Research on a “whiteness pandemic” from experts at the University of Minnesota that was published years ago received attention from Fox News this week. It was featured in a “first on Fox” feature under a “campus radicals” header.
“The Whiteness Pandemic Behind The Racism Pandemic: Familial Whiteness Socialization in Minneapolis Following #GeorgeFloyd’s Murder” was published in the American Psychologist journal around three years ago. Today, the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development Culture and Family Life Lab still includes information about this “whiteness pandemic” on its website.
It reads: “Racism is an epidemic that can also be considered a pandemic given its large cross-national proportion and spread. However, there is another pandemic lurking behind and driving the racism pandemic – the Whiteness Pandemic.”
This pandemic refers to “covert expressions of racism” that are part of “the centuries-old culture of Whiteness” such as “colorblindness, passivity, and White fragility.” By focusing on whiteness, the researchers intended to deal with systems that “perpetuate racism, starting with the family system.”
“Race matters in the United States because racism still exists,” said the site. “Young children perceive much more than we usually realize, and when parents, teachers, and other adults are silent around race it communicates apathy or approval of racism although this may be the opposite of what adults intend.”
Reading recommendations and tips for speaking to children about whiteness and racism are also included. For example, it recommends “humanizing victims of police brutality and racism – such as Mr. George Floyd – by recognizing that these individuals are someone’s father/brother/son/neighbor/friend.”
George Floyd – a Black man who was killed by a white former police officer in Minneapolis five years ago, sparking a global wave of protests against racism and police brutality – has become a touchpoint in discussions of racism. WCCO News Talk previously noted that, following Floyd’s death, much of corporate America pledged to improve their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies.
However, the push was short-lived. When President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, his new administration quickly went to work dismantling DEI initiatives in the government established by former President Joe Biden’s administration, and some businesses followed suit.
“The previous administration has embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the Federal Government,” said the president in an executive order signed the same day he was sworn into office. “The injection of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) into our institutions has corrupted them by replacing hard work, merit, and equality with a divisive and dangerous preferential hierarchy.”
Despite the position of the Trump administration, some institutions have kept up their DEI efforts. Audacy reported in April that the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota intended to keep its Office of Equity, Inclusion and Diversity by changing it to the Office of Belonging, citing an internal communication to staff.
According to the University of Minnesota, the “Whiteness Pandemic” project is funded by the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota; a predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute on Mental Health; a Provost Research Fellowship from the University of Minnesota; and an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Minnesota. Regarding the NIMH grant, it is for training “the next generation of scholars in developmental psychopathology who will conduct multiple levels of analysis research addressing one or more of NIMH’s 2020 strategic objectives,” and is a continuation of a training program at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, continuously supported by the National Institute of Mental Health since 1959.
The NIH RePorter site lists the start date of the grant as July 1 1979 and its end date as June 30, 2028. Its budget start date was July 1, 2024 and the budget end date was listed as June 30 of this year. Total funding for 2024 was listed as $261,163.
Fox News cited a report on the whiteness pandemic project from the conservative watchdog group Defending Education.
“This far-left programming at a major public university is another example of how ingrained DEI is in higher education and is not going away any time soon,” Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital. He also said he thinks it is “concerning that these programs appear to still be up and running,” and that “absurd ideas like ‘whiteness’ also gain legitimacy through dubious activist-academic ‘scholarship.’”
Meanwhile, a University of Minnesota spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement that the school is “steadfast in its commitment to the principles of academic freedom.”