Well, running with the nerd example, non-nerds never talk about being non-nerds while the ostracize the nerds. They can treat nerds as weird and other and never think of themselves as a particular thing other than &quot;normal&quot;. They don&#x27;t have to think about that because they dominate the dialog and become the unmarked case.<p>That&#x27;s why, e.g., people on the autism spectrum recently came up with the term &quot;neurotypical&quot;, so that they could try to create an equal footing in the discourse. In that construction, aspies and neurotypicals are just different kinds of people, both equally &quot;normal&quot;.<p>Casting what I&#x27;m saying as &quot;White Man&#x27;s Burden&quot; is either incredibly ignorant or a dick move, and I can&#x27;t tell which. But to be clear, I&#x27;m up to the opposite.<p>The whole &quot;White Man&#x27;s Burden&quot; [1] shtick rests upon the notion that white people are better, and therefore should help the benighted dark peoples. I, on the other hand, think races are fundamentally equal, and it&#x27;s only an accident of history that leaves me with more privilege. I&#x27;m thus using it here to educate white people ignorant of the US&#x27;s long history of ingrained racial prejudice.<p>Non-white people need no education on the topic. In the same way that nerds are forced to understand what nerdiness means to non-nerds, non-white people are forced to understand white notions of race, even as most white people see themselves as typical, average, default, &quot;normal&quot; and so never think about the topic in any depth.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_White_Man&#x27;s_Burden" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_White_Man&#x27;s_Burden</a>