The Curious Case of American White Culture
To start, I am going to focus on: the white perspective. Go ahead and eyeroll if you need to. I believe in any conversation, everyone needs a voice, everyone needs to be heard if understanding is the goal. We are at a critical point in our nation and these conversations have been and will be imperative.. so I am presenting a perspective I feel is not being heard, and that is deepening the national divide. We must listen to each other to avoid bloody conflict. Perhaps the time for that has passed, but I am going to try.
I was having a discussion with a friend of mine recently. They are a wonderful individual of color who I have been fortunate enough to have in my life. One who has expressed patience as I work through my own issues with recognizing privilege and racism. We frequently discuss topics of exclusion, racial identity, appropriation, etc. I learn a lot in these discussions, adding to what I am learning elsewhere.
During one of our discussions, I asked them:
“In your opinion, how would you describe white American culture, if such a thing exists?”
After a fairly long pause, “You know, I never really thought about that…. but I think I would describe it as the default setting for America, for Western Culture.”
“No doubt,” I replied. “It’s undeniable that the dominant culture in the United States is a white one, but what is the default social setting for America then?”
“Grotesque Consumerism, Social Dominance, and Cultural Appropriation”
Wow. That wasn’t flattering, it stung in fact, like when you get caught doing something stupid. I hadn’t quite put my finger on it, and as I do, got curious. So we did some exploring…
First, America is a very young country, and it is vast, incredibly vast. (fun fact, the entirety of the UK fits more or less in the footprint of Florida) Touting around 250 years old, America was colonized primarily by European settlers from varying countries. A majority of which left behind ties to their country of origin, language, traditions to join the American experiment. Ethnic groups were spread out geographically to the point where they were really just relevant to the immediate local family. Adhering to the ‘old ways’ was actually discouraged as old fashioned, as cultures blended in a sort of amalgam. There was also an unbridled opportunity, a chance to break away from the rigid hierarchies of social strata and monies for those clever and willing to find a niche. Entrepreneurship was the great lure of the New World and became part of the new culture growing there, part of the norm.
“If your skin was light, you co-opted white” my friend described, cleverly summarizing the trend.
So diving deeper into that.. you have multiple people literally abandoning their cultural identity for the promise of opportunity, one deeply rooted in capitalism. It makes sense that consumerism becomes the norm, and having abandoned a cultural identity, it seems obvious that other cultures would represent a resource for commodification. In more ways than one, people were leaving everything they had behind and forging new identities from what was available around them, physically, intellectually, and culturally. Interesting.
Having at least scratched the surface on why consumerism and appropriation seem to be relevant descriptors to white culture we move on to the concept of dominance. I had a resistance to attributing this to white people alone.
“Ok”, I said “I admit that white culture is dominant in the United States, but I think dominance is a tribal human condition. History is rife with one tribe dominating another across the globe”
“Agreed, but only White Europeans took it to a whole nother level with their expansion to other continents. They say it as their ‘right’. In an organized fashion, they invaded, killed, pillaged, displaced/replaced entries cultures.”
“Divine Providence of the Roman Catholic Church”
We both chewed on that for a bit. It wasn’t wrong. The Church was indeed responsible for many if not all of the pushes into other cultures, with the sole intent of replacing the cultural norms. Social dominance. Further, let’s be 100% honest here. Christ was not caucasian. He was likely quite dark, but the church performed what was likely the first and grandest whitewashing event in history, to justify spreading white dominance to the world. America has always been a religious country, one which does in fact support the concept of white dominance through Divine Providence.
Wow. Really. Wow.
So, the picture we have painted so far, of white American culture, are people whose main characteristics are social dominance morally backed through the concept of divine providence, no actual culture of their own, instead relying on consumerism and appropriation to fill the void.
Lets now factor in World War 2, where the Germans took white nationalism to the extreme, formed the Nazi party, and attempted to bend the world to its beliefs. Most of the world stood up against this, and halted this, decrying it as evil, rightfully. This also had an interesting effect on white Americans… anything ‘white’ centric became taboo. White power, white clubs, white pride are all concepts culturally scorned. It was very clear whites were still the dominant culture in America, but simultaneously, you couldn’t come out and say that or take pride in being white. This was inadvertently reinforced in the civil rights movement as well. Further distancing white people from any sort of identity of their own, just blanked dominance under the idea of ‘American’.
Here is where it gets interesting.
The importance of religion is waning in most populated areas. Further, the US is on track to becoming a majority-minority country in the next few decades. The writing is on the wall: White cultural dominance is coming to an end. Further, sensitivity to appropriation is aggressively hitting white Americans, as is resistance to excess consumerism.
White Americans literally have no racial identity of their own, we are losing dominance, and are being shut out from other cultures. We literally have nowhere to go. It is no wonder many white folks are digging in and becoming hostile.. they are literally afraid of being marginalized. Despite the irony of that statement, it isn’t entirely unfounded.
So then my friend turned the tables on me.
“What does it mean to you, to be white, from a cultural perspective.”
I thought for a moment. “Forbidden, hated, have some nice things, but afraid. Going deeper.. I recognize I have German, French, Spanish, Basque, North African heritage, but I neither feel empowered to explore those nor have a desire to. I recognize I don’t experience challenges that many minorities have to, which is privilege, but also feel that many invalidate my own accomplishments because of that. I gravitate to some other cultures not out of an exploitive mindset but out of a feeling of resonance at times, but often find walls to exploring those.”
“That sounds sad, but I can see how you are experiencing the effects of others that have come before you.”
Yup. I do, too.
I also noticed that in this dialog, we could not address any item of heritage that described white American culture. Neither did either of us attribute anything positive to white American culture. Yes, there was forced cultural obscurity that we applied to ourselves as well as any group wanting to assimilate. Yes, there were obstacles to that assimilation that unfairly created roadblocks for some ethnicities. The grand social experiment of America certainly was not without flaws.
However, it is undeniable that a nation of unparalleled success was formed, and for many years provided a moral compass that much of the world sought to emulate. We were leaders in science, medicine, and industry, and those benefits were shared with the world, despite how unfairly those benefits may have been applied, or the ethics of how we built to get there.
Growing up, I was presented with the concept that America was a ‘great melting pot’ many times. A cultural stew, where ideally, every culture contributes. Many white Americans feel strongly that this model is ethically and morally imperative, as we have been divorced from our cultural heritage, conditioned to believe that holding on to heritage was actually dangerous, at odds with forging a great new nation.
Ultimately, I am a member of a strange, almost non-ethnicity, that in a way, self marginalized in favor of vague concepts of dominance and consumerism. One that has no idea what it is without those things, and is keenly aware it is losing both. We are looking for a soul that our forefathers cast-off generations ago. We have no heritage to call our own, can take no pride in our ‘tribe’, and have no claim to the prosperity that much of the world now enjoys. We are nomads in the cultural landscape. We feel attacked, we feel silenced, we fear we are being marginalized, with no place to exist in what is coming.
