What are the differences between black and white America?

Great Debates
21

Blacks and whites often enjoy different food. Blacks and whites often wear different styles of clothing. Blacks and whites often listen to different kinds of music. Blacks and whites in America have pretty distinct cultures, from what I can see.

Is this thread about whether we think there are differences between us? Or is it actually about what those differences are? Because so far all I see is a bunch of people saying “there’s no distinct black culture!” and a bunch of other people saying “yes there is!”

Of course black culture exists in America, distinct from white culture. The fact that some whites like “black” music and some blacks like “white” literature doesn’t change that fact, any more than an American eating sushi invalidates Japanese culture.

22

[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
That’s a perfect example of the tenuous validity of the idea of a black culture. Besides it being used to refer to transient pop-cultural fads, black culture is often used to refer to a collection of American pathologies that are especially prevalent amongst blacks.
[/QUOTE]

I agree that people often attribute things to culture which are not products of culture, and it’s annoying, particularly when you suspect that there are some unsavory motivations behind that behavior.

The answer to that is not denying the existence of cultural differences between white and black Americans, though.

23

Two Letters: O.J.

24

[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
Of course, a culture can’t be defined by pathologies, or else they wouldn’t be considered pathologies.
[/quote]
Nonsense, cultural traits can certainly be pathologies. Female genital mutilation is an aspect of some African cultures, and it is certainly pathological. Suttee was pathological, and it was certainly part of Indian culture prior to the British conquest.

Things don’t have to be unique to a culture to be part of it. I’m Lutheran. Hot dish is part of my culture. Certainly other cultures eat hot dish. Doesn’t mean I don’t.

That does not explain the variance. Out-of-wedlock births are more common for blacks than for whites at all class levels.Among college-educated women, the rate of out-of-wedlock childbearing for blacks is ten times higher than for whites.

Regards,
Shodan

25

[QUOTE=An Arky]
It definitely depends on where you live. I’m white southerner, from a small town, and I find that there seem to be a lot of cultural commonalities between me and many of the black folks around here (DC area), that being southern culture, food, sense of humor and laidbackedness, whereas the generic northerner suburban types that predominate the white population here seem more foreign, or “other” to me than the black folks. If I still lived in Arkansas, I would never have known that.
[/QUOTE]

This has been my experience as well, which is why I’m not quite ready to jump on the bandwagon that says there’s a huge gulf between the two cultures.

Has anyone actually said that there is no black culture at all?

I think we do see a fairly large gap in entertainment. As for food, lots of stereotypically black foods were also eaten by poor southern whites. Is soul food part of black culture, Poor southern culture? Is urban culture interchangable with black culture?

It’s about both. Whether you feel that there isn’t a distinct culture, or you feel that there is, and you feel that you have examples of that culture, then share it.

26

For a frewheeling dissertation on the concept of “culture”, see here:
http://www.squeakywheelsblog.com/culture

27

[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
Delphica, wouldn’t a more meaningful reading of that situation be that hockey fandom is a niche that is currently disproportionately white? Because it’s not the case that hockey is a nationally popular sport that for some reason only blacks aren’t into.
[/QUOTE]

Oh wait, the other shoe just dropped for me (nearly 12 hours later, brilliant really). Were you going more for the notion that a culture usually isn’t defined by not doing something? Hmmm, an aspect of Jewish culture is not eating pork, but there’s an intention, a reason, a deliberate effort not to eat pork. On the other hand, black people probably didn’t get together and decide “okay, here’s the plan, we’re not going to watch hockey.”

28

[QUOTE=Mosier]
Blacks and whites often enjoy different food. Blacks and whites often wear different styles of clothing. Blacks and whites often listen to different kinds of music. Blacks and whites in America have pretty distinct cultures, from what I can see.
[/QUOTE]
I think part of the problem with the dicussion is the false dichotomy between balck and white cultures as though they were the onlt two options. There are a lot of different cultural groups in the U.S. and many of them will have strong intersections with race without necessarily being true of some monolithic “Race” Culture.

Most white immigrant waves have left behind residual cultures in the places where they bunched up. Boston’s Back Bay, the transplanted Southerners living in the rust belt, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, the Poles of suburban Detroit, Buffalo, and Chicago (with a few outliers in Pittsburgh), the various “Little Italy” neighborhoods. Similarly, I suspect that blacks have more than a single cultural group into which they can be pegged. Overall, a larger number of whites will have become members of a “suburban” (for lack of a better term) culture that is not bound by ethnicity or employment, although it is still going to take on different flavors depending on whether they live in suburban New York, suburban Los Angeles, suburban Chicago, suburban Dallas, or suburban Seattle.

So any discussion of “white” or “black” culture has to identify, (in some ways artifcially), ways that the very large number of white (sub)cultures are more like each other and less like the several distinct black (sub)cultures–with the potential risk of misidentifying a geographic culture as one identified by race when the reality is that it only happens that the person doing the sorting happens to know only people of a particular race by their geography.

29

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Out-of-wedlock births are more common for blacks than for whites at all class levels.Among college-educated women, the rate of out-of-wedlock childbearing for blacks is ten times higher than for whites.
[/QUOTE]

Your link didn’t work for me. But even if that statistic is true, it doesn’t address the issue of the socio-economic class difference between college educated whites and blacks.

30

[QUOTE=delphica]
Were you going more for the notion that a culture usually isn’t defined by not doing something?
[/QUOTE]
No, not doing something could be an aspect of a culture, even if it isn’t deliberate, I guess. I was just saying that hockey isn’t an example of a difference between white and black America, since overall hockey isn’t that popular with whites either. If most white people liked hockey and most blacks didn’t, that’d be something else. Blacks and whites still aren’t perfectly socially integrated, so certain phenomena aren’t going to distribute evenly amongst both groups, but there’s still not a wide enough gap to consider us having “very different cultures”.

31

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
So any discussion of “white” or “black” culture has to identify, (in some ways artifcially), ways that the very large number of white (sub)cultures are more like each other and less like the several distinct black (sub)cultures–with the potential risk of misidentifying a geographic culture as one identified by race when the reality is that it only happens that the person doing the sorting happens to know only people of a particular race by their geography.
[/QUOTE]

In the discussion that gave rise to this one, the subject was specifically about movie-going behavior. I offered that blacks and whites, as groups, have different preferences when it comes to watching movies. Cultural factors I suspect are largely at play.

When making this statement, I fail to see why it is necessary to talk about subcultures and sub-subcultures and point out the various ways in which white people are more alike each other and less like the black subcultures. Not only does this add a whole bunch of extra information that doesn’t really advance the discussion, but it needlessly complicates the basics of the idea being communicated. Generalizations are applied all the time to people, whether it be in regards to nationality, religion, class, or some other thing. Is ethnicity really all that different?

As a middle-class black person who was born and raised in integrated environments in the South, I’ve been around enough white and black people of various SES strata to know that while there are not vast chasms of dissimilarity separating the two groups, there are differences that are appreciable. Different ways of speaking, styles of self-expression, tastes in clothes, forms of celebration, food, names, art and music appreciation…a lot of things.

Sure, some of these observations may be confounded by class and regional derivation, but many are not. Religious customs are a good example. Christianity is prevalent among both whites and blacks, but a service at a black church generally speaking is not the same experience as a white one. Anyone who says otherwise is probably not qualified to speak on the subject.

There may not be some overarching commonality that puts whites uniformly in one pile and blacks in another. But I don’t think that means we can’t recognize and talk about the ways in which blacks (as a group) differ from what is commonly called the “mainstream”.

I think of it this way: African-Americans spent centuries in this country socially marginalized from the mainstream, isolated with only each other to turn to, with only bits and pieces from lost tribes and families to remind them of their pre-American past. It would have been impossible for them to have walked away from that isolation without having some kind of distinct cultural package Perhaps a hundred years from now, assimilation will have made these differences neglible, but not enough time has past for that to be the case now.

32

[QUOTE=you with the face]
When making this statement, I fail to see why it is necessary to talk about subcultures and sub-subcultures and point out the various ways in which white people are more alike each other and less like the black subcultures. Not only does this add a whole bunch of extra information that doesn’t really advance the discussion, but it needlessly complicates the basics of the idea being communicated. Generalizations are applied all the time to people, whether it be in regards to nationality, religion, class, or some other thing. Is ethnicity really all that different?
[/QUOTE]
So, basically, you are saying you’re all alike?

However the question originated, having landed in this thread, it was not necessarily confined by the same constraints as the other thread. It was the broader application that it appeared to me was being discussed in this thread that I addressed.

However, at your urging I am willing to ignore separate subcultures within the black population. I would still, however, find no strong evidence for a “white” culture. I think your argument goes a long way to establishing that of the many separate cultures found in the U.S., the black population, by and large, can find identity within one strong cultural trend. I do not see the same thing happening in the white population. The idea that Donald Trump, a mechanic or farmhand from Alabama with a high school education, and I share much in the way of preferred foods, music, entertainment, faith, sports, art, or politics is sufficiently unlikely as to be ludicrous. From that perspective, I would say that the black culture is one of the several cultures of the United States, but any comparisons should be limited to black compared to non-black or of black compared to a specific other group–and “white” is too large and nebulous to invite genuine comparison.

33

[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
No, not doing something could be an aspect of a culture, even if it isn’t deliberate, I guess. I was just saying that hockey isn’t an example of a difference between white and black America, since overall hockey isn’t that popular with whites either. If most white people liked hockey and most blacks didn’t, that’d be something else. Blacks and whites still aren’t perfectly socially integrated, so certain phenomena aren’t going to distribute evenly amongst both groups, but there’s still not a wide enough gap to consider us having “very different cultures”.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, I agree they aren’t “very different.” I guess that is what is intriguing to me about the topic, that when you look at people who are very much the same, the differences become interesting because they appear isolated in many ways.

In truth, my own pet topic is class (I have issues, so this is like my weird hobby). So I’m always looking at class and considering its impact. And then once in a while, after I’ve filtered through the class issues, in my own armchair sociologist way, race will come up in areas that I didn’t expect. I do like how you summed up the fact that blacks and whites still aren’t perfectly socially integrated, that helps me see how groups can be similar in geography, SES and other class factors and yet still demonstrate some social differences. It’s not as if I was unaware that blacks and whites aren’t completely integrated, but it puts it in a clearer context for me in terms of this conversation.

34

“White culture” … Tom is ight here. That is a non-entity other than by defining it as the median of a variety of cultures, or defining it as the median of American cultural attributes.

“Black culture” … I think that many would want to use urban Black as the spokesmodel for that but I wonder how accurate that is. Obviously any White who deigns to comment on what Black culture is, is stating a view from stereotypes or from biased samplings, or from statistics.

That said, can you compare urban Black culture, often poor, to mainstream American culture? Sure. Culture means, among other things, music and food and speech and where you socialize and how. Blacks are more likely to have a Blackcent and to speak with that Black dialect (?AAVE?) that has been the subject of some past threads. More likely to use the barbershop as a meaningful place for social dialogue. More likely to listen to hip-hop. Less likely to have listened to Barry Manilow. Less likely to have a present and involved father figure in the house and more likely to have strong grandmothers involved. More likely to use corporeal punishment and to have little tolerance for disrespect from their children. Blacks are more likely to have a Southern influence and an urban influence than the median American, even if they were born and raised in Nothern surburbia. These influences reflect in traditional foods of the culture vs that mythical median American. More likely to understand what ash is and to have a differnt set of habits for hair care. I think that Black churches are different and that they play a different role for many Blacks than churches play for the median American.

And all that said no more different from the mythical median mainstream American culture than any other subgroup: Jewish-American; Italian-American; Chinese-American; etc. Just more easily identified as belonging to the cultural group.

35

[QUOTE=Omega Glory]

Has anyone actually said that there is no black culture at all?
[/quote]

In the Cafe thread that inspired this thread, pizzabrat’s response to this post:

as being “absolutely wrong” communicates the idea that there is no black or white culture. And I’ve heard the idea expressed by other posters–generally black posters. UrbanChic was one of these posters.

On the other hand, I’ve rarely heard white posters deny the existence of black culture, while they seem reluctant to acknowledge their own separate culture.

It may be one of those things that only the “other” guy can notice. Or, perhaps the black people who don’t see big cultural gulfs are fully assimilated into mainstream society and/or live in an area where black people do not inhabit different worlds. Personally, I’ve always lived in areas with heavy black concentrations (grew up in Atlanta, did stints in Newark, NJ and Miami, FL) so I’ve never NOT seen evidence of black culture. As a child who experienced the bussing process, I regularly straddled white and black worlds, and it was hard not to draw contrasts between white friends and black friends, white teachers and black teachers, and white parents and black parents.

While class differences certainly play a part, it can’t explain everything. Most blacks are middle class and they don’t all live in urban environments. And yet it’s not like they turn “white” when they get a little money and move out of the city. They continue to listen to music that speaks to them, watch movies featuring actors that look like them, go to worship services with specific styles, and partake in different kinds of social environments. They even party in different ways. Compare a “white” party and a “black” party and you will not see two similar kinds of celebrations. One will emphasize good alcoholic beverages and lively small talk. The other will emphasize great music and dancing. In general, of course. I’m sure there are numerous instances of people breaking these stereotypes, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t based on truth.

In fact, some people cling so much to black culture (drawn along your subculture of choice) that they choose to go to a historically black college, live in predominately black neighborhoods, and never really interact with people who are not like them–in doing so becoming just as parochial as a white guy out in Idaho somewhere. I’ve met plenty of people like this through my life.

36

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Your link didn’t work for me. But even if that statistic is true, it doesn’t address the issue of the socio-economic class difference between college educated whites and blacks.
[/QUOte]
Here is the corrected link. But I rather doubt that class differences between college educated blacks and whites is a factor of ten. Indeed, the ROI for university education is much higher for blacks than for whites, relative to others of their race.

Certainly there is an overlap between the “culture of poverty” and black culture, given that blacks are disproportionately among the poor in the US. And illegitimate birth is a strong predictor of long-term poverty. In other words, some of the participation in “the culture of poverty” for blacks and whites is created by out-of-wedlock birth rates.

But even for those who are not poor, illegitimate births are higher for blacks than for whites. So it is incorrect to assume that the wide disparity in the out-of-wedlock birth rates is due to blacks being disproportionately poor, or because higher education does not create as large a class distinction for blacks as it does for whites.

Regards,
Shodan

37

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
However, at your urging I am willing to ignore separate subcultures within the black population. I would still, however, find no strong evidence for a “white” culture.
[/quote]

But I’m not urging you to ignore anything. All I’m saying that there’s nothing inaccurate or lazy about talking about black culture (or to be more precise, African American culture) that exists irrespective of SES and regional derivation.

There may not be one defineable white culture, but I don’t think it’s necessary for there to one before we talk about the differences between blacks and whites in a generalized way.

38

[QUOTE=monstro]
In the Cafe thread that inspired this thread, pizzabrat’s response to this post:

as being “absolutely wrong” communicates the idea that there is no black or white culture. And I’ve heard the idea expressed by other posters–generally black posters. UrbanChic was one of these posters.
[/QUOTE]

I believed that his sticking point was **carterba’s ** assertation that the cultures were very different. Not that there weren’t some things found in white America, whatever that is (or non black America) that were over or underrepresented in black America. I don’t remember anything **UrbanChic ** said, but I’ll take you at your word.

Maybe that is it. I remember a thread on gay culture where a lot of the gays said it wasn’t nearly as cohesive as some on the outside seemed to believe. A lot of times when I hear people talking about black culture, they’re contrasting the behaviors and preferences of inner city or first generation suburban blacks to the behaviors and preferences of solidly middle to upper middle class suburban whites. As I said in my other post, the blacks and whites who’ve been in this area for decades seem to have more in common than not. Having never lived in a majority black area I wasn’t prepared to agree with the original post that sparked this thread.

39

Shodan the incidence of out-of-wedlock births has been rising sharply in just about every American ethnic group in the last few decades. Why do you think this is a black thing simply because blacks have a headstart on a nation-wide trend?

Think of this way: if having children out of wedlock is a black thing that other groups are resistance to, then a reasonable assumption would be that over time, as the effects of assimilation dilute out the habits of “black culture”, the incidence of OOW births among blacks would decrease. Assimilation has this effect on other cultural traits, so why would this supposed trait of OOW births be any different?

And yet its not decreasing. It’s increasing. Not just in blacks, but in whites and Hispanics, too.

That suggests something more is going on. Disportionate poverty may have something to do with why we see more of ithis in blacks. Disproportionate incarceration rates and disproportionate levels of education between males and females may also play a role. Point is, calling it a black thing is short-sighted.

40

What are the differences between black and white America?

1+ for the differences in worship. Black culture has the better music by far. Although it seems to me African American church goers spent an inordinate amount of time in their churches.

It seems to me overall though that when on the same economic footing we’re not all that different. I’ve lived in Maryland since the 80’s and have worked with African Americans pretty much my entire career.

When there’s economic disparity though which is highly prevalent where I live there’s a big difference, in the schools for instance. My son attends a high school that’s probably 75 or 80% African American and it’s been going down hill over the last 15 years or so. The last year has seen a big increase in violence, there’s been a shooting not at the school but at the mall that was directly related to the fighting at school which was all among African American kids from different neighborhoods all of which are subsidized housing.

By the numbers derived from standardized testing there’s little interest shown by the majority in getting an education. The school’s recently undergone zero basing most of the teaching staff has been replaced, as if it was their fault. But that’s a different topic, perhaps.