Dontcha know, Tim Walz’s state of Minnesota has become the hinterlands of lunacy. The latest from the University of Minnesota is no exception to the crazy happening in the Upper Midwest.

Case in point, the “Culture and Family Lab” that belongs to the state’s flagship uni, that states if you were born in America, you are part of a “whiteness epidemic”. Or is it a whiteness “pandemic”? Whatever. From the website:

Racism is an epidemic (CDC, 2021) that can also be considered a pandemic given its large cross-national proportion and spread (APA, 2020). However, there is another pandemic lurking behind and driving the racism pandemic – the Whiteness Pandemic. Whiteness refers to culture not biology: the centuries-old culture of Whiteness features colorblindness, passivity, and White fragility, which are all covert expressions of racism common in the United States. Naming the Whiteness Pandemic shifts our gaze from the victims and effects of racism onto the systems that perpetrate and perpetuate racism, starting with the family system. At birth, young children growing up in White families begin to be socialized into the culture of Whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism.”-UM Institute of Child Development

Yes, you read the above. This from the Institute of Child Development. Take it from the white girl:

Gillespie suggests that sitting down and “talking about race reduces racial violence in both children and their parents. At the same time, we ourselves are still learning about our role in whiteness and racism, so our actions and conversations should be accompanied by ongoing self-education and reflection. These actions and reflections can be hard work and even uncomfortable and frustrating. It takes courage to embrace our own lifelong journey of antiracism and to bring the next generation along with us.”-Sarah Gillespie

Okay, Cat Lady. You know what is also hard work? Teaching your children not to see the color of one’s skin but to, at the same time, embrace everyone’s background, collectively as Americans and people on this Earth, and to be a decent human being regardless. But, apparently, according to these loons, “colorblindness” is rooted in (GASP) whiteness whiter than a Minnesota blizzard and some of these women on this panel.

Whiteness refers to culture, not biology: the centuries-old culture of Whiteness features colorblindness, passivity, and White fragility, which are all covert expressions of racism common in the United States.”-UM Institute of Child Development

There it is. Your colorblindness is part of a culture of whiteness. Tell that to old, southern Democrats stuck in the 1800s. Getting fired up about this, according to these crazies, only illustrates how damn raaaaacist you are. White Fragility and all. Say, didn’t some other WHITE chick make her millions on this grift? Robin? Which home are you hiding out in these days?

Naming the Whiteness Pandemic shifts our gaze from the victims and effects of racism onto the systems that perpetrate and perpetuate racism, starting with the family system. At birth, young children growing up in White families begin to be socialized into the culture of Whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism.”-UM Institute of Child Development

The family system in WHITE only families is responsible for systemic racism say a few token white women who are privileged enough to pursue DOCTORAL studies in this work. They say, “talk to your children about moderate to severe systemic racism”. The site even boasts lists upon lists of suggested reading on how to tell your little cretins how utterly hateful and racist they inherently are because of their skin pigmentation.

Imagine if we were to place “Blackness” in some of the sentences these half-wits dare to utter. I would be willing to bet The University of Minnesota would have one huge lawsuit on their hands. By reducing “whiteness” to a culture and not biology, these twits are basically saying that the background of a white person has no significance whatsoever. White is white is white. You can be the milquetoast midwesterner who grew up in a suburban white neighborhood of white, chardonnay-drinking, stay-at-home moms, who has the opportunity to be a career scholar, or the white child of immigrants who lived in a culturally diverse neighborhood in the inner city, in poverty, deciding between spending the weekly earnings on transportation to school or a gallon of milk for the rest of the family. You could be opening the windows to “smell the burning tires” because the occurrence was a “touchstone” or watching the car you worked hard to pay off burn along with the police car rioters torched. Doesn’t matter. You’re WHITE. By this logic, you deserved to have your car torched.

If there is any argument that overall curriculum and some university programs need to be torched, it’s this. Open up the mental institutions and let’s quarantine the infected.

Photo Credit: AlexiusHoratius, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/Cropped