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?
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I agree with the general consensus, there is no “white” culture per se, uness you’re talking about the bad craziness of nationalism.
What I think OP means is “plain vanilla American culture.” And that’s the thing. The US is so huge, so comparatively young as a nation, that it’s hard to even have a culture.
Furthermore, anywhere you go in the states, you have pretty much the same TV, same radio from central locations, news anchors from the same school, holding the same rip ‘n’ read newscast. The corporate world has skin in this game. Keep us homogenized and you keep us focused on the consumer culture they want us to have.
That said, we Americans who don’t identify with any ethnicity do have cultures, but it’s based more in what we do. Bikers, goths, snowboarders, rail fans, Trekkies, and then some. Those are all cultures.
Then too, when we try to do culture, because of our media obsession, it often becomes a parody. Case in point, I once went to an Oktoberfest here in California. I saw people wearing stereotypical “German” costume, playing a Polish-American wedding game (Chicken Dance) and singing an Italian children’s song (Rooki-Zooki). That’s about as all-American as it gets.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Apparently it has something to do with confusing there/they’re/their.
Do you know nothing of county/state fairs and various city festivals? Crab and crawfish boils? Rodeos? School shootings? Taco Tuesday?
But seriously, you are framing culture in the context of race and that is un-American. American culture is all cultures that we integrate. Other countries that are more homogeneous in their heritage only have their culture from their heritage, America has their culture and like 5 other ones that we draw from to make a culture as diverse as our population. Americans, regardless of genetic heritage, enjoy a rich tapestry of culture as our culture.
Go to another country and try to find Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Ethiopian, Arabic, German, and Irish food. I can drive in a direction and hit all of those in any major American city and stop in somewhere for a burger or pizza. That is American culture.
Go to another country and try to celebrate the Chinese New Year, Eid, Hanukkah, Christmas, Holi, and Kwanza. I can do that every year. That is American culture.
You say that is everything and nothing, I say that is America and I am proud that we can’t be so narrowly defined and have the freedom to enjoy all the cultures our people bring to the table.
A very strange post. I live in a mid size English town (not a city) and can find all the cuisines you mention within a one mile radius of our town centre. Plus numerous others such as Greek, Turkish, French, Egyptian, Portuguese, Bangladeshi. Even American, god help me.
I can celebrate all the holidays you mention if I wanted to. Why wouldn’t I be able to?
You really need to get out more.
I have never really considered Irish food before. (and I’m part Irish.)
Colcannon is GOAT.
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.
My culture has nothing to do with my skin color
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.
My culture’s cuisine
I remember fondly the image of my father, just come in from a cold new england winter, snow on his beard and cheese log on his shoulder
Cheese log? Is this comment sarcastic?
As sarcastic as a cheese log is cheesey
Ehhh, I don’t think there is a unifying “white” culture.
Plenty of regional cultures that are predominantly white, and definitely city level ones, but that’s different from a “white culture”.
Hell, it’s hard to even say there’s am American culture because it’s just so damn big. Even regional cultures, like the general southern culture I came up in, I can’t say is a single one. There’s to much different between adjoining counties sometimes, and states can be even further apart.
If I point to the Appalachian culture I’m also a part of, you can’t really rely on that as much as you’d think, because five hundred miles in the mountains is a huge barrier to culture connections, even though much of the population shares common ancestry that informs the local cultures.
So, nah, I can’t buy the idea of “white” culture any more than I can any singular racial culture. They just don’t work when in reality, though they’re temping on paper.
Shit, even “ethnic” cultures vary too much between specific cities to rely on them translating fully, so why would arbitrary skin color groupings? The Irish folk here in the hills have kept and/or adapted the culture of their ancestors different than those in Boston, or New Orleans, or New York. Just looking at my maternal and paternal families, there’s enough differences that I wouldn’t give credence to an Irish, Scots-Irish or German culture being fully passed down in the same way.
The UK is way smaller than the US, and every city has its own distinct culture. Some are big enough cities that there’s multiple versions in each one.
If I had to lay claim to a national culture of the US, it would have to be adaptability. The overall culture of the US is to take what comes here and mix it around until it sticks. And that’s not a very distinct thing at all.
To me, white American culture is capitalism.
