It’s okay to be White: laundering White supremacy through a colorblind victimized White race-consciousness raising campaign

Abstract

In 2017 users on the 4chan messaging platform concocted a scheme to launder their white supremacist messaging into the mainstream racial discourse. The campaign, proclaiming “It’s Okay to be White,” traveled from 4chan to traditional media and onto social media platforms where the message’s merits were discussed and debated within the vernacular racial discourse happening online. In this qualitative analysis of YouTube videos, where the vloggers express support for the sentiment that “it’s okay to be white,” I find that the vloggers employ strategic engagement with certain frames of colorblindness while avoiding others. I find that the originators of the “it’s okay to be white” campaign were successful in laundering their message onto YouTube and that the vloggers who offer alternative, conservative perspectives on news, media, and pop culture deployed the same strategies of colorblind racetalk as did those who are recognized and self-proclaimed far-right white nationalists and members of the alt-right. This finding offers insight into how colorblindness is strategically produced to slip white supremacist messaging into political and pop culture discourses as a way to gain support for white supremacist ideologies.

Notes

1 Formatting for this phrase shifts throughout (i.e. ok vs. okay). When quoting specific instances, I maintain the formatting and spelling in the original.

2 While the phrase “it’s okay to be white” has been documented in White supremacist discourse as far back as 2001 (ADL 2017) the contemporary it’s okay to be white poster campaign has its origins on the 4chan /pol/ board.

3 https://4plebs.org

4 Most of the users on the platform use the handle Anonymous when posting on the boards.

5 Note that spelling and punctuation, i.e. “ok”, “its” did not alter the search query returns in any way that effected data collection based on the criteria for inclusion.

6 The Red Pill concept, taken from The Matrix films, refers to the process by which people abandon their old, progressive ideologies, and take in ideas counter to the perceived toxic feminist, politically correct, and anti-white social justice mainstream culture.

7 BitChute is a video sharing platform that presents itself as a pure free speech alternative to YouTube. It is known as the platform that right-wing extremists go to once they have been removed from YouTube.

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Notes on contributors

Marcus A. Brooks

Marcus A. Brooks, MA is a graduate student in the department of sociology at the University of Cincinnati. His research interests are in digital and public sociology at the intersections of technology, culture, and knowledge production.