I ask this having been to events with national/ethnic dress, food, and other cultures. What can a white American say their culture is? It feels that for better or worse it’s been all melted together.
Trying to trace back to European roots feels disingenuous because I’ve been disconnected from those roots for a few generations.
This also makes me wonder was their any political motive in making white American culture be everything and nothing?
To me, white American culture is capitalism.
My culture has nothing to do with my skin color
As a white American myself I define it as a lot of things. It’s mostly European in origin. Things country music, burgers and fries, flannel shirts, line dancing and the Beach Boys are just some things that scream white Americana.
Mine is Bourbon, (desire for) freedom, individuality, self reliance, tomato sandwiches, Christianity, thank you notes, the beach, Appalachian mountains, family holidays, fried green tomatoes, seeking a better life for your family, and nice wooden furniture.
The most central characteristic of whiteness is a belief in racism. It feels disingenuous because there is no white race other than what we’ve constructed socially for political purposes. English culture exists, Latvian culture exists, Russian culture exists, many American cultures exist, and white culture doesn’t exist and never has.
Apparently it has something to do with confusing there/they’re/their.
As a white American male, not once have I considered my own “white American” culture. Kind of hard to wrap my head around the idea. Maybe because I don’t at all relate to what I would consider “white America” - like country music, corn fields, guns, fear of others, etc. So, yeah, there’s a diversity of white American culture across the country.
I also don’t have any emotional connection to the places my ancestors were born. So, at the same time, I reject stereotypical white American culture and my own heritage.
My culture is my family, my friends, my community and the things we do to pass the time and to strive to be better neighbors. It’s not based on color, or nationality, or heritage. It’s more about zip code than anything else.
But I recognize I’m in the minority. A lot of my friends are really into football and tailgating, etc. That’s not something I’ve been able to go all-in on. It seems cultish to me and I like to keep my head above ground.
Personally, I’ve never had a strong desire to fit in or belong to a group. I enjoy the freedom of flexibility and decision making based on my own lived experiences rather than the experiences of others.
To your point about ethnic events, the greatest thing about the US is the diverse culture. I would hate to be part of a monoculture like you find in the vast majority of other countries. It feels a bit like indoctrination to me.
US whiteness is a social construct that serves to justify and reproduce marginalization: white supremacy. It started out excluding the Irish, Italians, the Spanish, Slavs, etc and shifted over time in order to maintain anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity. So it is far from just one thing and is simultaneously very recent. It would be best described as a culture of domination and capitalism, being a product of the US’ industrialization and then economic subjugation of the planet. Whiteness is about who you are better than and how entitled you are to a good life, or at least one better than non-whites. White culture is tolerating and even engaging in genocide so long as it is against non-whites. White culture is trying to pretend oppressions don’t need justice on any timeline that might inconvenience a white person. White culture is jingoist. The image of a warlike America has a white face.
As white people were largely drawn from European immigrants, they sometimes have watered-down elements of culture from “the old country”, Americanized to the point of being unrecognizable. Those elements were usually watered down because their immigrant ancestors were not considered white at the time so they tried to hide or erase identifiable cultural elements. Name changes. Modifications to food. Going to the whiter church. Skipping traditional holidays.
And of course, much is just white supremacy under capitalism. Processed industrialized foods. Commercialized holidays and events. Workaholic myths of paths to success. Everything cheaper or subsidized to their benefit and treated as an entitlement. National chauvinism and racist warmongering. Colonizer mindsets.
Basically, your instincts are right and the question in the last line of your post is a good one. Here’s why:
“Whiteness” doesn’t come from biology or culture. It’s really just a way of describing a hierarchy that was set up by European empires and early corporations at the dawn of capitalism to justify the enslavement of people around the world, the colonization of their lands, and the exploitation of their natural resources for profit.
This hierarchy is used to steamroll over the huge number of ethnic and cultural backgrounds people have, in order to label some “white”, others “black”, others “asian”, and so on. There can be no “white” culture (even within one country), because the boundaries of who is accepted as “white” have shifted more than once in the past few hundred years and could easily shift again. For example, look up when and why Irish people and Italian people were accepted as fully white and look up the “contingent” whiteness that Jewish people have had in the US. See How the Irish Became White, for example.
Another reason there is no white culture is because, even for people accepted as white, whiteness has erased the cultures they brought to America when they immigrated by forcing them to conform to its rules. Think about how badly even light-skinned immigrants were treated by others whose families had been in America for generations. The immense pressure to look, sound, and act “American” and “white” to avoid being bullied at school, to be able to get good jobs, and to be seen as “respectable” in the neighborhood, meant for many people that they had to give up large parts of their culture to be accepted. This compounds over the generations, until we end up with people asking questions like the post you’ve made right here.
Racists proudly defend white (or “western” if they’re cowards) culture. They’re completely unable to see how whiteness has stolen big pieces of the cultures of everyone it touches. It has bleached them into a blander, more sterile version of what they once were.
One reason I think there might be no “white culture” per se is that things that white people invent tend to spread to other people, and become part of their cultures. Like, most people I know in real life who play classical (i.e. classical western) music on piano are asian, for instance. I’ve never once seen a white person say, “you can’t play that, because you’re not white. That’s offensive.” In contrast, I could imagine a white person playing an erhu might be told off.
If white people were defensive of their culture, that might change. Perhaps if the great replacement theory or whatever it’s called gets taken seriously, it’d be different. (Edit: by this I mean, if those white nationalist conspiracy theorists actually think that white people are going to be erased by other cultures then they’d act in such a way. But since they don’t seem to be, it seems like it’s clear they’re not only racist but also full of shit.)
If you see a number of people from Asian cultures playing classical music originating from Europe, does that mean it has become part of their culture? What if they are appreciating music from another culture? What if their families originate somewhere in Asia but they feel no connection to that place? Or what if there are more extracurricular opportunities for European-style orchestras than for other kinds of musical ensembles from other cultures?
The Great Replacement Theory is a racist and antijewish lie.
Edit: a white person who put in time and effort learning to play the Erhu, understood a reasonable amount of its history and context, and showed real respect for it would be fine.
Yes, it can become part of one’s culture to appreciate another’s culture.
I thought by adding “or whatever it’s called” would make it clear that I’m aware that the theory is a racist and antijewish lie, but I guess that was not enough. How should I have worded that differently?
What would it mean to take the time and effort to learn to play the Erhu, understand its history and context, but somehow not show real respect for it? I am asking because the first two things seem very measurable and observable things one can do, but the last one sounds like something that critics can decide arbitrarily however it suits them.
Yes, it can become part of one’s culture to appreciate another’s culture
It’s possible, sure, but you’d have to do a study. As I mentioned, there are plenty of ways to interpret it.
I thought by adding “or whatever it’s called” would make it clear that I’m aware that the theory is a racist and antijewish lie, but I guess that was not enough. How should I have worded that differently?
Ah, OK! I think “if white people were defensive of their culture” is what threw me.
What would it mean to take the time and effort to learn to play the Erhu, understand its history and context, but somehow not show real respect for it?
To begin with, there can always be some jerk out there who gives you a hard time no matter what, or who has had so many bad experiences with ppl thoughtlessly appropriating culture that their mind is just closed and they react badly. You’d just have to defend it and let reasonable ppl see that that person is wrong to call you out. That aside, I think showing respect means that if an instrument is sacred for some reason (I have no idea if the Erhu is), you don’t play it in a profane or silly way. Outside of that, using an instrument as like a way to make fun of the culture would be bad (e.g. playing it whenever a stereotyped character appears on screen). Just my two cents.
White… culture? What? White isn’t even a thing. We have Western culture. There is no reason for culture to respect boarders of nations in the digital age. We are melding more and more. We can see the Gaza genocide for what it is from first person accounts. We can’t be propagandandized to nearly as easily anymore.
Using the term white American culture is quite clear. Generalizing all of the west has a monolith is just silly.
No one is propagandizing you.
Okay, are Italians white? Because they were not always considered to be.
Are Asians more white than Africans? Because according to law they were.
Long story short, what is ‘white’ changes over time. Imagine if in India we were asking what was white Indian culture. There are white passing Indian people, so why not white Indian culture? Because they don’t divide themselves that way.
You are just using bigotry and calling it science. (Not literally, I know how you people are)
I bet you actually think no propaganda is shown to you. As if an episode of Law and Order wasn’t propaganda.
If you don’t know how little you know on a subject, you shouldn’t make sweeping declarative statements about it.
I’m not technically white, and I’m Canadian which is only technically “American,” but – close enough. IMO, it’s mostly people who are not white americans that define to me what white american culture. Like, if you were to ask me “is this part of your culture?” for various things, I would say “yes” to many things and “no” to many things.
But many of the things that I would say “yes” to, other people might inform me, “no, that’s not part of your culture.” Jazz, Super Mario bros., rap music, anime, chickpea stew, spaghetti – I identify these as elements of my culture, or at least my “idioculture” as it were, but people have told me these are not part of my culture.
I think maybe let’s stop gatekeeping culture so much and let people live how they like to live. If somebody likes wearing a yukata as a houserobe and they’re not japanese, is there really a problem? It’s not like they’re pretending to be japanese.
Works boots, denim, beer, God and NASCAR in reverse order
lol! That’s a good answer
The culture in my family that survived americanization is slovak and Hungarian in nature. My mother failed to pass most of the culture her grandmother tried to pass to her, so I’m doing my best to return to my roots.
I commune with the old gods, Mokosh, Veles and Dazhbog. I try to listen to the world and take cues in action from nature. I practice herbalism, rejecting western medicine for most purposes.
Just for everybody’s information: We don’t do those things in Hungary. Religious people here are mostly christians, also people behave like boomers do in America (yes even young people).
Oh and hate on everybody who isn’t Hungarian & white, especially Romas, Romanians and middle eastern people
I hope I didn’t imply that my practices are the same as in modern Hungary. My practices are entirely my own, developed from what my great grandparents taught me. They immigrated here as children close to a century ago, and were Catholic on paper when they did.
Oh, no. I just wanted to precise for the people here
I’m gonna talk out my ass for a minute, I haven’t actually done any focused reading on most of the tidbits I’m about to discuss. Just putting together a lot of disconnected thoughts and anecdotes I’ve collected over the years
I’m remembering that the phrase “white pride” only exists in imitation of the phrase “black pride” and the accompanying explanation for why one is absolutely not at all problematic while the other is unabashedly supremacist. That explanation being that “black” references the culture common to that group of people which, in the case of American black people, can’t really be narrowed down to any one country. While it can be narrowed down (mostly) to one continent, that still represents a fifth of the Earth’s land-area and therefore includes a lot of cultures that don’t have anything in common.
So, “black culture” then is a sort of (the word I’m about to use may be problematic, I don’t know, it makes sense in my head but I’m white and have no idea how it might feel to have someone else describe me this way) “prosthetic” culture. I’m thinking, because they did lose a real part of themselves but, because there are so many others with the same culture-esque background in America, the phrase “black culture” refers to a real thing that exists.
Now, the other direction. “White culture” is problematic because, what culture is it that “white” people share? People who are “white” have a cultural history already, they don’t need a prosthetic. I know I come from something vaguely Scots-Irish. If I could be bothered to look into that more, I could surely find clubs, celebrations, or whatever kind of pageantry I wanted to validate that identity. But what cultural history do I have in common with this other random “white” person who it turns out is actually Romanian?
And that brings me to the best bit! Take all the people who are considered “white” today, put them in a room and have them discuss with each other, looking for the single attribute that their culture shares with the most other cultures in that room. I would guess (totally out my ass here, I have no idea) that the one thing most cultures have in common today even the ones currently considered “white” is that they used to be persecuted for their non-whiteness.
I don’t have any numbers for that. I’m just thinking about how, for example, Italians didn’t used to be “white”, Irish people didn’t used to be “white”, or Romanian people are still kind of struggling to be considered “white”. Or we could take it another way, Jews aren’t “white” regardless of their skin color (though of course the state of Israel is likely to sterilize anyone whose skin is too dark…) and I remember a stereotype about Catholics that sure seemed to fit in the category of non-“white”.
So, now I don’t remember what the subject of the post I’m writing this in was…