Lundberg’s expert suggestion is not to reject the phrase. “It’s ok for me to get fries every time,” your friend might say. If you just look at the most recent delivery of fries, it looks like a double standard-you got fries and your friend didn’t. He brings fries for you, but not for your friend, who already has them. Here is a dumb simplification, back at the burger joint: Your friend’s burger came with fries, and yours didn’t. The list of inequalities is so long that to bring it up is insulting. Non-whites are vastly underrepresented in Hollywood. While this is true, the Asian population is much smaller, and Asian women still earn less than white men.) The likelihood of being shot and killed by a police officer is five times higher for black Americans than white Americans. (When I put this to Wintrich, he pointed out that Asian men make more on average than white men. The audio clip was uploaded to TikTok in March 2022 and went viral in April in ironic lip dubs where users act powerful and defensive over others. Black and Hispanic men with college degrees earn 80% of what their white counterparts do. Never Go Against the Family is a quote spoken by Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner in the first trailer for Hulu's The Kardashians.
The statistical advantages of white Americans are well-known. The context for “it’s ok to be white,” on the other hand, is one in which it is more than ok to be white. The affirmation “black lives matter” emerged in response to a specific historical context: A spate of public deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police officers who went unpunished. Women’s rights, gay pride, and black history month are attempts to compensate for a discrepancy that already exists. But there has to be, because they address a more fundamental double standard: historical social inequality. There is a double standard with men’s right and women’s rights. The alt-right takes pride in revealing what it sees as double standards through logic like this. Take for example, statements like, “If we want equality, and there is a black history month, why don’t we have a white history month, too?” Or, “Why do we have women’s rights when but no men’s rights?” And again, “If you can be proud to be gay, why can’t you be proud to be white?” It’s a rhetorical strategy that purports to reduce political statements to pure logic. Yet denying those implications and ignoring context serves as the foundation for much of the alt-right’s thinking on cultural issues. It is what Aristotle called an “enthymeme,” when the speaker “stops short of making a claim explicit, counting on their audience to fill it in.” By doing that, the speaker can imply controversial claims without actually making them.
This is an example of “one of the most important rhetorical devices,” says Christian Lundberg, associate professor of rhetoric at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a debate coach. By being removed from context, “it’s ok to be white” allows its audience to fill in the gaps.