This entire thread. I would just add Trump and Vance also have their jobs because whiteness is a credential. - ThreadSky

victorerikray.bsky.social • 12 hours ago

This entire thread.

I would just add Trump and Vance also have their jobs because whiteness is a credential.

Let's be very clear that Pete Hegseth absolutely has his job because he is a white man.

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He's not merely a white man. He's a white supremacist. In the way that they all view the fact of blackness as inherently racist toward them, their standard for "whiteness" is likewise inherently "white supremacist". Which, to be fair, is the classical definition OF "whiteness".

fritzswanson.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Whiteness is a racial category invented by European colonizers to establish a power structure over non-European colonized subjects. Blackness, likewise, is a category THEY invented. Before the colonial period, Europeans had no clear sense of color categories as race. Because "English" was a race.

fritzswanson.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Intra-European ethnic prejudice was the dominate racial form before the colonial period. It still exists today, but it was much more intense pre-1492. Whiteness was a category created to help explain why an Englishman and a Scotsman and a Frenchman could all trust one another against a non-Euro.

fritzswanson.bsky.social•11 hours ago

So, traditionally, to be "white" was created as a way to express Euro-supremacy. Whiteness had no other function, and to the Europeans who remained in Europe, whiteness was illegible. It made no sense to them. They were confused by the word when it started appearing in colonial dispatches.

fritzswanson.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Whiteness had to be EXPLAINED to Europeans by the colonizers amongst them. We're on the other end of that process where we can't see outside of the framework. But Trump is expressing the OG sense of whiteness, which is that to BE white you must be a supremacist. Because that's what "white" means.

fritzswanson.bsky.social•11 hours ago

We dance around this problem because it is hard for regular Euro-descended Americans to wrap their heads around, and we don't want to hurt peoples' feelings. People have come to adopt their "whiteness" as neutral. But it isn't. And there isn't time to be polite about this any more.

sorayanadiamcdonald.com•12 hours ago

Yes. Whiteness is a credential. And for MAGA, belief in white superiority is the ultimate credential.

victorerikray.bsky.social•12 hours ago

Right. They will let some people of color in as long as they affirm this.

sorayanadiamcdonald.com•12 hours ago

You see the way Vance defends anti-Indian racism like his wife and kids aren't *right there*

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