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.