Returning to the OP, I wonder if he/she is asking what is “white culture” as a general idea, or what do the popular pundits / bloggers who use this term mean when they use it?
To my eye, “white culture” as a general idea is the grab-bag of mainstream American culture as described by many people above. And yes, non-white Americans find some of this culture off-putting or exclusionary, while other parts are fully genuine for them too.
But when Glenn Beck or others of that ilk use it, it’s a coded reference to a idealized (??)version of 1950s America, one where White Men run things, white women are subservient baby- & dinner-makers, and non white people are seldom seen and never heard.
Wow, this is really interesting to me. I certainly did not consider the idea of white culture until college. I’m 10+ years older than you, though, and when I applied to college, the abolishment of certain college admissions quotas was still recent enough, I think, that it was a topic for discussion. Also, I was a grad student when proposition 209 was passed in California (it amended the state constitution to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity.) I hadn’t really thought about these individual “bubbles” in my experience before.
You point up the fact that there are White cultures, not White culture. It’s in bubbles, basically.
Some of the bubbles are a lot bigger and more durable than others. The White Southern Protestant bubble is one (which has distinctive “sub-bubbles” such as Appalachian, Texan, and Southeast). The White Urban Catholic bubble is another (with distinctive “sub-bubbles” that are Irish and Italian and overlapping regional “Venn bubbles”(?) of Northeast and Rust Belt). Breadbasket “agri-culture” is for all purposes a White culture covering the Midwest.
Sometimes a bubble pops. People of the 2 or 3 most numerous White ethnicities - WASP, German, Scots-Irish - are largely deracinated “Genericans” because it’s been so many generations since their ancestors came over, and because German culture was so strongly suppressed during WW1. (It survives mostly in enclaves, typically touristy ones.)
Edit: This above may not seem very surprising or interesting to most people, but I went most of my life under the impression I was not white until SWPL came along. Then the Duran Duran post. I love Duran Duran! Don’t make fun of me, you like bad stuff too!
The comments in the SWPL entries are always worth a chuckle – someone always gets angry, someone always tries to decry the entire site as racist, and someone else lamely admits that they were gladly going along with the entries until one hit too close to home.
Basically, the “white people” described in the site are upper-middle-class-to-upper-class people (of ANY racial background) who tend to have currently-popular “Liberal” political views, tend to be very aware of pop-culture, and tend to have a lot of disposable income. “Yuppies” is partly correct, but the “white people” in question need not be urban or “professionals” (and indeed, many are either in college or just-post-college). Part of the humor comes from the fact that the people reading the blog oftend tend to be those poked fun of therein.
Oh, and the “whitest person” we know, per the blog, is of Indian descent. They admitted it.
