Non-US Dopers, what mentions of contemporary American culture puzzle you?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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[QUOTE=Valteron]
I do not mean to insult America generally, since as a Canadian neighbour I like the country and its people and visit it regularly.

But since you ask what puzzles me about contemporary American culture, it is the implication in so many US TV programs and movies that racism in contemporary American society is an extremely rare phenomenon.

Very rarely, a character is depicted as a racist and is firmly and irrevocably condemned by everyone around him.

With the notable exception of Archie Bunker, most US popular culture gives us the impression that 99.9% of Americans are completely colour-blind and non-racist. They accept blacks and other non-whites freely and easily, and are perfectly comfortable with inter-racial sex and marriage.

Take the program Roseanne. This lower-middle-class family living in the industrial rust belt was totally free of not only racism but homophobia as well!

Now, my own experience of Americans is that while most of them are NOT what I would define as racist, perhaps one American in five holds opinions that I would definitely qualify as racially prejudiced.

And I am NOT talking about southern whites, necessarily. Most of my experience is with whites in Boston and New England. For example, I have frequently heard vicious and unbearable jokes about blacks from “Boston Irish” types at a party who had a few drinks in them.

On Cape Cod, I met a family who were ready to have an apoplexy because their daughter married a black Haitian. I would point out that the man is educated, has a decent income, and is a good father and husband. To be fair, the family is slowly working on changing their attitudes. They ARE making an effort.

But if that family were in a US TV program, they would no more notice the colour of the man than they would notice the number of consonants in his name.

Perhaps American culture is trying to set a good example, to show Americans how they SHOULD be. But the trouble is that your culture also gives complacent whites the idea that racism is something that is almost 100% banished from America. Yeah, right! :dubious:
[/QUOTE]

Yeah but who wants to see shows where some racist jeerk spouts off about this group or that group. Boy, there’s feel-good entertainment for you. Some cable shows will give you that grit, but the major networks whose major concern is ratings/ad revenues is not going to throw in a racist character for realisms sake in ashow that’s not about racism.

As to complacency, my main and as far as I’m concerned only responsibility is to 1. not be racist myself, and 2, ensure that my children are not raised to be racist. It starts at home. Are you suggesting its my responsibility to get in someone’s face (and risk bodily injury) if they exhibit racist tendencies? So long as I have a family to raise and be responsible for, that’s not happening!

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[QUOTE=saoirse]
Prerequisite for obtaining quo.
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Can you still hear the lambs screaming, Clarice?

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[QUOTE=gigi]
Can you still hear the lambs screaming, Clarice?
[/QUOTE]

Nah, they’ve been pretty quiet.

344

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
A lot of gas ovens don’t, and have the farcical ‘gas mark’ system
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I’ve seen old (1970s or earlier) cookbooks here that gave gas marks as well as oven temperatures.

345

[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
Which still ignores the fact that “World Series” is a preposterous title for a competition played between the winners of the “National League” and “American League”…
[/QUOTE]

So what? If you want to play semantic games, then how come you call it the “House of Lords” when the Lords don’t actually live there? How do you call it the “House of Lords” when you don’t include every Lord in the country, just a few of them? Why don’t you include Lords from other countries?

This question is just a stupid, semantic game that is intended to provoke. Here’s the reason, in my view: the guys who named it were arrogant rich guys who wanted to assert their dominance over who was allowed to play baseball. They called it the World Series, thereby semantically excluding any rival leagues from consideration.

When baseball was first begun, there was the National League (started in 1876, I believe). Eager to cash in on it, other private investors began their own leagues (notably, the American Association in 1881, the Union Association in 1884, the Players League in 1890, and the Western League in 1893), but the new leagues were crushed by the National League — partly because some of the new leagues wanted the players to control the game instead of the owners, which the power-hungry owners feared, but also because the country hadn’t yet made up its mind whether it was legal to have a monopoly on baseball.

The American League was begun in 1901 as a direct competitor to the National League, promising cheaper tickets, better talent, and less rowdy fans (ha!). It took two years for them to convince the National League to even consider a championship series, and when one was finally hammered out, they likely named it the “World Series” because they didn’t want to give the honor of recognizing that there could ever be any other legitimate baseball concerns outside of their two leagues.

Other leagues have sprung up since 1903, such as the Federal League and the Mexican League, in competition with the two existing Major Leagues. The main reason it was named the “World Series?” To stifle competition within America, I think.

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[QUOTE=BwanaBob]
Yeah but who wants to see shows where some racist jeerk spouts off about this group or that group. /QUOTE]

Arguably, judging by the popularity of Archie Bunker, the answer to your question would be: Millions of people.

I admit that not being racist yourself and not raising children with racist attitudes is about all that anyone can really demand of you. Anything else you do to combat racism is just extra kindness and justice on your part. :slight_smile:

But once again, it worries me that people are given the impression by TV nd movies that racism is practically non-existant in America. That can’t be good.

347

[QUOTE=Valteron]
Anything else you do to combat racism is just extra kindness and justice on your part. :slight_smile:
[/quote]

I figure it’s the difference between TV passively telling you not to be racist by showing you good examples of egalitarian behavior, and TV actively preaching against racism by showing racist characters getting their comeuppance in every show. My feeling is many Americans tolerate the former, and reject the latter.

348

You’re all going to think I hate Americans. I manifestly do not. How many Canadians (or Americans) do you know who can name all 50 states and their capitals and recite the opening of the Declaration of Independence by heart?

But since the OP asked what parts of contemporary American culture puzzle me, and as long as we are talking about races, why is it that an American who is as much as 7/8 or even 15/16 white is considered “black” if he or she has any noticeable African heritage?

Take Halle Berry (which I am certain most men would whatever their race :smiley: ). She has one black and one white parent. So why is she a “black” actress? Why is she an “African-American”? Obviously, half of her is European-American.

In fact, if Halle Berry marries a white man and has children, I am willing to bet that the children will STILL be considered “black” although they are 3/4 white.

Are black genes somehow considered a “super-gene” that overrules the white heritage, even then the proportion of white is greater than the black? Or are they considered a pollution, like a drop of ink in a glass of milk that will show even if it is only a drop in a whole glass?

Or does it come from slave owners who could use this definition to have sex with their female slaves and then consider their own offspring as another race separate from them?

Or does it come from the fact that racial segregation laws in the old south defined “negroes” as anyone with a “drop of negro blood”?

One way or another, there is something distasteful and vaguely racist about considering all these people black. You have only to look at most American blacks to realize that the US has relatively few African-Americans but millions and millions of European-African-Americans.

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It’s kind of taboo to talk about I guess, but I’m always pissed off when people like the lovely Miss Berry refer to themselves as black exclusively. During her teary Oscars speech when she talked about opening the doors for other black actresses, my friends and I were annoyed because… well… she’s not black.

Anyway, I guess it’s PC because people of any kind of ethnicity are supposed to be proud of their heritage, and who am I to tell her what race to consider herself to be? But still, not ALL Americans consider everyone with dark skin black.

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[QUOTE=Valteron]

Or does it come from the fact that racial segregation laws in the old south defined “negroes” as anyone with a “drop of negro blood”?
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Bingo. At least, this is how I came to understand the rationale behind this classification. A great deal of these practices can be traced to the “one drop rule”. An interesting precursor to this theory can be found in the Casta of early Spanish colonial America.

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[QUOTE=Valteron]
But since the OP asked what parts of contemporary American culture puzzle me, and as long as we are talking about races, why is it that an American who is as much as 7/8 or even 15/16 white is considered “black” if he or she has any noticeable African heritage?
[/QUOTE]

I think there just hasn’t been a big movement for recognizing mixed heritage people. It seems like the non-white races are more physically visible, and there’s the whole “pride in your heritage thing”. Especially when being white is considered the norm, anything different is still more novel.
And then there’s how people prefer to self-identify, which further complicates things.
Its generally safer to say Halle Berry is black than “well, she looks like she might have a little white in her…” or call her… what exactly? Euro-African-American? black/white? mixed race is vague (doesn’t specify which ones). I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but that’s where it stands now and maybe we’ll figure out how to deal with (or ignore) it in the future.

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[QUOTE=wasson]
It’s kind of taboo to talk about I guess, but I’m always pissed off when people like the lovely Miss Berry refer to themselves as black exclusively. During her teary Oscars speech when she talked about opening the doors for other black actresses, my friends and I were annoyed because… well… she’s not black.

[/QUOTE]

I understand what you are saying but people do not stop judging you as a black person if you tell them that you are actually half black. Most people find it hard to stray from the belief that “If it walks like a duck…” so whether or not someone is mixed is often irrelevant because ultimately everyone else views them a certain way. If everyone whom I encounter perceives me as black, then I grew up, externally, as a black American regardless of what my background may actually be made up of.

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My guess, Valteron, is that it stems originally from the “grandfather clauses” in many ex-slave states after the Civil War. Because the 15th Amendment made it legal for black men to vote as citizens, some states said that you must pass a literacy test before voting — exempting anybody whose grandfather was permitted to vote in the pre-Civil War days, effectively saying only blacks had to pass the literacy test.

It has sort of continued on in spirit today, in the service of the civil rights movement, where we maintain that if someone had an ancestor who was a black slave, even one ancestor, then that person didn’t begin with the same head start as (for comparison) a white non-slave.

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[QUOTE=wasson]
I’m always pissed off when people like the lovely Miss Berry refer to themselves as black exclusively.
[/QUOTE]

Most likely, her experience in American society has been as black exclusively, so that’s why she considers herself black exclusively. I grew up as a non-white person in American society, and in my experience that’s how it is. Halle Berry doesn’t identify herself as (half-)white because white society didn’t give her that option.

An interesting question is why this matter should piss you off.

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[QUOTE=Valteron]
Take Halle Berry (which I am certain most men would whatever their race :smiley: ). She has one black and one white parent. So why is she a “black” actress? Why is she an “African-American”? Obviously, half of her is European-American.
[/QUOTE]
For her as an individual (which doesn’t extend to all mixed race folks), the way she tells it is her (white) mother put her in front of a mirror and said what do you see. Halle Berry said a black woman and her mom said, that’s that the world will see, so be proud of being that.

356

[QUOTE=hawksgirl]
I think there just hasn’t been a big movement for recognizing mixed heritage people. It seems like the non-white races are more physically visible, and there’s the whole “pride in your heritage thing”. Especially when being white is considered the norm, anything different is still more novel.
And then there’s how people prefer to self-identify, which further complicates things.
Its generally safer to say Halle Berry is black than “well, she looks like she might have a little white in her…” or call her… what exactly? Euro-African-American? black/white? mixed race is vague (doesn’t specify which ones). I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but that’s where it stands now and maybe we’ll figure out how to deal with (or ignore) it in the future.
[/QUOTE]

For what it is worth, Derek Jeter, Mariah Carey and Tiger Woods embrace their mixed heritage and talk about it. Maybe things are finally changing.

357

I’m not sure if this is true of contemporary American culture as a whole or just the subset of it here on the SDMB, but I’m always intrigued by what seems to me to be an excessive interest in Jeopardy. I saw it a couple of times in the US. I remember it when a version used to be shown here on television in the 1970s. It’s a rather ordinary, run-of-the-mill quiz show. Yet there always seem to be threads running about it - the latest is here.

I just don’t get it.

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[QUOTE=gigi]
quid? what is quid?

:dubious:
[/QUOTE]

As well as being a slang term for a “tile surround” :smiley: it’s also a plug of terbakker

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[QUOTE=Cunctator]
I’m not sure if this is true of contemporary American culture as a whole or just the subset of it here on the SDMB, but I’m always intrigued by what seems to me to be an excessive interest in Jeopardy. I saw it a couple of times in the US. I remember it when a version used to be shown here on television in the 1970s. It’s a rather ordinary, run-of-the-mill quiz show. Yet there always seem to be threads running about it - the latest is here.

I just don’t get it.
[/QUOTE]

Ummm… the crossover interest between a board like this and a general knowledge quiz show is rather large although the show is rather popular in general. This board is populated by many former Jeopardy champions which is a pretty big deal considering that its daily audience is the size of a significant portion of the population of Australia. It is also one of the few pop cultural nods to high intellect of that type that we have.

360

I should also point out that Jeopardy is just one of those game shows that made it for the long haul and has built up a sustainable audience. The host, Alex Trebek, who I should point out now is Canadian is a real condescending dick to people that are supposed to be smart which is always a winner. The questions are broad and just hard enough that most people can get some questions right yet still be impressed with the skills of the winners.

If you asked about why Wheel of Fortune (spin letters, fill in words) is popular then we might have a conundrum. They talk about Red states and Blue states all the time here when they should be talking about Jeopardy versus Wheel of Fortune audiences for political purposes.