Using my example, there is no such thing as “white” culture.
No, because race is not a culture unto itself.
I have no comment about Black culture, but there is at least one way White culture defined itself specifically as not-Black.
An old word for redneck, cracker, etc., that hasn’t been used in at least a generation, was wool-hat. In the Deep South, White farmers would wear their hot, uncomfortable wool felt hats all summer long – simply because they identified the cooler, but cheaper, straw hats with Blacks. Your race pride was so important to you that you had better be prepared to sweat for it.
I think “white culture” is essentially the same as “American culture” - whites are the largest ethnic group in the country and, until very recently, dominated most forms of popular culture. White culture is eating turkey on Thanksgiving, sitting on Santa Claus’ lap, watching “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners”, going to a baseball game, etc.
Well for the context of this thread, white = white American, just as black = black American and Asian = Asian American.
You can’t make any generic label that would fit. There is no litmus test for it beyond American culture. I listen to the Blues at clubs at least once a week and consider it part of my culture. Yes, it’s roots are African American but it is still American.
Last time I checked a lot of my black friends eat turkey and watch baseball. Where does “white” fit into this?
As much fun as the food discussion is, if we’re going to tackle this question, I’d say White culture is more about attitudes and beliefs than what people eat and what people say. White culture - for the most part - is dominant culture, and if you’ve lived in the US for any amount of time you will likely take on aspects of speech and dress, for instance, that match the dominant culture (if your culture or experience didn’t do what is done here).
Preface here - I’m talking broad strokes and in generalities. I think there are wonderful aspects to these traits and beliefs as well as challenges.
There’s the belief in the “bootstraps” method of getting through life. I would say that White Americans believe that if you work hard and study hard you can accomplish anything. I certainly think many other cultures, including mine (African American) believe this as well - but there is an understanding in my culture that even though you do those things, it doesn’t always work out. There are people and systems that thwart that process at times. I think White culture minimizes this and at its most extreme, ignores this altogether.
I also think that rugged individualism is also a manifestation of White American culture. Almost every other cultural group in this nation - Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans - have maxims about the importance of collective progress. What’s interesting is that the business and research worlds have discovered that teamwork has benefits so individualism is taking a hit - but I think the phenomenon of White flight is a good example of this. When they ended bussing in Austin, almost all of the White kids at my high school left (my school has a rep as being “the worst in the city” but every year kids were going to Yale, Barnard, and Bard). I graduated 15 years ago, right after the end of bussing, and once the district closed the magnet program the school has lost White students (17% of the population today). Certainly all parents want the best for their kids, but I think the attitude of most Black and Latino parents varied between “the teachers know what’s best” to “we need to help the school become better.”
Just to clarify, I used “White culture” where I should have used “White American culture.”
Some people from the UK listen to the blues too. Does that make it any less American?
It doesn’t have to be* your *ancestry. It can also come from the dominant group in your area. For example, my area was heavily populated by Germans and you can still see some influences today in our regional dialect, food and architecture.
If your hometown was primarily German, or Irish, or Jewish or black, or* anything,* your “culture” includes those influences.
When we talk about culture, I think we need to keep in mind that culture can only be appreciated when you look at groups and compare them to other groups. There are plenty of individual cases of people in one group partaking in customs from another group. Some white people eat macaroni and cheese for Thanksgiving. Some black people like country music. But if you look at all white people, you’ll see that as group, mac and cheese isn’t a holiday mainstay like it is with black people.
With white Americans, I’m trying to think of things they do that other groups don’t do as often.What about music? Country and modern rock music are white American artforms, IMO. Having experienced white parties, it seems to me that getting drunk and making small talk seem to be bigger focus than dancing and jamming to music is for blacks and others. Is this an element of culture?
What about conformity? Despite the individuality that Hippy talked about, in my experience, white Americans seem to encourage blending in. Their clothing isn’t as expressive (think flannel shirt and khakis), children are given Anglophilic names like “John” and “Jennifer”, and there’s more of a competitive “keeping up with the Jones” mentality when it comes to childrearing. I’m thinking of the overscheduled kids who are into ballet, piano, and soccer before they are out of diapers. Even after class is accounted for, I think this is “white” thing. White people seem to especially care about making sure that their kids measure up to a standard set by what all the other kids are doing, while with other groups, I don’t sense that the status of the next door neighbor’s kids imparts as much influence. Maybe this tendency is related to white flight, too. I don’t want to be derogatory in my descriptions, but I see it sorta like a flock mentality. If one or two birds suddenly break from the pack, it causes the bunch to follow suit.
It’s going to hard to figure out exactly how much of these observations stem from ethnic culture and how much are products of class, though. Naming and style of dress, for instance, becomes more conservative the higher the SES. Competitive parenting also goes up the more money one has. I experienced this in my own household, which is black. With my two older siblings, who grew up when our parents were less well-off than when me and my twin sprouted, I don’t get the sense that my parents were worried that my brother and sister weren’t “keeping up with Jones” in terms of academics and extracurriculars. By the time my sister and I were big kids, my parents had more money and prestige, and their expectations of us seemed to rise accordingly. So we got the violin lessons, the girl scouts, the orchestra summer camps, the Kaplan courses, the braces, etc. With money, you have more resources to be competitive.
Both of these are basically what I was saying; white culture is American culture. There is no distinct culture that white Americans have that is seperate from general American culture; American culture = white culture. Not because white people have some special control of culture (although that may have been true in the past) but because of sheer numbers. If black Americans name their children “Lavon” and “Shaniqua” or if hispanic Americans name their children “Jesus” and “Maria” then those names might not cross over and might remain identifiable with those subcultures. But if white Americans start naming their kids “Justin” and “Heather” those names aren’t just recognized as stereotypical white names, they’re stereotypical American names.
Y’know, I used to think Wonder Bread was about as white as you can get but it seems that it has become more black. Miracle Whip, too. And when they first opened an Old Country Buffet around here I wasn’t surprised they’re headquartered in a suburb–SUBURB–of Minneapolis beacuse they serve what I recognize as my own “soul food” but when I look around about a third or half of the patrons are black and another third Hispanic or Asian and I realize that tasteless food you have to soak in gravy and/or hot sauce to wrestle it down your throat is not just what white folk eat, it’s universal. And this diverse clientele has assured that they have FINALLY gotten the first clue of how to cook collards. They are still far from delicious, but they are not bad.
Isn’t part of the problem that we’re putting “Italian” or “Korean” or “African” in front of American? I mean, for a group of people that are supposed to have the same vote, we find a lot of ways to try and divide ourselves a lot, no? I’ve got a slight problem wrapping my head around why people have separate cultures, at least in their minds. We tend to rank things, and when we divide things, we automatically assume that one isn’t as good as the other, thereby creating an immediate ranking system.
Isn’t that just complicating things?
I guess I would define white culture as the norm from whichall other cultures in America distinguishes itself. My acid test has always been if the purported “culture” has their own restaurants with a distinct menu.
There is a lot of conflation between white culture and white racial identity.
Sure. McDonalds.
McDonalds = McHonkys?
Kinda. “Honky” is pretty non-specific, it’s an epithet without any demographic definition. A peckerwood is a honky, and so is a cracker, but a peckerwood is not a cracker. We are far superior to crackers.
When I attended Denver Community College in the early 1980s, the main classroom building had exposed undersides of wide stairwells. Four stairwells, four slanted surfaces just begging to get murals. Whoever planned the public art for those spaces decided each of four races would be represented by their own mural. The Chicano and American Indian murals were by far the coolest. There was no contest.
The Chicano mural was the most boldly and impressively designed. It showed a mighty Corn Plant growing up right through the body and armor of a dead Conquistador and spreading out like a mythic Tree of Life to bless the land and the people, symbolized by a young modern Chicana and Chicano to the right and left of the corn plant, reaching across and holding hands, looking like they’re ready to start a family. A+
The American Indian mural was stunning the way it was planned on a buffalo hide on a round hoop, divided into four quarters, holding symbols of the four directions and elements, buffalo head, corn plant, sacred pipe, and other sacred symbols with a background of night sky. A
The Black people’s mural lacked the formal organization of the first two; it showed various scenes from black culture, like jazz bands and conga drums, with bold bright colors and rhythmic verve. B-
The White people’s mural had no visual or thematic coherence of any sort. There were just random images of what someone with poor imagination chose to stand for white people. There’s Einstein, there’s a girl in a dirndl, I can’t remember anything else because it was so banal. F
What I get from this set of murals is the consequences of hegemony on art. Whiteness doesn’t seem to have any specific semiotic marker. It’s assumed as the default culture, the privileged identity. It lacks the strongly visual symbols of the other races’ art. Perhaps as hegemonically powerful as it becomes, it grows artistically sterile for being the dominant culture. Its culture needs to feed vampirically on those of subaltern peoples to stay alive.