Aren't they associated with whiteness?
Short Answer: No.
Long Answer: The entire prospect is absurd, and manages to be on two levels. "Whiteness," whatever it is, is something that's universally agreed on to be bad, but if rationality and objectivity are associated with something bad, then it stands to reason that these things are bad. Only I'm having a hard time imagining how either of these things could be bad. Taken too far, maybe, but you could take anything too far.
That's the weird thing about the pamphlet, because it reads like something a white supremacist would write (listing off a number of positive traits that no-one has a monopoly on, and casting it as "white,"), yet I'm guessing that wasn't the intent.
I mean, not "associated" in the sense that white people truly ARE objective and rational thinkers where other races are not, but that there may be an ingrained assumption that they are, or a form of cultural pressure for it in ways others may not have.
Who actually thinks that though? Because I'll give the Smithsonian enough credit (maybe) that it doesn't, but it's Poe's Law in effect.
One might note for instance the stereotype of the "angry black woman" - which is perhaps based in some part in the assumption that black people are emotional (volatile... uncivilised?)
I'm vaguely aware of the former, the latter is a stretch.
Now take that sort of idea back to the Smithsonian's controversial infographic, and you start seeing what they were maybe trying to get across. The idea didn't survive gross simplification through an infographic, sure. You can disagree with it, sure. But it's not necessarily as dumb as portrayed.
For shits and giggles, I went back to the chart, and I still don't know what they're trying to get across.
If we're starting from the prospect that "whiteness" is bad (which is the unspoken understanding), then it stands to reason that everything on the chart should be bad, but while some elements may be subjective, most are what you'd expect from a dominant culture in any country, while others are universal. For instance, "worship of the written word." Writing's evolved all over the globe in numerous cultures, are they "embracing whiteness?" Or are they "white adjacent?" Or embracing "multiracial whiteness?" These aren't my terms, by the way. It's a microcosm of how the chart is simultaniously saying "worship of the written word" is a bad thing, while also, that "whites" invented writing. The former is tenuous, the latter is flat-out wrong.
If it's looking at WASP culture, you might be able to narrow it down, but even then, a lot of the chart is a non sequitur. For instance, "based on northern European immigrants experiences." Um, yes? People of a given culture tend to focus on their own culture and history. That's a universal. It's why if you lived in the US you'd be studying "history," and why in Singapore for instance, "American Studies" is an elective in at least some schools. The religion thing is another example, because it's this weird mix of "no shit" (as to Christianity and Judaism being the 'norm' - any survey will tell you that Christianity is a dominant religion), lumped in with "no tolerance for deviation from a single god concept." I'd argue that's a trait of monotheism in general, and I'm not the only one (e.g. Yuval Harari), that historically, monotheistic religions tend to be less tolerant of other faiths than polytheistic religions (this is true for Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, off the top of my head), but here, it's "whiteness." And even as someone who lives outside the US, who finds its religious fervour a bit strange (e.g. you'd rarely get a politican here talking about God in public), the US still ranks high on religious tolerance compared to many other countries. Even if the chart says otherwise.
So, no. I don't know what the chart is going for. It's this weird mix of "no shit," coupled with "wait, what?", association of positive traits with "whiteness," and claiming that "whiteness" has a monopoly on these traits. It's an example of "woke racism," (again, not my term) in that it's weirdly kinda racist to anyone outside WASP culture, in claiming that such people can't be hard working, or can't delay gratifying, or can't be objective, or rational.
But of course that sort of thing requires constructive and analytical thinking, and when you're too busy working yourself up into a tantrum, you don't see it - you're not even looking. Maybe you need to work on your whiteness.
I'm too busy alternating between "what the fuck?" and laughing to have a tantrum. This is "Funny Events in Woke World," after all. I'm under no illusions that anything I write here will make any kind of difference, but I can alternate between laughter and despair in the meantime.
