The recent Supreme Court ruling against Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action admission processes has generated lots of backlash from people who embrace intersectionality and critical race theory, as one might expect. While reading reactions across the political spectrum, I’ve learned a new term that has apparently been used for a while by the clergy in that particular sect. The term is white adjacent.
Urban Dictionary defines white adjacent as A person who is technically a minority, but has access to, utilizes and sometimes benefits from white privilege. This is usually accomplished by said person distancing themselves from the socio political problems their ethnic group commonly faces. Usually by considering themselves better than their minority counterparts sharing their same ethnic heritage.
Intersectionality, as used by university departments such as Gender Studies, African American Studies, etc. describes the ways in which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class and other forms of discrimination “intersect” to create unique dynamics and effects.
The 1619 Project, Black Lives Matter, modern DEI executives and consultants, the Bud Light and Target blowbacks, and others who have displayed outrage at the Supreme Court over its recent rulings all have Intersectionality as the primary underlying construct that fuels their belief system. Much like Methodist, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers each share the Bible, and particularly the New Testament, as providing the idealogical foundational for their constructs, each group applies their own priorities to the foundation.
Since one can’t prove that God exists or that Jesus actually died and was resurrected, or that Paul’s interpretation of those events is theologically accurate, at some point a Christian has to either accept certain truths on faith or reject them. One who rejects that construct outright is called an Atheist. One who doesn’t much care one way or the other is called an agnostic. One who accepts Intersectionality ideology on faith was once referred to as “woke.” However this term has been appropriated by opponents, so proponents have begun avoiding it and use terms like anti-racist instead.
It seems to me that white adjacent is a phrase invented by proponents of Intersectionality to describe situations their core beliefs can’t explain. At the core of wokeness are constructs that can be summarized as follows:
- Europeans (white people) are bad because they were colonizers and used slave labor to extract wealth from stolen lands.
- Males are bad because they subjugate females, gay and trans people in almost every culture in the world.
- Therefore, white males are the worst of the worst. The white patriarchy is the root of most evil. White supremacy is the underlying cause of nearly all of the suffering in the northern and western hemispheres.
- Economic and political systems that were developed by and lead by white males are illegitimate because they were developed by and lead by white males to their benefit. To be woke, one must reject all things white.
But the woke have a problem when it comes to Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and some immigrants from the mediterranean and Middle East. Individuals from these parts of the world are not from the UK, France, or northern Europe. They have darker skin tones and often speak English with a slight accent (if they are first generation Americans). And yet many immigrants from these geographies have prospered in the U.S.
How can this be? India was colonized by the British just as North America was. Chinese first arrived in the U.S. during the 1850s trying to escape political and economic turmoil in their native land. They became a source for cheap labor and were really one step above slaves on the economic ladder. They faced similar discrimination to what African descendants were facing post emancipation. Yet today, Asian Americans (people from China, Japan, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, etc.) have the highest average household income in the U.S., by a significant margin over white Americans.
This forces the woke to provide some kind of explanation that is consistent with their anti-white world view. They’ve concluded that even though these groups are not white, they somehow benefit from white supremacy rather than suffering from it. They have abandoned their core culture and embraced European culture in ways that shield them from the negative effects of their skin tone. They are not white, but they are white adjacent. They somehow sold their soul to the (white) devil in exchange for prosperity.
So what exactly are these categories of immigrants doing to distance themselves from the socio political problems their ethnic group commonly faces? Could it be some of these things?
- Value education? A higher percentage of kids from these homes attend school and engage in their education. After earlier generations found ways to be successful, many modern Asian families can afford to send their kids to private school. But that certainly wasn’t the case for first generation of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Indian children. The commitment to education lead to economic success which lead to greater educational opportunity. So much so that the Supreme Court Harvard/UNC decisions were basically to prevent discrimination against these groups for being successful.
- Leverage capital markets? Wealth is created via capitalism by identifying ways to add value to raw materials, products or services so that consumers or businesses desire to purchase them. Even when these groups had less family wealth, they figured out ways to buy or start small businesses and leverage their success into greater wealth. Apu is a character on The Simpsons who is clearly a stereotype of an Indian or Pakistani convenience store owner. One reason it’s a stereotype is that many Apu’s started with a single convenient store, hotel, laundry or restaurant. Their descendants turned those early businesses into larger ones – chains of stores, hotels, laundries, restaurants, etc.
- Be law-abiding? Yes, there are Asian, Greek, and Italian thieves and criminals. We’ve even romanticized the Italian mafia in movies and TV. But in real life, most Italian families are hard-working, law abiding citizens who began immigrating to the U.S. in the 1880s and started life at the bottom of the economic ladder. As did Greek immigrants in the 1890s who came to work hard labor jobs on the railroads. Today, Greeks are #13 in average household income, Italians are #21. People of British descent are #14 and Scandanavians in the U.S. are #19.
- Value the family unit? The groups at the top of the average household income chart are ethnic groups that traditionally value the family unit.
Contrast these values to what we hear from the converts to Intersectionality and critical theory:
- Education: African Americans and Native Americans have never embraced the benefits of education in large numbers. Yes, urban schools have historically had substandard facilities, etc., but there is no question that the culture of urban black youth is often anti-education and studious black kids are taunted as “acting white.” Dr. John McWhorter, an African American professor at Columbia University, wrote this brilliant piece for Wilson Quarterly (certainly no right-wing rag) in 2000 on the subject of black culture, the roots of anti-intellectualism and the dismal record of black educational achievement. Unfortunately black activists respond to black underrepresentation in elite schools, honors programs, and low standardized test scores by labeling those programs or instruments as racist and demanding schools and universities eliminate such programs and lower their standards.
- Capital Markets: Interestingly, entrepreneurship is beginning to thrive in parts of Africa. While western Europe clearly dominated the western hemisphere from the 16th through the 19th centuries, Africa could well be positioning itself to be a more significant player in world economics later in this century. Unfortunately, African Americans and Native Americans have not embraced entrepreneurship in large numbers in the U.S., even though small business ownership is one of the best ways to build individual, family and generational wealth and the Small Business Administration has many options to assist minorities in such endeavors.
- Crime: According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (a government agency), whites accounted for 70% of all arrests across all age groups in 2020 while 26% of arrests were of black suspects. While black arrests for driving while impaired, public drunkenness and other liquor law violations are more in-line with demographics (14% +/-), blacks are much more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, theft or burglary, or weapons charges than whites (35-51% of all arrests). Of course the woke response is a push decriminalize many of these offenses so that the percentages fall in line with the demographics. The problem with this is that the violent or property crimes continue and blacks are more likely to be the victims.
- Family: The leaders of the woke movement see the family unit as a threat rather than a benefit. This aligns with Marxism, that points to families as the way privilege is sustained and that to have a truly equitable society, families should be abolished in favor of community. Chuck Colson’s 1991 classic, Why America Doesn’t Work, does an excellent job of revealing how well-intentioned social programs from the 1960s contributed mightily to the breakdown of the African American family unit. These impacts are still felt today.
Seems to me that if white adjacent people of color are prospering in the most prosperous country in the world, and people of color who hate all things white are struggling in the same land of opportunity, then maybe those folks should take a closer look at what white adjacent really means and perhaps embrace some of those ideologies? Perhaps success isn’t so much linked to being white, but is more closely linked to embracing education, capitalism, law and order, and the family structure. I’m confident that research would show that poor, white communities who have rejected some of these four foundational behaviors are also struggling economically.