> It described a set of assumptions that are cultural.
Yes, but most social scientists would describe these as bourgeois values (or "bourgeois virtues"), not "Whiteness". Why bring race into it? I mean, I get it that they're looking at this from a US-centric point of view, but even then it makes zero sense other than as an intentionally provocative and sharply divisive statement. (But why would the Smithsonian Institution want to blatantly troll their patrons like that? It's mind-boggling.)
Because "white" in US is de facto a cultural category that is heavily intertwined with those proclaimed virtues.
Note that this doesn't mean that people who don't exemplify them are not considered white, or that people with non-white skin who do exemplify them are considered white. What it means is that it's assumed to be the norm for whites, and ideal for other groups to strive towards - and the lack of attainment is deemed as the root cause of their troubles.
Furthermore, if public perception shifts on this for some group - i.e. if they are deemed as having largely attained the ideal, when they weren't perceived as such before - they get to partake in "white privilege" to the corresponding degree; first, promoted to "honorary whites", separate but (gradually more and more) equal; and then finally fully adopted into the fold. This happened historically with e.g. Catholics (especially Irish and Italians), Eastern Europeans, and Jews; and is ongoing with some Asian nationalities, and some subgroups of Hispanics.
Note also that this is about perception of those groups by the dominant group in society, not the actual degree to which they really manifest or don't manifest those virtues. The determination to exclude the group comes first, and then their supposed failure to adhere to the virtues is used to morally justify it, and shift the blame onto those excluded. Conversely, the dominant group becomes dominant first, and then claims that its dominant status is merely an inevitable and justifiable outcome of adherence to the virtues.
> ...if public perception shifts on this for some group - i.e. if they are deemed as having largely attained the ideal, when they weren't perceived as such before - they [are] first, promoted to "honorary whites", separate but (gradually more and more) equal; and then finally fully adopted into the fold.
This feels like a just-so story to me. The story of "white" identity as such in the U.S. is really a lot simpler than that, and we can trace it very easily in the primary sources: it does show up early on as something that was talked about mostly in opposition to Natives and the enslaved blacks, and to some extent it kept that role in the "Jim-Crow" segregated south after the emancipation of slaves, up to as recently as the Civil Rights Era. In the meantime, and quite importantly for this discussion, it got actively repurposed throughout the U.S. as a way of assimilating the fractious immigrant identities from Europe into something that could be shared by European-Americans in general. This shows up especially clearly wrt. immigrants from Germany in the run-up to World War I, who were heavily encouraged to shed any association with their nationality for obvious reasons; but the same is true of other nationalities.
But to say that Asians have been subsequently adopted as "honorary whites" in some sort of continuing dynamic, let alone that this is also true of "white Hispanics" (a categorization that does formally exist in the U.S. Census but that very few would acknowledge as such) really strains credulity. I do think that this whole way of talking about "Whiteness" as something terrible is purposely divisive; it is exploiting a deep equivocation about the legacy of slavery and segregation in order to disregard the fact that "white" is what many, many millions of people in the US have been explicitly requested to identify as, and it's really not feasible to disregard or deprecate existing identities like this without being divisive.
Marco Rubio is a good example of a Hispanic person who is treated as white in practice. When I was talking about a subset like that, I didn't mean white Hispanics so much so as subgroups defined by religion, and especially politics. Basically, there's a "presumption of non-whiteness" for Hispanics, but it can be overcome by individuals and communities aggressively embracing the "white" virtues (and denouncing other Hispanics who do not).
And as for Asians, you can easily observe the dynamics by first looking at the "yellow peril" scare, or, say, the justifications for the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2 - and then compare it to how the same groups are treated today. The difference is obvious and immense.
I do agree that "white" is a bad term for it overall. But thing is, it's a pre-existing one - the reason why we talk about stuff like "white privilege" is because "white" and "non-white" was the language used to get us where we are, and the same distinction (usually obscured shibboleths like "inner city youth") is what largely fuels systemic racism today. So it's impossible to meaningfully talk about racism without talking about whiteness.
(I'll also add that SJ vocabulary is pretty bad overall when it comes to conveying concepts accurately - e.g. "privilege" is another highly misleading term that I wish was never popularized to describe the very real concept behind it.)
I might agree that there are some interesting dynamics here and that they relate to this set of values, it's just that "X is being treated as white" is not necessarily a good way of describing them. Using that kind of wording is just assuming the conclusion - and while "white" and "non-white" may have been used in that way by some, it's only a small part of how these terms were used and it's hardly what most people think about as "white" today.
"What fuels structural, systemic racism" is another can of worms entirely and I see little reason to get into it here, other than to note that our aforementioned attitudes to class, wealth, gratification etc. might just as well be "fueling" other systemic social problems that people don't generally describe as "systemic racism", such as the opioid overuse epidemic among lower-class whites. So again, bringing race into the description of these problems risks adding confusion for little gain.
I think you're starting with the implied assumption that "white" is some objective thing that exists outside of the cultural convention that establishes it. But that's exactly my point - it doesn't. Marco Rubio is white because society treats him as white. I am white for the same reason. The actual color of our skin is not primary here - it's the social convention that makes it relevant.
And yeah, this is the historical meaning of "white". Consider the one-drop rule, both as a legal concept, and as a social convention. You could be white as snow, and yet the moment the society knew you had a black ancestor several generations back, you were treated as black - and thus, you were black. In other societies, it was different - e.g. the Spanish system of meticulously tracking blood percentages, and a formal hierarchy based on that, made it possible to "whiten" a bloodline.
The one-drop rule is no longer a broadly accepted social convention by itself, true. But while it had been, it created numerous derivative cultural markers, above and beyond skin color, which continue to be the basis of the social conventions establishing race today - distinctive names, for example, or use of AAVE. Somebody can still be white as snow, have stereotypically European facial features and hair etc - but if their name is DeShawn or Shanice, and they "talk black", they will be categorized as "black who can pass as white", and treated as such. Scenarios where their appearance isn't in the picture at all - e.g. that famous study with swapping names on resumes - make that rather apparent.
BTW, the opioid abuse epidemic is very much a manifestation of systemic racism - the reason why it started in poor white communities is because they are more likely to get an opioid prescription to begin with, and because the prescriptions are more generous (and thus more ripe for abuse). These both stem from long-standing racial stereotypes - one about blacks having inherently higher pain tolerance [1], and another about them being less responsible and less able to exercise self-control. Ironically, as those stereotypes are getting addressed, the epidemic is starting to affect black communities more.
But you're absolutely right that not every social problem is about racism, even when it stems from some social value that is also used to define race. For example, the overemphasis on "rugged individualism" destroys informal community safety nets regardless of race, and the adverse effect is the same for somebody in the same position on the economic ladder. It's brought up more often specifically in the context of black communities mostly because theirs haven't been destroyed as fully as those in white communities. So the process is much more apparent there to begin with - and then economic effects of systemic racism (i.e. the fact that black communities are much poorer on average) make the negative effects of this destruction much more blatant.
> I think you're starting with the implied assumption that "white" is some objective thing that exists outside of the cultural convention that establishes it.
It's not "objective" or outside of culture - on the contrary, it is definitely subjective and inter-subjective. It's what some people have been expected to identify as for quite some time, "as a social convention". I don't think the current "social convention" agrees with e.g. "Marco Rubio is white because society treats him as white". Not because of the color of anyone's skin, or anything like that - but because he is widely identified as Latino/Hispanic, and a widespread "social convention" treats that as something other than white. (Perhaps this sort of identity is less socially important than it formerly was, but that's quite different from positing a sort of "honorary white" identity wrt. Rubio or anyone else.)
> ...For example, the overemphasis on "rugged individualism" destroys informal community safety nets
Is it really the overemphasis on rugged individualism that does this? Some people might dispute that, and blame widespread dislike for traditional values or traditional community institutions - something that, for better or for worse, seems to be very much part of the "progressive" ethic.
If most social scientists would describe these as "bourgeois values" unaware of how closely what is bourgeois values in the US is historically tied to ethnicity, then most social scientists are idiots.
Most of the things listed are very much cultural, and the bourgeois assumptions within different cultures would vary massively.
E.g. "Follow rigid time schedules" is a good example that is very much cultural. My ex is Nigerian. She'll adjust her adherence to schedules based on whether or not she's going to meet white or black friends. With white friends e.g. a 2pm start for an event means the event will start at 2pm. With her black friends a 2pm start means 2pm is the earliest it's ok to consider arriving, and most likely people will start arriving by 3pm-4pm. "African time" is very much a real cultural expectation that has nothing to do with being bourgeois or working class. It's not better or worse; just a different way of thinking about time.
You might suggest she's just not "bourgeois", except she comes from a family full of leading lawyers. When I first started dating her, her dad disapproved enough to have the wife of Nigerias then vice president call her to try to talk her out of it. She grew up with servants, before she was shipped off to an expensive English boarding school. In other words: "African time" has nothing to do with socioeconomic status, and everything to do with culture.
In the US these are "bourgeois values" because bourgeois values in the US are values mostly influenced by European protestant values, and so dominated by "white" cultures.
It doesn't mean none of these values are shared by subsets of black people. Or Asian people, or whatever other group. E.g. the section on justice is very much shared by Nigerians for example, as the Nigerian system very much adopted British legal customs.
It does means most of these values are culturally dependent, and not universal, and that the origin of the US take on this is "white". It doesn't map neatly to race, but it works as a short-hand to point out that a whole lot of things we take as given about how society "should" operate and what is polite, or bourgeois, is based on cultural expectation that very often follows ethnic lines for historical reasons.
"Follow rigid time schedules" is all about industrialization and the spread of railways. That's all there is to it. That's why people have been caring about that since 200 years ago in the U.S. and not at all in places like Nigeria.
That may well be, but it does not change the cultural link of it today among people who have grown up in industrialised cities with extensive railways and still apply 'African time'.
That cultural aspects can change quickly does not mean they don't exist.
Yes, but most social scientists would describe these as bourgeois values (or "bourgeois virtues"), not "Whiteness". Why bring race into it? I mean, I get it that they're looking at this from a US-centric point of view, but even then it makes zero sense other than as an intentionally provocative and sharply divisive statement. (But why would the Smithsonian Institution want to blatantly troll their patrons like that? It's mind-boggling.)