Imperceivably There
Written by Luke Probst SJND ‘26
Hello Dear reader,
I’m Luke Probst, a white U.S. citizen and former expat to Germany. I have a story to share. On an overcast Californian winter day, I ate lunch inside, avoiding the rain. A gaggle of my peers were speaking in an– obviously– audible whisper. I kept on stressing about finals until… I heard, “I took a genetics test, it said I’m German.” Startled by his comment I stood. I walked over to the pack and asked the individual, “Have you ever been to Deutschland? Do you practice their culture, traditions, and history?” “No,” he said. “Then how can you count yourself as German?” I replied. He responded by saying, “Because my genetics are from there; therefore, I’m culturally German.” Getting annoyed I responded, “Genetics doesn’t make culture.” I left the conversation perplexed: what made this individual feel the need to claim another culture as his own? The large size, geographic isolation, and changing cultural demographics of the United States all make white Americans feel an artificial lack of culture, prompting them to adopt other white cultures.
Culture exists as a contrast. If you have a monoculture, everything is normal; however, when you introduce a new culture, a contrast is created in which your beliefs and traditions are contrasted with another’s. For centuries, white Americans– like myself– have dominated this country’s culture. Lucia Barnum, a Latina American, says it best, “White is the default.” Diversity inclusion efforts have increasingly contrasted non-white cultures against a white backdrop, making white Americans more aware of other non-white cultures. Because white culture is dominant, white people don’t perceive their own culture; i.e. a fish doesn’t know it’s in water. As the fish, we don’t perceive the water, our culture, because it’s “normal.” This has created an environment where white Americans are surrounded by the celebration of other cultures with no perceivable culture to call their own. The effect this inadvertently has is that white Americans feel dispossessed of culture, prompting them to seek out other cultures.
The cultures white Americans seek out are often other white cultures. This may lead my readers to ask why it is that white Europeans perceive their own unique cultures as distinct from one another, while white Americans do not. Aren’t they also culturally dominant? Why are they different? Simple: geographic proximity to other culturally different countries– particularly– different white countries. Remember I told you that I was an expat in Germany. While there, we did a lot of traveling. Countries in the EU are much closer together than in North America; we could drive 90 minutes and reach a different country with a different culture and history. Due to European countries’ proximity to each other, they interact with each other more often for work, family, political collaboration, and vacation. Interaction is the catalyst for comparison. Europeans interact with other equally prevalent cultures more often than white Americans, creating a state of cultural equilibrium. No European culture exerts dominance over another, allowing Europeans to exist in a state of neutral contrast, flushing out their individual cultures.
White Americans do have culture. Fourth of July fireworks, Thanksgiving, American football, Rodeo, and country music are all things that white Americans started. Because those aspects are so dominant in American culture, they are adopted and modified by other cultures. A good example is the combination of R&B and Country Music forms to create Rock music. White American culture is universally understood which adds to its, “normalization.” We can’t see this because we are the fish surrounded by our water, but it’s there– imperceivably. As the bubbles of culture pass us, it creates a contrast. The other side of this contrast is that our Non-white American peers have to deal with our ignorance. Robert Lake, the father of a grade school Native American child, writes about his son’s adjustment to a new cultural system that comes so easily to his peers:
“I realize he may be slow in grasping the methods and tools that you are now using in your classroom, ones quite familiar to his white peers, but I hope you will be patient with him. It takes time to adjust to a new cultural system and learn new things,” (Robert Lake par 4).
The father asks the teacher to work with him to understand his son so his son doesn’t feel ostracized. What we as white Americans risk by not recognizing that we have culture, especially that our culture is dominant, is relatability and equality. When we don’t recognize our culture, everyone else is different to us and it never occurs to us that we are different from everyone else. That’s what Robert Lake’s son struggles with. The teacher never once realized the problem was her, not the son. Nothing is wrong with him; he just has a different learning basis that makes learning at a white-dominated school hard, because he carries with him “unique forms of knowledge” (Robert Lake). The beauty of America is that we draw power from diversity. The creation of Rock music merged two cultures to create an expressive and powerful art form. As white Americans, when we don’t recognize our culture, we ostracize our fellow Americans by not being able to see that we are different not the other way around. By not being able to see both sides of the relationship, we lose reliability. When we falsify ourselves with foreign cultures, we can no longer say, “Oh, cool that’s like this in my culture.” We forfeit our ability to connect truthfully with our culture rather than one we claim to possess. By doing this, we cannot form “a more perfect union,” (Thomas Jefferson) with our peers. We cannot see ourselves in relationship with our compatriots and therefore cannot unite. We cannot participate in America’s beautiful cultural collage. We cannot step aside and raise our fellow American’s voices. When we connect as ourselves and no one else, “we regain a kind of paradise” (Chimamanda Adichie).
SJND Pilot Island Editorial Staff 2024–2025:
Editor-in-Chief: Anne Obuchi ‘25:
News Editors: Jaslyn Ho ’26 and Jeanette McClure ‘27
Features Editors: Naomi Seche ’26 and Anabel Arista ‘27
Opinion Editors: Nicolaus Thyen ’27 and Victor Pham ‘27
Reviews Editor: Austin Ly ’27 and Sean Kimbrew ‘27
Sports Editors: Jayla Anderson ’27 and Jeremiah Myers ‘27
