# 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:** 5
**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, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/81 "2019-07-26T04:03:09Z")
> [@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. Bet you anything that the author or at least the editor of that book lived in a place with plenty of black people. But the book did represent the makeup of offices back then, so it was accurate. The thing was, very few people thought twice about it. It wasn’t until the mid-60s that there were black characters on TV that weren’t either maids or people named Amos and Andy. ---
**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, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/82 "2019-07-26T04:17:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yeah, but when you take out the white racist GOP faction, Congress is very well balanced. Saying that we can reduce the appearance of racial imbalance in Congress by arbitrarily declaring that a large chunk of the Congressional membership simply shall not be counted is also a pretty feeble argument. (And it also requires you to ignore the fact that an extremely disproportionate number of Democratic Senators are white, not just the Republican ones.) Like I said, you can’t naively divide US culture into a “racist” part and a “racism-free” part. We have parts of American society that are more racist and parts that are less racist, and there’s a good argument to be made (I hope) that much of American society is getting substantially less racist with time, but it’s nonsensical to claim that any part of American society is totally unaffected by racism. > [@DrDeth](#): > > “Pollyannaism”.:rolleyes: Well, it’s the term that springs to mind when confronted with the kind of resolute denial of uncomfortable realities that you’re espousing here. ---
**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, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/83 "2019-07-26T05:04:48Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Saying that we can reduce the appearance of racial imbalance in Congress by arbitrarily declaring that a large chunk of the Congressional membership simply shall not be counted is also a pretty feeble argument. (And it also requires you to ignore the fact that an extremely disproportionate number of Democratic Senators are white, not just the Republican ones.) > > Like I said, you can’t naively divide US culture into a “racist” part and a “racism-free” part. We have parts of American society that are more racist and parts that are less racist, and there’s a good argument to be made (I hope) that much of American society is getting substantially less racist with time, but it’s nonsensical to claim that any part of American society is totally unaffected by racism. > > Well, it’s the term that springs to mind when confronted with the kind of resolute denial of uncomfortable realities that you’re espousing here. Yeah, we can take out all the racists, why not? Pretty much I can: “Democrats”, Republicans". See? Maybe only 90% right, but pretty damn close. Nice of the racists to label themselves. So, now we know. “realities”?:rolleyes::dubious: _“Ya well that’s just like, you’re opinion man.”_ and\* “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”\* ---
**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, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/84 "2019-07-26T08:16:30Z")
> [@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”. > > 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. I disagree. What are these cultural differences that “we”(my community) hate, not just look at as foreign, but hate or diminish, in blacks? ---
**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 26, 2019, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/85 "2019-07-26T14:32:05Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > 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. Do you agree with this statement: > [@Max\_S](#): > > 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:** ![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 26, 2019, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/86 "2019-07-26T15:10:41Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > It wasn’t until the mid-60s that there were black characters on TV that weren’t either maids or people named Amos and Andy. In sitcoms perhaps, but Nat King Cole had [his own show](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307789/) on NBC for about a year. Louis Armstrong appeared as a bandleader on NBC’s _Producer’s Show_ in the episode “[The Lord Don’t Play Favorites](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0679277/)”. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/87 "2019-07-26T19:11:50Z")
White male culture is right-handed scissors. You can buy scissors or you can buy special left-handed scissors. To some right handed people it appears discriminatory that there aren’t scissors that are built especially for right handed people. ---
**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, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/88 "2019-07-26T19:46:49Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > … > It wasn’t until the mid-60s that there were black characters on TV that weren’t either maids or people named Amos and Andy. Amos & Andy wasnt as bad as you seem to think: > **[What Was It About 'Amos 'n' Andy'? (Published 1991)](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/07/books/what-was-it-about-amos-n-andy.html)** > **[Amos ’N’ Andy was the rare representation of black culture on 1950s TV—but at...](https://www.avclub.com/amos-n-andy-was-the-rare-representation-of-black-cult-1798239784)** > > Welcome to the TV Roundtable, where some of TV Club’s writers tackle episodes that deal with a central theme. This is the fifth of eight installments to focus on “controversial episodes.” ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/89 "2019-07-26T19:51:08Z")
According to Hair, the musical White boys are so pretty Skin as smooth as milk White boys are so pretty Hair like Chinese silk White boys give me goose bumps White boys give me chills When they touch my shoulder That’s the touch that kills Well, my momma calls 'em lilies I call 'em Piccadillies My daddy warns me stay away I say come on out and play White boys are so groovy White boys are so tough Every time that they’re near me I just can’t get enough White boys are so pretty White boys are so sweet White boys drive me crazy Drive me indiscreet White boys are so sexy Legs so long and lean Love those sprayed-on trousers Love the love machine My brother calls 'em rubble That’s my kind of trouble My daddy warns me “no no no” But I say “White boys go go go” White boys are so lovely Beautiful as girls I love to run my fingers And toes through all their curls Give me a tall A lean A sexy A sweet A pretty A juicy White boys! ---
**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 27, 2019, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/90 "2019-07-27T01:13:02Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Amos & Andy wasnt as bad as you seem to think: > [https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/07/books/what-was-it-about-amos-n-andy.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/07/books/what-was-it-about-amos-n-andy.html) > > [Amos ’N’ Andy was the rare representation of black culture on 1950s TV—but at what cost?](https://tv.avclub.com/amos-n-andy-was-the-rare-representation-of-black-cult-1798239784) I saw it as a kid. Yes it was. I even knew it back then. The racism was subtle, not outright, and they had to hire black actors to play the characters unlike the radio show, so I guess there is that. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/91 "2019-07-27T02:08:12Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Bet you anything that the author or at least the editor of that book lived in a place with plenty of black people. But the book did represent the makeup of offices back then, so it was accurate. The thing was, very few people thought twice about it. > It wasn’t until the mid-60s that there were black characters on TV that weren’t either maids or people named Amos and Andy. I suspect you miss my point that the author probably didn’t live in a place with “plenty of black people” because there weren’t plenty of black people in 1950. > [@UltraVires](#): > > 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. It’s frustrating because among some left-leaning circles, it’s apparently trendy now to bash “white maleness”. Like I get that there was and is racism. But now it’s like “white male” apparently has to automatically mean “racist” and things are naturally better the more “diverse” and “multicultural” you are. Like “The Squad” in congress. I don’t even know what their ideas are or if they make sense, but it seems to me that people on the left glommed on to them because they are four women of color. ---
**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 27, 2019, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/92 "2019-07-27T18:58:08Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I suspect you miss my point that the author probably didn’t live in a place with “plenty of black people” because there weren’t plenty of black people in 1950. The author maybe but if the editor lived in New York where the publishing business was, there were plenty of black people. Not that many books get edited out of Iowa. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/93 "2019-07-27T21:29:06Z")
Hey, quit picking on mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is pan-social. Mayonnaise is urban. Go to any African-American cookout or church social. Taste the delicious potato salad. That’s MAYONNAISE in there. Show me a Jewish deli that isn’t proud of its egg salad. Order yourself a Vietnamese _Bahn Mi._ Give yourself over to lashings of mayonnaise. I don’t consume much mayonnaise myself, but I’m sick of people laughing at it. ---
**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 27, 2019, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/94 "2019-07-27T22:37:16Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Hey, quit picking on mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is pan-social. Mayonnaise is urban. > > Go to any African-American cookout or church social. Taste the delicious potato salad. That’s MAYONNAISE in there. > > Show me a Jewish deli that isn’t proud of its egg salad. > > Order yourself a Vietnamese _Bahn Mi._ Give yourself over to lashings of mayonnaise. > > I don’t consume much mayonnaise myself, but I’m sick of people laughing at it. I like mayonnaise just fine, but at a lunch counter I went to when I worked for the post office I had to dissuade the nice ladies who ran it from putting mayonnaise on a salami sandwich. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/95 "2019-07-28T00:21:05Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Do you agree with this statement: > > > [@Max S.](#): > > > > 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. I don’t agree that that’s an accurate or clear description of the way “privilege” is typically used, especially with reference to the perspective of white people and male people. The weird bits in particular are the narrow focus on “presumption of innocence” and the suggestion of **conscious** indifference or even hostility to other people’s rights. As for whether it’s an accurate description of how “white male culture” is “often viewed”, all I can say is that I haven’t encountered it before, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/96 "2019-07-28T00:31:31Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yeah, we can take out all the racists, why not? Because if we do, then we’re completely distorting the concepts of “shared culture” and “society as a whole” that I’ve been explicitly referencing. Racists are Americans too, and they influence the American zeitgeist just like the rest of us do. Pretending that all aspects of racism in American culture can be treated as some kind of condition that’s entirely restricted to **overt** racists, which all the rest of us are completely immune to and unaffected by, is a white-fragility fantasy. Sure, we don’t **like** thinking that we can be affected by racism even if we consciously reject racist opinions, but we won’t get anywhere by just shutting our eyes to such a fundamental fact of social psychology. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/97 "2019-07-28T00:38:24Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > What are these cultural differences that “we”(my community) hate, not just look at as foreign, but hate or diminish, in blacks? It’s not about “your community” and specific “cultural differences”. It’s about cultural **prejudices** in American society as a whole. I mean, I get that what you want to believe is that you have a completely objective view of black people because you never knew any while you were growing up, and therefore were not influenced in any way by white racism against them, and consequently every opinion you have about any black person now is based on a purely rational and unbiased assessment of them as an individual. But for a white person in a historically and persistently racist society, that’s just not very realistic. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/98 "2019-07-28T00:53:57Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I suspect you miss my point that the author probably didn’t live in a place with “plenty of black people” because there weren’t plenty of black people in 1950. > [@Voyager](#): > > The author maybe but if the editor lived in New York where the publishing business was, there were plenty of black people. Not that many books get edited out of Iowa. Also, there **were** “plenty of black people” in 1950. Even if black people were only about 10% of the US population then, that’s still nearly 1 in 10. If you’re writing a book about “what dads do all day” showing a whole bunch of different working-class and middle-class occupations, with illustrations depicting the dads and people they interact with, you’re presumably illustrating up to dozens of different individuals. Not including any black people, not one, among those individuals is very unlikely to be just accidental. It reflects the segregation-era mindset of the white majority regarding themselves as the default “normal” “regular” people, and the substantial black minority as anything from merely peripheral to outright invisible. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/99 "2019-07-28T01:27:49Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The author maybe but if the editor lived in New York where the publishing business was, there were plenty of black people. Not that many books get edited out of Iowa. Perhaps. What I think is actually weirder is that our copy was actually a reprint published in 2011. And yet no one thought to update the illustrations. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2019, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475/100 "2019-07-28T02:37:45Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > What I think is actually weirder is that our copy was actually a reprint published in 2011. And yet no one thought to update the illustrations. Btw, if what you’re talking about is the [Little Golden Book _Daddies_ by Janet Frank](https://www.amazon.com/Daddies-Little-Golden-Janet-Frank/dp/0375861300), then I counted between 50 and 60 individuals depicted in the illustrations on just the first 6 or 7 pages (out of 24) visible at that link. Every last one of 'em white. As for why they didn’t update the illustrations in the 2011 reprint, just read the customer reviews. Plenty of people like the “old-fashioned” and “traditional” or “retro” style of the book (some specifically remembering it from an earlier edition in their younger days) to the extent of leaving an Amazon review saying so. A large number of the reviews commented that the book was somewhat out of date in terms of gender roles, but by my count no more than three of the 140+ reviews I read made any mention of all the daddies being white (not to mention all the other white people in the illustrations). I’d be willing to bet that at least most of those reviewers who praised the book’s “traditional” “bygone” “non-PC” appeal were not actually **advocating** for excluding black people from representation in it, and wouldn’t have explicitly considered its all-whiteness one of its positive features. But they were overwhelmingly able just to ignore the issue and like the book anyway. Even if racial segregation isn’t overtly a **reason** why they like the 1950s, they’re able to completely disregard it in their emotional assessment of the 1950s. That’s an example of the ways that implicit societal racism can affect even people who reject **overt** racism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-white-male-culture/837475.md?page=6)