Federally Funded University of Minnesota Lab Dedicated to Combatting ‘White Pandemic’

The website of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Culture and Family Lab features a page titled “Whiteness Pandemic,” that criticizes whiteness as a culture and attributes being white to perpetuating systemic racism.

The lab is under the university’s Institute of Child Development and is funded in part by the National Institute on Mental Health, through a predoctoral fellowship program. The NIMH is the largest funder of research on mental disorders, according to its website. The research, evidently, is to help “halt the Whiteness Pandemic,” as a university paper cited on the lab’s website states.

“Naming the Whiteness Pandemic shifts our gaze from the victims and effects of racism onto the systems that perpetrate and perpetuate racism, starting with the family system,” the page reads. “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.”

In the paper’s explanation of the “Whiteness Pandemic,” it explains that racism is not only an epidemic, but a pandemic, because of “its large cross-national proportion and spread.” But, behind racism, the curriculum explains, is the “Whiteness Pandemic,” beginning with the family system.

According to the paper’s definition, when children are raised in white families, they “begin to be socialized into the culture of Whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism.”

The study’s authors came to that conclusion based on a survey of around 400 respondents. All of the participants were middle-aged white women, making between $125,000 – $149,999 per year, all boasting bachelor’s degrees. Almost all of the respondents were from Minnesota, and 61 percent reported being somewhat or very liberal.

“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,” said Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education. “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.' Universities must end this nonsense yesterday.”

The university told National Review it is “steadfast in its commitment to the principles of academic freedom.”

The NIMH funds four predoctoral and two postdoctoral trainees for two-year terms at the University of Minnesota under its Institute of Child Development, according to the NIMH project proposal. The training program at the University of Minnesota has been funded by the NIMH since 1959.

“The purpose of the proposed program is to train the next generation of scholars in developmental psychopathology who will conduct multiple levels of analysis research addressing the first three of NIMH’s strategic objectives from a developmental perspective,” the NIMH website reads.

The paper notes that whiteness is not in reference to biology, but rather culture. The issues with white culture include colorblindness, passivity, and white fragility.

To be an actively anti-racist white adult, according to the paper, “involves an ongoing process of self-reflection in order to develop a healthy positive White identity while engaging in courageous antiracist parenting/caregiving.”

The page also lists resources for white parents on how and why they should be actively talking about race with their children, by authors like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo.

The “Whiteness Pandemic” paper was dedicated to “Mr. George Floyd and to all the other Black and Brown individuals who have been killed by police including Mr. Daunte Wright, who was fatally shot at a traffic stop in Minneapolis metro area just days before Derek Chauvin was convicted for Floyd's murder,” the website reads.

The NIMH did not respond to National Review‘s request for comment at the time of publication.