I don’t know if he(?)'s saying that or not, but I’m the one who doesn’t think that most Americans (black or white) would list chess sets and leather chairs as some of their comforting images.
The results show an unsurprising ignorance and probably do reflect some racism but it’s hard to say how much. As others have said, there is no such thing as “white culture.” There are various, discrete, “white” European ethnicities and I can see people giving affirmative answers to questions about whether they want to preserve Irish or Norwegian or Finnish cultural traditions but anyone who says that the “white race” has a distinct cultural identity is at least ignorant but not necessarily racist. They may view the question as referring to American culture or aggragate European culture or something or might see the question as hostile and be answering defensively.
Who are these liberals who go around saying that white people should feel guilty, by the way? I’ve never seen one. I suspect that conservatives might be making them up.
I am surprised that so many whites agree that their culture should be ** preserved**. Does this mean that they feel the white culture is being threatened (by whom? The blacks?), and that steps should be taken (by segregation?) Yes, there are different cultures, depending on where people grew up - East Coast culture is different from West Coast, and suburbia is different from inner-city ghettoes (and some of these lines fall along colour lines). But why protect a culture, and not enrich it? Why not raise children with Grimm fairy stories, Alice in Wonderland and African fairy-stories? Why not listen to classical music, beatles and jazz and hip-hop?
Yeah? What do you call Lawrence Welk, Barry Manilow and Burl Ives? Spam on white bread with mayonaisse? Tapioca pudding? Ozzie and Harriet? Archie comics? The Episcopal church? You can’t get any more white than that!
I did not read it that way. Had the pertinent word been “defended,” they might have been expressing some fear. However, preserving a culture (or an old building or a musical genre or anything similar) can have the fairly neutral meaning that time tends to wipe away the good and the bad and that they feel some (as yet to be identified, since we do not have the study) “white culture” has good elements that should be preserved against the passage of time.
Oh, puhleeze, of course there’s an American White culture. It’s full of regional variations, as is American Black culture (Branford Marsalis expounded on this briefly and with verve in Sting’s Bring On the Night).
And it’s vastly different from the various European White cultures.
I would venture to guess that fewer of them got the Disney channel, and that they would probably be less likely to see the kindly old white guy and identify with him as much.
I am however, of course, not black, so asking me really doesn’t tell you anything except my WAG. I was simply trying to answer as best I could for Irishgal since she’s Irish and didn’t grow up in American culture.
Ah, okay. I see it’s a difference of interpretation.
No, I don’t imagine so. Which is why I said that I doubt I would fall in the majority of the 77%. But still they probably mean something similar, mine’s just more Alice in Wonderland/Sherlock Holmes than most Americans. What they view as white culture I’ve no idea, but probably the idea is parallel.
My first year of college in Japan, we were asked to tell a story from our country. The Chinese and Korean kids had no problem, but all the white kids were like, “Nah man, we don’t have any of that.”
So it comes my turn:
“A hundred and fifty or so years ago, there was a giant baby found. A kindly couple found him, naming him Paul Bunyan…”
I tell the story all the way through (that I can remember from the Disney version…) and up to Babe the Blue Ox and Paul losing the battle and going North to Alaska, where they still wrestle creating the auroraborealis that we see. At which point my teacher goes, “That’s beautiful… Thank you for telling that.” And she was genuinely happy and impressed by our American Tall Tail.
So, regardless of whether it was the Disney version or not, I still fear that if I watched the Disney channel today, I would be afraid that they have stopped showing about Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and John Henry. Those are American heritage (if not all white) and are something that should be preserved.
So rather, I don’t think it makes sense to ask whether “white” culture should be preserved. All of our cultural heritage should be.
I really wonder where they got the statistics about preserving “white culture.” Either the article is poorly written or there’s something weird about the study. My bet is that Time wrote a bizarre article to get people riled up.
I’ll be surprised if the study gave a useful definition of “white culture.” They probably left it up to the individual respondant to interpret that phrase. But look at the question this way: why would you NOT want your own culture to be preserved? The only reason I can think of is (as others have mentioned) if you automatically equate “white culture” with “white supremacy” and think of white culture as being inherantly tainted or malevolent. Basically, a certain amount of self-loathing is necessary to prompt a ‘No’ answer to this question, IMHO. That, or fear of being accused of being a racist hick, which I’m sure probably factored into some people’s answers.
I admit I’m somewhat surprised by this statistic. It might be a problem of perception. Blacks who do blame society for their problems tend to be rather vocal in expressing this opinion, but a guy who realizes that his problems are due largely to his own lack of motivation is unlikely to shout this fact from the rooftops.
I was raised Episcopalian. Last time I went to my mom’s church a woman was talking with pride about her son (obviously gay to anyone but her) who had painted a picture of a saint and donated it to the church. After she left, another woman complained that the saint “looked too dark”.
To me, white culture is mayonaise, pickup trucks, pancake suppers, double wides, bologna sandwiches, and tater tots.
Yes, I’m surprised. As another poster mentioned, to me it feels more like (from an inside looking out stance) that there isn’t a well defined whiteness factor that can be considered “white culture”. That most other races do have one, and we just sort of exist and don’t really think about it too much.
That opinion seems to have been shored up by still other posters who stated that other races of American children grew up with Grimm fairy tales, Disney and such, as well so that hardly counts as American white culture.
When I think of myself, my identity, unless I’m answering a form of some sort, “I am white” isn’t even in the top twenty of who I am. I’d be hardpressed to think of anything really that fits into a notion of a “white culture” that isn’t also shared by most Americans of many other ethnic backgrounds.
What IS “white culture” anyway, that it needs to be preserved that is?
Interesting link, and I intend to take a look at the study at some point… It’s great that the concept of Whiteness is getting airplay, because I’d argue that it’s seen as some joke of social science outside of the academy.
Of course there is a White American culture. It’s certainly not called that - part of the privilege and advantage enjoyed by Whites is that norms, beliefs, and values are viewed as neutral and natural rather than a manifestation of the choices and beliefs of a group that coincides and contradicts - complements those of others. There are some proxy labels for what I would term Whiteness - “WASP culture,” “middle-class norms,” to name two. Like any culture, some values and beliefs are held by other groups - just because they are in the domain of Whiteness does not mean that they are the sole domain of White Americans, and nor does it mean that every single White American subscribes to each belief to the same degree.
Other cultures are often defined in how they contrast with Whiteness. When we talk about Mexican-American culture, for instance, we often talk about food, kinship bonds, family structure, and rituals - which all differ from most White Americans in those categories.
I would imagine that the study defined culture in a distinct way, and asked subjects about culture in a less direct way… you wouldn’t get reliable results from asking directed questions on such an inflammatory or taboo topic.
The (upper-to) middle-class White American culture is the veiled culture that is seen as the norm in this country. We have labels for groups of Whites who are different from this group based on class, region, sexual orientation, ability, and ethnicity, to name a few dimensions - again, typically defined in how they differ from dominant middle-class White American culture.
Having not read the study I can’t really know what it means to say that 77% of Whites feel their culture should be maintained but it doesn’t strike me as a racist comment at all. When I hear people decrying fashion trends, linguistic patterns, or values from working class, poor, Black, Asian, Latino people - I think this how White Americans see their culture threatened (especially when it differs radically from those beliefs, etc. held by middle-class White Americans - if it’s similar or close it isn’t a threat).
Another article. Quote:
This is probably all really obvious, but it’s insomnia for me tonight so I thought I’d type it out.
If there wasn’t a White American culture, we wouldn’t have shows like Friends and Sex in the City, or magazines like People and Us. We wouldn’t have predominately White churches where nobody in the pews sings or talks. White grocery stores. White neighborhood block parties and public parks and sports events.
It’s not like other people are legally excluded, just that the normative behavior is dictated by White values - only we don’t realize they’re choices. When the Mexicans come to the park, they play their car radios loud enough for everyone to hear; Whites think this is an intrusion. At a Black beauty parlor, customers spend a couple of hours getting their hair done; Whites think this is a waste of time. And Whites don’t dance casually, it’s not a part of our social gatherings (unless we’re drunk); we’re afraid we might look stupid.
American Whites are more emotionally repressed and competitive, more self-conscious and concerned with appearances. Not appearances as in “beauty”, but as in “appearing to do things the way everyone else does.” We seek to conform; those status labels on clothes ARE “white pride” t-shirts, in symbolic form - they’re proof one has money. We worship money. Money is how we segregate now.
We used to admire the British upper crust and tried to emulate them, aiming for “refinement” (minimalism is still dominant in upper-class design, take a look at the Museum of Modern Art catalog). That’s why so many White parents despise the way today’s White kids admire rappers, with their street-savvy culture; it feels like downward mobility.
I think the people talking about blacks blaming society for their problems are the ones who are vocal. Plus, I’ve witnessed plenty of times whites twisting a black person’s words into “whitey keeping me down”.
I’d also love to see the full study sometime. I think I’ve seen Doug Hartmann (one of the co-authors) lecture, and he’s an interesting guy.
Diceman hit on a good point about how people might answer this sort of question, particularly in a telephone survey which seems to have contained a lot of questions about race and culture. If someone asked me about white culture in a telephone survey, I’d probably think in terms of my personal experience of white culture when answering. I’d also be surprised if the format of the survey allowed for a lot of “talk back” responses.
Related to Irishgirl’s question, there’s been some neat research recently by a professor of music named Kyra Gaunt – her book is called The Games Black Girls Play and she looks at the traditional songs and games that young black (American) girls learn at home. While her research focuses on this population, she does touch somewhat upon what games white (American) girls typically learn and how there is still a pretty marked difference between them. I was surprised that many of the games and songs that I remember from childhood are not as universally “American” as I would have assumed.
I should think that “essentially amounts to” would be more than a haphazard metaphor. And it’s not a good metaphor, anyway. For example, my ability to drive legally without being harassed by the police is hardly a function of others’ misfortunes when they’re harassed for the offense of driving-while-black. There isn’t some set amount of police harassment that needs to be distributed among the populace, and whites haven’t banded together to push all the harassment on to blacks.
To put it another way, you’re accusing many whites of being blind to what is a fundamentally true, and presumably obvious fact; however, this fact relies on the implicit assumption that there is a conservation of disadvantage. It is not obvious that there is a conservation of disadvange. If it was true, the few blacks in my area would never make it ten feet past the exit doors of the emergency room before being beaten sensless by the police waiting to pounce on them again. There is no conservation rule for disadvantage, and therefore, your fact is not obviously true.
If a cop is friendly to, and doesn’t harass a black man, that in no way, shape, or form takes from me the advantage of being able to not be harassed. Acceptance, civility, and toleration create a mutual advantage that is not dependent on someone else being exploited. Even Machiavelli understood that:
A society doesn’t rely on conservation rules to run. If black children call black dolls ugly and white dolls pretty, it does not follow that this form of self-hatred has a matching form of self-love that is mirrored in whites. And even closer to the point, eliminating this terrible phenomenon will not suddenly force white children to think white dolls are less pretty; all dolls can be pretty.
[Helen Lovejoy]
Don’t judge a doll by the color of her plastic. Oh, won’t somebody please think of the children?
[/Helen Lovejoy]