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Our evolving identity defines our thinking and action to the world around us.
This article will explain how Positive Whiteness builds a Positive White culture. Read this before you read the rest.
Identity is an evolving science, one that defines the very nature of who you are. For what Identity is, there are two major elements. The Identity you’re born with that you have no choice in, and the one that you choose through your actions.
As for both, they have a close relationship with each other.
Positive Whiteness brings in several areas of focus to build a positive White identity. The first is the relationship between perception and identity. Your identity is shaped based on how you perceive the world around you, how you perceive yourself and how the world perceives you. Secondly, the sciences of philosophy, psychology, and sociology are marshaled to try to understand the individual, society, and our actions. Thirdly mass media and social media are then utilized as powerful forces in shaping how you and others see all aspects of the world.
The core part of Positive Whiteness’s work is seeing how our identity can define our actions. Then from that identity, be a friend, neighbor or ally to support everyone.
As the American Psychological Association states, “The way we perceive ourselves in relation to the rest of the world influences our behaviors and our beliefs.”
Our understanding of who we are as a global White Community is extremely important in helping us know the right actions in the globalizing, diverse, and dynamic world that we live in. For White people in America and around the world, they are seeing themselves as a race for the first time and developing a racial identity because of it. This means our self-perception, perception of others, and thus are actions are in the process of going through great transformational change.
Currently, the only ‘White’ organizations that exist to address this identity and what it means are the destructive White Supremacist groups that seek to destroy those around them. From the KKK, Neo-Nazis, and such, these groups seek to martial Whiteness and White people together to engage in racist or destructive behavior. For them, being White means to be under siege, that you are hated and your identity is based on how you can conquer and defeat those who are not White. All modern Whites organizations exist from the framework that White people are seen by society as negative and they have an opponent they view in a negative light. Thus these non-White targets must be defeated, damaged, or destroyed in some way. White Supremacists hold the belief that they are viewed negatively, and viewing non-Whites negatively, is the foundation for their relationship with the world which defines their actions. Currently, they are the only organizations that represent Whiteness and White people.
People become the identity they see themselves as, which is shown by Social Identity Theory. Social Identity Theory in short “refers to the ways that people’s self-concepts are based on their membership in social groups. Examples include sports teams, religions, nationalities, occupations, sexual orientation, ethnic groups, and gender.” You become what you see yourself as.
People act based on the way they see themselves. We know that from Social Identity Theory yet even further, Self-Perception Theory comes into play. “Self-perception theory posits that people determine their attitudes and preferences by interpreting the meaning of their own behavior.” Essentially that means that your behavior changes your attitude, not the other way around. One test was run that had its subjects forced to smile or frown when they see pictures of Black or White people. They then took a test after and they scored the pictures higher when they were smiling and lower when they were frowning. This was even tested on terrorists where the authors looked at how “the new converts may form increasingly radical attitudes to be consistent with their increasingly radical behavior. Self-perception theory, then, has strong ties to social identity and social influence in this scenario.”
When someone of your own identity group, your own thinking engages in a certain behavior, you mirror that. For many White people in America, The UK, France, Australia, and around the globe, they see what Whiteness means and are drawn to that attitude and behavior. Because of our human nature, they want to conform to it and be perceived as normal by the group.
In today’s climate, this conforming isn’t just happening on a local level anymore but on a global scale. Bias research shows that media shapes how we perceive people of different races and thus our actions toward them. Yet media in the present day includes mass media, the internet, and social media showing us that there is a radical dynamic change in the global ways that shape and define our identity.
In the materials that you engage with at Positive Whiteness, the approach is to build that positive identity for the global White community based on the good things they have done individually, nationally, and as a whole and then create media to edify society. The reason is as we can see from above, we become what we see ourselves as and our media and societal work will transform our identity and thus our actions.
For the Global White Community, Whiteness is an old identity historically attached to malicious Whites organizations yet being White is a new identity for many around the globe. With the internet, modern media, and social media laying the foundation for a modern Whiteness, our work in building a Positive White Identity is of great importance.
For the Global White Community, as we can see by the Culture articles below, we’re a community of Democracy & Republicanism, Human Rights, Global Charity, Minority Rights, Education & Science, and World Peace. It’s imperative that we define ourselves by these laudable ideals, and propagate them even further.
In this section, we will explore the creation of a modern positive White Identity and Culture. Articles in the future here will work to further develop a positive identity which will combine with the initiatives for ways to take action from that constructive place.
Something must be done. In this article, Stephen Grey of Positive Identity breaks down how the modern collapse in race relations and the escalating violence require revolutionary thinking. Positive Whiteness is just that.
The Global White Community are historic leaders in perpetuating Democracy & Republicanism. To succeed as a White individual means to engage in a civic system that rejects fascism, communism, and monarchism, and embraces freedom and empowerment for all.
Human Rights come from an Enlightenment-era ideal that all people have inherent rights by natural law. Since that spark, the ideals of fair trials, protection against slavery, prohibition of genocide, free speech and a right to education have become a global mission.
Since the post-WWII era, White Majority countries have taken an accelerated effort to end global poverty, starvation, and sickness. In that time, just the governments alone have donated around $2 trillion to African, Latin American, and Asian countries. Further, many individuals have done tremendous work in this area.
In the modern era, tremendous achievements have been made in women’s rights and designing systems with equality in mind. The global White Community has been a leader in providing women around the world with opportunity, happiness, and civil rights.
In history, minority populations in countries around the world would almost always face discrimination. The Global White Community has the admirable task of overcoming this condition by providing protections for minority groups and empowering them through government and cultural initiatives.
A society that values science, education, and knowledge is a society that advances to greatness. For if we know the world, all that once seemed impossible, becomes possible. Around the globe, the White Community has taken to the noble endeavor of academic research and scientific excellence.
World Peace. It’s a sky-high ideal, shared by many around the world. From the deeply religious priest to the secular scientist, the hope of a society without war, division, and hate is one we all dream of. That dream is one the global White Community has deeply embraced.
Identity and Culture are self-perpetuating systems that are deeply tied together.
Culture:
noun
1.
“the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.”
2.
“the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.”
Identity:
noun
1.
“the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.”
2.
“a close similarity or affinity.”
Every group or society has a culture. Every group or people has an identity. How the people of that culture identity themselves is then how they achieve their identity. Conversely, how a group identities itself then defines how it will see what its culture is.
White people have an identity and thus have a culture.
The process that Positive Whiteness engages in is to define an identity and create culture, in positive ways. This is both a trial and error scientific procedure yet our approach is built from the work of preexisting movements and institutions.
In viewing identity and culture, a question emerges similar to the question of the chicken and the egg. What comes first, the identity or the culture? Is the culture there and then we identify it, or does an identity form that then defines how people view themselves?
The answer is both. This feedback loop of culture and identity, identity and culture are what defines all sorts of societies of people. But the key thing to remember is that feedback loop.
Every group has many negative and positive feedback loops that define who they are. They have good aspects of their culture and bad aspects. Their identity is perceived in a good light internally and externally, or in a bad light internally or externally.
This might sound repetitive but the point is “the loop” of culture and identity.
Positive Whiteness is aiming to amplify the positive aspects of White culture and erase the negative aspects of White culture for those who need it. Erase the cycle of hate and evil, and accelerate the cycle of love and good. But this obviously is a complex process.
In the Who You Are article, we cover how our approach to Identity and Culture is from Social Identity Theory and Bias research.
The first is Social Identity Theory. Social Identity Theory in short “refers to the ways that people’s self-concepts are based on their membership in social groups. Examples include sports teams, religions, nationalities, occupations, sexual orientation, ethnic groups, and gender.” You become what you see yourself as. For Self-Perception Theory, “Self-perception theory posits that people determine their attitudes and preferences by interpreting the meaning of their own behavior.” Essentially that means that your behavior changes your attitude, not the other way around. At Positive Whiteness we want people to perceive what is expected or normal to be in positive and constructive actions and thinking to influence people to that behavior. Then Bias is another area that defines our work. “A bias is a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or someone. Some biases are positive and helpful, but biases are often based on stereotypes, rather than actual knowledge of an individual or circumstance.” Why people think the way they do, and how they’re biased, is a major part of our research. For Positive Whiteness our goal is to get to the truth of the matter, but a constructive and unifying approach to truth. We want to look at the truth in a way that can help us in our cultural actions and what it means to have our identity.
At Positive Whiteness our Identity = Culture. How we shape it then comes from modern scholarship showing just how important perception can be in interfacing with the negative or positive loops in our identity/culture relationship.
The work being done here is in service to this. Changing perception. Positive perception leads to positive action. Which leads to a positive identity and culture. That is how Positive Whiteness approaches identity and culture.
But lastly, in all of this, there is a key quote that is mentioned above.
“Positive Whiteness is aiming to amplify the positive aspects of White culture and erase the negative aspects of White culture for those who need it”. Many White people have no connection to their identity or culture, many believe it is very important. Many people who aren’t White don’t think or care about Whiteness or White. Others care very much and believe it is very important to focus on.
In many ways, this applies to all people. People around the world have two different relationships with who they are. Their identity and culture matter to them, or it doesn’t!
This creates a complex situation. There are people who feel that identity is reality and our focus on our variety of identities will be with us as long as there is existence. Others feel that these identities we have, these labels, will someday fade away and we will exist only through our actions or moral nature. Not our identity or color of our skin is who we are but the content of our character.
Positive Whiteness’s answer is that it is only for people who need it. If someone needs Positive Whiteness, then it is there for them. If they don’t need it, then it won’t be there for them.
Identity is a defining nature of our experience in the world. Yet when we think of our utopian future, identity fades away as we’re defined by our moral good. So while identity will always exist, it won’t be our identity that will define who we are, but our moral relationship with ourselves and with each other. That is how Positive Whiteness approaches identity and culture, and the culture and identity that Positive Whiteness is working towards.
Perception drives action, which then drives perception and creates a feedback loop.
The Positive Identity Loop is a philosophy based on the idea that if we see the best in who we are and in who others are, we’ll exponentially improve ourselves, others, and the world around us.
The Positive Identity Loop is founded on the cultural standards of modern philosophy, religious moralism, and secular scientific analysis. The goal is to create a maxim that could work with many divergent thinkings and approaches as a way to bring people together. The goal of this maxim is to be the foundational way of thought and action for Positive Whiteness. Knowing this, Positive Whiteness’s foundational maxim is as follows.
“Love your neighbor, as yourself”
This creed is one that has received near universal support among many different cultures and moral systems. It is a foundational element of Positive Whiteness and The Positive Identity Loop.
It works as follows. By “learning how to love yourself” through self-love of your identity, this will give you the understanding of love and the skills for how to act on it. Then, taking that thinking, emotion, and action, you can mirror it outwards to help improve other people and society at large.
The system goes as follows.
1. Individually, by loving who you are, you will be healthier, live longer, more confident, more assertive, and happier. It’s also a fact that positive thinking and visualization makes you more successful. Loving who you are and celebrating who you are will make you succeed in life far more than you normally would.
2. Secondly, by seeing the best of others, instead of withdrawing yourself from people, you’ll find yourself drawn to them. As such it will lead to an immediate and natural habitual transformation. The individual will now find themselves more involved in civic, charitable, social, and cultural life with a more constructive mindset.
3. Thirdly, and most importantly, this approach will be imprinted in others. By being drawn to the good in others, will validate their good, positive actions and thus perpetuate that behavior. At minimum people like those who like them. As such, they will interact with you with the same unifying, positive approach that you have imprinted on them. This will create a feedback loop. Where your help of others will cause them to help you and thus exponentially improve you both.
Believe in the good you can do, do good to others and they will do good to you. Which leads to more action for mutual good.
This is The Positive Identity Loop.
READ FURTHER FOR MORE THEORY AND PERSPECTIVE
The creation of The Positive Identity Based Loop is a response to the collapse of the current racial and political climate of the United States.
The Positive Identity Loop is a system that rejects the mistrust, division, and alienation that people feel is our defining relationship. Instead, it looks to celebrate who you are, who others are, and how we’re working together to improve the world.
The major thing to think about is, how can you love others if you don’t know how to love yourself? Whether you’re Black or White, you must love your Blackness or love your Whiteness. You must love your Hispanicness and Asianness. Whatever you may be. You must celebrate the members of your community who have made significant accomplishments in the world, seek to emulate them, celebrate the achievements of other communities and help them succeed even further.
Potentially the most important part of this is that by trying to look at yourself positively, you then start to think critically about “what is a positive”? What is the definition of “success”? What constitutes “success” or a “positive” wildly differs from person to person no matter the identity. Some people think success is getting wealthy and famous; others believe that it means having a family, others think it’s activism, finding the truth, and so on. At Positive Whiteness, we’re open-minded to all aspects. However, our primary focus for the barometer of success is being a moral person.
Hence the maxim: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now morality can be subjective but we solidified our system with the “Love your neighbor as yourself” maxim. What is good for ourselves we should do to others. This is the approach as we seek to highlight the positive individual and community contributions of all people in areas of universally agreed ideals. We all agree on the shared values of Democracy & Republicanism, Human Rights, Global Charity, Scientific Progress, Cultural Greatness, and so forth. And we’ll continue to analyze and create more shared values. Identifying these shared values and actualizing them will be the “success measurement” that we’ll build identity, culture, and action from.
This is extremely important for the Global White Community. In today’s age, there are groups that preach hatred of people based on their identity, and they have created their own negative and destructive feedback loops to drag regular people into.
As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out light, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” To realize this ideal everyone should love their individual and group in thought and action, and then in turn love other individuals and groups in thought and action. This is the Positive Identity Loop which we work from.
