What is White Culture?

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Well, associating pop icons and TV shows with culture is problematic because of the role that racial bias plays.

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Umm, but the performers that African-Americans like are usually overwhelmingly African-American. I would still consider the music they create part of African-American culture. It is not the entirety of it, but it is also much older.

I know that using pop icons to describe culture will not give you a very complete picture. But, it is the majority of what I can see as a White-American cutlure, if such a thing exists. The TV and radio seem to be a pretty big societal glue in the U.S. Almost to the point that there is nothing else.

82

[QUOTE=Cemetery Savior]
Can I just say that I’ve never had Turnip Greens? I think that (at least in the pocket-Midwestern-White-culture) green beans are the more common veggie.
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Turnip greens are what I feed to the cavies, the iguana, and the uromastyces (uromastyxes?). People don’t eat turnip greens.
We do eat green beans–steamed, nuked, with butter and pepper, with onions (or onions and tomatoes), alongside mashed potatoes, mixed into three-bean (or seven-bean) salad.

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Wonder bread, light beer, hot dogs,soap operas,Carlin,Nascar
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I hate white bread (aside from Italian loaves or French baguettes), only whole wheat or rye (or some exotic multigrain or pumpernickel) in my house.
Light beer is not permitted in my house. We much prefer ales and stouts and will drink lagers and pilseners on occasion, but one-third-the-taste-with-one-half-the-calories is a stupid reason to drink beer.
We do like hot dogs, but I’m more likely to buy brats.
Geeze, I even gave up watching ER in the third season when it stepped over the line into full-fledged soap opera.
George Carlin I liked in his early years. He can still be amusing.
NASCAR? You mean where you watch a bunch of cars loudly run a round a circle (or oval) for a few hours? What’s the point?

I guess I’ve got no culture.

83

[QUOTE=Magiver]
To say that Country Music is culturally white is different than saying white people claim it culturally. It has Appalachian roots but Appalachia would not be the cornerstone of white culture.
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To say that Country Music is culturally white would be quite incorrect. Yes, music from the British Isles transferred to Appalachia (& other parts of the South) is one source. But African-Americans were also influential in forming what we know as Country music. The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams & Bob Wills were all acquainted with African-American musical traditions & almost all of them had African-American teachers.

Most fans of Nashville’s current craptastic output are pretty damn white. But their musical taste demonstrates their ignorance of Country Roots.

www.birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/index.cgi?cat=10043

Here’s the first 'net source I could find repeating some of Carl Jung’s thoughts about American culture.

*Jung was quite specific in his collected works about the dangers of white people living side by side with black people. “Even today the European, however highly developed, cannot live with impunity among the Negroes in Africa; their psychology gets into him unnoticed and unconsciously he becomes a Negro…” (CW 10, 121).

That “the inferior man has a tremendous pull because he fascinates the inferior layers of the psyche” was a spiritual dilemma that Jung believed very much shaped the American (that is to say, white American) soul. "Americans present a strange picture: a European with Negro behavior and an Indian soul: (CW 10, 507).*

www.gatheringin.com/jung.html

The influences that upset Jung seem blessings to those of us not prone to rectal transport of iron rods.

American culture has always been a mixture. Slavery began here long before any of my ancestors arrived. Of course, there are subcultures such as African-American, Mexican-American & Irish-American–not to say that members of each subculture are identical. All take part in the “majority” culture–& continue to influence it.

There is no such thing as “White” culture.