This is just it. They don’t think about how it looks to say these things on an international website. If in my country we have problems with eastern Indians being racist, I might think it’s appropriate to make a thread with just Indians being racist called “Brown Culture”.
They are able to see how a thread fixating on what’s wrong with brown people is bad, but not how a thread about white people is bad, even though different parts of the world have different forms of bigotry.
It’s ok in my country, so the rest of the world also needs to find it acceptable
Instead of talking about the problem, which is racism, we talk about skin color being a culture, which it’s not. If you’re talking on a global board, think about how it might be seen as unwelcoming.
A good example of this is how we talk about we talk about “Indian food” or “Chinese food” or “Mexican food”, but a hamburger and fries is just “food”. Steak and potatoes is just basic food.
But they’re not. They are North American white people foods. Sure, you can buy a burger and fries worldwide, but that’s a result of white culture being exported and even imposed on the world. Coca-cola, Starbucks… all the same thing (Starbucks having the bonus of cultural appropriation thrown in. Most serious non-white NA coffee drinking cultures will tell you that whatever Starbucks pretends to be about, it’s not about coffee).
This despite the fact that a lot of what we call “Chinese food” or “Indian food” is from single regions of very complex countries and isn’t even like what they serve in those regions anymore. It’s been altered to appeal to white, western palates. But we’ll say things like “let’s order Chinese, I am dying for some sweet-and-sour”, yet you’ll never hear “let’s go get some White food. I have been craving mashed potatoes all day.”
If there’s a white person in China, what do they call Chinese food?
They call it, “Food”. You see, this discussion isn’t for a global audience. It’s acceptable from your world view, but in other places, white people are the minority, and grouping people together by skin color is always racism.
You are not thinking about how this looks to a global community.
It seems to me that like most topics on bb and bbs, the U.S., Canada, UK (by which I include, though perhaps wrongly, Australia and NZ) and Europe generally comprise the general orientation of both the main page writers and most commenters here. In all those places, white supremacy remains part of the social order, and thus white culture does too. Yes, it differs in various places, but much of it is constant, especially the empowered position of things and people who are racially white.
Yes, other places differ from that. But pointing that out on bbs seems to me a lot like men saying in a discussion of toxic masculinity, “You know, that’s not true of all men.” And everyone who’s been talking is all like, “Well duh, no one here said ALL men.” In this discussion of white culture, I don’t think anyone has been saying it exists in all countries.
Racism IS the culture that makes some people “white” and others “not white”. We know it’s cultural, because it changes over time.
We are unwelcoming to racists, because fuck that noise. If you don’t want to have a more mature conversation that goes beyond the simplistic explanation of “bad apples” you are welcome to mute the topic. There are plenty of other topics that are not so triggering for you.
This board does lean heavily American/Canadian, European, and Australian/NZ, so yeah, those are going to inform our normanative ideas. our goal here is to deconstruct them so we can eventually (as a society) move past them.
Not only is it a discourse here, but anthropologists and historians talk about food, the culture of food, and how it intersections with the construction of categories like race and ethnicity.
High fashion promoting racism yet again… the designer was a student, who is apparently Chinese, and claimed not to know it’s offensive… even if that is true, the instructor should have been more than aware and head that shit off before it got to the stage of presentation.
That seems to explain why latin american whites are not seen as real whites in the US and Europe even if some of them have the same ancestors and look exactly like the natives.
The wahhabis pasr reminded me that the people who came from Middle East to Brazil, mostly from Lebanon (but I’m not sure if they are considered arabs or not), are seen as whites here.
I noticed the same thing, but we, non-american-or-western-europeans, also didn’t offered much input on this topic.
The biggest missing point for me is that other countries, in my case Brazil, has a completely different concept of being white than US and Europe, and while there is some mention in this topic of how whiteness was developed, it still seem alien to me like it became natural and the definition is overlooked (as Mindysan33 said above) to focus on the effects.
There is a lot of implicit racism that is perpetuated and transmitted by the hegemonic group culture, or what is simply called culture on each place.
While in other countries that don’t have a white majority it will manifest with different practices, but still with some similarities regarding othering, and it is not appropriate to just label it white culture, in the Americas and Europe it is.
And even if you reject racism and fight against it, the white culture will still have effect on you, and the only way to completely counter require understanding it first.
You mention Brazil, and that made me think that I might have a personal story that can exemplify some of what you’re saying, plus how intersectionality works within this concept.
We’re a multi-mixed-race family, with enough small differences between us that people in the U.S. are often quite open about their confusion. One of my daughters is regularly ‘assigned’ one of two nationalities, depending on the worldly knowledge of the observer: if they don’t know anything about Latin America, they assume she’s Mexican; if they do, they assume she’s Brazilian. I’m sure you can already figure out why: a mix of European plus Native plus western, central, AND east Asian (including significant Jewish from 3 different populations) fits right in in Brazil. If one is used to truly mixed populations, one thinks in those terms, but if not, one views the world in black-&-white and picks the obvious (closest ‘non-white’ country to the U.S., and with the largest number of immigrants, is Mexico).
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.)
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.
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.
