White Culture

And also so much easier to wander into serious, extensive discusions of racism and whiteness and toss in some uninformed stinkbombs, without having bothered to hear first much of what’s been said. (Which is likely in itself yet another example of white culture.)

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Since I am talking about my own life experience I am certain that I am exquisitely informed on the points I’m razing.

Having read through this topic, the OPs intent, and recent conversation, I’m going to set the following ground rules here:

1 - White culture exists because people believe it exists. Whether you’re talking “European culture” or “American culture” or caucasian “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic” culture, it doesn’t matter - there is no doubt people have an affinity to this culture, and that affinity leads to a lot of the modern bigotry and “fighting to maintain our culture” crap going on in Western democracies right now. Suggesting white culture doesn’t exist as a matter of dictionary definition is largely irrelevant as a result. It does exist in the minds of the majority. There is no point in trying to litigate that in this topic.
2 - Suggesting that a topic like this shouldn’t exist ignores #1, or at least ignores the fact that what folks think of as white culture defines and controls a vast majority of the resources and influence on the planet. So of course, it should exist. If the fact that a lot of the things done in the name of white culture happen to be of the bigoted variety? Well. Welcome to the uncomfortability of white privilege, a situation I also find myself in.
3 - given #1 and #2, we’re not doing #notallwhitepeople here. Because of course, not all anyone. However, you cannot ignore the effects of bigotry and hatred on people of colour in large part not only because of the colour of their skin, but also the very way statements like “urban” or “ethnic” or “not like us” are meant in those contexts. That they are culturally different from whatever “white culture” is.

So, if you aren’t interested in having conversations about the ways that white culture unduly influences everything, then find another topic. If you believe this inherently racist topic is racist, well, you’re right, it is. Rightly so. If you can’t deal with that, there are a great many other forums from which you can choose to post.

Also: the above isn’t up for debate. It’s the mod position on this issue. I’m sorry if you are disappointed in our stance, but it isn’t going to change. Posts trying to rules-lawyer the above will be unceremoniously eaten. Our house our rules.

Thanks.

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Thank you. Racists, specifically. “White culture” exists only insofar as something they think must be defended from malign and (often literally) dark outside forces. Let’s be clear: anyone in North America or Europe who frets about the preservation of white culture, either openly or through a variety of tissue-thin masking issues (e.g. selective laicité, false equivalence of “Western” with “white”,pseudoscience, etc.) is really demanding the preservation of their white privilege (which they deny exists – if anything they think white people are the historically persecuted group).

It’s a domain of disgruntled fools. You’re not going to find a lot of happy or content white people worrying about things like “The Great Replacement”, nor will you find a lot of educated white members of “the reality-based community” denying that skin privilege exists in North America. Worrying about “white culture” in this way is the province of ignorant losers who are incapable of critical thinking, and charlatans like Jordaddy, Charles Murray, and Gavin McInnes (not to mention the vast array of ultra-nationalist and nativist politicians) who prey on their insecurity and dullwittedness.

Those same charlatans, famous or not, also frequently indulge in logical fallacies (whataboutism, false equivalencies, tu quoque arguments, etc.) and concern-tr0lling to distract and discredit those who dare challenge their views or who point out that white supremacy exists in and of itself as well as through the concept of white culture. Since they tend to think they’re the smartest people in the room, they also think that everyone else is too stupid to see through what are ultimately stale, trite and spurious tactics and rhetoric.

tl;dr: if you’re an American or European worried about preserving “white culture”, overtly or through cut-outs, and if you’re bending over backward to deny the existence of white privilege in North America and Europe, you’re a racist. Period endstop.

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What does this mean in this context please?

Don’t think that you live in a white supremacist culture, especially in the Americas? Look around. Look at your government, from the low rungs all the way up to the top.

Are you using a European-derived form of government such as a republic or parliament? Congratulations, you’ve got white supremacy baked in. Is that government populated mostly or in large part by descendants of European colonists? Congratulations! You have white culture! What’s the most commonly practiced religion? Is it a form of Christianity? White Culture, Baby. Are the most common or official language(s) from Europe? Take a wild guess what that means.

Unless the Natives/First Nations/Aboriginal People are running your country under a governing system they traditionally used and you have assimilated into their language and religious practices… it’s pretty much a guarantee you are living in some flavour of white supremacist system. And nobody here is saying that you have to give all that up, just that you recognize how it works to privilege the culture of whiteness and suppress others. Listen to those voices and work for ways to suppress them less.

If you don’t want to do that, then admit that you are happy and comfortable living in a white supremacist culture. It doesn’t mean that you are a flag-carrying, torch-waving Nazi. It just means you’re okay with being indifferent to people less privileged than you, because you would rather not have to be uncomfortable, thinking about these things.

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As a foreign observer, it seems to me like “White culture” is defined by not being not-White; it exists only in opposition. This is different from, say, Texan or Californian culture, or Italian-American or Jewish American culture, which are defined by what they are, not what they aren’t – positive cultures, instead of the angry negation of White culture.

Plausible deniability, basically.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: ELI5: What was the history of North American genocide again?

All very true. In whatever sense the term “white culture” is being used, whether by the alt-right as something to be defended or as another way of describing and critiquing institutional and societal defaults that allow certain people to play on Scalzi’s “easy mode” by accident of birth, the racism underlying it is evident to those who make a good-faith effort to discuss it.

In addition to the other examples you provided, I’d also note that white supremacy has found a complement and has become intimately entwined in Libertarian/AynCap political-economic philosophy, and vice-versa. If one’s economic and/or societal philosophy posits that certain individuals by circumstances of nature or of specific nurture have more value than others, it’s not a huge leap for one to move to the idea that people with certain skin colours have more value than others.

This is one of the reasons we see such an affinity for “free”-market fundamentalism amongst the assorted racists, anti-Semites, misogynists, TERFs, and neo-feudalists who populate the alt-right, and why it’s no surprise that white supremacists are regularly discovered in mainstream conservative political parties pushing Reaganism and Thatcherism in North America and Europe.

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I don’t really believe that and that’s why I wanted to start this thread. I realize that what I’m grasping at might really be some kind of British-descended culture that shows itself in English speaking nations. But something this discussion has solidified for me is that I think that not being not-white is usually as far as a white person will go in thinking about whiteness because part of our shared culture is not examining our shared culture.

I think as a white person I’m afraid to identify myself as white because I know that’s the domain of the white supremacists. I’m afraid to think of something as white culture because, as @gracchus said, the only people interested in “preserving” white culture are evil people.

But I think there is something that is really there. There is a shared set of values that is sitting unseen beneath the surface of my Southern Ontario culture, and I see it reflected back at me in politics in the US and from the UK and in games and movies. I see it in other parts of my country.

White people often try to characterize it as this inevitable outcome of being the predominant culture. Like Chinese people living in China must be just as ignorant of Chinese culture as I am of Canadian culture. But I’m not sure that’s true. I feel like it’s something we might be telling ourselves because we don’t want to admit that we have a special ignorance, and that that ignorance serves itself.

If there’s one value I’m fairly sure I’ve settled on as a part of white culture, it’s individualism. But we don’t think of ourselves as individualists. We don’t tell ourselves that individualism is a good value because we learned it from our parents and they learned it from their parents and that’s how we built the world we live in. We tell ourselves that individualism arises naturally out of an objective look at the universe.

I think ironically at the same time we’re committed to the idea of a perspective-free view of the universe. The idea is that science and logic (or things that exist in opposition to them) provide us with knowledge of what is really real in a way that transcends people.

And together I feel like it adds up to solipsism. We were raised to think that we were alone on our journey through life and that what is our is what we take.

I appreciate that perspective. I’m definitely grasping at a thing here, and it felt like what I was grasping at was what had been silently handed to me as truth by my culture. What is “my culture”? It’s just the predominant culture of Southern Ontario, and the one thing that seems to link that is whiteness.

I see non-white comedians makes jokes about white people and it feels like they hit bull-eyes every time, so it feels like it is at least as widespread as north america and seems to penetrate in the UK and Australia too. There is something that connects us.

Now maybe I shouldn’t be calling this “white” culture. Maybe it’s post-enlightenment Christian culture. Maybe it’s colonial English culture. Maybe it’s neo-liberal culture.

But to your concern that the point of this discussion is to group people together by skin colour, that is not the point. I started this topic in the hopes of learning something that was eluding me. For me the outcome of this topic has been to find better ways to relate to my children, and I think that’s really worked. If the discussion is too specific to an American or a Canadian experience to be of my use to you where you live then I guess it’s just not for you.

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I will not pretend to tell you how to relate to your children but I can share how I recently
explained racism to my 8yo after they mentioned hearing the word (her class could not be more multicultural if Titania Mcgrath was in charge of enrollment). The conversation was quite long and involved a few pencil drawings but the basic crux was. “people are individuals and should be treated based on how they behave and how they treat you. Taking anything else into consideration like race, gender, skin color, money, is not only wrong but is more likely than not to give you an outcome based on bad assumptions as not.” This is not intended as a solution to “whiteness” but it is what I belive was the best approach for my kid.

When I talk about finding better ways to interact with my kids, I’m talking about something that might seem quite peripheral to the subject. I didn’t make this thread to figure out how to deal better with racism. Anti-racism’s got it’s own tactics. What I want to know is what values I’m handing down without knowing I’m handing them down because I’ve never examined them. What have I had passed to me, embedded in this culture (that I called white culture, but like I said if someone else told me, “no, that’s just british colonial culture” I wouldn’t jump up to contradict them) that I am going to pass on unthinkingly.

I know this is going to sound a little far afield, but basically I was singing Leonard Cohen’s “The sisters of mercy” as a lullaby (comments on the appropriateness of that I’ll save for another time). I know the lyrics in that I can sing them, but I didn’t really think them through ahead of time. And Cohen wrote:

You who must leave everything that you cannot control
It begins with your family but soon it comes round to your soul

And I was struck by the poverty of soul (I’m not going to dwell on this term excessively, it can be a metaphor if it needs to be) that exists in my culture. The thought of one another as things, as disposable, as useful-if-they-are-useful. And that makes me think of Smog’s “The be of use” which is a song about fantasizing about being as useful as a corkscrew - a song that deeply affected the Gen X white men I listened to it with.

I think that the imperialist solipsism that has been handed to me invisibly and unthinkingly by my parents exists to a significant degree as an element of a racist worldview and power structure. But I also think it is a thing unto itself. It exists in my culture, it’s poisoned my siblings and it’s poisoning my children.

So when I talk about this thread helping me interact with my children, I’m not talking about talking to them about racism. I mean that one night when my daughter was extremely sad and angry and couldn’t calm down I told them that I think sometimes they feel alone and feel that they will always been alone. And I think they feel that was because I feel that way. And I want them to know that I am going through this life with them and I don’t want them to have to feel alone. And that was exactly what I needed to say.

That’s how this thread helped me. So I have no idea if it is living up to it’s potential for others, of if there is anything useful here for you. But I’m very grateful to people who did want to share because I think it’s helped me and by helping me it’s helped my family.

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People keep talking about how if we act like race doesn’t exist, it’ll somehow solve racism, because it’s “just a social construct it isn’t real”. Unfortunately, that leads into the kind of thinking that an ideal, non-racist world is one where we’re all treated the same. Equally. The problem is that if you ask white people what it would look like, it looks an awful lot like what we have now, just for everybody. The same kind of cultural assimilation we’re supposedly trying to undo. As long as we treat ourselves as some sort of default normal, we run the risk of doing just that.

As I said above, white supremacy is more than just NeoNazis and the alt-right. It’s the idea that people should become like us, follow rules and norms that we have identified as ideal, or part of a well-run society, while ignoring the voices of cultures we see as other.

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I posted this in another thread, but thought I’d post it here, considering the history of Oregon as an incredibly white state that was founded on racial exclusion, it most certainly informs politics there today:

The more obvious outposts of white supremacy are easy to dismiss for many as outliers:

But white power groups have been remarkable successful at colonizing the right wing in rural places like Oregon and Idaho. They do this by leaning into “common sense” notions of race, at first at a very dog whistle level, but with increasing understanding of what they actual mean. The language of culture has come to replace more eugenicist language that have been more openly coded as racist by the larger public. So people can say things about “preserving our culture” and not sound like a new recruit for the hammerskins. And the militias that have spreads of land in these rural places position themselves as “patriots” seeking to “make American Great again” in the form of re-imposing “white” cultural norms (ie Western civilization, etc) and maintaining white control, but they speak in a way to appeal to at least some members of the GOP. They push people who become attracted to their movements (like they think they have a few “good ideas” and are talking some “common sense”) to run for office and push for agendas that are friendly to their goals. The reason why people who might not consider themselves to be racists (like the KKK or whatever) feel an affinity for these groups rests in how these groups employ particular kinds of language that avoids open racism, but appeals to particular, deeply held beliefs rooted in some of the notions that @MalevolentPixy is discussing above, that “white” culture is seen as inherently superior and desirable to assimilate to.

The colonization of the GOP by the far right, including white power-aligned groups has led to this sort of hostility when democrats are in power, because they’ve fed into the notion that a more progressive agenda that includes a social justice platform and greater inclusion is a direct attack on them and “their way of life.”

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And the thing is, even rural Oregon is pretty diverse. There are few African Americans, but it’s a melting pot of Native Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and other ethnic groups. The folks who support that stupid “Greater Idaho” boondoggle or the older “State of Jefferson” nonsense don’t factor in the diversity of the area they want to control or the effects on the people within that geography.

The last thing I would do is trust such a state to treat minorities fairly, even in proportion to the population. How do I know? Because shitheads like Matt Shea are their chosen leaders.

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