Who are the Whites? And why do people hate them so much?

A Spicy Blogpost by a Long-Time Whitepeopleologist

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

Who are the Whites and what counts as White?

Many of the world’s smartest and most educated and morally upright people insist that whiteness, however real in a sociological and political sense, does not really exist biologically. When they say “race is just a social construct,” they don’t deny its presence. These Berkeley grads just deny that the color of your skin (or the shape of your nose, or the texture of your hair) has any meaning beyond what other humans assign or project onto it.

Are the poor coal miners of West Virginia or the guidos of the Jersey Coast truly white? Even so, are they white in the same way as the Grosvenor family? Knowing the answers to these questions is key to any productive conversations about white people and whiteness.

Who are the whites?

(Basically, every vaguely fair-skinned person from Europe whose DNA plots inside the big European blob on a PCA chart.)

It’s very easy to spot a white person in the wild, especially in an incredibly ethnically and racially diverse metropolis like London, New York City, or even North Dublin. The average white person will be wearing stylish stretchy pants, a tasteful shirt, and a boring coat. He or she will either be in excellent shape or could use an extra weekly workout.

They love learning about other cultures in a passionate yet detached way, are deeply opinionated about mahogany, and love reading middlebrow political tracts. Their favorite foods include matcha-infused drinks, some types of red or white meat accompanied by bread or potatoes, and salted caramel ice cream.

Every white country has extremely different variations of this type of person, but it all points in the same direction. Peripheral Whites like the Southern Italians or the Black Irish have a more olive-like skin tone and rich, dark hair; Greeks insist they actually enjoy eating octopus, and Croatians like to think they possess the secret to attracting billionaire patrons who pay their staff under the table. These are all very interesting quirks, but they are all Europeans. They are all the result of the same ancient farmer + steppe + hunter-gatherer recipe, just stirred in different ways. In the end, they all believe in affordable egalitarianism and feel entitled to overpriced coffee.

If all else fails, here are two ways to truly know if someone is White.

• Does said man or woman look and feel like someone who would be coveted by a 26-year-old neurotic Asian American?

• Ask them, “Are you white?” If they look uneasy, a bit concerned for your sanity, or just plain annoyed, then you’re speaking to a bona fide white person.

WEIRD Kulchure

Let’s be honest: when most people talk about whiteness and white culture, they aren’t exactly talking about cacio e pepe, Grigori Perelman, or even how the Winged Hussars saved Europe from the Ottomans at Vienna.

When your average woke person or Asian parent talks about whiteness — especially in that special derogatory tone — they conjure up a very different, far less flattering, and weirdly profound collection of traits. Think: free-market capitalism, gap years, or a posh git spending his sabbatical in a tastefully furnished cabin in northern Sweden, or a lovely suite at the Lisbon Ritz, to finally finish his magnum opus.

These are all aspects of WEIRD culture — the psychological and behavioral package that originated and was nurtured in northwestern Europe (England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and much of the German world) and has since become the most prestigious and most despised culture on earth. Like classical liberalism, it’s the original culture that spawned a thousand enemies.

The Weirds are the extreme psychological variant of Europeans that emerged in northwestern Europe a thousand years ago. They’re the people who exhibit ungodly levels of individualism, analytical thinking, trust in strangers, and that special guilt-based moral system that is kinda endearing but also deeply counterproductive outside the West. Perhaps it was the rain or the demoralizing climate, but these countries gave birth to the original high-trust, self-critical, restrained, luxury-obsessed, pasty-skinned people.

The culture of Westernized, Educated, Individualistic, Rich, and Democratic people came about after some wise guy in the Western Catholic Church (probably in England, but it could be anywhere) said to a colleague, “Gerard, I’m beginning to think that incest and clannishness are getting in the way of proper prayer and obedience to God. Besides, it’s just awful on a practical level. Let’s stamp this out in the name of Jesus.”

So for the next six hundred years, the Western Catholic Church spent real time and energy changing the psychology and way of life of millions of people. The Church banned any type of cousin marriage, outlawed polygamy with a vengeance, made divorce and remarriage into an incredibly difficult and bureaucratic process, and (crucially) pushed individual-based inheritance laws.

The result was that, gradually and then suddenly, your average German or Swede started marrying outside their clan. Wealth, land, and loyalty slowly seeped out of large extended families. Powerful men were no longer able to build huge kin networks that came with multiple wives and spousal swapping. New inheritance laws weakened the incentives to have big families, and people began finding suitors who were the right match rather than the best for the clan.

This state- and church-led social engineering produced a strange culture that made analytical thinking (breaking big concepts into smaller chunks to make logical reasoning easier), trusting complete strangers, and cooperating with men and women you’d otherwise despise for mutual benefit, utterly normal.

It’s hard to explain how much of a sea change this has become in historical terms. Other great civilizations, like Ancient China and Rome, were built on strong familial ties and more collectivist cultures. Sophisticated concepts such as Roman virtues and filial piety were nurtured and refined within a different paradigm.

Capitalism, Self-Hate, and the possible end of whiteness

By the time Northwestern Europeans had gone full WEIRD, the rest of humanity was still crawling out of the Dark Ages. Trade, the Protestant work ethic, half-decent universities, and a sudden hunger for something beyond Aristotle’s extended shitposts and yet another interpretation of the Bible all kicked in at once. By the early 1600s, Europe had clawed its way back to the living standards of its ancient ancestors. Settler colonialism, coal, and the steam engines cranked it up to proverbial warp speed. The Malthusian Trap was finally smashed. Technology could suddenly feed, clothe, educate, and enlighten millions more people than ever before. And these weirdos were not content to sit pretty in Leuven libraries, Krakow seminaries, and the pubs of Merry Olde England.

These Brits, Germans, Poles, Dutch — even the Italians — fanned out across the planet and exported their strange new psychology along with their muskets and their bracket clocks. To the world’s detriment and benefit, it worked all too well.

Today, a Beijinger studies at a university still modeled on Salamanca and the Sorbonne. A Black South African washes down a cheeseburger and fries with an ice-cold Coke. A Mexican American with Oaxacan roots speaks fluent Spanish and English instead of Zapotec. The entire planet, especially you, now runs on a mindset that barely existed seven centuries ago.

What happens when the Whites are all gone?

Unfortunately, this story did not end with these blue-eyed, blonde-haired aliens riding off into the sunset and enjoying their classical liberalism while listening to Ryo Fukui albums in the comfort of their own net-zero lakehouses.

Around 75 to 80 years ago, these Northwestern Weirds — the same highly trusting, guilt-constrained, analytical weirdos who smashed clans, broke the Malthusian Trap, and exported their mindset to the entire planet — became the only ones actively trying to apologize it out of existence.

They’ve turned their own tools of self-criticism and universal trustworthiness against the very people who made any of this possible. Today, white people and whiteness are persona non grata. It’s not only responsible for unintentional microaggressions and questionable reinterpretations of nigiri sushi, but it’s also a system that chains us all to low pay and low self-esteem on a burning planet. The undeniably Caucasian super-lesbian literary demoness, Susan Sontag, went so far as to call her brethren “the cancer of human history.” You laugh, but it’s what most young educated people think, regardless of race or class.

The saddest part of this whole process isn’t just white demographic decline, the last two or so decades of genuinely harmful self-flagellation, or the potential breakup of Britain and the hollowing out of mother Europa. I’m a Hong Kong person. I know that all good things come to an end. No golden age lasts forever; just consult a Chinese history book or a chart of US Total Factor Productivity.

So yes — the poor coal miners of West Virginia, the guidos of the Jersey Coast, the Grosvenor family, the Black Irish, the Southern Italians, the Poles, the Greeks, and every vaguely fair-skinned European whose DNA sits inside that big European blob on the PCA chart are all White. They’re all the same ancient farmer + steppe + hunter-gatherer recipe, just stirred differently.

The real question isn’t “who counts as White.”
It’s whether the Weirds will keep harming themselves until there’s no one left who remembers how this truly magical culture was birthed and nurtured.

Conclusion

Why do I care? It’s not because I think white people are morally superior. I’ve spent way too many years in special ed schools to believe any group has a monopoly on virtue.

I just know they built something rare: a form of ordered liberty that hasn’t been matched by Hong Kongers, Rwandans, Qataris, or even the Japanese.

That’s why millions of us keep showing up at your borders. We may make better pasta now, but we still can’t bottle that specific freedom.

As much as it pains me to admit it, drinks in ultra-capitalist Kowloon don’t quite hit the same as driving down the Pacific Coast Highway or bombing a flirt with a six-foot woke Oxford math tutor and still feeling victorious when she says, “That’s very kind. Have a good day.”

I want Lap Gong Jr. to have the same experience when he visits Cambridge someday.