting (rightfully) this thesis by rejecting (wrongfully) the notion that there is a civilized standard which all people need, which all people are capable of meeting, and to which all people should be held accountable. True civilization is built on the Natural Law, knowable through Reason by all. In this sense, there is no “Western Civilization”; there is either civilization or barbarianism. It is by either civilization or barbarism that every society or culture is identified. Whiteness Ideology throws out the baby (civilization) with the bath water (White Supremacy). What was normalized throughout American history up to the 1960s, more than anything else, was a Judeo-Christian value system. What is really “at the core of understanding race in America” is that a good value system was not always practiced as it should have been by whites in their relationships with people of color.

The Revolutionaries Are Becoming the Establishment

Whiteness Ideology would have us believe that American culture has not changed since 1953. So the new Cardi B release would have seen the light of day in 1953? The “Counterculture” of the ’60s started taking over American culture in the ’90s, if not earlier. The revolutionaries of the ’60s have become the Establishment in the news media, education, and the entertainment industry. What has become increasingly “normalized” over the last 5-6 decades is Neo-Marxism, also known as Political Correctness, being Woke, Intersectionality, Identity Politics, Progressivism, and Cultural Marxism.

Neo-Marxists continue to work on monopolizing political power. Liberals in the mold of FDR and JFK did differ with Conservatives, for example, in management-labor disputes and over whether government or free enterprise would be a better solution to a particular problem. Liberals and Conservatives used to be united in many essential ways. They shared Judeo-Christian values. They both took their principles from the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the U. S. Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address, which they saw as the best political path humanity had taken. They were united in their anti-Marxism. At their noblest, Liberals sought to extend the benefits of civilization to those deprived of them

The irony is that Whiteness Ideology, along with other forms of Neo-Marxism, would not have developed without the Western (in their eyes, “White”) intellectual tradition of Marx himself, along with Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Lenin, Gramsci, Freud, Rogers, Foucault, and Derrida. All white males. All Modernists or Postmodernists, who sought to replace Faith and Reason—first with Reason alone, then with Emotion and Power.

The Neo-Marxists want to destroy freedom of religion and freedom of speech. They want to have complete control over society. Their anthem is John Lennon’s “Imagine” (although revolutionary elites have always excused themselves from having to “imagine no possessions”). They not only “seem to understand George Orwell’s 1984 not as a warning but as a manual,” as Daniel Schwammenthal has written, but they also seem to understand Huxley’s Brave New World the same way. We are watching the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror and the Bolshevik Revolution unfold before our eyes in slow motion, as their current iteration is taking decades instead of years.

Well-intentioned people are unconsciously enabling the new Jacobins and new Bolsheviks who are clever enough to manipulate them by using words and concepts coined in the West—love, justice, etc.—to mean something radically different from what these well-intentioned people assume they mean. The human mind is easily confused by equivocation.

The Solution Is Personal

Know political history, economic history, and intellectual history. Do not let Neo-Marxists shape your language, your thoughts, and your actions. Say No to “Black Lives Matter.” Say Yes to “ALL Black Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter.” Realize that to the Neo-Marxists the end always justifies the means, the goal always justifies the method. Their own power is their goal. They will stop at nothing. The Revolutionary Left has never been appeased. No concession is ever enough for them. They are the change they have been waiting for.

Seek the Kingdom of God by assenting to all Catholic Doctrine in thought and deed.