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Genuine question: What is white culture?

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Europeans have mobility as well (Through the EU). Their is are distinct regional cultures in the US.You can see it in the food , even if it's the same type of food the taste will be distinct.As well as with the regional accents and different specific regional vocabulary among others things. Culture isn't a singular picture it's like a mosaic it's a whole butch of smaller pieces that build up to form an image a lot of these you may not even notice until you look at them. If you want I may be able to dig up some articles on this as I have done classes dealing with the Different Regional cultures of the US with a focus on Intersections of Linguistics, Culture and food.

Mobility in Europe is a very recent phenomenon though. Clusters of people in Europe had centuries of relatively stationary living in which to develop distinct rituals, customs, diets etc. There were bits that traveled between regions (largely religious or technological ones). It wasn't until the last hundred years or so did the actual movement of people between regions start and those concepts really start spreading whole and en masse.

If you have any resources comparing American regional cultural disparity to European regional cultural disparity I'd be interested in that.
 
White culture is wearing makeup and creating art that holds up the ugly reflection of America's transgressions. Born out of Americas impoverished.


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All culture is about appropriation, it's not exclusive to Europeans or American whites. Just look at any major religion. The Islamic Golden Age was mentioned in this thread: it would be as ridiculous to diminish it for its Greek and Indian basis (and the Near East as an economic/cultural bridge between worlds), as it would be to diminish the Renaissance. And appropriation is rarely a one way exchange, even if there's a significant power balance.

The confusion over what a "white culture" is makes sense as the special thing about being white is that you don't have to think about race. However, it's not really that hard to map this out. For one, white people are still people and people generate culture merely by being alive. For something truly substantial, just step outside the twitter memes and pop culture references and you'll see white Americans have been creating literature and art (and philosophy, to a lesser extent) distinct from their European counterparts for centuries. This goes on to include a hundred years of Hollywood, a special relationship with automobiles, new forms of Christianity, and so on. Mark Twain is probably a good place to start.
 
White isn't a race if it includes Gaelic, Nordic, Aryan, Semitic, Mediterranean etc people as identical.

Lmao what is going on with these categories. You've got like 4 different racial schemata in this.

Mobility in Europe is a very recent phenomenon though. Clusters of people in Europe had centuries of relatively stationary living in which to develop distinct rituals, customs, diets etc. There were bits that traveled between regions (largely religious or technological ones). It wasn't until the last hundred years or so did the actual movement of people between regions start and those concepts really start spreading whole and en masse.

If you have any resources comparing American regional cultural disparity to European regional cultural disparity I'd be interested in that.

This isn't true at all. Europeans have been moving around Europe for pretty much forever. Look at Scottish, Irish, and to a less extent Swiss emigration to pretty much every European country over the last millennium.
 
Her love of Stephen King may be my favorite part of the show actually.

This picture is giving me painful memories of when my local used bookstore had a nice hardcover of Pet Sematary but it was a day before payday and I was broke. I went back the next day as soon as I got paid and it was gone.

I still got a nice book club edition hardcover of Salem's Lot though.
 
I've said this before and got dumped on, but I think that there really isn't a "white culture" because white people can live their lives without ever really thinking about their race, something POC cannot do.

So white people identify more with their socio-economic classes than a collective racial culture. It's part of white privilege.
 
This thread did not disappoint lol

If I were to be serious for a moment and look at only Americans I would think White [American] culture is individualism. Boot straps mentality. Do it on your own and when someone else helps you along don't have their assistance garner too much attention.

Black [American] culture as well as other minority group seem to be community focused and the success of an individual is often credited to the success of those around them.
 
There's no such thing as white culture. There's western culture based on greco-roman culture and christianity with its good aspects and its not so good aspects.

Now if you're talking about american Wasp culture then that's another thing.

That's what they are talking about: American WASP culture...likely the stereotyped conservative evangelical Christian variety, since they are the biggest douchebags.
 
White culture? I guess it started with greek/Latin culture where the foundations of our language begat.

Then i guess it goes on from there to the major philosophers, romance poets, Christianity/Catholicism. The artists also.

I'm pretty sure it's anything with European heritage?

No one in this thread is writing in a language derived from Greek or Latin....
 
I dont know what white culture would be. As a white guy, here's some stuff I stereotypically think of, with degrees of whiteness for extra fun:

white:
Taylor Swift
Cheese
Mayonnaise
Friends
Country
Starbucks

extra white:
Nascar
Bud Light/PBR
Seinfeld
Fishing
Metal
Square Dancing
 
I've said this before and got dumped on, but I think that there really isn't a "white culture" because white people can live their lives without ever really thinking about their race, something POC cannot do.

So white people identify more with their socio-economic classes than a collective racial culture. It's part of white privilege.

I don't know why you would get dumped on by this because it's mostly true. The privilege of being white in Western cultures is that, ironically, culture doesn't matter. A person can't say that about other ethnicities living in Western societies.

As an ethnic minority myself, I get judged in both subtle and overt ways every day of my life -- at the workplace, in my social life, or even with romantic partners.


edit: The difficulties in identifying what white culture actually is actually proves the point, because it means that people can be whatever they want to be without societal constraints or judgments.
 
This thread did not disappoint lol

If I were to be serious for a moment and look at only Americans I would think White [American] culture is individualism.

Black [American] culture as well as other minority group seem to be community focused and the success of an individual is often credited to the success of those around them.

This sounds about right.

If you subscribe to the concept that culture and community are survival mechanisms which allow for individuals to flourish in a world of competing cultures and communities, White privilege seems to have allowed us to really "shed" cultural norms as unnecessary relics. Those things that were fostered in the Old World to give structure and meaning to the lives of countless villages and fledgling nations don't really matter anymore. Whatever cultural history we can gleen from our ancestors is usually just fun trivia rather than something that needs to be cherished for the survival of our "group". The platonic family is all that matters now, and culture can be seen as more of am anchor than anything.
 
Honestly the advent of DNA testing pokes some real holes in the idea of whiteness.

You just know these guys championing their white "purity" could well be part Mexican or African or Jewish. Turns out skin colour is even that big of a deal as far as genetic code is concerned.

Actually it doesn't poke that big of a hole in it because race is social not biological. Trying to tie race to genetics isn't the path progressives should be taking. Think about the last time that was a major thing...
 
I've said this before and got dumped on, but I think that there really isn't a "white culture" because white people can live their lives without ever really thinking about their race, something POC cannot do.

So white people identify more with their socio-economic classes than a collective racial culture. It's part of white privilege.

Is there a Japanese Culture?
 
"American" white culture is the lack of identifiable "racial" culture, because american culture as a whole is a bit of everything and hyper homogenized, which comes off as a "lack of culture" and defaulted to "white".
 
Whatever cultural history we can gleen from our ancestors is usually just fun trivia rather than something that needs to be cherished for the survival of our "group". The platonic family is all that matters now, and culture can be seen as more of am anchor than anything.

Wow, I'm not even a cultural historian and this is fucked up.

Also you don't seem to know what the word platonic means.
 
This isn't true at all. Europeans have been moving around Europe for pretty much forever. Look at Scottish, Irish, and to a less extent Swiss emigration to pretty much every European country over the last millennium.

And these movements were large, traumatic, but relatively rare moments in European history right? I'm talking about those migrations so massive thst they displace the regional culture they move to rather than become absorbed by them.
 
And these movements were large, traumatic, but relatively rare moments in European history right? I'm talking about those migrations so massive thst they displace the regional culture they move to rather than become absorbed by them.

Err no. Scotland in particular was constantly bleeding large numbers of people. There were also extant Scottish-French, Scottish-German, Scottish-Polish, Scottish-Russian, and Scottish-Swedish cultures that were identifiable until fairly recently.

Anyway your goal posts for movements to count seems weird. Not all large migrations end up displacing the local culture. Many times people end up blending in.

Meanwhile sometimes small scale migrations greatly change the culture of a region. Look at the Anglo-Saxons in England, or, quite likely, the Indo-Europeans pretty much everywhere their culture spread to.
 

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I've said this before and got dumped on, but I think that there really isn't a "white culture" because white people can live their lives without ever really thinking about their race, something POC cannot do.

So white people identify more with their socio-economic classes than a collective racial culture. It's part of white privilege.

Seems to be the most reasonable answer I've seen so far. Probably why everyone is having trouble narrowing it down.
 
I'm kind of baffled by seeing Heavy Metal mentioned multiple times actually.

Iron Maiden and their ilk continue to perform through sold-out arena tours throughout Asia, Central and South America most likely enjoying larger 'mainstream' success than in white American demographics if we're speaking strictly American here.

In the late 70s/early 80s it was even a staple for most big Hard Rock/Heavy Metal bands to have their 'live in Japan' LP.

I'm really just bringing it up as a huge Metal fan since childhood. The majority of Metal show audiences around NYC actually tends to be Hispanic.
 
So is this a thread about white American culture or white culture in general?

Because there is no such thing as white culture, black culture, etc when viewing it on a global level or even just in the west.

This is why it is difficult to identify what is white culture, black culture, asian culture, etc.

There is zero similarity between a Silesian and a Flemish person's culture for example.

I have lived in both Europe and Africa, and Africa is the same in this regard, Zulu and Xhosa people are very different for example just within one country, let alone Tswana people (Botswana) etc, there is no such thing as black culture in Africa. Their cultures are different.

There are cultures in Europe and Africa that most people have never even heard of, but you'll know it if you go to the region with a dominant population of it.

Culture is way more complex than being simply tied to race.

You need to look at, what is French culture? What is German culture? What is Zulu culture? What is Xhosa culture? What is Tswana culture?

Black culture of what is in the U.S for example is absolutely nothing like what someone would tell you what black culture is in an African country. When I think of "black culture music", I actually think of deep house, because that is what I have experienced in South Africa, it is by far the most popular type of music among black people.

By looking at specific cultures themselves, you will find the answer. It is not difficult to differentiate very clearly what French culture is in comparison to German culture.

Black culture in France is completely different from black culture in Germany as well for example, just as white culture is between the two.
 
Err no. Scotland in particular was constantly bleeding large numbers of people. There were also extant Scottish-French, Scottish-German, Scottish-Polish, Scottish-Russian, and Scottish-Swedish cultures that were identifiable until fairly recently.

Anyway your goal posts for movements to count seems weird. Not all large migrations end up displacing the local culture. Many times people end up blending in.

It's the blending aspect I'm concerned with. I suppose it depends on what level we choose to analyze the culture of.

But yeah Im no expert of European history.

Wow, I'm not even a cultural historian and this is fucked up.

Also you don't seem to know what the word platonic means.

Yeah I meant "nuclear" family.

And yeah its fucked up but not a new idea. People really started actively pushing to shed unnecessary cultural baggage after the French Revolution to focus on national or economic ties versus cultural ones.
 
It's the blending aspect I'm concerned with. I suppose it depends on what level we choose to analyze the culture of.

But yeah Im no expert of European history.



Yeah I meant "nuclear" family.

And yeah its fucked up but not a new idea. People really started actively pushing to shed unnecessary cultural baggage after the French Revolution to focus on national or economic ties versus cultural ones.

Err it's the other way around. Europeans, with the exception of the British, became obsessed with culture. They just wanted a national instead of a regional one, and to do that they picked and chose elements to support as that culture. For instance look at romanticism and increasing emphasis on "national dress".
 
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