Important Information Regarding Your Whiteness Software Update
06/20/20
Welcome to Whiteness v2.020
This is our most dramatic overhaul of Whiteness Software in years, and it represents a lot of hard work from our brilliant and diverse team of developers. You can jump right in and start using Whiteness now, but we thought some of you might be interested in the details of the rollout, so if that’s you, please keep reading to learn about product enhancements, new features, and bug fixes.
Now Featuring Self Awareness
We’ve given all users the ability to recognize their whiteness. Sorry it’s taken us this long! This is a feature many of you have been requesting for years, and we’re finally there: not only can you use Self Awareness to perceive whiteness as it relates to your own identity formation, you can use it to observe how whiteness influences your perception of and relationship to the world around you.
Speech Recognition
Whiteness v2.020 enables white people to talk to other white people about whiteness. For many years this feature was limited to overt racists talking about white power; it turns out this was caused by a syntax error in the History plugin. Fixed! Now anyone can enjoy talking about whiteness, whether at home, on the job, or hanging out with friends.
Advanced users, please note that the default setting is “Sober and Informative” but that there are options from the command prompt for Self-Deprecating, Ironic, Contemplative, and more.
Enhanced Systems Diagnostics
In prior versions of Whiteness, systemic racism was rarely understood, leading many users to misinterpret critiques of white supremacy as personal insults. Our enhanced System Diagnostics interface provides all users direct access to the subtle and pervasive atmosphere of white supremacy, empowering even newbies to enjoy the challenge of dissolving it from the inside via the many tools in our Creative Suite.
Brain Training Apps
Our free library is freshly stocked with cool apps and fun quizzes! Keep your brain sharp with memory tests: do you remember how we got here, and what has happened on this land? Enjoy puzzling apps like Audre’s Adventure™ where you and a team of friends try to dismantle the master’s house…without the master’s tools! And when it’s time to destress, you can rely on our extensive collection of guided meditations to increase your resilience when awakening to repressed emotions or stumbling into hidden rooms of your psyche.
#AllLivesMatter bug fix
We’ve had a lot of tickets over the last few years pertaining to the #AllLivesMatter plugin. This is a third-party developer plugin that many users installed in an attempt to fix the critical fragility of our last release. The #AllLivesMatter plugin was intended to stabilize Worldview, but kept returning a null value, which made Whiteness incompatible with other software on your device.
We were able to fix the fragility as part of our overhaul of the emotional framework (see below), so you can confidently delete the #AllLivesMatter plugin and enjoy enhanced access to compassion and insight while using Whiteness.
Complete Redesign of the Emotional Framework
The Emotional Framework of Whiteness in v2.020 is a breathtaking redesign, and the result of collaborations across a truly diverse network of development teams (special thanks to our friends at Blackness, QueerFolx, Decolonization, and ClimateCrisis for contracting with us on this rebuild; we would be totally lost without you). Where the prior Emotional Framework was built on Confidence, our new framework centers on Empathy. This was a particularly elegant solution for us; where the Confidence root tended to promote Obliviousness, the Empathy root tends instead toward Curiosity. Might seem subtle, but Curiosity connects elegantly with the History database, whereas Obliviousness seems to corrupt data transfer.
Longtime users, please note: your Emotional Framework is finally fully functional, but it is also incredibly intense. Prior developers used a lot of patches to repress difficult emotions, relying on quick fixes that caused complex inefficiencies in Insight and Perception, so we removed them. We were surprised to discover that direct access to powerful and uncomfortable emotions is a nutrient to the entire software ecosystem on your platform. In order to fully experience the benefits of of this build, we highly recommend stabilizing a consistent contemplative practice, seeing a therapist, talking to other users of Whiteness openly about your feelings, and keeping a journal.
Update on the Alt-Right Virus
Despite our best efforts, the Alt-Right virus continues to infect more and more platforms running Whiteness. It’s particularly invasive, and seems to hack the Confidence module by repressing difficult emotions (ironically, this new virus functions a bit like the legacy Emotional Framework), which in turn corrupts the whole Whiteness dashboard. There are some basic cautionary steps you can take to protect your software, which include the recommendations above for navigating the new Emotional Framework, as well as organizing your files, monitoring your screen time, and regularly clearing the cache in your Fear and Anxiety networks.
By no means do we underestimate the risk of compromised platforms, and know that we are hard at work on finding a back-end solution here. But we also need your help. We highly recommend patience with and compassion toward users whose software may be corrupted; attacking them does nothing to neutralize the virus. Instead, we at Whiteness recommend sharing your own insights and vulnerabilities with other users; the enhanced Emotional Framework should help with that. While your kindheartedness will not eradicate the virus, it may help to prevent its spread. Thank you for your support on this.
Notes on Future Development
While we celebrate the release of v2.020, we’re already looking ahead to the future of Whiteness. The redesign of the Emotional Framework has opened Whiteness to a truly radical flexibility; the next step from here is making our platform open-source. Imagine a world in which any and all users can contribute directly to Whiteness! No more waiting on our overtaxed development team to absorb external input, only to watch it get lost in translation.
Of course, we realize the risks associated with decentralizing Whiteness; without a traditional development foundation, how will we guide the evolution of the software? But we’re banking on the complexity and diversity of visions being a strength, not a weakness. As we’ve systematically worked on removing malicious conditions from the foundational code, it’s impossible not to see the obvious: Whiteness is, itself, searching for meaningful configuration. Instead of protecting our intellectual property and ignoring its glaring limitations, we embrace the transformations ahead, and look forward to collaborating on building a culture we can all be proud of.
Image attributions: Heading photo by Moose Photos. Self Awareness photo by Andrea Piacquadio. Speech Recognition photo by Andrea Piacquadio. Enhanced System Diagnostics photo by Startup Stock Photos. Brain Training Apps photo by Andrea Piacquadio. Emotional Framework photo by Alan Retratos. Alt-Right Virus photo by August de Richelieu. Notes on Future Development photo by Lukas.
This text was written in June of 2020 by Adam Grossi, with thanks to his good friends Angel, lara kelland, Shakira Lavett Smith, and Robby, who provided edits and feedback.