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How would you define your white American culture? (lemmy.selfhostcat.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I ask this having been to events with national/ethnic dress, food, and other cultures. What can a white American say their culture is? It feels that for better or worse it’s been all melted together.

Trying to trace back to European roots feels disingenuous because I’ve been disconnected from those roots for a few generations.

This also makes me wonder was their any political motive in making white American culture be everything and nothing?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I agree with the general consensus, there is no "white" culture per se, uness you're talking about the bad craziness of nationalism.

What I think OP means is "plain vanilla American culture." And that's the thing. The US is so huge, so comparatively young as a nation, that it's hard to even have a culture.

Furthermore, anywhere you go in the states, you have pretty much the same TV, same radio from central locations, news anchors from the same school, holding the same rip 'n' read newscast. The corporate world has skin in this game. Keep us homogenized and you keep us focused on the consumer culture they want us to have.

That said, we Americans who don't identify with any ethnicity do have cultures, but it's based more in what we do. Bikers, goths, snowboarders, rail fans, Trekkies, and then some. Those are all cultures.

Then too, when we try to do culture, because of our media obsession, it often becomes a parody. Case in point, I once went to an Oktoberfest here in California. I saw people wearing stereotypical "German" costume, playing a Polish-American wedding game (Chicken Dance) and singing an Italian children's song (Rooki-Zooki). That's about as all-American as it gets.