One of the invisible but important features of a dominant culture is that it, and it alone, gets to define what ‘the other’ is. Women are other. Blacks are other. Latinos are other, Asians are other. Etc. A great deal of the whatever-liberation focus is to be able to define yourselves, not have white males define you (and if you are a different ‘color’, then white women also get to define you).
It seems like a kind of fixed psychological rule that the dominant culture cannot, will not, see what they themselves are, and how they affect those they think of as other. They just can’t. Rather than see what reality is like for those they dominate, they tie themselves into the most bizarre logistical knots. Even the most enlightened and empathetic individuals have a surprising amount of difficulty with it.
White male culture is super easy to see from the outside, though. Nothing easier really.
Rethinking my answer, I think you have an excellent point. One of the things about '50s culture was that while there were “others” around, they were invisible. (Remind you of a book title?)
I grew up three blocks from the black neighborhood. As far as I know, there was little or no crime there, certainly no one from my neighborhood was worried about it. But I never, ever went there and no one from there ever went into my neighborhood. Or to my elementary school. Or to my Boy Scout Troop. They might as well have lived on Mars.
So the editor might have lived and worked in New York, but never have really seen them.
That’s '50s White Culture for you.
You disagree, but why? I think we’re getting caught up in some sort of word game.
The relevant definition of “culture” is “the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society”. Unsurprisingly “white male culture” is the ideas, customs, and social behavior of white male people. There’s nothing inherently racist or sexist in that definition, if read in isolation.
My understanding of “white male culture” in the vernacular is not the culture of white males, but “white male privilege”. Privilege is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group”. Therefore a “white male privilege” is a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to white male people as a group. “White male privilege” in the collective noun form refers to all of the rights, advantages, and immunities granted or available only to white male people as a group.
tim-n-va wrote:
I disagreed because expecting the benefit of the doubt is not something I associate with white male culture in particular. I believe the presumption of innocence is a right and ought to be part of American culture as a whole. If the meaning of those phrases is “expecting that benefit of the doubt”, that implies that there is something negative or wrong with expecting a presumption of innocence, which contradicts my previous assertion.
There is something wrong with white male culture (white male privilege), but it is not merely expecting the benefit of the doubt. I think you and I agree that those phrases convey a hint of racism and sexism, not necessarily an outright amount but at least a small amount. This follows from the plain meaning of the words - if the privilege were not based on race, the word “white” would be meaningless; if the privilege were not sex-based, the word “male” would be meaningless. But surely it is neither racist nor sexist to expect a presumption of innocence? Such an expectation as to a right ought to be encouraged. As I said before, every person ought to demand that their rights are respected. It only becomes “white male privilege” or “white male culture” when one expects a presumption of innocence for white males, and does not expect the same for others.
I think most would agree that the presumption of innocence should be a right and part of American culture. Sadly, there are many of us who quite simply don’t have that particular privilege. For many of us, we must operate as though we can be accused of wrong doing at any time for any reason and we must be fully prepared to defend ourselves from these accusations else we find ourselves in a hole we might not be able to climb out of. We have been demanding that our rights be respected for more years than I have been alive and things haven’t really changed and future improvement isn’t looking too good.
In my experience, white guys have never had this problem and typically operate as if everyone will always assume they are good people and their intentions are benign. I believe this is where the “expectation of the benefit of the doubt” comes from.
There’s nothing wrong with expecting the benefit of the doubt it’s just not something the rest of us get to enjoy with any frequency, thus it is part of that whole white privilege thing.
I’m not sure it’s a “white male” thing or just a “male” thing, and to which extend it counts as culture is up for debate ; but one of the universal constants I’ve observed among men of all cultures and most walks of life was the inability to find one’s blasted 10 mil socket, even though they just put it there a minute ago.
There’s a movie from the late 60’s called “The Incident” . A couple of white punks terrorize a subway car full of people. Spoilers: Long story short, in the end the punks are “handled” by a white soldier who’s wearing a cast.
When the train pulls into Grand Central Station, cops run in, see one of the punks injured on the ground and without asking for info, immediately grab the only black man on the car as if “naturally” he must be the villain.
Even with blood on the cast, the white guy is not even considered. This is the privilege being described.
I acknowledge and agree with your observations. In many cases, especially for non-whites, cynicism is warranted. But as I said to tim-n-va, the conclusion is inconsistent with the negative connotation in “white male privilege” and “white male culture”. You must either strip the phrases of their connotations, and therefore say there is nothing wrong with white male culture/privilege, or you must resolve the contradiction.
White male privilege is wrong, and it is not-wrong to want a presumption of innocence. The transition from wanting to expecting is a matter of consequence - the optimist will expect the presumption of innocence, the cynic will expect a presumption of guilt, and for most people experience determines whether one takes an optimal or cynical view. There is nothing inherently right or wrong with justified optimism or cynicism. Therefore there is nothing inherently right or wrong with an optimistic view; there is nothing inherently right or wrong with “expecting that benefit of the doubt”.
Where is the injustice? It is found in people’s experience - if you were to experience a situation where you were denied the presumption of innocence, that is unjust and therefore wrong. Therefore it is the denial of a presumption of innocence, the presumption of guilt or at least apathy, which gives “white male privilege” and “white male culture” their negative connotations.
The fact that a writer in the 60’s knew even then that black people were the default “person of interest” in a potential crime scene. I’ve seen something like it happen in real life if that makes any difference to you.
I’m still digesting this but I think I agree with you to a certain degree.
The negative connotation doesn’t come from white guys wanting/expecting the presumption of innocence or the benefit of the doubt. It comes from white guys wanting/expecting the presumption of innocence while actively denying women and people of color the same privilege. In my opinion it feels more hypocritical than amoral…but it still feels pretty amoral.
Of the countries you mention, the only one where the dominant chunk of the population would be considered “not white” by anyone other than an American is China.
No, you have it right. As soon as someone violates the golden rule, it ceases to be amoral and becomes hypocritical (immoral).
[ul][li]merely expecting a presumption of innocence is not wrong, it is optimistic[/li][li]merely expecting a presumption of guilt is not wrong, it is cynical[/li][li]expecting a presumption of innocence for oneself and not extending the same to others on account of race/sex is wrong, because it is hypocritical[/ul][/li]
~Max
Nothing specifically male about that. It’s just human.
(That wrench has to be here someplace, I couldn’t have disconnected this thing in the first place if I didn’t have it!)
I think it’s more a matter of assuming that everyone else has the same experience, and that therefore complaints based on others’ actual experience must not be warranted.
Nothing wrong with expecting a presumption of innocence, no. Something wrong with expecting everyone else to behave as if they’re expecting a presumtion of innocence, yes. Something wrong with assuming that because in one’s own experience one gets a presumption of innocence then there must not be any problem needing fixing about other people not getting it, very much yes.
Yeah, like I said at the beginning of the thread, I don’t think the fundamental issue here really is about “white male culture”, because I don’t think there really is such a thing. Any more than “nonwhite male culture” is really a thing.
“Culture” implies some group with a particular shared cultural heritage, and “white” isn’t a shared cultural heritage. There definitely are ethnic/culture groups that are generally classified as “white” that do have such a heritage, e.g., Swedish, Afrikaner, Bavarian, Italian-American, etc. So referring, e.g., to “Swedish male culture” or “Russian male culture” or “Basque male culture” makes sense because it means “social gender norms for males in Swedish culture” or whichever other culture group you’re talking about.
But “white” and “nonwhite” are classifications that aren’t really meaningfully defined except in relation to each other. Neither of them references a specific distinct cultural heritage.
So we can talk about “white male privilege”, as you note, or about cultural expectations of white male dominance that form part of white male privilege, or about “X male culture” where X is some specific culture group usually identified as racially white, but I don’t think it’s accurate to describe any of those as “white male culture”.
I really think we’re looking at it wrong; I think that it’s not a culture unto itself, but rather the intersection of white culture/white privilege AND male dominant/male chauvinistic culture.
Look at it this way- men in general have privileges/advantages when compared to women across the board in the US. And white people have the same when compared to non-white people.
“White male culture” is just the conjunction of those two things, not its own separate unique thing that we should vilify white males for independent of the other two phenomena.
You make a point here, but although I admit it’d be very hard to generalize about “white male culture” it’s not impossible.
And the Op asked about white male culture not *white privilege. *
So, if you are saying* you* can’t define white male culture- which i admit is difficult and slippery, then isnt coming here to change the thread into white privilege more than a bit of a hijack? And have we not discussed white privilege in several thread?
No, of course it isn’t. Re-read the start of the OP:
My point is, as I said back in my first post in this thread, that these “fears” among “whites, especially white males” about “losing majority” don’t stem from any looming threats to “white male culture”, because there isn’t really any such thing as “white male culture”. The source of these fears is our society’s entrenched cultural expectation of white male dominance, which is a different thing.
Whether or not fishing and golf and mayonnaise constitute some kind of identifiable “white male culture” is not really germane to the question the OP was asking. Which is why most of the posters in this thread have all along been discussing instead issues relating to the traditional high status of white males in American culture, so it seems a bit late to start calling that a “hijack”.
Are there specific attributes of white male culture that you can point to? You seem to be saying that it exists but only those other than white males can accurately define it. From your post I assume that you are not a white male, so I’m curious as to what your definition is.
OMG, don’t be so PC. There are things that are inherently White, Black, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, Greek, etc culture. Otherwise we wouldn’t have so many movies or music that tend to be specific to one culture. They don’t necessarily define every last person who could be characterized by that demographic. But they present a set of shared experiences and history that are familiar enough that people recognize them.
If I were to characterize a “White Male Culture”, at least how I experienced it for my generation I would describe the following:
First, I am primarily talking about non-ethnically identifiable American working through upper middle class culture. As a member of Gen-X, my POV is also skewed towards people born between 1965 and 1985.
Primarily grew up in suburbs of large cities and small towns.
Typically being the demographic majority, never really thought about race.
You spent most of your childhood playing with your friends around town getting into various adventures, involved in various sports and other activities and talking about how you can’t wait to get out of that town.
Everyone’s dad worked. Some, maybe most of your friend’s mom worked.
Oddly enough, racist, sexist, homophobic jokes and comments were acceptable, but not in front of actual minorities, women, or LGBTwhatever people.
Tended to listen to various forms of rock music (classic rock, metal, prog rock, hard rock, alt rock, indie rock, new wave, punk, so on and so forth).
High school tended to be a “jockocracy”. Much of young people’s self was viewed by how well they did or did not fit into that social structure.
Drinking, smoking pot and maybe cocaine if you were from a more affluent town was “cool”. Harder drugs not so much.
Unless you are adopting some subculture uniform (Goth, punk, metal head, grunge, whatever) clothing tends to be fairly neutral styles, like what you might find in a J Crew, Gap or Banana Republic.
There was a general expectation of a strong correlation between academic and professional success. Even if it wasn’t considered “cool”, it was generally recognized that the “nerds” would likely go on to college and get decent corporate jobs.
Young people tended to leave town after graduating high school, whether it was for college, the military or to just start their life somewhere. Still living in town 5 years after high school was considered unusual.
College was alternately viewed as a pressure cooker of achievement to prepare you for your job in the “real world” and a summer camp country club to party for 4 years.
Your 20s are typically spent living in a major city like New York, Boston or Chicago where you are both building your career and “finding yourself”.
If you didn’t marry your high school or college sweetheart, you spend your 20s and possibly much of your 30s in a series of one night stand hookups and not so great relationships until you find “the one”.
When you are ready to settle down, you typically move out to some small town or suburb with your wife, have some kids and start the cycle over again.
White women tend to identify with movies like any John Hughes film, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail (really any Meg Ryan romcom by this point), etc
White men tend to identify with any John Hughes film (whether they admit it or not), Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Animal House, Caddyshack, Van Wilder, Swingers, Old School, 40 Year Old Virgin, The Hangover, etc.
Now looking at such a lifestyle from the outside, it would appear relatively dull and safe in a way that people on the outside would want to aspire to, but may feel excluded from. So I think the intent is that this should be more of a “Middle Class AMERICAN” lifestyle than simply a Middle Class WHITE American lifestyle.
Also, looking back, there was a lot of casual sexism, classism, racism, homophobia and lack of cultural diversity that isn’t desirable or acceptable these days.