I have observed with a sort of low-grade alarm the evolution of the woke usages of the word “white.” Notable notches on the timeline include the old, semi-ironic use of “that’s so white” to mean so square, which at some point melted into constant acknowledgments and only-sometimes-instructive invocations of “white privilege.” And then “white” accrued a suffix, leading to the abstract noun “whiteness.” A little while back, if you hung around a certain class of overeducated people, some instances of white privilege might be held up along with the instruction to “watch whiteness work.”

So, casual anti-white racism is a core part of the radical chic verbal fashion sense. Fine. As far as it goes, this is not some horrible racial injustice against whites. White Americans are not in any serious danger of being laid low by organized prejudice. I’m white, and I’m certainly not put out by it. My only practical concern here is that if the culture emphasizes white identity it might cause certain kinds of bitter and vulnerable white people to emphasize their white identity with tattoos and torches and such. Really not a fan of that.