I have just the right amount of culture. More than hillbillies, and less than flatlanders.
Culture? Brewer’s yeast, I guess. Never lived outside of Indiana, and I sound that way. Liberal. I’ve been called intellectual, but I’m uncomfortable calling myself that. I’m a big enough man to startle some people, but I’m kind and gentle.
My favorite baseball team is the current world champion, and my football team is going to this year’s Superb Owl, but I don’t make a big deal about it. I never learned how to gloat.
Yeah, I know you hate us, anu-la, you point it out at basically every occasion. I’ve never intervened, because in fact I do believe you when you say that you were ostracized when you were living in Saguenay (which, incidentally, is not “Northern Quebec”: Northern Quebec, to me, is the area around the James, Hudson and Ungava bays). The Saguenay is a place that’s quite ethnically and culturally homogeneous, so I’m ready to consider the possibility that many people around there (especially rural folks) aren’t too accepting of immigrants. (This said, I’ve never actually been there, and I wish there was someone from Saguenay on this board but unfortunately there isn’t.)
However, I’m kind of getting bored with my culture getting smeared with the brush of xenophobia and racism – which is something that I just don’t see in any unusual amounts, but then again I’ve always lived in cities --, so if you don’t mind, I’d like you to be careful with your comments and stop painting with such a wide brush. And actually, I’m kind of curious to know, not only how you and your family were treated when you lived there, but also how you and your family acted towards the locals. Because this, and the fact that there was certainly a cultural difference between you and them, does have an influence on how they acted towards you.
I guess you may reply in this thread if you want, it does stay in line with Sal’s original question. Or if you want to take it to the Pit, you may, and I will follow you there.
Now, this said, what culture do I consider myself to be part of? Well, I think it’s clear that my culture is urban Quebec’s culture (which I consider to be distinct from “French-Canadian” culture: to me, French-Canadian culture is the culture of the francophones and descendents of francophones in the rest of Canada and in the US). I recognize the people around me in Antigen’s description, but I am personally “geekier” and more shy than that. And I’m an atheist, none of that calling myself Catholic on surveys but going to church only once a year for me. (I nevertheless do have a sweet spot in my heart for the Catholic church, since it is still part of my culture.)
I’ve moved to Sherbrooke (in the Eastern Townships in southern Quebec) a few weeks ago, so I haven’t immersed myself in the culture that much yet, but what’s already clear is that Sherbrooke is above all a university town. So what you find here is the young, urban, intellectual and very liberal part of Quebec culture. I kind of fit in this mold, except, as I’ve already said, for the fact that I’m kind of geekier and less loud than the people around me. Antigen couldn’t describe what she called French-Canadian culture, so I’ll make an attempt: it’s an unmistakeably North American culture, except more communautarian and probably more protectionist than the cultures of the rest of Canada and of the US. And as Antigen said, we’re quite opinionated: Canadians are known for being very gentle, soft-spoken and tactful, while Quebecers, in my opinion and experience, are more likely to say what’s on their mind. We also have (the urbanites, at least) an European influence that you may not necessarily find in the rest of North America. (Although I’ve heard on this board the liberal elites of New England being described as influenced by Europe.)
Previously I lived in Gatineau, in Southwestern Quebec and just north of Ottawa, Ontario. Most people there work in the federal public service, so they are a little different, although recognizable as belonging to Quebec culture. Studying in Ottawa I met anglophones from the rest of the country, as well as Franco-Ontarians. Franco-Ontarians (these are mostly who I mean when I say “French-Canadians”) are a little more Catholic and conservative than us, in my experience, and their status as a threatened minority also influences their culture. Anglophones are different from francophone Quebecers, and I alluded to some of those differences earlier. Among other things, I believe they tend to be more individualistic.
Southwestern-American (that would be Arizona) of Franco-Italian ethnicity, subject to the prevailing local belief that just about anything can be solved by giving or getting a good ass-kicking. Former Catholic, former New Yorker, former Protestant, former resident of France, former McGill student/auditor, former liberal pot-smoking hippy (sorry for the redundancy), rabid capitalist, seriously considering conversion to Judaism. Political independent with libertarian streak, despise political labels and Big Government. Also despise self-labeling liberals who love Big Government. All they need, though, is a good ass-kicking. Supremely arrogant most of the time, and dismissive of intellectuals, sports aficionados, and religious fundamentalists of any stripe. Am predisposed to be distracted from the mundane by sailing, photography, beautiful women and Mexican food. If I’m late to something, I can usually be found PhotoShopping myself into a picture of a girl on a sloop eating a taco.
Australian beach culture, I would guess. Workling class. A fairly mixed local culture of Aussies and Kiwis.
I live on one of the more infamous beaches, and I can remember years ago one of my editors described it as a beachside ghetto, though in truth I think it’s reputation is somewhat inflated.
Say what?
I don’t think I solidly fit into any one culture, although I guess I am a generic midwestern American, with the caveat of being born a Southern Californian that spent some time growing up in a small Colorado mountain town that is the strangest mix of straight-laced redneck and free-wheeling flower child. I live in a Republican stronghold of Los Angeles county now though, although I am not a typical denizen of the AV.
My family are all working-middle class WASPs who value bacon grease as well as elbow grease, Victory Gardens, and cast iron cookware. My move to Colorado when I was 10 firmly sealed me in as an environmentalist liberal in spite of my family’s conservative nature. They’re all pretty tolerant of me, though. 
College wasn’t expected of me the same way it seems to be for my peers; in fact aside from my aunt I will be the only one in my family with a bachelor’s and will hopefully be the first with a professional degree.
As far as religion goes, it was sort of a vague idea that Jesus was a good dude and it’s probably a good idea to be a Christian. Church wasn’t a normal thing for us to do. I went to a private Christian school for academic purposes though but was encouraged by my parents to question doctrine, and I got into trouble a few times for it. As a result I am pretty cynical of religion as a whole.
I was born and grew up in South Florida in a beach town area near Ft. Lauderdale. My father and mother were both transplanted to this area; him from rural Connecticut, her from Iceland. Both were from families that were not upper class, but were not blue-collar (lower working class) either. Neither of my parents have college degrees, but my maternal grandfather did. My father was traditional (“old fashioned”) in some ways, such as things like table manners and basic childrearing, but he was a bit liberal. My mom’s culture was fairly dominant in the household, and I learned a lot of values that I’d attribute to her culture. Liberal when it comes to social issues, and conservative/pragmatic when it comes to monetary ones. I’d say that I’ve retained these ideas pretty well, and, although I was never all that religious, it had created an open-minded outlook when it comes to religion and spirituality. I got a lot of encouragement to read and learn about things, and that enthusiasm has never waned. (Much to the dismay of many of my less-knowledge-oriented peers, I voraciously read books and retain information easily.) I’m losing some of my former materialism, but it’s transforming into a more pragmatic view on having ‘stuff.’
Right now I live in the same area, but will be moving to Central Florida within the year. I find that I don’t completely fit in around here. I’m not concerned with dressing in the latest fashion, driving the biggest, most expensive car available, being seen at all the parties, or just having a ton of money. I’m not as familiar with celebrities, and I don’t watch a lot of those reality shows. (Well, my weaknesses are the occasional viewing of those nanny shows and the wife-swapping ones. It’s the incredible drama that makes it entertaining. Oh, and Bravo-made reality contest stuff like Top Chef.) I can blend in, but at the same time, I come across as being a bit cold and elitist at times. I think I’d fit in better in other areas, but I’m not so sure. I kind of feel like a child with no homeland.
Dude, severus, take a chill pill. My parents have to go to court to send me to an English school and we almost get run out of the neighbourhood for being darkies and you’re asking me to justify how we behaved? Tried not to get harassed is about it. I guess I didn’t realise that we had an affirmative obligation to court the natives after they spraypainted our garage with ethnic slurs for a decade.
If you’re asking me whether or not I speak French, yes, perfectly, as do my parents. I’m not going to colour or not speak out on my impression of Northern Quebec and how we were treated because it you want to ignore the anti-immigrant sentiment of the 1980s to pontificate about your culture. I read as many half-truths about Indians and Indian culture on this Board and sometimes I speak up and sometimes I don’t. If you’re happy with your culture, that’s awesome. Frankly, my views and opinions have been influenced by the treatment I received, which was simply put, extensive RACIAL harassment and I’m not going to lie about it. I’m also not going to lie about the fact that I really like Americans and received much better treatment here.
Please desist in junior modding me. I’ll talk about my experience in Quebec till you get a moderator to tell me to stop.
And I am NOT from Sherbrooke. I grew up in Arvida.
I grew up in a very small town of about 1300 on the Louisiana side of the Louisiana/Texas border in Northwestern Louisiana. It is a very poor town about half redneck and half black. My family would be the one that most would pick to be the “first family” of the town because they had been there since it began practically and owned some of the most prominent businesses downtown. The were (are) few jobs there and the town is still dying.
One illustrating fact is that my hometown doesn’t have a web page to this day. There are scattered references to it in junk form on some other sites but that is about it. It has practically Google-proofed itself. I can’t find any people that still live there that have a web site either and I have spent tens of hours trying. It is an amazing thing.
My family was educated though. Even my grandparents went to college and both my parents were from somewhat affluent backgrounds even though their irresponsible habits ensured that I would grow up flat broke.
My lineage is basically 100 Southern for the past 400 years according to some rather extensive genealogy records that others have shared. The grandparents that I got my last name from landed at the First Colony at Jamestown around 1610. They weren’t very notable themselves but they did save much of the colony after their adopted Indian son/servant tipped them off just before a devastating Indian raid.
I live in suburban Boston now. I don’t fit into Boston proper culture well at all but the suburb I picked for us to live is somewhat rural-ish, mildly affluent and friendly and it has worked out fine. I don’t think I could ever be a bonafide Northeasterner though because I can mimic some of it but I can’t quite think like they do.
I grew up in an urban middle-class African American family. Both parents come from working-class backgrounds, were the first in their families to get college and Master’s degrees, and moved from the Midwest to the South before I was born.
People often attribute special values to my parents that they do not possess, because on the surface they look like the Huxtables. While both educated, we did not get the “education at all costs” speech that other people get when they’re growing up. None of us kids were pressured to do well in school or go on to college or get fancy jobs. My parents did not spend much effort taking us to museums or buying books for us, although my parents always heaped praise on us when we went after these things on our own. I think they were more concerned about us being good and respectable people. Church was a huge part of our lives, though my parents never forced us to get baptized or join their church. Helping around the house and not getting into trouble were more valued than making straight As and getting accolades at school. They aren’t anti-intellectual, though. I just think they care more about being nice than being smart.
My parents are liberal. My mother is a left-wing fanatic, while my father is moderately liberal (who has a strange and disturbing crush on Condi Rice 
)). Their views has transferred on to me, but I’m more like my father than my mother.
I’ve adopted some of my parents’ provincial ways, I think. I don’t have a burning lust to go traveling the world, visiting exotic cultures. I have a simple palate, and I’m very pragmatic. I tend to view academics suspiciously–even though I am an academic. I’m particularly biased against humanities people, but I’m working on it. 
Right now, I don’t know what my culture is. I’m still black, of course, but I don’t interact with black people where I live. And the black culture here in South Florida–which is heavily Caribbean-influenced and working class–isn’t familiar to me. Although I identify strongly with my black roots, sometimes I feel like I’m not really connected to my cultural heritage. My speech patterns, intellectual pursuits, style of dress, and musical tastes have always defied the stereotypes. But I don’t feel particularly connected to other cultures either. I don’t speak Spanish like the majority of my neighbors do (which often surprises them since I apparently look like I should.) And I don’t feel “white” either.
If I had to define my culture with a label, I’d say it was an urban, over-educated, workaholic liberal. I live alone, in a one-bed apartment with two cats, drive a beat-up car, and sleep in on Sundays. I have more books than CDs, a 13" TV, and two computers. My parents live a thousand miles away and I only talk to them every two weeks. And I’m always working. Maybe I’m a Puritan born in the wrong century.
I was raised as a sterotypical spoiled child of well-to-do former hippie baby boomers, with a dollop of the working-class-Brooklyn-Sicillian my father tried so hard to outrun (and I loved). I am a nerdy, left wing, shoes-optional girl, and I never fit in there.
California turned out to suit me just fine, and I much more this culture than the one I was raised in. People are nicer, and they’re quieter. I’ve lived in my house 2 years, and I know my neighbors better than my parents know theirs after a decade.
I work in a laid back office (and right now I’m not wearing shoes). The only woman who wears any kind of make-up is the one at the front desk. Everyone around me is the same kind of wierd I am. There’s a lot of cultural & ethnic diversity and a general vibe that what you do is your own business-- and if it makes you happy and does no harm, than good for you. Everything is okay. Which is good because my capacity to humor the ignorant/close-minded/biggoted is really, really low. The culture also embraces a wide variety in diet, lots of fresh produce is everywhere year round, and the lack of truly bad weather leads to a more outdoor lifestyle. (Thankfully, our wireless reaches into the backyard<g>)
Best summed up as: San Francisco liberal, Dotcom nerd (my house has 11 working and nonworking computers and 6 video game systems for 4 people), with just a dash of Jersey.
The culture I grew up with:
Catholic, working class, Rust Belt, close to the immigrant experience. I think that covers it pretty well. My family tended to produce cops and teachers, which I always think of as what happens when working class comes across some education, the “gateway” white collar professions.
I always thought of my culture as American when I was growing up, and was somewhat surprised to realize when I was older, and met more people from different backgrounds, that having Ellis Island grandparents made my experience more noticeably immigrant-ish. (And not just my personal family, just about everyone I knew had grandparents with accents.)
Politically, everyone I knew growing up was a Democrat, because that is/was the party of labor unions. I was shocked (a little) when I went to college and learned that most people associate the Democrats with social liberals. I mean, I am a social liberal myself, but that had never came up as a something related to Democrats before.
I’m so tempted to guess the suburb, but I don’t want to compromise your privacy.
I’ve got it down to two likely contenders* with a third as an outsider. All city beaches, not Northern.
*I’ve lived in one of them for several years - twice. HINT: the one with the Astra.
I’m not angry or anything. It’s just that, while I sympathise with how you were probably treated while you lived in the Saguenay, your obsession is getting tiresome to me, and I must set the record straight, based on my own experience, of course. When you say that francophone Quebecers are a bunch of racist Nazis, well, you’re defaming me, an extremely tolerant liberal (like most other people I know), so why wouldn’t I respond?
Of course they did. English (public) schools in Quebec are intended for the anglophone minority of Quebec, which I guess you weren’t part of since you came from another country. Yeah, I know it probably sucked if they wanted to send you to English schools, but there are compelling reasons why this arrangement is as it is.
Hey, I don’t know what they did, and I don’t know why. Listen, I’m not saying you didn’t run into xenophobic people, I’m sure you did, they are everywhere. Maybe you’re right and the whole population of Arvida wanted to get rid of the Indians who hadn’t done anything wrong to anyone (although I kind of doubt it). But seeing the way you generalize about your experience, is it possible that maybe some people would have been on your side, but you discouraged them?
Don’t take it as an insult, I’m just trying to understand what happened, but I wasn’t there, and I can only hear one side of the story anyway, so it might be pretty pointless.
Well, learning the language of the place where you’re moving to is always a good thing, so that’s great.
Hey, you can say what you want (subject to the forum rules, of course; don’t wish death on all of us outside of the Pit), and I can respond. I’ll even admit that there is an ongoing debate in Quebec about multiculturalism and how tolerant of cultures whose values differ largely from our common values we should be. It’s very current; there have been a lot of discussions on the subject for the last few months. But that’s not the same thing as being anti-immigrant; most of the people I know certainly aren’t against immigration (even if they may have some reserves about who we’re allowing in). Then again, I must admit that I’ve never lived in homogeneous rural areas, and yes, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of those who live there don’t like to have their little white bread existence disturbed by different people. It’s sad, but it’s also human nature.
And I’m not “pontificating” about my culture. It has its good and bad points, like any other culture. But what you’re saying is that our culture basically has no redeeming value, and since I disagree, why shouldn’t I give my point of view?
Hey, if you read something that doesn’t match your experience, feel free to speak up. That’s the whole point of this board. Many times I haven’t spoken up either: I think this is the first time I respond to one of your posts. Personally I like to hear different opinions, so if you hear something about Indian culture (or whatever) that you disagree with, well, join the discussion.
As I said, it’s not perfect (no culture is), but yeah, I’m happy with it. Of course, my experience with it is clearly not the same as yours, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m a white francophone guy either.
Hey, if it’s what happened to you, what can I say?
What’s this supposed to mean? Moderators aren’t in my pocket, they’re not going to censor you just because I tell them to. And I don’t want to censor you anyway, you have the right to your opinion, and I have the right to a contrary opinion, and our readers can decide. I’m not junior modding you, I’m just joining the discussion.
I’m well aware of this. Please re-read my first post.
- German-Swiss
- Navarrese (Cuenca), with Catalan mother and college in Catalonia.
- Navarrese (Ribera).
I’m not just Navarrese, apparently I’m cuenca like my Daddy and his family and Lilbro, while Middlebro is more ribero.
Anglophile Goth Gamer (as in Roleplaying, SCA and LARPing, not videogames) culture, which is decidedly not my birth culture (Cape Flats Coloured with Khoisan rather than Cape Malay roots), but closer to the culture of the area I live (White hippies & Yuppies in equal measure, with a scattering of Coloureds and Blacks) without being the mainstream.
I’m a scandinavian hybrid. I grew up and lost my milk teeth on the Lappish tundra on the Finnish border to Russia. So the biggest cultural influence probably came from mosquitos and frostbite and getting lost on the wrong side of the border (my buttocks still hurts thinking about it). Then we relocated to mid west coast farmland, being culturally influenced by Pat Sharp, cow handling and strawberrypicking, fishing and being chased by moose on the soccerfield. Now I bear over with the unbearable ease of suburban living, but soothing my soul in the fact that I can do a lot of field work being a biologist. Thus, being culturally influenced by a more practical academic sphere, where most people actually do know what to do with a spanner.
I grew up Pennsylvania German, subtype Catholic. What my culture is now after 16 years of living in the Land of the Trolls is anyone’s guess. I’ll just say that my boys might be the only kids in our suburb of Oslo who love birch beer and say that their favorite jeans need washed 