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  1. #1
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    What Is White Culture?

    The whole world is lost...



    What is white culture, exactly? Here's what the stats say


    Race issues



    Whiteness is hard to define, but apparently it involves lots of vegetables, alcohol and the arts – and names like Yoder





    Mona Chalabi

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    Mon 26 Feb 2018 06.00 EST Last modified on Tue 27 Feb 2018 12.07 EST








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    White culture seems hard to pin down. Illustration: Mona Chalabi A few months after I moved to New York, a magical conversation happened that would radically shift my psyche forever. I was telling my friend that I had gone to his favorite shop and he asked: “Who served you? Was it the tall white guy?”
    I frowned and replied, “Are the rest of the staff not white?” to which my friend replied “Huh? What do you mean? No. I was just describing him.”
    While he wandered off to get a beer, I stood dumbfounded. This was the first time I had heard a white person’s race used as a casual descriptor, a simple point of differentiation in what I perceive to be a white world.
    As a Brit, I grew up in a country that was 86% white, so “white” was the norm. That kid you were imagining in books like Roald Dahl’s was white, unless you were told otherwise (which you never were). The men paraded on the TV show Crimewatch were described as black when they were black, and short or tall or thin or fat when they were white.
    Now I live in the United States, a country that is 61% white. Non-whiteness is much more visible here, and suddenly the contrast of whiteness is too. But I’m still struggling to make the shift from my previous mindset, where white is the default, the presumed, the baseline. You don’t notice normalcy; you see the deviations from it. So the word “white” could always be hopped over as an adjective.
    Now, “white” still feels like an absence: an absence of color, an absence of food that is “different” and an absence of a mum who pronounces your name differently from the way your friends do. But if my friend can use “white” as an adjective, then what exactly are they describing? What is white culture, exactly?
    I decided to find out by asking the questions that I and many other non-white people have been asked over and over again. I looked for answers in data.
    Q: What do white people eat?
    A: Vegetables.


    The US Department of Agriculture’s latest data shows that the average white American eats 16lb more vegetables at home each year than do non-white Americans (that could add up to 112 medium-sized carrots, 432 cherry tomatoes, or God knows how much kale).
    The only thing that white people seem to love more than vegetables is dairy. White Americans eat 185lb of dairy products at home each year, compared with just 106lb for black Americans.
    But this isn’t just the result of our appetites: all of these numbers are shaped by structural factors. For example, fruit and vegetable consumption increases each time that a new supermarket is added near to someone’s home, according to a 2002 study. That same study also found that white Americans are four times more likely than black Americans to live in a census tract that has a supermarket.
    Q: What do white people drink?
    A: Alcohol.


    Almost a third of non-Hispanic whites had at least one heavy drinking day in the past year, according to the CDC. Only 16% of black Americans and 24% of Hispanic Americans said the same.
    If you’re wondering which drinks white people are drinking, then you have the same question as a team of researchers who followed 2,171 girls from the time they were 11 years old to the time they were 18. As each year passed, the researchers noticed that compared to the black girls, white girls drank a lot more wine (and beer, actually, and, er, spirits, too).
    Q: What’s a typical white name?
    A: Joseph Yoder.


    The Census Bureau did an analysis of 270 million people’s last names to find those that are most likely to be held by certain races or ethnicities. Yoder might not be the most common family name in the US – only about 45,000 people have it – but, since 98.1% of those people are white, it’s just ahead of Krueger and Mueller and Koch as the whitest last name in the country. Which means that statistically speaking, the Yoders of America are probably the least likely white people to marry someone of a different race to themselves.



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    The last names in America with the greatest share of white people. Illustration: Mona Chalabi


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    The last names in America with the greatest share of Hispanic people. Illustration: Mona Chalabi


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    The last names in America with the greatest share of black people. Illustration: Mona Chalabi


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    The last names in America with the greatest share of Asian people. Illustration: Mona Chalabi Many of these last names have German and Jewish origins. Which seems to run counter to my theory of white culture being intangible – Jewish culture is far from it. Having experienced discrimination, and having a distinct, tangible culture is enough to potentially disqualify you as white, as some American Jewish people themselves ask the question: “Are Jews White?”.
    As for Joseph, well, the best data I could find was the most popular baby names listed by the race or the ethnicity of the mother (no mention of the father so some of these Josephs are probably mixed race). Even then, the numbers are only from New York and were collected from 2011 to 2014. Still, I found that the most common white names are Joseph, David, Michael, Jacob and Moshe (seven of the most common names were male because people tend to be more creative when they’ve birthed a girl).
    Q: What do white people do for fun?
    A: Enjoy the arts.


    I turned to my esteemed colleague and friend Amanda and asked what she would like to know about white people. Amanda, herself a white person, replied: “Why do they love guitars so much?” Alas, despite two hours of online research, I couldn’t test her theory about musical instruments and race. (Although I did find out that bassoons are more popular with women than men, which led me to a YouTube clip of a woman playing the bassoon with a comment that read “THIS is how you bassoon”. It made me laugh so hard I had to take a break from writing this.)
    Instead, I looked at the latest American Time Use Survey. It was published after the Bureau of Labor Statistics asked 10,500 people in the US how they spend their time. White people are the only racial or ethnic group in the dataset to have a number higher than zero for time spent attending museums or the performing arts. It’s only 36 seconds, but remember, this is a daily average, so that adds up to 219 minutes each year.
    I double checked my findings against a 2015 report from the National Endowment for the Arts, which found that white Americans were almost twice as likely as black or Hispanic Americans to have done at least one arts activity in the past year. Their definition of an arts activity was pretty broad – it included “jazz, classical music, opera, musical and non-musical plays, ballet, and visits to an art museum or gallery”.



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    Pondering leisure time. Illustration: Mona Chalabi These numbers feel close to home. When I was growing up, my family never set foot inside a museum, gallery or theatre. Not once. I didn’t think it was strange, I just thought it was like travelling in pairs or taking coaches – an activity reserved only for school trips.
    And yet, despite having better access to these institutions, it seems like it’s some white people who seem to feel culturally deprived.
    Remember Amanda? I mentioned her earlier – she’s my colleague with the contempt for guitars. In 2015, she interviewed black psychologists to ask their opinion about Rachel Dolezal, a white academic who purposely misrepresented herself as an African American.
    Anita Thomas, an associate professor of counseling psychology at Loyola University, said: “In some ways it’s normal, but not at her age.” Thomas explained that many white adolescents behaved similarly to Dolezal, attempting to take on what they perceived to be the characteristics of another race while exploring their identities. Being “the other” sure as hell has its downsides, but it turns out that not being “the other” does too – especially if you’re a teenager.
    “For white [American] youth, who are disconnected from European heritage or legacy, it often feels like whiteness as a concept is empty,” Thomas added in a quote that has really stuck with me. It seems to tie together some disparate thoughts I have had on “white” as an adjective.
    Dolezal was treated as if she were a “bizarre” outlier, but she’s part of a much bigger pattern of white behavior. It includes Mezz Mezzrow, the 1930s jazz musician who declared himself a “voluntary Negro” after marrying a black woman and selling marijuana. It includes the millions of white Americans who take DNA tests and proudly reveal that they are in fact x percent non-white. And it’s a pattern that includes the white Americans who listen to a “rights for whites” album that includes songs titled Sons of Israel and Fetch the Noose. One reaction might seem laughable, the other frightening, but they are all ultimately about finding a concept of whiteness that isn’t empty.
    But what does all that searching yield? I’m not sure I can answer the question “what is white culture?” but I’m certain we should try. If whiteness takes no shape, then the concrete structures that shaped it (and often benefit from it) remain invisible too – the supermarkets, the marriages, and the museums that make these numbers what they are. If the “somethingness” of white culture is never quite pinned down, it remains both “nothing, really” and “well, everything”.
    If white culture remains vague, then it can lay claim to every recipe, every garment, every idea that is not explicitly “non-white”. That would mean that my identity is just a sum, that my “non-whiteness” can only be understood as a subtraction from the totality of “whiteness”. I refuse to be a remainder.
    This article will be published in the March edition of The Smudge.
    Do you have thoughts on white culture? We want to hear them! Please leave a comment below or email me at mona.chalabi@theguardian.com.
    This article was amended on 27 February 2018 to substitute the correct information in the illustration which shows the last names in America with the greatest share of black people, and to amend the captions of the illustrations to more accurately reflect the data shown.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...tables-alcohol

  2. #2
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    You know, it's interesting you post this, because I've been confused about the use of the term "culture", because it's used to refer to acts, traditions, customs and behavior that I don't associate with the definition of the term "culture". Culture is the arts, literally, music, paintings, theater, literature, poetry, etc.
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    But if my friend can use “white” as an adjective, then what exactly are they describing? What is white culture, exactly?
    I think that everybody has made race an issue. So everybody must fit into "some" category. As the story points out, in this country, "whites" are a declining percentage. So I guess they are no longer the norm. So they must be identified just like every other race as there seems to be no default!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Judy View Post
    because I've been confused about the use of the term "culture", because it's used to refer to acts, traditions, customs and behavior that I don't associate with the definition of the term "culture".
    It is culture that divides us. Those who don't wear their culture on their sleeve get along with everybody. But those obsessed with their own culture are reluctant to accept another's culture.

    Merriam-Webster defines culture as:
    "a : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group;"! These groups are what tear societies apart.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jtdc View Post
    It is culture that divides us. Those who don't wear their culture on their sleeve get along with everybody. But those obsessed with their own culture are reluctant to accept another's culture.

    Merriam-Webster defines culture as:
    "a : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group;"! These groups are what tear societies apart.
    Exactly what I thought when a Boer woman in another post complained that she didn't know the language. I thought that she had plenty of time to learn.
    I still cannot wrap my mind around people that live in a country but fail to learn the language.

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    Adding to my comments on culture, a Black person from Great Britain will usually speak with clear diction and dress well. I will perceive them as intelligent and well educated. A Black person from South Chicago or South Los Angeles will speak in ghetto slang and dress like a homeless person. I will perceive them as dangerous and uneducated. They are both Black. The difference is the culture they were brought up in.

    My prejudice will be based on past experience. But if I treat them both with disdain because of a bad experience from someone with Black skin, that is bigotry.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jtdc View Post
    Adding to my comments on culture, a Black person from Great Britain will usually speak with clear diction and dress well. I will perceive them as intelligent and well educated. A Black person from South Chicago or South Los Angeles will speak in ghetto slang and dress like a homeless person. I will perceive them as dangerous and uneducated. They are both Black. The difference is the culture they were brought up in.

    My prejudice will be based on past experience. But if I treat them both with disdain because of a bad experience from someone with Black skin, that is bigotry.
    People in Tanzania are very friendly to mzungu, so much so, the Kenyans make fun of them.

    I could get a Tanzanian to perceive you as a nice person. Then I could ask a person in Cicero about how they perceive you and get a totally different answer.

    The world is moving so fast that many people still think their word has power or that their view is what matters. It doesn't on both counts. There was a time when they could talk like that and more or less be correct in the assumption that their words or feelings mattered. Now, I believe their words and feelings matter to them and that's where I allow them to exist in their own space. But their words or feelings and even culture have nothing to do with me.

    In 2018, nobody's checking to see how others perceive them, especially at the macro level.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Judy View Post
    You know, it's interesting you post this, because I've been confused about the use of the term "culture", because it's used to refer to acts, traditions, customs and behavior that I don't associate with the definition of the term "culture". Culture is the arts, literally, music, paintings, theater, literature, poetry, etc.
    Music and literature, etc., are products of the culture.

    I'm not saying you do this, but, looking at another culture through your own culture can cause internal and external feelings that may or may not be beneficial to understanding.

    So, I need a singer for my new band, can you perform Mongolian Throat Singing?

    Who's to say that this art created by the Mongolian culture isn't beautiful on the same plane as Opera?




    French overtone singing
    (nothing cultural about this, I just like it)


    Last edited by Boomslang; 03-07-2018 at 05:58 AM.

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