Ever watch a sitcom with a predominately black cast during the 90’s? The token white person often comes across as corny, trying-too-hard-to-be-hip, ditzy, and faux pas prone.
Ever watch a hip hop video that has that one party scene where some nerdy white guy gets on the dance floor and spazs out like a seizure patient?
I’m not white, but these portrayals would bug me.
Nah.
You can’t beat what you can’t define. Muahhha!
Yeah sure. North Korea and Zimbabwe are just teeming with elements that criticise the leadership. Saudi Arabian museums are overflowing with images of Allah fellating goats.
This is one of the most ridiculous assertions that I have seen on these boards.:rolleyes:
No, it doesn’t. That was the OP’s entire point. Western culture just doesn’t give a shit about being criticised from the outside.
But we are well aware that the criticism exists. I challenge you to find more than 100 people in the US (or England, France, Australia etc) who are unaware that multiple cultures consider western culture to be decadent, racist, immoral, greedy, heartless, warmongering and environmentally destructive. Everyone in western culture is perfectly aware of these cricticisms leveled at us regularly by foreign cultures.
That’s a total non sequitur. How does being hyprocritical make me less inclined to being offended? And if it does, then doesn’t that still mean that I am, in fact, less inclined to being offended?
But they don’t bug White people, at least not to any great degree.
That’s why they *are *so widespread. Shows like “Family Matters” and videos like “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” aren’t being watched by primarily Black audiences. They are mostly being watched by White people. I imagine they are *written *almost exclusively by White people. Only the actors happen to be Black. If the White audience found those portrayals to be offensive, they would cease to be used.
True or false: a culture is geographically defined.
Interesting.
I wonder, though: Is there a “snappy” anti-Chinese word in Mandarin, or perhaps Cantonese? A biting anti-Indian slur in Hindi, Bengali or for that matter Sanskrit? A harshly anti-Persian term in Persian?
Or, well, since we’re talking race rather than nationality, anti-black taunts in Swahili, Yoruba or Fula?
The thing is, I wonder if the lack of a “self-derogatory” term is unique to the languages spoken in predominantly white countries.
My next question: How do Afro-Americans describe themselves; whether formally, colloquially, or privately?
None of those things bug me, and I’m a white nerd with epilepsy.
Likewise if any one of these stereotypes was used to refer to me I would not be offended (mostly because none of them can be applied, rather than the examples in the quote above).
This is a very interesting question to me, and it has me scratching my head. I’ll be watching this thread with interest.
Black Folk.
In the US, white culture is generally treated as just “American culture”…at least by white Americans. Movies and TV shows that are by and about white people aren’t considered “white movies and TV shows”. Styles of music where a large majority of the performers and fans are white people aren’t considered “white music”. People who aren’t white may see things differently (I remember a black classmate of mine back in the '90s dismissively referring to grunge rock as “white music”), but to most of us white folks it just seems normal that people in the media tend to be the same color as we are.
As a white person it’s not a big deal to me to see another white person on TV, and since there are so many white people on TV I don’t need to worry that, say, the bumbling Michael Scott or weirdo Dwight on The Office (US) are going to reflect badly on me as a white person. I like The Office, but if someone else starts mocking the show I’m not going to suspect they have anti-white reasons for doing so because The Office is far from the only show on TV with a mostly white cast. But if The Office were one of the few American TV shows with white people on it, I might feel a bit differently.
I have known other white people to get a little uncomfortable or defensive about the Stuff White People Like blog and books, which point out that many things we consider just “normal” or “American” are more specifically parts of white American culture. I’ve heard reactions like “Well, what’s wrong with X?” or “It’s not just white people that like Y!” or even “But I’m white, and I don’t like Z!” I’ve never encountered anyone who was really offended by Stuff White People Like, but the author is a white guy and the humor is pretty gentle. If a non-white person started a blog/wrote a book called Stuff White People Like and really ripped into white folks for liking these things then I think that would provoke a harsher reaction. Not necessarily because white people really feel that strongly about wearing pea coats or cooking with sea salt, but because no one likes having negative generalizations made about them.
Do they prefer to be called that? Sorry, this is my last off-topic question.
I will say, when I visited Honduras, I encountered a bit of prejudice and name calling based on my ethnicity and nationality, and they do have several disparaging terms for white people, but I found the idea so ridiculous (and really don’t particularly place much personal importance on identifying with my ethnicity or nationality) that I couldn’t take it seriously and just acknowledged it with good humor. However, if I had grown up there with it, I could see how it might have gotten to me. I wonder if perhaps people who are long term expats might be more sensitive to it.
This very board has had multiple meltdowns, years apart, with calls for actual official warnings, over a poster using the term “white trash”, on the basis that it’s as racist as the word “nigger”.
So no, apparently white culture is not unassailable.
Opps.
That term is usually used when they refer to themselves, to each other.
IIRC, there were no significant white characters on Family Matters and the big dork Steve Urkel was black, so there wasn’t much for white people to be offended by there. “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” is a song by The Offspring, an apparently all-white band playing a style of music that has a predominantly white audience. It seems unlikely that a bunch of white guys intended the song to be anti-white or a mockery of all/most white guys. While I doubt this was the band’s intent, it would even be possible for a racist white listener to interpret the song as being about how pathetic it is for white people to turn their backs on their own, superior culture and try to mimic inferior black culture. Anyway, I think lines like “If he looks twice they [the “homies”] are gonna kick his lily ass” might not have seemed so amusing to white listeners if they’d been written and performed by, say, a black rapper instead of a white skate punk band.
Obama, during his first presidential run for office, offended a number of people when he mentioned reaching out to rural voters who clung to guns and religion. Now, he did explicitly mention white voters, but the negative responses appeared to emanate most strongly from the white working class.
I would also concur with something others have already noted. It’s more difficult to be offended when you are a majority race (assuming the OP is from America).
I really don’t think it’s the case of white people being above the fray. You can’t even imply that someone may be just a little bit prejudiced around here without that person flying into hysterics.
Folks of the western world (who aren’t all white…nor are all white people “western”) enjoy privilege in popular culture. A member of a privileged class can be butthurt just as much as anyone else. But at the end of the day, they have their privilege to come home to and that makes the hurt go away.
White Person may be butthurt watching five minutes of the latest “black people do it this way, white people do it that way” sketch on BET. But they have eleventy-billion other television shows that affirm who they are. Furthermore, they don’t have to worry if their coworkers or their supervisors were watching that mean awful show and getting the wrong idea about them. Because their coworkers and supervisors are, for the most part, going to be white just like them. Just like the police officer who pulls them over, just like the kids’ teachers at school, just like their dentist and the OB-GYN. So of course they can brush off racial silliness directed at them. This isn’t a testament to the great stoicism of white people, but to the fact that everything looks silly when you have great self-esteem.
The same deal with western culture. Why should I care that some guy out in the Congo think I’m an evil witch because I’m agnostic and wear pants? My bedroom has more wealth than he can ever dream of having. Why should I care that the Chinese think America is about an inch away from being engulfed in fire and brimstone? They may be right, but at least I don’t have to live in constant fear of saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong person. I may be going to hell for dressing like Madonna, but hey! At least I can pop out as many babies as I want without the state forcing abortions on me! And my babies won’t suffer from melamine-induced precocious puberty and be destined for life as slave-wage laborers in Walmart sweatshops! Now those things are really hell. The hell waiting for me for dressing up like Madonna won’t be but a fraction of that. And everyone knows this.
If fifty years from now, the Chinese have really drunk our milkshakes, then we–the West–won’t be so easy-going in the face of such remarks. But right now we’re top dog. It’s easy to be above the fray when you’re at the top.
To piggy back off Monstro’s and other people’s points.
1 - It’s easier to feel the hate as a minority. If you were a white guy dating a black chick and every single person around you starts off conversations with “Jungle Fever” it would get annoying real quick. If every interaction focused around your race and how you’re a white guy drawn towards a black world you would start feeling self conscious. If every activity you started was prefaced with “I know this isn’t exactly cow tipping but…” you would start to feel the resentment.
2 - It’s easier to feel the hate when you’re not successful. If you were Paris Hilton and somebody called you a meth addled drain on society, you would just call security over to deal with it then tweet about it. If you were holding up the line at wal mart because they were going through what items were and were not covered by food stamps and someone behind you called you a worthless math-addled drain on society, you would probably be more offended.
3 - Just because a stray statement doesn’t bother you doesn’t mean the white race is unassailable. If that statement was said to someone else, it might be, or said to you under different circumstances, or if it was repeated to you every day by everyone you knew, or if the media embraced that image and ran with it, etc. definitely stretches the definition of assailable.
Mainstream American culture is largely white culture for now, because white people are the influential majority. So when you say someone is “American”, even if they aren’t white it’s nearly impossible to live in America and not be influenced by the mainstream culture which is white. It is nearly impossible as a minority to be a successful minority without appealing or being able to work within a white power structure, it’s simply mathematics. If you want to be a raving success, you have to appeal to a white market, because there are more whites with more buying power. Rap music isn’t written for black people, the typical rap music consumer is white.
I know some people who get some sort of satisfaction criticising Americans for having “no culture”, but if that was true we could go to any country and fit in with no adjustment. This obviously is not the case. When someone claims there is no American culture, they’re either intentionally being a jerk, or what they really mean is that American culture is world culture through entertainment, pop music and movies etc, so that most countries will be more familiar with American culture than any most (any?) other.
I can give a bunch of personal anecdotes about how I tried doing what was right/polite by the way I grew up in my culture which was the exact WRONG thing to do in others, this means that I (American) have a distinct culture.
BTW the way to offend a large percentage of white people is to point out all the advantages they enjoy in American life.
Filipinos would not like it if you called them “katutubo” which just means “native”.
I have never even heard any black people refer to each other as “African American”, we say black.