The girl ain't got no culture.....

[Zoe]

Shoshana is right. You use the words “Black and tan” as if everyone would know what that means. Nope. That is not a common part of my upbringing.

What choices do you make in clothing? Neiman Marcus? Land’s End? Banana Republic? Dresses? Shorts? Pants? Long? Short? What kind of shoes? How do you wear your hair? Do you dance? Taste in music? Movies? Politics? Reading? Entertainment? Games? What are weddings like? Teas and showers for the bride? Funerals? Wakes? What holidays do you observe? How do you discipline your children?

I’m not asking you to give answers here – especially if they are going to be so short. These are questions to think about and explore more fully to get a better grasp of your own culture as distinct from other cultures.

[FriarTed]

@Shoshana

Nor were Jews spared this cultural difference. At the school where I worked, there also was very little Hannukah hype, and there weren’t Hannukah decorations. Hannukah is a minor Jewish military holiday, and in Israel, it’s much less commercialized and has a lot less hype than in the US.

Not even Hannukah Harry?!?

[Eva_Luna]

I can’t believe nobody has mentioned music. What kind of music do you all listen to? Culturally, in assimilation food and music are usually some of the last things to go.

[calm_kiwi]

@Scribble

I would guess that, if you googled “European origins of American traditions”, or something like that, you’d get quite a bit of information on the cultural roots of the day-to-day and special occasion practices you think of as simply American.

I would guess that if your family has “no” particular cultural traditions then your traditional culture is British.

Yes you have ditched some traditions and taken up some other traditions but the reason you can’t name a culture probably means your culture is originaly British. Britain was the major colonial force in America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (are there other countries with greater immigrant numbers than the native population?)

In New Zealand many white people identify as Pakeha. That is our culture Pakeha/New Zealander (some NZers find this term offensive…mostly South Islanders :D). MOST of us came from British stock, our customs grew from there but we have a culture that is particular to New Zealand. I would be hard pressed explaining NZ culture though. I know it exisits because I live it but I don’t think I could explain it as A culture (unless rugby counts).

When a culture is the MAJORITY culture and it adapts to it’s new surroundings it is very hard to see anything unique about it. The original culture just melts into the evolving culture. I know there is a different culture in New Zealand then there is in Britain, I spent several years in Britain and it was very different but I can’t tell you HOW exactly.

When I have to explain my culture or cultural background I would have to say I am a NZer and Christmas is in the Summer at the beach. I am very different in culture to my British Great GrandMother or even my Scottish husband but it isn’t easy to expalin how.

Tell your daughter that your culture is STILL a culture if it doesn’t have special food or celebrations or music. Mainstream culture still counts as culture.

[Ferret_Herder]

Agree with many of the others - talk about assimilation done by your forebears that pushed aside their own traditions in favor of what they saw as being “normal” for the area, talk about adoption of unusual things done by someone secretly or even unconsciously longing for something special. Talk about what you see as “normal” from a viewpoint that even though you might be the majority, you’re not everyone.

[Septima]

Eh, well, norwegians don’t do christmas day either. we do christmas eve.

(sorry if somebody already mentioned this, I got sidetracked halfway down the thread)

Do you:

1. Wave flags around a lot? Any flag really.
2. Use “neutral” language/words, designed to hide real emotions?
3. Have family stories about the “little gray man”, or something similar, who lives in the attic?
   4.Walk a lot, or do other athletic things, like skiing, running around lakes and such?
4. Like to go camping, or being out in the great outdoors.
5. Put as little butter as possible on bread, while still eating it buttered?
6. Live near your relatives or visit them on family occasions, like christmas?
7. Eat moose?
8. Keep hunting dogs?
9. Are your daughters, if you have them, obsessed with horses?
10. Are your sons, if you have them, obsessed with footbal (soccer) and/or basketball?
11. Thrive in cold weather, faint in summer?
12. Drink the same amount of alcohol as everyone else, but all at once?
13. Were your children born with skis on their feet?
14. Fascinated with royalty?

All of these things can be claimed as “norwegian cultural heritage”.

[enipla]

Sinkid indicates that stating we have basically “American” cultural traditions is unacceptable to her Prof.

That’s bull. I would be screwed too. I don’t follow any traditions that have been handed down from the old county, where ever that may be. I think the prof is being an ass and somewhat elitist to assume that everybody has these traditions. What the hell are they thinking? Sheeesss, IF I where able to think about something I sure couldn’t right a paper about it. Perhaps a paragraph.

[Dangerosa]

The real place mine come out is when I need to feed 40 people. What do you need to feed 40? For me, its ham (German side) and Macs (Italian side). If I have a small army coming to my house that is what you will get.

Strange thing is I didn’t realize this wasn’t how EVERYONE did it until we went to some catered event where they were serving mac and Italian Sausage and everyone commented on how unusual it was. “Really?”

Then the men sit around and don’t do ANYTHING (on the Italian side - take naps, watch television - they don’t make small talk) or play cards (on the German side), while the women clean the kitchen. On my husbands side, they eat off paperplates, all sit around talking, and when they leave, you pick up all the paper plates and toss them.

My husband side does lots of bread and cold meats and snacks all day. English side, I believe - though his family has also been around since the U.S. was a mere colony.

[amarinth]

@Shoshana

My point is that your family does have a culture, or cultures. This culture may just seem typical or normal to you because it’s congruent with majority culture in this country, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a culture. Not being aware of one’s cultural beliefs and practices means you’re more likely to assume that everyone is like you or that your culture is “normal” rather than “majority.”

The problem with the assignment though is that due to the American (and possibly very American) culture of getting both physical and psychological distance from extended (and sometimes nuclear) family, a family’s culture may not be handed down for generations. Americans live in a very “choose your own culture” culture, and the prof seems very unwilling to accept that as an answer.

When Grandmother is no longer “over the river and through the woods,” but “that person we see every 5 years or so, when it’s mom’s turn to have us at Christmas and she and Grandmother weren’t at each other’s throats - plus, after Dad converted, all the holiday things changed” families lose the traditional, old country, passed on for centuries types of cultural practices.

For a lot of us, our cultural traditions didn’t come from our parents and their parents and their parents, it came from the people next door, or school, or something cool we saw on TV. (I suppose that could be her answer, “My family watches TV at night, after dinner. We emulate everything we see. My grandmother used to vacuum in pearls, because June Cleaver did. She even has their aluminum Christmas Tree. My mother dressed like and acted like Alexis Carrington Colby. She can throw water at you like the best of them - and you should see her nails. Just like Catherine Willows, I’m working my way through school as a stripper.”)

I just can’t believe that a graduate school prof would give such an idiot assignment. It sounds like something a well meaning, but misguided fourth grade teacher would do.

[Caridwen]

Why don’t you ask a family friend?

Sometimes we get so used to doing things that we think it’s the norm.

Or, what kinds of things do your friends do that your family doesn’t or does differently?

I just can’t believe that a graduate school prof would give such an idiot assignment. It sounds like something a well meaning, but misguided fourth grade teacher would do.

I’ll say. Psych/sociology courses drove me up the wall for that reason. I’m a ‘just the facts’ kinda girl. I’m not putting psychology down at all! But I had a hard time with stuff like this.

[burundi]

[Hijack] Septima, can you elaborate on this?

Have family stories about the “little gray man”, or something similar, who lives in the attic?

Because that sounds creepy as hell! [/end hijack]

[Dangerosa]

@burundi

[Hijack] Septima, can you elaborate on this?

Because that sounds creepy as hell! [/end hijack]

Don’t know what Septima was talking about, but we have invisible elephants that live in the basement. They keep the monsters away.

[sinjin]

@amarinth

(I suppose that could be her answer, "My family watches TV at night, after dinner. We emulate everything we see. My grandmother used to vacuum in pearls, because June Cleaver did. She even has their aluminum Christmas Tree. My mother dressed like and acted like Alexis Carrington Colby.)

Hehehehe, this is so funny, my mother (her grandmother) used to dress all five of us kids for dinner and she would wear a dress, heels, stockings and pearls…to eat dinner in the kitchen (no dining room in chez Sin) with my Dad, the construction worker, in his T-shirt and khakis. And it seemed so normal at the time :smack: . We, sinkkid’s parental units, were way more like the parents on Family Ties

So, there you go, we have TV culture!!! Too bad we didn’t get BBC in the 70’s and 80’s.

BTW Sinkid’s going to post later as a guest, she’s come up with enough bs to write the paper, and makes it all sound almost plausible.

Thanks for the responses.

PS: we hate the cold

[Thorium_Indium_Potassium]

So yeah, we ain’t got no culture. Well, we really do have lots of culture, it’s just not one I would consider as something that’s been handed down from generation to generation. My grandparents surely didn’t wear Hawaiian shirts and decorate palm trees for Christmas.

The problem with the assignment was that a chunk of the paper was to “examine the historical antecedents that still covertly influence thought, feelings, and behavior in your family.”

But luckily, I’m an amazing bullshitter, er, examiner of my life, and found some stuff in a few books that actually kind of worked. Just for fun, here’s what I found:

1. Irish - are moralistic and are predominantly Catholic. While my parents didn’t raise us with any religion and I didn’t step foot in a church other than to be in extended families weddings, I became a Catholic much to their chagrin. So maybe if my family had been from somewhere else, I would have been more comfortable with another religion. Oh and we did celebrate our own quasi-Christmas every year complete with giving gifts and hanging stockings. That came from somewhere…

I also found that humor plays a role in the Irish lifestyle and found this quote, “humor can at times block family members’ closeness, leaving them emotionally isolated from one another”. While this isn’t true for our immediate family, it is in how we interact with our extended family.

2. Scandinavian - I found that this quote: “[t]heir determination can become stubbornness, and even defiance, as they stand their ground…” which can certainly be used to describe my mother and I.

3. French/Anglo-Saxon - are very autonomous, etc.

So it worked. The paper is written. Hopefully I’ll get a decent grade. The rest of the assignment was fine because it was more an examination of your current culture and what experiences shaped world view and such, which was fine.

Oh, and I did attempt to argue with the professor. I asked point blank “how many generations does my family need to be in the US before I can be considered American and not a European mutt that just happens to live in the US?” and I also pointed out that if we were doing this assignment anywhere else in the world, I would be writing about the American culture, not my European muttage. But alas, she told me I had to do what she told me to do and not wanting to cause any more waves than I already have in my program, I did the assignment.

One last thing - don’t be confused by my screenname. I married a Spaniard, so that’s where the Senora comes from

[Maastricht]

I was thinking that marketing studies often yield an amazing accurate view of what constitutes modern culture.
Culture defined as “qaint family customs from Ye Olden European Country X” constitute a small part of what we nowadays choose to read, wear, vote, watch, do, and buy. And precisely those are extensively researched in marketing studies. Those are individual choices, but they run in families, although they change much more rapidly then things like Christmas Pudding and menora’s with Chanukka.

For instance, my family had the typical intellectual and atheistical traditions of using Sunday morning not to go to church, but to listen to classical music. We also tended to look down on fun stuff on TV, and entertainment in general. Except for theatre and literature. Sports were for dumb jocks. Except for walking. On Sunday, in the woods.

[GorillaMan]

Hi, SenoraGO, and too bad the paper is now written!

“historical antecedents” means far more than ancestory. Cambridge is wonderfully ambiguous: someone or something existing or happening before, especially as the cause or origin of something existing or happening later.

I also pointed out that if we were doing this assignment anywhere else in the world, I would be writing about the American culture, not my European muttage

Good for you

[susan]

“examine the historical antecedents that still covertly influence thought, feelings, and behavior in your family.”

So what’s the religious heritage in your family, and how does that influence you? To give a very broad example, if you come from a religious background that includes decorating any kind of tree and giving gifts at Christmas, you probably have a response to seeing the mall decorated in December. It may be positive and it may be negative, but it will be different from mine as an American Jew. Never, ever will you see on my lawn a sign that says “Jesus is the Reason for the Season,” NOR will you see Christmas decorations when I am not married to a person from a Christian tradition. My experience of Christmas is “American,” but it’s not the same as yours because we come from different American historical and cultural traditions.

That’s bull. I would be screwed too. I don’t follow any traditions that have been handed down from the old county, where ever that may be. I think the prof is being an ass and somewhat elitist to assume that everybody has these traditions. What the hell are they thinking? Sheeesss, IF I where able to think about something I sure couldn’t right a paper about it. Perhaps a paragraph.

For the reason above, and in my earlier post, I agree that you would be screwed, but not because you have no culture. You would be screwed because you seem to assume that because your traditions don’t seem special to you, you have no traditions that relate to your cultural history. Maybe what the hell the professor is thinking is that students from primarily majority culture backgrounds somehow think that they have no culture, and that whatever their culture is is “normal,” and that they are genuine Americans while everyone with different traditions is exotic or other.

[Thorium_Indium_Potassium]

@GorillaMan

“historical antecedents” means far more than ancestory. Cambridge is wonderfully ambiguous: someone or something existing or happening before, especially as the cause or origin of something existing or happening later.

Normally I’d agree with you, but the professor described it in class exactly as looking at your ancestory and even gave us the book to make photocopies from where I got all the quotes from my post. I’ve gone against the grain with her before and I was not rewarded kindly.

[GorillaMan]

One more point…the way religion has pervaded through this thread is an American trait, not a European one.

[GorillaMan]

@SenoraGO

Normally I’d agree with you, but the professor described it in class exactly as looking at your ancestory and even gave us the book to make photocopies from where I got all the quotes from my post. I’ve gone against the grain with her before and I was not rewarded kindly.

It’s very disappointing that she doesn’t do her job properly.