Repository file
Capture — aspects of whiteness
evidence/2020/aspects-of-whiteness/source.md
From Can’t Explain Raw capture
Capture — aspects of whiteness
- Claim filed: “Hard work, rational thinking and the nuclear family are aspects of whiteness.” (faithful paraphrase of the NMAAHC chart)
- Who: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
- URL: https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333
- Official page (chart later removed): https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness
- Date on page: Newsweek 2020-07-17; chart live in mid-July 2020
- Publisher: Newsweek reporting the official graphic
- Captured: 2026-08-16
- Method: saved HTML (
newsweek-2020-07-17.html). The live NMAAHC page is a thin client and no longer carries the chart. A Wayback fetch of the July 2020 page returned an interstitial.
Verbatim (Newsweek, quoting the official graphic)
A graphic displayed in the guidelines, entitled “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States,” declares that rational thinking and hard work, among others, are white values.
Smithsonian declares that “objective, rational, linear thinking,” “quantitative emphasis,” “hard work before play,” and various other values are aspects and assumptions of whiteness.
“White dominant culture, or whiteness, refers to the ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States.”
Museum statement on removal (reported contemporaneously):
We have listened to public sentiment and have removed a chart that does not contribute to the productive discussion we had intended.
The Talking About Race / Whiteness page remains: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness
Chart credited to Judith Katz, White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training (1978).
What this file does not do
It does not file “the Smithsonian invented race.” It files the official educator chart that coded hard work and reason as white, and the museum’s own decision to pull the picture.