# What exactly is "white male culture"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 22, 2019, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475 "2019-07-22T21:17:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/41 "2019-07-24T06:00:14Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I’ve seen this claimed in these threads without any support, but in my entire life when someone talks about how the 50s were pretty good, I have never heard a single person mention or allude to the fact that “blacks knew their place” or “we kept the Jews down” or any similar sentiment. There’s nothing wrong with identifying a stereotype with a zeitgeist, so long as you acknowledge the fact that it is a stereotype. That it wasn’t all peaches and creams in the '50s has no bearing on the number of people who identify “white male culture” with the stereotypical white evangelical male from that day and age. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/42 "2019-07-24T06:55:52Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > What I generally heard was the fact that any able bodied …_White_… > [@](#): > > man could get a job and support a whole family in a middle class lifestyle, saving for kids’ college, owning a house that was paid for on a 5 year mortgage, and having enough money for the extras in the community. > [@](#): > > Vacations usually meant going to a nearby lake or state park Yeah…[about that](https://publiclands.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2018/09/1E62A6E9-155D-451F-673761D6190F8193Original-600x457.jpg)…and better be careful [driving](https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/OL-NOVzOm2AMX54auKazvmzMIFE=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/f2/a7/f2a7cd19-78b3-4a09-9515-adf001180870/apr2016_f01_nationaltreasuregreenbook.jpg) to said park ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/43 "2019-07-24T10:43:02Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Fentanyl is what is killing people and that is an illegal opiate obtained from china. > > Also Rx pills are illegal when bought on the black market. My understanding is fentanyl is often sold as something else, e.g. cut and pressed into pills marked as some legit (if prescribed) drug. A junky who got hooked by her doctor after she tore her ACL and later turned to the black market to keep from feeling sick is way more sympathetic than one who started out by trying to get high in the first place. That is a prime difference between the two epidemics. Another is drug overdose death rate and scale; more of us know someone affected. And a third is violence and gang activity. Never mind the decades of addiction science, which was barely a term being used thirty years ago. We simply know more now about addiction, and at least some of that had rubbed off on the general population. That doesn’t preclude any differences because of who is addicted, and I’m sure that contributes. But the the attribution thus far had been grossly unscientific, which is expected for these boards. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/44 "2019-07-24T11:51:40Z")
A bologna sandwich, with Kraft Singles and Miracle Whip, on Wonder Bread. That’s what pops into my head when I hear the words “white male culture”, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/45 "2019-07-24T16:56:33Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I’ve seen this claimed in these threads without any support, but in my entire life when someone talks about how the 50s were pretty good, I have never heard a single person mention or allude to the fact that “blacks knew their place” or “we kept the Jews down” or any similar sentiment. > > What I generally heard was the fact that any able bodied man could get a job and support a whole family in a middle class lifestyle, saving for kids’ college, owning a house that was paid for on a 5 year mortgage, and having enough money for the extras in the community. There was no need to pay for cable, internet, and cell phone bills. Vacations usually meant going to a nearby lake or state park and the constant pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” wasn’t nearly as prevalent. > > At its nadir, nostalgia for the 50s peaked in the 1980s as captured in Back to the Future. The high crime rate in the 1980s made people look back to the 50s as a better time. Recall that nothing in the movie showed how good the 50s were because of blacks. > > I’m not saying that nobody at all wishes for that time for racist reasons, but I’ve just never heard it and it seems as if there were many other positives that without any support, the accusation shouldn’t be made that people primarily look to the 50s for these reasons. Able bodied white man, you mean. I’m not sure what your objection is. Are you denying that the oppression existed in the '50s? Most anti-Semites avoided explicit anti-Semitism back then, but Woody Allen was still joking about restricted clubs at the end of the decade. Or is it that '50s lovers don’t explicitly love it because of the discrimination back then. True enough, but they do say that my type had it good, and don’t consider that their type didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/46 "2019-07-24T19:01:13Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I’m not saying that nobody at all wishes for that time for racist reasons, but I’ve just never heard it and it seems as if there were many other positives that without any support, the accusation shouldn’t be made that people primarily look to the 50s for these reasons. Actually, I think most of these old white guys are nostalgic for the ‘50’s because they have fond memories of the days when they had a full head of hair and a dick that worked. The one they never mention was the thing that made all this American Greatness possible, which was a top marginal tax rate of 91% . IMHO, it made employers less greedy and made it possible for your 50’s dad to support a family on a single blue collar income. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/47 "2019-07-24T19:51:12Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > And some people will say ‘I’ve never felt any status and privilege by being a white male’. > … Sure there’s some. But compared to just being born in the USA, it’s pretty damn small. We dont realize how privileged we are, all of us here in the uSA. White males are too diverse a group to have a culture, there’s the stoners, the ex-hippies, the Alt-righters, the millennials, the gun culture dudes, etc etc etc. Is there a white female culture? I am not even sure if there is a black male culture, even. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/48 "2019-07-24T19:52:16Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > golf > > [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XTf9Sdrq1zg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XTf9Sdrq1zg) Tiger Woods. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/49 "2019-07-24T19:54:51Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > … > > What I generally heard was the fact that any able bodied man could get a job and support a whole family in a middle class lifestyle, saving for kids’ college, owning a house that was paid for on a 5 year mortgage, and having enough money for the extras in the community. There was no need to pay for cable, internet, and cell phone bills. Vacations usually meant going to a nearby lake or state park and the constant pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” wasn’t nearly as prevalent. > … We had a 20 year mortgage, and both parents worked. In fact in many of the middle class households in Gardena CA, both parents worked. Latchkey kids were the norm. ---
**Author:** ![tim-n-va](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim-n-va/32/3001_2.png) [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/50 "2019-07-24T19:57:25Z")
White privileged is mostly being given the benefit of doubt, a second chance. White culture is expecting that benefit of the doubt. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/51 "2019-07-24T20:09:28Z")
> [@tim-n-va](#): > > White privileged is mostly being given the benefit of doubt, a second chance. White culture is expecting that benefit of the doubt. Try being over 55 in the job market and looking for that _benefit of the doubt._:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/52 "2019-07-24T20:12:41Z")
> [@tim-n-va](#): > > White culture is expecting that benefit of the doubt. I disagree. The benefit of the doubt is not something I associate with “white culture”, it is just a restatement of the presumption of innocence. White culture can mean many things, but it is not productive to define it as merely being afforded one’s rights. Everybody ought to _demand_ that their rights are not infringed, and to expect your rights will be curtailed by default is a form of pessimism. To identify white culture as the opposite of pessimism is to call it a form of optimism, or bliss. To the contrary, “white male culture” is often viewed as a form of privilege - to expect the presumption of innocence for yourself and other white males while being ambivalent or even hostile to same rights of others. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/53 "2019-07-24T22:49:01Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But that says a lot more about them than it does about the actual views or intentions of the people speaking out against our culturally conditioned expectation of white male dominance. There are PLENTY of countries out there where white males are NOT dominant. So I’d guess you would prefer Iran, Saudi Arabia, China… hell most of anywhere in Asia, middle east, Africa, Central and South America. Which one do you prefer? ---
**Author:** ![Rayks\_Marcial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e47c2d/32.png) [@Rayks\_Marcial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayks_Marcial)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2019, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/54 "2019-07-24T23:47:34Z")
Cigars, brandy, playing cards. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/55 "2019-07-25T00:31:18Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Which one do you prefer? Which one do you live in? The discussion on white male privilege was by default focused on societies where white people are a majority or a controlling minority, until [someone used the term “world”.](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21765169&postcount=16) (I concede that the countries you’ve named are not places where I’d want to live as a minority (racial, religious, etc.)) To answer your question: > [@Urbanredneck](#): > > So what will replace it? Do you really see some sort of perfectly equal world where everyones views and ways are accepted as equal? … I would suggest you re-read [Kimstu’s post](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21766443&postcount=36), without trying to hijack the conversation to societies we’re obviously not talking about. Are you saying that Americans who aren’t white males can’t be trusted with democracy, lest they turn the U.S. into a nightmare of white-male subjugation? ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/56 "2019-07-25T00:35:57Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Or is it that '50s lovers don’t explicitly love it because of the discrimination back then. True enough, but they do say that my type had it good, and don’t consider that their type didn’t. That’s what I am saying. I didn’t live through the 50s so I cannot say if the recollections are accurate of simply a part of rosy recollection or other things. I simply dispute the idea, stated as fact, that people loved the 50s because the blacks were kept in their proper place. I’ve never heard anyone say or imply that. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/57 "2019-07-25T02:25:10Z")
I don’t know. I just want to watch some old episodes of Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother, enjoy a cold bottle of craft beer, change out of my Brooks Brothers work clothes in some flannel J Crew pajamas, throw on some Mumford & Sons and go to bed. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/58 "2019-07-25T03:43:02Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I don’t know. I just want to watch some old episodes of Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother, enjoy a cold bottle of craft beer, change out of my Brooks Brothers work clothes in some flannel J Crew pajamas, throw on some Mumford & Sons and go to bed. Are you sure it is that, or do you just miss the days of the 90s when gays couldn’t get married and could be arrested for sodomy? Note: I know you really don’t believe that, but to me there is as much evidence for that as there is to say that people look back on the 50s for racist reasons. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/59 "2019-07-25T03:57:24Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > You can even see the sense of status and privilege given to white men in our politics. When white men are left behind by the economy (coal miners for example) its a national emergency. Meanwhile service sector jobs are disappearing even faster than coal miner jobs but nobody cares. One reason nobody cares is those jobs are full of minorities and women. > > When the opiate epidemic hits white men, its a national emergency and needs government intervention. When the crack epidemic hit the black neighborhoods it was because the people there were animals and we needed to send in violent cops. > > When white men feel unheard in politics, everyone acts like ‘how can we appeal to white men in the rust belt’. However black people have felt ignored in politics for years, and nobody cares. Do you have cites for any of this or is it just a rant? 1. Service Sector v. Coal Mine Jobs–This has nothing to do with racism or sexism. Service jobs are generally viewed as dead end jobs and both parties want a way to leave those jobs to the teenagers and get adults out of those jobs into things that can pay a living wage, like coal mining. In my state, coal mining provided quality jobs for a couple of generations of people who made my state economically viable. Now those jobs are gone and it has devastated an entire region. It is debatable whether we should or even can bring back coal, but it is easily explained why the loss of those jobs are a larger issue. 2. Drugs–anyone who used drugs in their home and doesn’t bother anyone gets a very low enforcement priority–white or black. When drugs cause turf wars, dead bodies, and quality of life crimes, that is a serious issue–white or black. 3. This one is the most outrageous. The Dems have bought off black voters for years with their proposals. So much so that they get 90+ percent of the vote each time, reliably and without fail. They have been cared for so much in politics that their votes are taken for granted, and for either party, there is not much more each can do with the black vote to win an election. White people in the rust belt? That was the key in 2016 and will be the key in 2020. One can hardly claim racism with a straight face when you are concentrating of the pivotal demographic that will decide whether you win or lose the election. If the racial roles were reversed, you don’t think that there would be a dismissal of whites and a laser focus on blacks? You think a candidate would say, “Sure, I’ll probably lose this election, but at least I take care of the white boys!” That’s silly. You seem to see everything through the tinted lense of racism when they have obvious, non-racial reasons behind them. ---
**Author:** ![BeagleJesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5daacb/32.png) [@BeagleJesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeagleJesus)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/60 "2019-07-25T13:59:39Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > 1. This one is the most outrageous. The Dems have bought off black voters for years with their proposals. So much so that they get 90+ percent of the vote each time, reliably and without fail. They have been cared for so much in politics that their votes are taken for granted, and for either party, there is not much more each can do with the black vote to win an election. This is bullshit. For generations black folks in the US have had 2 basic choices for political parties: Side with the group that contains damn near every racist white person in the country or side with the group that is at least willing to pay lip service to our political concerns. Why the fuck would any self respecting black person _ever_ choose the side with damn near all the racist white folks? And in case you were wondering, yes, racist ass republicans are the main reason why most non-white people vote democrat. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475.md?page=4)