The Nordic countries are white.

Very white. Except the skies. The skies are gray. But otherwise white. The people are tall, white, generally attractive, and for much of the year frolicking in white snow. Assuming they avoid the yellow snow, which they must. Because white is their color.

That, apparently, is a problem. Which is why the Norwegian government has funded a project–to the tune of $1.2 million–to study the problem of “whiteness” and how Norway–specifically Norwegian paint–contributes to it.

The Research Council of Norway is spending over $1.2 million USD on a project that is dedicated to discovering how the country has contributed to the spread of “whiteness” globally, through colonialism and through paint.

The research project, “How Norway Made the World Whiter (NorWhite),” hosted by the University of Bergen, describes “whiteness” as “​one of today’s key societal and political concerns.”

Norway, it turns out, is where titanium dioxide was turned into the first truly white paint. And, as we all know, white paint is the root of all racism.

Or something. Not quite sure what the connection is, but white is bad.

“Within and beyond academia worldwide, actions of revolt and regret seek to cope with our racial past. In the pivotal works in whiteness studies within art and architecture history, whiteness is understood as cultural and visual structures of privilege,” the project, principally led by Associate Professor Ingrid Halland, opens. Her website boasts of a 12 million kroner funding grant from the government.

According to the project’s webpage, the aim is to address “a distinctively different battleground for politics of whiteness in art and architecture.”

Now I will openly admit that if this project were an academic paper thrown together with all the right buzzwords to get a quickie publication I wouldn’t even have noticed. Absurd as it is, it is barely noticeable in the noise of truly ridiculous academic projects.

But this is a real project, complete with grant money, post-docs, and is being taken seriously. Because paint is racist.

Although Norway is not a conventional colonial power, this project will show how the country has played a globally leading role in establishing white as a superior color. Until now, however, this story has been lesser known to scholars and the public. NorWhite will connect the challenging topics: whiteness, technological innovation, and mass-exploitation of natural resources in a single case study. The research project will study the Norwegian innovations the chemical compound titanium dioxide (TiO2) and the white pigment titanium white in a historical, aesthetic, and critical lens—focusing on how the innovations transformed surfaces in art, architecture, and design—in order to show how aesthetic—and thereby societal—transformation is driven by technological development.

Ironically, while TiO2 indeed produces a very clean white and is used in all sorts of products to make them whiter and brighter, the connection between TiO2 and “whiteness” as hypothesized here is ridiculous.

“White” people aren’t actually anything close to white. We are, if anything, pinkish. And stylish white people actually strive to have a decent amount of melanin in our skin–to get darker, not whiter–to give off that healthy glow of a tan.

The whitest of the white men–in the awful, evil, darkest, most fascist imaginations of the Left–is famously orange. He is so in order to look for tanned, I assume, not more like TiO2.

We call really white people “pallid,” implying they look unhealthy. Paint and social “whiteness” haven’t even a tenuous relationship.

So it seems rather odd to have the Norwegian government actually tossing over a million dollars to investigate the colonial and racist implications of white paint.

All of this bears notice not because Norway is wasting money on trivial and stupid research, but because it demonstrates the longing of Westerners for something to feel guilty about. It is our new hobbyhorse.

Norway was never in on the early modern colonialist game, and hence doesn’t get its share of collective guilt. And you gotta have either guilt points or victimhood points to count in the modern West. Since Norwegians are “white,” it is their job to find something to feel guilty about.

You would think the Viking rampages that originated in the Nordic countries might count for something–after all, the Viking went everywhere and oppressed everybody in medieval times, but apparently that isn’t the right kind of rampaging. That was more raping and pillaging of mostly other white people, so that doesn’t count.

Sure, the Vikings colonized the British Isles and France, and even made it to the Mediterranean, but again, wrong victims. Gotta have brown victims to count.

So all they have is paint to fall back on. They oppressed through paint.