Saw part of an episode of the Tyra show on Purity Balls - fancy events popping up around the US where fathers sign a covenant to be good examples of “purity” for their daughters - abstinence bullshit mostly.
What irked me was after the segment on the white, home schooled, large christian family who started the movement, she went to introduce the second segment saying that the fad “also crosses cultural boundaries” - then continued the introduce a black, home schooled, large christian family… what the fuck man? I didn’t expect better from you Tyra, but a family similar in every way who even lives in the same town and attends the same wacky event except for the fact they are black is not cross-cultural.
Maybe you didn’t know better, or have misplaced zeal in you categorization of “cultures” - I still think you’re a clueless Maury-in-waiting (at best).
Afro-Americans don’t have a culture? Maybe you should tell that to all the authors of sociological works on Afro-American Culture. Google will provide hundreds of such titles.
I’m sure if you examined the home lives of the two families close enough you’d find some notably different habits, customs, tastes, and behaviors. That’s culture.
Also according to M-W the definition of culture includes: " b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group".
75,000,000 different cultures within the USA? Each family having different habits, customs, tastes, and behaviors?
I can give you the benefit of the doubt as you probably didn’t see the show, but it would seem that large-christian-Springfieldian-homed schooled-family one was culturally (in broad terms) analogous to large-christian-Springfieldian-home schooled-family two.
I certainly wouldn’t make a point of discerning the two families above to any degree if their ancestry were Welsh and Italian. And I don’t distinguish between two since they are No Name brand white, and black. And I don’t think you’d tell me the Welsh and Italians need not be discerned, though from eye balling the two on a talk show you’d be hard pressed to tell.
I pit that Tyra made skin color synonymous with culture. Fail Tyra.
That argument is ludicrous. There is a general Afro-American culture, acknowledged, discussed and written about as such. You can nitpick till you’re blue in the face but you’re isolated on this. As I said before, just google African American culture and see the number of sites and books that come back.
Are they all using the term wrongly (including the dictionary definition cited above) and you alone are right?
However, is it meaningful to describe something as “cross cultural” when the only difference between adopters is whether they’re black or white? The whole point of describing something as cross cultural is to describe the wide variety of people who buy into it. Variety is not white AND black Religious Home Schooling Christians, when the primary factor in joining up with the purity ball concept is the religious home schooling thing.
It is certainly meaningful to describe the adoption of an African American child by white parents as a cross-cultural adoption. I can assure you that white couples who do so adopt are given advice on the importance of ensuring the child is given exposure to both cultures, the culture of their adopted parents and of their race.
I didn’t mean child adoption, I meant adopting a practice, like Purity Balls.
The fact that both white and black families engage in a practice does not make it a cross cultural phenomenon, especially when those families have other defining characteristics that are very similar, and are related to the practice.
I think the argument is not so much that there’s no Afro-American culture, as that the Springfield Biblethumpers are NOT mainstream Afro-American culture. The black one or the white ones. They’re a distinct culture, and it’s not the same as the Afro-American culture (or collection of subcultures).
Face it, even if you say that the white Springfield Biblethumpers are a different culture from the black Springfield Biblethumpers, you’d still have to grant that it’s a pretty weak example of a cross-cultural phenomenon, since the two cultures are so intensely similar.
That’s like arguing that something is “common to all types of Americans, from US Army Green Berets to US Navy Seals.” See what I’m getting at? The very first thing that leaps into your mind is “those two cultures have a lot in common, that’s not a wide range.”
Of course there’s an Afro-American culture. And family #2 isn’t part of that. Whatever they have that makes them uniquely black doesn’t factor into this Purity Ball bullshit. They have the same class, same religion, same town…same culture!!
You’re pitting Tyra over THIS? Not over the time she threw a hissy fit because some top model contestant didn’t cry enough when she was given the boot? Or the fact that she makes them live in a house with wall to wall Tyra pics? Er, not that I watch the show or anything like that…
But the child would share in African-American culture only as a result of him or her being exposed to it–rather artificially–by the adoptive parents, rather than anything inherant at birth. If the parents refused to participate, then no such culture would be present (although the child could still absorb some AA culture as a result of interacting with peers).
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these kinds of issues, so here’s my Grand Slam of an essay on the topic: Squeaky Wheels on CULTURE
Not all blacks are members of the baseline african-american culture. This should be obvious. Culture is something learned and practiced, not an aura that springs up based on your particular facial bone structure and melanocyte activity.
If these people live the same kind of lives, live in the same town, share the same church, go to the same ignorant-ass bullshit abstinence parties they can be safely said to belong to the same culture.
The woman who broke down crying to all the fat women on her show after she’d learned how mean people would be to her when she wore a fat suit is clueless? No, say it ain’t so!
I think we should pit Tyra over firing Paulina Porizkova because her (Paulina’s) ego was too big. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Tyra’s ego is so massive that it threatens to destroy everything around her. Everything she does and says is not only a testament to her go, it’s a freaking monument to it. She won’t be happy until everybody is worshiping at her altar.