# "Multi-racial whiteness" **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 19, 2021, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901 "2021-01-19T17:32:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/21 "2021-01-19T20:22:40Z")
> [@Dark\_Sponge](#): > > If by “Whitening” they mean the meshing of races and cultures together it is absolutely happening and it is a good thing. In the same way though, mainstream culture is becoming slightly more hispanic and black. > > Intermarriage of races and enmeshment of cultures is the path to ending racism. As a wise man once said: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/GfxL_wuYtSg/hqdefault.jpg "Bulworth on Racial Deconstruction") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfxL_wuYtSg) ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2021, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/22 "2021-01-19T20:28:04Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Whiteness is a concept that is not the same thing as being white. It’s what happens if you study white people as a race, with our own culture and everything, rather than treating us like the default since we’re in a predominantly white country. As such, it makes sense in the same way there are some white people who are well integrated with black culture. I think it’s a very poor choice of terminology (like so many concepts on the left); US culture isn’t white culture, and the former seems to be what you are describing. It makes perfect sense that the dominant culture in the US is defined by the majority race, but that it’s not necessary to be white to share it, or to contribute to it. US culture includes elements adopted from previous groups of immigrants that used to be separate but are now considered part of the majority - ‘within the tent’ as Begbert put it - and the same could happen in future, that Asians or Hispanics could join the majority culture and group, but that isn’t the case now because the majority is currently defined racially (and in the past perhaps was defined as being a WASP?) ---
**Author:** ![WalterBishop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/aeb1de/32.png) [@WalterBishop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WalterBishop)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2021, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/23 "2021-01-19T21:13:55Z")
I’ve read the article twice and, to be honest, it seems to be a bit of a mess. There’s a lot of unjustified assumptions built into it. For one thing, the author implies that anyone loyal to President Trump (who, for the record, I despise), is a racist. This isn’t necessarily true. Trump _is_ a racist, and I don’t deny that a significant number of his supporters are, too. Indeed, I’d be willing to guess that a large majority of racists who voted in 2020 voted for Trump. But that’s not the same as saying everyone who voted for Trump in 2020 is a racist. It’s possible to be a Trump supporter without being a racist. For another, the author seems to be under the impression that the natural inclination of any member of any ethnic minority is to vote along racial lines, and those who appear to vote in a manner she perceives as contrary to their group’s interests, must be laboring under some species of internalized racism. The notion that these people may simply not view politics through an exclusively racial lens seems not to have occurred to her. The author asks _"What are we to make of Tarrio - and, more broadly, of Latino voters inspired by Trump?_ and then tries to answer her own question by shoehorning the very people she’s talking about into this weird, oxymoronic theoretical construction of her own devising. Did she try _asking_ any of these people why they support Trump? The article gives no indication that she did. Honestly, at the risk of being reductive it seems to me like the author could’ve saved herself a lot of time and several hundred words if she’d just written that any latino who voted for Trump is a _“Tio Tomás”_, as it were, and left it at that. By my reading, her argument doesn’t seem to amount to much more than that. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2021, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/24 "2021-01-19T21:34:10Z")
Put another way - Jeremy Lin wasn’t being “black” by pursuing a career in NBA basketball; he was being Jeremy Lin. Ben Carson wasn’t being “un-black” by pursuing a career in medicine; he was…being Ben Carson. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2021, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/25 "2021-01-20T01:16:49Z")
Around 100 years ago, white skin and a christian faith wasn’t enough to qualify as an in-group member. You had to be the right kind of white and the right kind of christian. You had to be an anglo-saxon christian and a protestant. Couldn’t be German, Italian, Spanish, French, Polish, Russian, etc. Also couldn’t be catholic, mormon, etc. Now to be labeled an in-group you just need to be white and christian. I think the same thing is happening sadly, as white supremacy can’t get enough adherents they allow other races in as long as those other races support white supremacy. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/fxHWtw_GZIk/hqdefault.jpg "Griffin on equal rights in America!") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxHWtw_GZIk) ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2021, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/26 "2021-01-20T02:45:20Z")
When you have to torture your categories as far as that article does in order to understand what’s going on around you - probably time to find new categories. In particular, I think there’s a big blind spot in left-wing analysis of Trumpian politics, where people want to say “it’s about maintaining privilege”. And then they have to contort their argument every which way to account for the fact that Trump support contains at least _some_ people (women, Latinx’s, Black people) who aren’t in the cis-white-hetero-male privileged category. Apparently it’s easier for some people to bend the word “white” into unrecognisability, rather than admit that they can’t do a simple single-value analysis of Trumpian support ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2021, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/27 "2021-01-20T04:45:06Z")
In this entire thread, I do not see the word “assimilate”. It is an active verb, that describes how some non-white Americans became white, through their own volition. They joined the mainstream, which happpened to be founded on white culture. Instead of expecting the mainstream to embrace theirs. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2021, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/28 "2021-01-20T04:58:02Z")
There’s no such thing as “white culture”. There’s a bunch of different cultures, many of whom happen to be comprised mostly of white people (in a country where that’s most of the actual inhabitants) ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2021, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/29 "2021-01-20T23:05:45Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > In this entire thread, I do not see the word “assimilate”. It is an active verb, that describes how some non-white Americans became white, through their own volition. They joined the mainstream, which happpened to be founded on white culture. Instead of expecting the mainstream to embrace theirs. No one ‘became white’. It’s like @Wesley_Clark said; some number of years ago, being white wasn’t enough to qualify for in-group membership. But as various groups assimilated, the in-group expanded to include all white Americans. And Asians aren’t going to become white, but it’s possible the in-group could change to include them. I don’t believe it has happened yet, though. > [@Aspidistra](#): > > There’s no such thing as “white culture”. There’s a bunch of different cultures, many of whom happen to be comprised mostly of white people (in a country where that’s most of the actual inhabitants) Yeah, I’m not sure I understand that part of BigT’s post. Obviously there is no such thing as a ‘white culture’ that all white people share. There are shared influences and one culture can influence another, but that’s not limited by race. So how does race play into it exactly? [quote=“Aspidistra, post:26, topic:930901”] Apparently it’s easier for some people to bend the word “white” into unrecognisability, rather than admit that they can’t do a simple single-value analysis of Trumpian support [/quote] I agree with this. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2021, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/30 "2021-01-20T23:52:02Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > No one ‘became white’. It’s like @Wesley_Clark said; some number of years ago, being white wasn’t enough to qualify for in-group membership. But as various groups assimilated, the in-group expanded to include all white Americans. And Asians aren’t going to become white, but it’s possible the in-group could change to include them. I don’t believe it has happened yet, though. In Australia, the term ‘Anglo-Celtic’ started coming into use at around the time Italian/Greek migration was high, as a kind of signifier that those non-U Irish Catholic types, who used to be very much “them”, were now “us”, compared to this _new_ weird mob. I’m expecting the next expansion of the dominant in-group to be “Eurasian” … unless by that stage we’re all so mixed that nobody can really tell any more. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2021, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/31 "2021-01-20T23:56:22Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > I’m expecting the next expansion of the dominant in-group to be “Eurasian” … unless by that stage we’re all so mixed that nobody can really tell any more. Maybe so. But is it a good thing? Expansion of the in-group ought to be good, but it implies there’s still an out-group. And what’s non-U? ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/32 "2021-01-21T00:01:46Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > And what’s non-U? English upper-class slang. “Not one of us” - Nancy Mitford. My mother uses it all the time (in irony) so I always think it’s more well-known than it is ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/33 "2021-01-21T00:06:35Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > US culture isn’t white culture, and the former seems to be what you are describing. It makes perfect sense that the dominant culture in the US is defined by the majority race, but that it’s not necessary to be white to share it, or to contribute to it. […] > > No one ‘became white’. Given that race isn’t a biologically immutable quality but rather a set of social categories, it seems perfectly reasonable to refer to changing criteria about who belongs in a particular category in terms of “becoming white”. For instance, [Benjamin Franklin, along with many of his contemporaries, famously had a much narrower definition of “whiteness” than is current nowadays:](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/02/swarthy-germans/48324/) > [@](#): > > And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. [Here’s a 1916 industrial relations report illustrating the distinction that many employers of the time took for granted between “white men” and “Italians”](https://books.google.com/books?id=luYeAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA2171&lpg=PA2171&dq=%22white+men+and+Italians%22&source=bl&ots=6otrex2uLj&sig=ACfU3U2iy5hz45Lu8SHdlNGK6zQkZoH6xw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAtevY16vuAhUpTd8KHaYQCAIQ6AEwA3oECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=%22white%20men%20and%20Italians%22&f=false): > [@](#): > > Mr. Barnes: Now, Mr. Petersen, let us establish a couple of facts so we can go on. All of your men that you employ there that are not Italians, are white men? You employ white men and Italians? > Mr. Petersen: In discharging we employ all Italians, and in loading all white men—all nationalities. […] > Mr. Barnes: Yes; but why do you put the Italians at discharging and the white men at stowing. Are not the white men better for stowing? > Mr. Petersen: Because the Italians are not qualified for it—stowing. […] > Mr. Barnes: So you make a division between the Italians and white men and put the white men to stowing and the Italians to discharging? [This article](https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/race-and-americas-immigrant-press-how-the-slovaks-were-taught-to-think-like-white-people/ch4-a-slav-can-live-in-dirt-that-would-kill-a-white-man-race-and-the-european-other.pdf) discusses similar evolution of racial classifications of various groups of Europeans, illustrated by the contemporary quote in the article’s title, “A Slav can live in dirt that would kill a white man”. Nobody is claiming that the physical skin color of people of, say, Swedish or Italian or Slavic ethnicity significantly changed between then and now. But it is absolutely true that their perceived qualification to be included in the category of “white people”, according to commonly understood definitions of that category, did change. We see a similar evolution going on now, for example, in the inclusion of Hispanic/Latinx people in the category “white”. It’s commonly held nowadays that Hispanic and Latinx aren’t racial categories, and may describe people who are either white or nonwhite. But [in this 1983 article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191332/) entitled “Differences among black, Hispanic, and white people in knowledge about long-term care services”, for example, it was taken as a given that “Hispanic” signified a racial category that was neither white nor black. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/34 "2021-01-21T00:24:53Z")
As @Kimstu notes, the definition of who is white has changed over time (and in the present it’s different in different places). ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/35 "2021-01-21T00:51:29Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > There’s no such thing as “white culture”. There’s a bunch of different cultures, many of whom happen to be comprised mostly of white people (in a country where that’s most of the actual inhabitants) There is, though, in the same sense there is a black culture or a Latino culture or an LGBT culture. Sure, these cultures all contain other smaller cultures, but there’s still an overlapping culture they share. And this is a great example of white people objecting to being analyzed as a race. It’s okay to talk about “black culture,” but we must always subdivide white culture. We also wind up with people treating the default culture at the white one: when people talk about American culture, they’re most often talking about white American culture, treating African-American culture as different. There was another thread about someone talking about the values of whiteness–values shared by white people. The fact that such a grouping can be made–that we can guess a whole set of values based on someone’s white skin-- shows that there is an underlying culture there. That’s all a culture is, really: shared beliefs in a group of people. And that culture is 100% what Trump tried to appeal to. He was addressing the grievances of white people who are having to exist in a multicultural world. no longer being on the top. That was his message. And it was those brown people coming up from Mexico or those brown people who were Muslim who were the threat. He made no attempt at all to appeal to black people, and even actively fought against black people daring to protest their mistreatment by cops. No, he didn’t appeal to all white people. But nearly everything he ever pushed was in the language of white grievances, even when he would also appeal to straight, cisgender, and male grievances. Is it the only lens through which to view his support? Of course not. But it is a valid one. There is a reason people talk of Trump’s message being white identity politics. It’s hard to think of any other race he even tried to appeal to. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/36 "2021-01-21T01:00:49Z")
That’s not “white culture”. There is a distinct black culture in the US, much more so than a “white culture”, because for most of our history black people were forced to only rely on each other and not anyone else, nor any institutions, for safety and necessities. That created a coherent black culture. There were never such forces in place to create a coherent white culture in America. There’s probably an Irish American culture, and Italian American, and Jewish American, etc. Similarly there’s an Appalachian culture, a Southern culture (or cultures), etc. But white culture? No such thing. At least nothing nearly as coherent as black culture or those others I mentioned. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/37 "2021-01-21T01:05:34Z")
There may be a sort of “white grievance” culture that’s surprisingly big, and that’s who Trump appealed to (aside from the normal red voters - conservatives on economic and social issues). But that’s not “white culture” - just a big slice. All IMO of course. ---
**Author:** ![MustangSal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mustangsal/32/6327_2.png) [@MustangSal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MustangSal)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/38 "2021-01-21T01:16:33Z")
I concur. There is no such thing as “white culture”. A New England WASP has little in common with a Nebraskan trailer trash. Class is what it’s all about. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/39 "2021-01-21T01:43:06Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > That’s not “white culture”. There is a distinct black culture in the US, much more so than a, “white culture”, because for most of our history black people were forced to only rely on each other and not anyone else, nor any institutions, for safety and necessities. That created a coherent black culture. There were never such forces in place to create a coherent white culture in America. There’s probably an Irish American culture, and Italian American, and Jewish American, etc. But white culture? No such thing. Huh? Yes, there is. And it’s the only reason that “whiteness” as a concept makes any sense. There are shared values among white people that form a coherent culture, and that culture can be studied, rather than treated as some sort of null culture that other aspects are placed on top of. There is no reason that oppression is needed to create a common culture. You can talk about Republican culture, gamer culture, business culture, and so on. All that is needed are shared values that develop over time due to separation of some sort. Sure, white people created that separation ourselves, but it still happened. We assimilated several other cultures–it’s how “becoming white” makes sense, too. Now, sure, it’s true that there are racists who think they define what white culture is. Those are the ones who tend to say that “white culture is under attack,” when no such thing is true. The KKK is not white culture, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a shared culture. Now maybe we’re quibbling over semantics, and you have a different word for what I’m describing. But it’s the term I used throughout my explanation of whiteness, which you did not disagree with. So I don’t see how it makes sense to rip out the foundation of that explanation without replacing it with something else. I actually would have expected this response from those who do not think whiteness exists. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901/40 "2021-01-21T22:57:02Z")
Split this topic on January 21, 2021, 10:57pm UTC 2 posts were merged into an existing topic: [CoconutPete trolling posts](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coconutpete-trolling-posts/931146/2) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/multi-racial-whiteness/930901.md?page=3)