As an outgrowth of this thread, which was an outgrowth of another thread (but I digress), I would like to know how people on this board would describe their culture, and if they can further clarify whether:
This is the generally the culture of the area where you currently live;
This is the culture you grew up with; and
This is the culture of the geography you grew up in.
I’ll go first: I’d describe my culture as generic American, of the effete book-reading, SDMB-haunting Northeastern liberal subtype. It’s generally the same culture as that of the area where I live (Eastern Massachusetts), though its resemblance to other people’s culture depends to some extent on their subtype. I would say it’s the culture I grew up with, through the influence of the family, and less that of the geography I grew up in, which varied wildly over the years.
I grew up in working-class Chicago, but was raised in a fairly ethnic Italian household - which is not entirely two different things. Despite the focus on violence in Mafia movies and TV shows, some of them give a pretty accurate picture of working-class Italian families.
I would say I’m culturally white-bread generic suburban American these days, with a slight tendency to the liberal subculture. While I grew up in a very conservative working-class family, I rebelled and did a little unintentional social-climbing and now I describe myself as your basic new-age, tree-hugging, veggie-scarfing hippie chick cleverly disguised as a soccer mom.
White southern (Bible Belt) Protestant. Suburban. Conservative. Professional class (almost every male on my close family tree was a doctor), with emphasis on education.
It’s how I grew up and influenced my current choice of where to settle down.
Um, generic rural/Suburban liberal American, who is concerned with education, and basic rights for all. My family, and the area is sort of culturally Catholic. The culture I grew up in, and with, is more moderate leaning than I am though. I still live in the same part of the country, so the culture I grew up with, is basically the same as the one I live in now.
French-Canadian, as a result of family and geography. Suburban working/professional class (the family’s quite a mix), emphasis on family and good eating, very liberal and opinionated and expressive about politics, hockey, and sex. Catholic because we’re supposed to be, but that just means we pray to Saint Anthony when we lose things. I’m not sure how to really describe French-Canadian culture, I just know I’m it.
Midwestern Intelligentisa–meaning economically conservative, socially liberal, book-reading, ethnic-cuisine-eating, NPR-listening, PBS-watching, foreign-film-tolerating, advanced-degree-earning, big-city-loathing WASPs. My grandparents are much more plebeian and my parents sort of clawed their way into this bracket, but still have a lot of vestiges of where they came from–for example, they’re seriously freaked out that I’m 26 and still not married. I only freak out about it when I have PMS.
Semi-generic Southern Californian, with an emphasis on Southern. Most of my family is from the South, and has been there since Jamestown. Suburban professional (education) since a lot of us are teachers, including both parents. Recovering Republican. This means that anything north of Virginia and east of Indiana is “Enemy Territory.”
Midwest-girl-who-doesn’t-fit-in. My local culture is country music-listening, culture-disdaining, anti-intellectual, conservative Christian which worships at the altar of high school football. I’m a liberal athiest who adores museums and live theater and has never attended a high school sprting event as an adult.
I do have a bit of the accent of the locals which can best be described as somewhat of a mixture of Southern and Midwest with a hint of German. (My grandmother still says “milch cow”.) “Whale” and “well” rhyme here. “Dish” and “wish” are said with a long “e”. (I make a concerted effort to avoid these pronunciations.)
Our phone book lists about ten pages of churches (the majority of which are not connected with any denomination) and only 1/3 a page of clubs or bars.
There is massive brain-drain because there are no jobs other than in a factory or prison for a 65 mile radius. The local university branch campus is really not much better than a diploma mill, filled with students impatient with the idea that they should actually have to read something in order to pass the test. (Most people around here seem to read/write at about a sixth-grade level. The only bookstore which has survived is the Christian Bookstore which carries very few books.)
I’m considered an odd-ball, if not an outright elitist. (I was introduced to my husband through a blind date, set up by a woman who described him as “Weird like you.” Meaning, of course, that he read.) My home library always draws astounded (and actually, somewhat pitying) stares. For years, co-workers have been trying to “rescue” us from our quiet lives. Surely the only reason that we stay at home reading is because we either have no other options or are ignorant of the joys involved in making a repetitious circuit of the local bars. When I talk about working in the museum with them, I always get a comment like, “That’s the right place for ya!” like it’s a padded room for weirdos like me.
But this is my home. I grew up here. When Hubby and I moved away for a brief period of time, I felt all out-of-sorts. The people didn’t say, “Hello!” when they passed you on the sidewalk (and they gave me odd looks when I did.) My mailman didn’t know me and certainly didn’t seem interested in getting to know me. (How do people in other parts of the country get their mis-addressed mail delivered to them if they don’t know their postal carrier?) Nobody called me “honey” except for my husband. Despite the fact that the place we moved had bookstores galore and we had the opprotunity to see plays and opera, I was relieved when we moved back. I don’t fit in, but I know these people.
American and Jewish. It is most definitely not the culture of where I live now (scotland). I didn’t anticipate the importance of culture before I arrived. I often feel very out of place, from not understanding the accents or words of people I talk to, to not knowing what to do in social situations. It’s been an interesting experience so far.
I’d describe my culture as white homogenized American. I think a lot of American “culture” is the same across the geographic board, since the 1960s, differing more by when you grew up than where. I’m a child of the '70s and '80s, so I grew up with Stretch Armstrong and Captain Kangaroo. But eveyone watches the same TV and listens to much the same music (differing, again, by genre, not by geography) and understands the same cultural referents.
That said, I was born and raised in Montana, and although I was a “townie” I think I have more understanding of country living and philosophy than most people. I was raised as, and remain, a fiscally conservative, socially moderate person of the “you mind your own business and I’ll mind mine” variety. Love to read, love the outdoors, but, yes, listen to country music. Not being elitist is a point of pride. Being from Montana is a point of pride.
Now I live in a college town in the South, and it’s a lot more lefty-liberal than where I grew up, just because it is a college town. That’s not my culture. I wouldn’t describe the culture here as “Southern” – I seem to meet more people who moved here than I do people who are actually from here – but, to the extent it is, “Southern” isn’t my culture, either.
People who seem to “know where I come from” both geographically and philosophically are people from small Western towns – Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Alberta, and parts of British Columbia. But I find I have more in common with folks with a rural life or upbringing than I do with folks with an urban life or upbringing, regardless of geography.
I grew up in Inside the Beltway, to Yankee parents (of very different social classes and thus different cultures), one of whom was in Ivory Tower culture as well. I have since moved to Yankee-land, and shifted from Ivory Tower to Techno-Nerd.
The overall effect is probably something like “American East Coast Professional Class”, subtype “Smug intellectual”.
Working class white Australian with a bent towards the conservative side of politics.
I grew up in a beach town full of white working class people, and most of my classmates were surfer types. That town has now been gentrified and I can barely afford to walk down the street there, though back in the day it was poor enough that there were rumours of some classmates having to eat pet food.
Currently I’m living in the Sydney suburb of Belmore. This was traditionally a working class white area, smack bang in the middle of the suburban sprawl. These days, white people are one of many minorities there (I don’t think there’s a dominant group). It’s in the most Islamic area in the country with a lot of Lebanese Muslim migrants, but there is also a huge Vietnamese population as well as a lot of Greeks. In the last few years, we’re getting large numbers of north Africans. It’s still primarily working class and a safe Labor party seat, although it’s starting to get expensive. All in all I like Belmore.
This is hard for me to answer. I grew up in a Southern Ontario village (<2000 pop.) with the children of farmers and miners of limestone and gypsum. My family were generic WASPs from English, Scottish and Welsh ancestry. None had any post-secondary education. None were religious or politically inclined. After I’d been to the big city, I moved there at the first opportunity, after I realized the anti-intellectual bent of the people in my town. I’ve lived in cities ever since.
That was then; now I’m transplanted to the deep South, where there was definitely culture shock when I arrived. I work with degreed professionals. My wife is also one. However, I live with those stereotypical characters you read about. I’m here to tell ya that they exist, and are multiplying. Extremely anti-intellectual, hardcore fundie, educationally impoverished, never-been-anywhere-never-done-anything-but-know-everything rednecks. The kind of place where, when the plumber sees your three thousand books, says, “Hoo-ee, that’s a lotta movies, ain’t it?” “What? They’re books? Have you really read all of 'em?” My wife and I seem like aliens to these folks, and vice versa, so we pretty much leave each other alone, where possible. There are many aspects of Southern culture that make my wife cringe, and she was born here! On the flip side, there are so many other things about living down here that make my life worthwhile, we’re staying. But you won’t find us in the saw-saw patch.
I grew up in suburban Virginia, but we had this old south vibe running through it. My family is an FFV (First Family of Virginia, as if you had to ask). I’m kind of liberal geek with a healthy dash of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Hybrid Indian-Western. Grew up first in northern Quebec, French-Canadian culture. Left for upper middle-class liberal intelligentsia stronghold in Taxachusetts when I was 12. Have bounced all over the US with a 3 year sojourn in Quebec since then and parents dragged us all over the place before I left for college.
I’d say I’m about 60-40 Indian/Western in outlook and values. Quebec didn’t leave a single mark on me, no doubt because most of the populace were racist and ostracised anyone who wasn’t white, and I have about 5 good memories of growing up in that hellhole. I have a Canadian passport that I never use and 1 degree from a Canadian university. That’s about all the evidence that exists about my past in said country and province.
I like to call myself a Boston Brahmin. I’m definitely a New Englander, though California sure does take easy.
I’m East Coast ultrawasp, though an uknown percent of me is (American) Indian. Makes me the exotic at the yacht club. Watching The Good Shepherd was especially eerie when I saw the US flag colored needlepoint hanging on the wall in the background. Those haunt me to this day. My mother’s idea of a joke on my father was to argue him into naming me so that my initials are the same as the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Hmm. That’s a tough one. My ancestors were German and my mom does make some Pennsylvania German food and use a few P German expressions. My great-grandparents and grandparents were farmers, manual laborers and quasi-white-collar workers but my father was white-collar and we went to what are considered excellent colleges. My parents moved away from where they grew up so I had no extended family culture. I grew up in a suburb where people feared the City but our family visited the City regularly. People also knew the natives and outsiders and we were outsiders. I grew up in New York State but with no sense of being a Yankee.
So, I guess American, although I am very un-patriotic. Man, no wonder life is so unsettling.
American Russian Jew. Though when I say I’m American I mean I grew up in Brooklyn and I usually don’t pronounce any "R"s.
My family is a bunch conservatives, but they aren’t religious. They mostly believe that everyone should be able to make it on their own without government help.
Right now I’m just a nerdy liberal. When I grow up and get a J.D. I’ll be an intellectual liberal.
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