Performance Review
Western civilization won primacy across the world, not because it was "white" but because it best answered the human conundrums of food, clothing and shelter.
Author’s Note: Pursuant to this post, one aspect I left out that I thought about after I posted is this:
Western civilization is not culturally dependent. It did develop its own cultural aspects, but the reason it is able to adopt and adapt (now known as "cultural appropriation") is because it isn't a culture, per se, it is a set of values, beliefs and processes that, as I noted, were refined as the best to satisfy the never ending question of finding something to eat, something to wear to shield me from the elements and somewhere to sleep where I will be safe.
It's not super good at "self-actualization" because that would seem to be an individual characteristic, best pursued by the person - but Western civilization does facilitate that by protecting the environment for finding the meaning of self by making the quest for food, clothing and shelter easier for more and more people every decade and century that passes.
Because it isn't culturally dependent, any culture, society, race, group or person can practice it and enjoy the benefits.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast…
I was looking at the chart the African American Smithsonian posted last year and comparing what they call traits of "Whiteness" to performance reviews of employees I have authored over my career - these reviews covered pretty much every race on the planet, whites American, European and South African, black Americans, blacks from the Caribbean, blacks from the North, Central and South of the continent of Africa, Chinese nationals, Hong Kong Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians and other South Asians (Thailand, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Vietnam), Arabs from the Middle East and North Africa, and every one of them could have used that "whiteness" chart as a guide (with the exception of the section on Christianity).
My reviews had nothing to do with race - they were all about performance, about meeting or exceeding goals we set as a company and ones agreed between the employee and me. Many were about continuing education and career growth and almost every one had an element of problem solving and meeting unexpected challenges.
I personally know that many of these "non-white" people have gone on to much larger roles and responsibilities in their respective careers and organizations - they have succeeded, not just in America but in many different countries and cultures all around the world. This indicates that "whiteness" has little to do with the problems faced all around the world and race has no impact on how people approach and solve them.
When you consider what they propose as "whiteness", you must consider that what they mean by "blackness" or the "black experience" is the opposite. Then the conclusion follows that these things are not as much an indictment of "whiteness" (especially when I consider the huge number of non-white people who are proven to have succeeded through practicing those characteristics), as they are an excuse for lack of performance of black Americans. It is just another aspect of racial theories that posit that when everything is equal, the lack of success of American blacks as a group can only be explained by racism.
Looking at the global view of work and success, that is simply not true.
Western civilization didn't invent problems and challenges that fit the culture, it was created as a response to the universal challenges faced by all people of history. It was a formula developed to successfully answer the "food, clothing, shelter (and even the added self-actualization)" conundrums that are still faced today by every single human on the planet (the first three are faced, literally, by every animal on the planet).
Problems and challenges don't go away because you don't want to use the scientific method, don't want to show up on time, use written communication or want to be a part of a village rather than being an individual. Like the law of gravity, believe it or not, it exists - the same goes for our daily struggle for survival.
If African civilization, as opposed to Western civilization, was the way to go, it would seem that it would have succeeded in the way Western civilization has. Look even to the great kingdoms of Africa, Egypt and the Mediterranean - most of what today is called "whiteness" is demonstrated in them.
None of this manufactured conflict has a basis solely of race, it has to do with a civilization and the resulting culture that has been better to date than any other at advancing the cause of humanity.
Exactly. As I wrote to my state board of education in response to the putative racism of math,
"How in the world can math be rationally labeled white supremacist? The Greeks gave us geometry—southeast European people of color. The Arabs—another people of color—gave us algebra. The Chinese, east Indians, & all manner of cultures contributed to mathematical insights. The magnificent beauty of math is a reflection of humanity’s never-ending quest to sate our curiosity & explain the universe around us. Math has nothing to do with race—or 'equity'. Claiming otherwise simply doesn't add up."