# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/61 "2019-07-25T17:17:48Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > 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.** Or notice it? I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw back when I was in grade school (1960s). The scene depicted two suburbanite men at a bus stop, discussing the newspaper article whose headline appeared on the paper one of the men was holding. The gist of the headline was a suggestion that problems in the black community could be traced to attitudes within the white community (particularly the suburbs). The caption read (paraphrased from memory): _“How can it be my attitude that causes the problem? I never give the Negro a second thought.”_ ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/62 "2019-07-25T19:43:19Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > 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. That’s probably more numbers than anything; there are twice as many white men (or women) out there than there are TOTAL black people. And more than four times the number of white people out there. It’s more pragmatic in a democracy to worry about the larger group- even if they only sway 30% of the white vote, they’ve already swayed more people than if they swayed 100% of the black vote. Beyond that, when you’re 15% of the population more or less, and geographically distributed, you’re by necessity going to get less than 15% of the total representatives. ---
**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 25, 2019, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/63 "2019-07-25T21:26:07Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > 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. Maybe this analogy will be clearer. There are some people who look back with fondness about plantation culture. Southern gentlemen, southern belles, huge mansions. People who do this never say they love it because slavery was a good thing. Yet you can only truly love plantation culture if you push slavery from your mind - or think it was good. When we lived in Louisiana in the late '70s we stayed in a plantation house one weekend. Slavery was barely acknowledged. A tour about five years ago of another made the experience of the slaves a big part of the narrative. Loving the '50s the way the nostalgia buffs do is only possible if you ignore the oppression - which does not imply that someone is explicitly supporting it. ---
**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, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/64 "2019-07-25T21:38:31Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Or notice it? > > I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw back when I was in grade school (1960s). The scene depicted two suburbanite men at a bus stop, discussing the newspaper article whose headline appeared on the paper one of the men was holding. The gist of the headline was a suggestion that problems in the black community could be traced to attitudes within the white community (particularly the suburbs). The caption read (paraphrased from memory): _“How can it be my attitude that causes the problem? I never give the Negro a second thought.”_ > [@Voyager](#): > > Maybe this analogy will be clearer. There are some people who look back with fondness about plantation culture. Southern gentlemen, southern belles, huge mansions. People who do this never say they love it because slavery was a good thing. Yet you can only truly love plantation culture if you push slavery from your mind - or think it was good. > > When we lived in Louisiana in the late '70s we stayed in a plantation house one weekend. Slavery was barely acknowledged. A tour about five years ago of another made the experience of the slaves a big part of the narrative. > Loving the '50s the way the nostalgia buffs do is only possible if you ignore the oppression - which does not imply that someone is explicitly supporting it. I don’t disagree with either of these statements, but that is never what is claimed. The claim is that people have nostalgia for the 50s because it was a time when they could beat their wives or keep blacks in their place. It is never said that they were simply indifferent or didn’t really give it full thought. The accusation is that white people expressly and unequivocally long for those days of racial oppression and that any other thing they look back on in purely a dog whistle to cover up their true reason for liking the 50s. And that is not unusual. Most people don’t look at a larger picture. If they have a good job, a good home, and take a vacation every once in a while, they are happy. Most people are happy precisely because they are able to ignore a lot of bad shit in the world. When the bad stuff bothers you, that’s when the depression and anxiety sets it because you cannot change the world. ---
**Author:** ![Haldurson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/51bf81/32.png) [@Haldurson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haldurson)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/65 "2019-07-25T21:57:44Z")
Many people can’t conceive of themselves as being ‘privileged’. You have to first be sensitive to prejudice and differential treatment, either because you are not white, or because you are a member of a different marginalized group or groups. On the other hand, being part of a marginalized group does not guarantee that you will be sensitive to the situations of others. What I mean is that there are racists and anti-semites and islamophobes and so on among various marginalized groups (which only goes to show you that some people are just plain clueless). I’ve experienced both the privilege of being white, as well as the stigma of being born Jewish, of being an atheist, of having a mental illness, of having both asian and mixed race relatives, of having islamic and LGBTQ and hispanic and asian and black and native american friends etc. I’ve been lucky in that my upbringing and environment was extremely diverse starting from a very young age (plus I had very liberal parents, including my dad who had tried to stop a race riot happening outside our house, and was honored by a church in Harlem in the 1950s or 1960 for his work on their behalf). So yeah, I see what’s going on all the time that even liberal friends of mine seem to be blind to. ---
**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, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/66 "2019-07-25T22:09:21Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > 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. Interestingly, I found an old children’s book in our collection that was written in 1953. It’s basically about what dads do all day in their jobs. Every single character in the book is white. Even the dads who work in what we consider to be more …multicultural jobs like food service or taxi drivers. And why wouldn’t it? 89.3% of the population was white in 1950. Even growing up in the 70s and 80s, I knew like 3 black kids in my class of 250. My college had something like 8% minorities. “Racism” was never really something I observed much of simply because there wasn’t really many people of other races around. ---
**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, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/67 "2019-07-25T22:46:10Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Interestingly, I found an old children’s book in our collection that was written in 1953. It’s basically about what dads do all day in their jobs. Every single character in the book is white. Even the dads who work in what we consider to be more …multicultural jobs like food service or taxi drivers. And why wouldn’t it? 89.3% of the population was white in 1950. Even growing up in the 70s and 80s, I knew like 3 black kids in my class of 250. My college had something like 8% minorities. > > “Racism” was never really something I observed much of simply because there wasn’t really many people of other races around. I agree. I graduated from an all-white high school in the early 90s! However, in our community we still had many of the same issues. Bitching about people on welfare for example. That wasn’t directed at blacks, it was white people in my community. Yet, some on this board say that is a mere dog whistle for racism. “Those” people in town that your mother told you to stay away from. All white people. We didn’t have a lot of drugs back then, but the people selling it? White people. So growing up, I never had any animus towards blacks because I didn’t know any. And when I went to college, I still had no animus towards them. In the last 25 years, I have gotten to know many people of different cultures and still have no animus. That is why it is frustrating in these debates that the accusation of racism because of positions that I have held which have nothing at all to do with race are raised against people like me. Sure, I would accept an argument that because of the situation I grew up in I don’t have as much understanding, say, of someone who grew up in a diverse community. But the accusation of racism is outrageous when the people making it have no frame of reference. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/68 "2019-07-25T23:56:05Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I don’t disagree with either of these statements, but that is never what is claimed. Perhaps not in so many words. The \*implication \* is pretty clear to anyone not willfully blind and deaf to it. > [@](#): > > The claim is that people have nostalgia for the 50s because it was a time when they could beat their wives or keep blacks in their place. It is never said that they were simply indifferent or didn’t really give it full thought. The accusation is that white people expressly and unequivocally long for those days of racial oppression and that any other thing they look back on in purely a dog whistle to cover up their true reason for liking the 50s. Okay, I’m gonna ask for a cite on that (demonstrably mainstream sources preferred, please. We have enough to to just demonstrating YOUR side’s wrongness; we don’t need to be saddled with the extra burden of fending off axe-grinding loonies who want to be on our side). ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2019, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/69 "2019-07-25T23:59:48Z")
> [@Haldurson](#): > > Many people can’t conceive of themselves as being ‘privileged’. You have to first be sensitive to prejudice and differential treatment, either because you are not white, or because you are a member of a different marginalized group or groups. > > On the other hand, being part of a marginalized group does not guarantee that you will be sensitive to the situations of others. What I mean is that there are racists and anti-semites and islamophobes and so on among various marginalized groups (which only goes to show you that some people are just plain clueless). > > I’ve experienced both the privilege of being white, as well as the stigma of being born Jewish, of being an atheist, of having a mental illness, of having both asian and mixed race relatives, of having islamic and LGBTQ and hispanic and asian and black and native american friends etc. I’ve been lucky in that my upbringing and environment was extremely diverse starting from a very young age (plus I had very liberal parents, including my dad who had tried to stop a race riot happening outside our house, and was honored by a church in Harlem in the 1950s or 1960 for his work on their behalf). So yeah, I see what’s going on all the time that even liberal friends of mine seem to be blind to. That’s funny, you don’t LOOK Jewi— Okay, that’s enough of that. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/70 "2019-07-26T00:19:40Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > To put it another way, white male culture was American culture in the 1950s. White males could assume dominance over women and minorities, all of whom knew their place. In fact I’d call it White Male Christian Culture, because before the war Jews should know their place also. I didn’t get much of this living in a Jewish majority neighborhood, but it was there. > Why some people are so nostalgic for the '50s. This one. It is “why” people are nostalgic so sayeth the poster. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/71 "2019-07-26T00:20:49Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Okay, I’m gonna ask for a cite on that (demonstrably mainstream sources preferred, please. We have enough to to just demonstrating YOUR side’s wrongness; we don’t need to be saddled with the extra burden of fending off axe-grinding loonies who want to be on our side). That is my cite to the post above and repeated many times on this board. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/72 "2019-07-26T02:30:05Z")
> [@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? > [@Kimstu](#): > > Will the world magically become “perfectly equal” if we (all of us, not just white males) learn to let go of our culturally conditioned expectation of white male dominance? No, of course not. > > Will the world be somewhat **better** if we learn to let go of our culturally conditioned expectation of white male dominance? Yup. […] > > […] a lot of people who ostensibly support the principles of democracy and equality […] assume that the real choice is not between equality and inequality, but between inequality that favors one group and inequality that favors another. The only way they can picture a world in which white males are no longer the default/dominant members of society is to imagine white males being replaced by a different group (maybe nonwhite males, maybe females in general) as the default/dominant members of society. […] > [@Urbanredneck](#): > > 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. :rolleyes: Thanks for that textbook example of **exactly the sort of false dichotomy I was talking about in the very post you replied to**. Once again: The choice does not have to be between (1) a culturally conditioned expectation of white male dominance and (2) a culturally conditioned expectation of nonwhite male dominance. **Letting go of the historical legacy of automatically expecting white males to be the default/dominant individuals in American culture will not automatically turn America into Iran or Saudi Arabia.** But as you can see from this exchange, some people really are convinced that it will. Even if they don’t consciously advocate overtly racist or sexist views, the idea of an America where white males don’t have that automatic boost in perceived and actual status relative to the rest of the population feels to them like the collapse of civilization. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/73 "2019-07-26T02:33:45Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Everybody ought to _demand_ that their rights are not infringed Uh-huh, very nice, but the issue here is that some people in a historically and persistently racist/sexist society have an easier time than others getting those demands listened to. That’s the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/74 "2019-07-26T02:59:09Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > So growing up, I never had any animus towards blacks because I didn’t know any. And when I went to college, I still had no animus towards them. In the last 25 years, I have gotten to know many people of different cultures and still have no animus. > > That is why it is frustrating in these debates that the accusation of racism because of positions that I have held which have nothing at all to do with race are raised against people like me. The thing is, though, that in a historically and (to a lesser extent) persistently racist society like the US, **we all get a background-radiation dose of cultural animus toward black people just through living in our shared culture**. Racial bias and inequality filters through our media, our neighborhoods, all our assumptions about what’s culturally “normal”. Sure, it’s possible for people to consciously reject and push back against those baseline-level amounts of racial bias in our culture. But it’s delusional for any of us (white OR nonwhite) to assume that we’re somehow magically immune to it just because we never had to think about it when we were growing up. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/75 "2019-07-26T03:02:49Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > The thing is, though, that in a historically and (to a lesser extent) persistently racist society like the US, **we all get a background-radiation dose of cultural animus toward black people just through living in our shared culture**. Racial bias and inequality filters through our media, our neighborhoods, all our assumptions about what’s culturally “normal”. This is totally and completely wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/76 "2019-07-26T03:24:42Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > This is totally and completely wrong. Nope. We all absorb some kind of awareness of the news articles that disproportionately emphasize black crime, for example. We all hear the everyday language in which words like “animal” and “thug” and “welfare queen” are implicitly coded more “black” than “white”, even though they’re superficially race-neutral. We all see the disproportionate number of white faces on people like TV news announcers, leading authorities, Congresspeople, models, CEOs. That’s the sort of background-radiation-type effect that I mean: the way our historical legacy of racism still subtly influences so much of what seems culturally “normal” to us. (And a post consisting solely of an unsupported negation of another poster’s statements isn’t so much an argument or debate but rather mere contradiction.) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/77 "2019-07-26T03:30:46Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Nope. We all absorb some kind of awareness of the news articles that disproportionately emphasize black crime, for example. We all hear the everyday language in which words like “animal” and “thug” and “welfare queen” are implicitly coded more “black” than “white”, even though they’re superficially race-neutral. We all see the disproportionate number of white faces on people like TV news announcers, leading authorities, Congresspeople, models, CEOs. That’s the sort of background-radiation-type effect that I mean: the way our historical legacy of racism still subtly influences so much of what seems culturally “normal” to us. I couldnt disagree more. The news- except FOX is pretty well balanced, and the newest crop of Dem frosh congressmemberslooks pretty damn balanced. I havent heard the term “welfare queen” on mainstream media is a couple decades. When i hear "animal’ it is about…animals. Four footed kind. “Thug” is applied to black gangs- because thats what they call themselves. Maybe you watch Fox too much. You are starting to sound like Fredric Wertham, except with you it’s racism. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/78 "2019-07-26T03:48:30Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I couldnt disagree more. The news- except FOX is pretty well balanced, and the newest crop of Dem frosh congressmemberslooks pretty damn balanced. I like your naive optimism, but unfortunately it doesn’t accurately reflect the facts. In the first place, the fact that you have to restrict your counterclaim about Congress to the specific subset of **freshman Democrats** in order to make it look anything like racially balanced illustrates how feeble that argument is. Congress as a whole is still [only about 22% nonwhite, compared to 39% of the US population overall](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/8/18217076/congress-racial-diversity-white). And as for [racial bias in crime reporting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_bias_in_criminal_news_in_the_United_States), no, in fact it’s not just on Fox. > [@](#): > > The study conducted in the article Race and Punishment states that current crime coverage strategies aim to increase in the importance of a crime, thus distorting the public sense of who commits crimes, and leads to biased reactions. By over-representing Caucasians as victims of crimes perpetrated by people of color it exaggerates crimes committed by African Americans and downplays victimization of African Americans. […] > > A study by the Sentencing Project reports that African American crime suspects were presented in more threatening contexts than Caucasians; to specify, African American suspects were more often left unnamed and were more likely to be shown as threatening by being depicted in physical custody of the police. > > Analyses of television news consistently indicate that African American males are overrepresented as perpetrators and underrepresented as victims, compared to both their Caucasian male counterparts on TV as well as real-world Department of Justice arrest reports. In these news stories, African American suspects are more likely than Caucasians to be portrayed as nameless, menacing, and in the grasp of the police. Some evidence also suggests that audiences know the news they watch misrepresents the reality of race and crime in the United States, and that news executives know their broadcasts scare their audiences. This isn’t about conspiracy theories or accusing the vast majority of Americans of openly endorsing nefarious racial hatred. This is just a rational recognition of how our society as a whole is still non-negligibly influenced by our traditional cultural assumption of white male dominance and racism against black people. I’m not saying we should go around accusing everybody of being motivated by conscious racism all the time: that would be silly. But it’s equally silly to take refuge in the chirpy Pollyannaism (generally covering a lot of white-fragility anxiety) that needs to pretend that the influence of persistent societal racism only ever affects overt racists. ---
**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 26, 2019, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/79 "2019-07-26T03:56:57Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > This one. It is “why” people are nostalgic so sayeth the poster. But them being at heart nostalgic doesn’t mean they come out and say it. You’re surely aware that lots of people are racist and sexist (and not just white males) without consciously seeming themselves as racist and sexist. And I’d say that few of the nostalgia types change their tune when the problems are pointed out to them. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/80 "2019-07-26T03:59:31Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I like your naive optimism, but unfortunately it doesn’t accurately reflect the facts. In the first place, the fact that you have to restrict your counterclaim about Congress to the specific subset of **freshman Democrats** in order to make it look anything like racially balanced illustrates how feeble that argument is. Congress as a whole is still [only about 22% nonwhite, compared to 39% of the US population overall](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/8/18217076/congress-racial-diversity-white). > > … > > I’m not saying we should go around accusing everybody of being motivated by conscious racism all the time: that would be silly. But it’s equally silly to take refuge in the chirpy Pollyannaism (generally covering a lot of white-fragility anxiety) that needs to pretend that the influence of persistent societal racism only ever affects overt racists. Yeah, but when you take out the white racist GOP faction, Congress is very well balanced. > **[Photo of new House members shows big gap in diversity between parties](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/14/congress-diversity-democrats-republicans-photo)** > > Proportion of white male Democrats will drop from 41% to 38% while Republican figure will climb from 86% to 90% _Proportion of Democrats who are white men will drop from 41% to 38% while Republican figure will climb from 86% to 90%._ “Pollyannaism”.:rolleyes: “white-fragility anxiety”:dubious::rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475.md?page=5)