But it seems rather clueless when its purported members are unable or willing to define what it is. How can people make a sound argument for their favorite hegemon if they don’t understand it or know what it represents? It’s like trying to argue with US wanna-be conservatives - how can you conserve your traditions if you don’t even know what they are? It makes for some extremely unconvincing argumentation.
Defining one’s own culture seems like something people don’t need to do, but get to do, because they have some pride in it. When people default to merely fronting for others, I find it hard to buy that it is really their culture. It infantilizes people, as if they assume somebody else will speak their mind on their behalf.
Human beings are entitled to take offense at what they think are demeaning labels applied to them. But I do not think that a can of chow mein on the shelf at Kroger particularly cares.
That they very well might. Although it sounds like a more effective exercise in solipsism than it does communication. And as I understand it, societies are based upon the latter. Maybe somebody else is doing the communication whilst they are conned into perpetual naval-gazing.
You missed the white overculture of America that worships the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, the Civil War, etc., I take it? All identified as “America” which, historically, is synonymous with nativist “White” America. The thing that later immigrants did was graft themselves into this identity, which was later called “white.” The culture is the one most of us get taught in school and, if you look in the mirror and aren’t white, I expect you realize that it isn’t entirely “yours.” Malcolm X certainly spoke about that message.
Because of lack of any particular ethnic identification (I’m English/German/Irish/French), I was taught that I was an “American” and I was “white,” just like my parents and grandparents. The civics of all of those civic classes was my culture and civics. The history was my history. I had ancestors in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War so this was just part of the narrative of whiteness and being an American.
Excellent! I was wondering when that culture was going to be over! XD
Re-labeling the “colonists” as “natives” is not terribly convincing - especially to those who have lived here much longer than they.
This identity you describe has never impressed me (or much of the world) as being very well-established. I can respect it for the few hundred years worth of what it is, but I think that it is not a cohesive identity. No more than people would mistake England, France, Holland, and Spain for being the same place. So when weighing 200-400 years of colonial hype against thousands of years of Native American, Asian, African - even indigenous European culture - it often fails to define itself.
ETA: By which I do not mean to disparage US culture! But simply point out that it often seems to lack more robust explanations of why one should follow those traditions in favor of anything else. A “free person” in a multicultural society has the traditions of the entire planet to draw from.
I don’t relate. It may not be mine, but it is mine as much as it is anyone elses. It is illusory for people to be attached to land, things - even identities.
Did you ever find yourself questioning any of this? The history, traditions, identity, etc? Attempts to socialize me into anybody’s system always set my BS detectors off and kicked my critical faculties into overdrive.
I thought the modern understanding was that things can be called Oriental but people shouldn’t be. There are plenty of Oriental Rug stores around, and they’re not run by white people.
I know that people have been doing it, but I still don’t find it convincing! If they claim to be Native Americans, then they can’t be such obstructionists when people choose to live as Native Americans. And certainly not with a counter of “Well, I’ve got 200 years of pseudo-tradition”. That’s nice, but since I can choose, I am not going to live like an English immigrant (not there is anything wrong with being one).
Can’t believe we’ve gone almost 100 posts and nobody has brought up BRINE.
“It is said that after Brine visits your village, products will be made out of coconut oil for no reason whatsoever. The horse’s green color represents the thousands of dollars that will soon be wasted on items like serrano pepper dishwashing liquid.”
The person who wrote this was clearly high as a kite.
When talk of so-called “ethnic foods” happened, I mentioned that everybody has an ethnicity. Which became a roundabout discussion of implicit cultural bias. I tried pointing out that “gentry” is itself a somewhat ethnocentric conception of lifestyle and development, but one without much self-awareness. Sorry if I am unclear! I do try.
Well, when it comes time for other people and myself to negotiate what we are doing, how we live, then they need to do precisely that. It’s called “agency”, and if they can’t deal, they aren’t going to last. I am willing to help most people to live how they choose, but if they can’t articulate that, then I can’t help them - and neither can anybody else.
I thought we already went over this. I understand the term. As I have already said, it is easily refuted by indigenous people who have seem the colonists fail to integrate. There are people who are demonstrably more native than the nativists, and who are not impressed! This failure is compounded by the nativist-colonial-Euros often having a weak grasp of whatever traditions they claim to be establishing. If the USian has an essentialist identity, it might be a conflicted schizoid thing which is both native and Euro, but naive to both, and hostile to both. So when they try asserting this identity to others, be they indigenous people or other immigrants, there is a lack of cultural definition which can render it unpersuasive
The confusion might be that you consider this history and culture to be an artifact fixed in time, but I think of it as a process lived out in daily experience. People don’t somehow inherit an ill-defined culture and play in it, but create it with others in their interactions. Default culture is a lifeless thing in the face of living tradition.
