white normativity

it occurs to me that white normativity exists although i have never heard this term. i was just at a conference about race, at a workshop on a theory of "silent racism." this theory is essentially that all white people are somewhat racist--that white people's actions/behaviors/thoughts are more or less racist or somewhere on that continuum. "not racist" doesn't exist in this theory.
now, i am not going to argue for or against this theory, but i do want to mention that during the workshop, the person leading it kept saying "we." usually this is not a big deal, however, someone asked who the "we" was and the response was white people. language, namely "we," the presenter used was never altered after this question was asked.
the presenter assumed the audience was white, as that is the meaning of "we." the audience was not white. in fact, the audience was mostly people of color. to me, the inherent message of the continuation of using "we" is that people of color should be disregarded, even if they are in the room.
this was the moment during the conference that i began to think about white normativity. i began to connect concept to practice. to me, white normativity is when we reference the world from a white perspective and (un/consciously) assume that everyone agrees with and has this perspective.

in this situation, the perfectly logical explanation (ple) for the presenter using "we" and really only meaning white people, was simply that it was difficult to find an easy way to make clear that the theory was in reference to white people. to me the ple is pretty pathetic. also, it tells me that the presenter is not doing their own work, just reporting their research. if the presenter had done their own work, this ple would not exist.