The rise of white signaling

What is culture but an endless backlash against the backlash? Woke was a sustained war on whitey for his privilege and crimes, real or imagined. But now that woke is dead, killed by Donald and Elon, is it any wonder we whites now emerge increasingly ecstatically from our hidey-holes, rubbing our eyes to celebrate, er, Sydney Sweeney’s magnificent rack.

I know, I know, there’s more to white culture than a perfect pair of breasts, but it’s been a while. Give us a moment, OK? Let us get used once again to guiltlessly celebrating the sheer pleasure of being alive and white. Yes, there’s other stuff to like about being Caucasian. But we’ll get to that. 

In fact, we already are: white-signaling furiously to one another as we go to demonstrate the coast is as clear as it was in the Eighties. We’ve waited it out and the hard yards have been reclaimed. No more obese and hirsute multi-racial models selling us our Calvin Kleins, thank you very much. The bygone era is back, baby. And so are we. Good genes are good genes, right? 

It’s not just registered Republican Sydney Sweeney getting ’em out without fear of consequence, either. Justin Bieber is at it, too, this week posting photos of himself like a regular redneck, stripped to the waist and firing his gun, tattoos on full display. That’s it, J-Dog. You fire that gun. No more crap about wanting with your music “to continue the conversation of what justice looks like so we can continue to heal.” He knows what time it is – less Kumbaya, more Hawk Tuah – and so the white-signaling conservative rebrand continues apace. 

Once you start noticing it, it’s everywhere you look. Caitlin Clark is no longer punished for her whiteness – no one’s leaving her out of the US women’s Olympic basketball team in this new era. Instead, she’s celebrated as the face of the WNBA. In Sophie Cunningham, too, the Indiana Fever have provided her a white bodyguard/savior who is equal parts supermodel/Amazonian goddess to stop her being roughed up by the likes of Chennedy Carter and Angel Reese. The white signal couldn’t be clearer, and now suddenly women’s basketball is a very enthralling watch for white guys everywhere. 

But it’s not just the sudden willingness of cynical marketing guys to start again pushing white beauty at us – shamelessly, even Dunkin is at it, using white heartthrob Gavin Casalegno in its latest campaign to shift donuts and muffins (Gavin’s washboard stomach presumably not included). The kids are doing it, too, all by themselves. The white tradwife phenomenon, whereby young women cosplay 1950s stay-at-home suburban femininity, is in full swing on social media. It’s a natural reaction, surely, to all the furious admonitions about cultural appropriation that until recently were all the rage. Can’t borrow anyone else’s culture, no matter how innocently? Fine, we’ll reclaim our own. Read the white signal and don’t come at us. 

President Trump, who by now even his most committed enemies must concede is very possibly the most culturally attuned man ever to live, of course delights in white signaling. Why wouldn’t he? It’s yet more evidence that his victory over his enemies is total. 

“Go get ’em, Sweeney,” he Truthed on Monday. “On the other side of the ledger, Jaguar did a stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement, THAT IS A TOTAL DISASTER! The CEO just resigned in disgrace, and the company is in total turmoil. Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad. Shouldn’t they have learned a lesson from Bud Lite, which went Woke and essentially destroyed, in a short campaign, the Company.”

He went on to point out: “The tide has seriously turned – being WOKE is for losers.” 

My theory is that none of this would be possible without Taylor Swift’s box-office melting 152-date global Eras tour of last year. In her sequins and her revealing outfits – with her extremely good genes – she seemed to girdle the Earth, broadcasting the ultimate white signal as she went. An irrefutable message to the billions watching: whiteness is OK. Whiteness is good. Whiteness is hot. 

In her gentle but effective way, a beautiful wrecking ball, she rescued whitey from woke by clearing the path along which the rest of us can now follow. The shame of being white was removed – thanks to Taylor, white lives now matter, too. 

It may be just getting started, but white signaling is here to stay. It will only gain momentum and power as a cultural force as white people more and more come to understand the repercussions – by which I mean cancellation – no longer exist as they previously did. 

Until the backlash, that is.