University of Minnesota faces backlash over project that seeks to cure the ‘Whiteness Pandemic’

The Trump administration has worked with great success over the past year to dismantle racist DEI initiatives in government and public education across the country. Nevertheless leftist identity politics continue to linger in various taxpayer-funded institutions.

The parental advocacy group Defending Education recently highlighted that the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, which received $628 million in federal research awards in the 2024 fiscal year, is harboring an anti-white research project that claims America is suffering from a “Whiteness Pandemic.”

‘Family socialization into the centuries-old culture of Whiteness — involving colorblindness, passivity, and fragility — perpetrates and perpetuates US racism.’

Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News, “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.”

The UMTC’s Culture and Family Lab, which is part of the school’s Institute of Child Development, has a page titled, “Whiteness Pandemic Resources for Parents, Educators and other Caregivers.”

The website:

• characterizes the white family as a threat, stating, “At birth, young children growing up in White families begin to be socialized into the culture of Whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism”;
• tells white adults that it is their “responsibility to self-reflect, re-educate [themselves], and act” and that they need to engage “in courageous antiracist parenting/caregiving”;
• recommends white adults begin “listening to, taking seriously, and following the stories and recommendations” of the scandal-plagued Black Lives Matter organization and “humanizing victims of police brutality and racism — such as Mr. George Floyd”; and
• links to various works of agitprop for parents to “read and watch with children as part of a discussion about race, racism, white privilege, and antiracism.”

While the website references content from various radical sources, it largely focuses on a 2021 paper by the lab’s director, Gail Ferguson, titled “The Whiteness pandemic behind the racism pandemic: Familial Whiteness socialization in Minneapolis following #GeorgeFloyd’s murder.”

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Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images

The paper, which was published in the journal American Psychologist and dedicated to repeat offender George Floyd, claims that “family socialization into the centuries-old culture of Whiteness — involving colorblindness, passivity, and fragility — perpetrates and perpetuates U.S. racism, reflecting an insidious Whiteness pandemic.”

While generally implying that “Whiteness” is a disease, the UMTC professor suggested that “color-evasion and power-evasion” specifically are “pathogens of the Whiteness pandemic” that “are inexorably transmitted within families, with White parents serving as carriers to their children unless they take active preventive measures rooted in antiracism and equity-promotion.”

According to Ferguson, who is black, and the paper’s other authors, one litmus test for whether a white mother is helping spread the supposed “Whiteness” disease comes down to how that mother responded to George Floyd’s death.

A mother’s apathy over the criminal’s death and her unwillingness to discuss so-called “systemic racism” with her children were treated as indicators that she approves of or is at the very least indifferent to imagined racism. Alternatively the willingness of mothers to express grief and concern over Floyd’s death and to discuss it “and Black Lives Matter with their children using color- and power-conscious parenting” were regarded as signs of a desired “antiracist” mentality.

The authors stressed that to dismantle “colorblind racial ideology,” white students should be subjected to “racism and antiracism education,” especially at a young age, and that “it will be important to go beyond how White women learn to say the right things to also consider how they learn to do the right things and actually ‘show up’ for racial justice.”

The basis for the conclusions in the paper was a survey of 392 white mothers, 51% of whom were “somewhat or very liberal,” 18% of whom were “somewhat or very conservative,” and over 91% of whom had a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The racist initiative was made possible with the help of federal funds provided by the National Institute of Mental Health during former President Joe Biden’s tenure.

When asked about the anti-white project, the UMTC told the National Review that it remains “steadfast in its commitment to the principles of academic freedom.” The NIMH reportedly did not respond to the Review’s request for comment.

“It is not only concerning that these programs appear to still be up and running, but that absurd ideas like ‘whiteness’ also gain legitimacy through dubious activist-academic ‘scholarship,'” said Staley. “Universities must end this nonsense yesterday.”

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