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>They were forced into a distinct reality and stereotypes served to reinforce the segregation that eventually may have led to cultural differences, not the othe

>They were forced into a distinct reality and stereotypes served to reinforce the segregation that eventually may have led to cultural differences, not the other way around. The thing that I don't accept about this argument is that this would seem to imply then that not expressing these differences could be seen as "white culture." It seems like only you try to disentangle Black Culture from American Culture, then the non-black aspects of American Culture can be thought of interchangeably with "White Culture." It's almost like a straightforward semantic thing, but it's aggressively resisted for reasons that I can't see as stemming from anything other than a prior desire to somehow elevate blacks. Note that the argument can scale up to encompass other racial cultures as well - once you subtract "Latino Culture" and "Black Culture" and "Asian Culture" from "American Culture" why is it so offensive to call whatever residual that's left that's only associated with non-blacks/asians/latinos "white culture"? Is the because it would be argued that these cultural dimensions didn't arise because of a specifically-shared white identity? It seems pretty odd to find that relevant, however, as the specific practices of other racial cultures largely did not originate/propagate based on conscious racial identity. I think that it's really difficult to justify all of this stuff without embracing an axiomatic "white people are different" assumption somewhere in the argument. Like, what does it matter for the definition of culture if group X and Y are different because X was "forced" to adopt different practices? Does this means that X culture exists but Y culture doesn't? That seems arbitrary to me.

webmaven 6y ago
> once you subtract "Latino Culture" and "Black Culture" and "Asian Culture" from "American Culture" why is it so offensive to call whatever residual that's left that's only associated with non-blacks/asians/latinos "white culture"? Perhaps because on the one hand you still need to subtract so many other immigrant cultures (Italian American, Polish American, Irish American, etc.), and on the other the "melting-pot" residue is still a set of (largely regional) subcultures that don't have all that much in common (California Surfers, Utah Mormons, Mountain Westerners, Texan Cattle Ranchers, Minnesota Nice, New England Yankees, Deep Southerners, etc.), and if you subtract those what's left over is a fiction that mostly exists only in media and advertising, like the Standard American Newscaster accent that no-one actually speaks natively, although you might make a case for the existence of a generic Suburban American culture that, if it can be said to exist, only came into being after World War II.
- yanderekko 6y ago
  The same sort of decomposition can be done towards black culture as well though. It also strikes me as untenable that one can simultaneously support the notion of "white privilege" while attacking the notion of "white culture" - many things that are commonly-cited as reflective of white privilege are cultural in nature.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > The same sort of decomposition can be done towards black culture as well though. You can, and it has been done, but that's a bit more like noting regional differences within a subculture than it is, for example, like examining the differences between Americans who identify as Latino/Tejano/Hispanic. There are fewer differences between East Coast vs. West Coast Rap and Hip-hop than there are between "Country" and "Western" music. > It also strikes me as untenable that one can simultaneously support the notion of "white privilege" while attacking the notion of "white culture" - many things that are commonly-cited as reflective of white privilege are cultural in nature. There are plenty of privileges that have cultural markers that don't necessarily have a corresponding culture per-se. Rich, straight, and male privileges come to mind. The privilege, in many respects, often simply comes from the assumption that members of your group are in some sense considered the default type of human, and that other humans are the exceptions (even if they actually outnumber the 'default') that the world may or may not choose to accommodate in various ways. That doesn't necessarily imply that the privileged 'default' groups have distinct cultures surrounding that core assumption. Gah. Intersectionality is hard. Perhaps a bit of nuance is in order. Rather than saying that "there is no such thing as White Culture", it would make more sense to say "in America there are many white cultures"?
    - yanderekko 6y ago
      >The privilege, in many respects, often simply comes from the assumption that members of your group are in some sense considered the default type of human, and that other humans are the exceptions (even if they actually outnumber the 'default') that the world may or may not choose to accommodate in various ways. Sure, but obviously the modally-raised examples of privilege are not stuff like "'flesh-colored' crayons correspond to white skin tones." It pertains to perceived social norms and such that benefit white people as a class at the expense of non-white people. But if you posit that those social norms may constitute a shared cultural experience, then you've crossed a line? I don't buy it. If you go on Twitter and find someone talking about hating white people for whatever reasons (shouldn't be too hard), I'm sure that many of the critiques will be cultural in nature (eg. look at all the culturally-laden digs towards "white-girl feminism".) But again, this shouldn't be taken to imply the existence of white culture? Why not? I'm not particularly hung up on trying to prove that white culture exists in particular, but I just don't think the arguments for why black culture exists but not white culture are very good, and I think they are clearly subverted by how woke narratives collectively treat white people in pretty much any sort of critical context.

webmaven 6y ago

> once you subtract "Latino Culture" and "Black Culture" and "Asian Culture" from "American Culture" why is it so offensive to call whatever residual that's left that's only associated with non-blacks/asians/latinos "white culture"? Perhaps because on the one hand you still need to subtract so many other immigrant cultures (Italian American, Polish American, Irish American, etc.), and on the other the "melting-pot" residue is still a set of (largely regional) subcultures that don't have all that much in common (California Surfers, Utah Mormons, Mountain Westerners, Texan Cattle Ranchers, Minnesota Nice, New England Yankees, Deep Southerners, etc.), and if you subtract those what's left over is a fiction that mostly exists only in media and advertising, like the Standard American Newscaster accent that no-one actually speaks natively, although you might make a case for the existence of a generic Suburban American culture that, if it can be said to exist, only came into being after World War II.

yanderekko 6y ago
The same sort of decomposition can be done towards black culture as well though. It also strikes me as untenable that one can simultaneously support the notion of "white privilege" while attacking the notion of "white culture" - many things that are commonly-cited as reflective of white privilege are cultural in nature.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > The same sort of decomposition can be done towards black culture as well though. You can, and it has been done, but that's a bit more like noting regional differences within a subculture than it is, for example, like examining the differences between Americans who identify as Latino/Tejano/Hispanic. There are fewer differences between East Coast vs. West Coast Rap and Hip-hop than there are between "Country" and "Western" music. > It also strikes me as untenable that one can simultaneously support the notion of "white privilege" while attacking the notion of "white culture" - many things that are commonly-cited as reflective of white privilege are cultural in nature. There are plenty of privileges that have cultural markers that don't necessarily have a corresponding culture per-se. Rich, straight, and male privileges come to mind. The privilege, in many respects, often simply comes from the assumption that members of your group are in some sense considered the default type of human, and that other humans are the exceptions (even if they actually outnumber the 'default') that the world may or may not choose to accommodate in various ways. That doesn't necessarily imply that the privileged 'default' groups have distinct cultures surrounding that core assumption. Gah. Intersectionality is hard. Perhaps a bit of nuance is in order. Rather than saying that "there is no such thing as White Culture", it would make more sense to say "in America there are many white cultures"?
  - yanderekko 6y ago
    >The privilege, in many respects, often simply comes from the assumption that members of your group are in some sense considered the default type of human, and that other humans are the exceptions (even if they actually outnumber the 'default') that the world may or may not choose to accommodate in various ways. Sure, but obviously the modally-raised examples of privilege are not stuff like "'flesh-colored' crayons correspond to white skin tones." It pertains to perceived social norms and such that benefit white people as a class at the expense of non-white people. But if you posit that those social norms may constitute a shared cultural experience, then you've crossed a line? I don't buy it. If you go on Twitter and find someone talking about hating white people for whatever reasons (shouldn't be too hard), I'm sure that many of the critiques will be cultural in nature (eg. look at all the culturally-laden digs towards "white-girl feminism".) But again, this shouldn't be taken to imply the existence of white culture? Why not? I'm not particularly hung up on trying to prove that white culture exists in particular, but I just don't think the arguments for why black culture exists but not white culture are very good, and I think they are clearly subverted by how woke narratives collectively treat white people in pretty much any sort of critical context.