A very long detour.

So Bitch | Lab had an interesting post this morning... one of those smack-yr-forehead kind of revelations.  She's thinking about psychology and she encounters this little snippet of someone describing white culture:

"White people don’t sleep with their children. They don’t play much and they don’t hug much. They don’t laugh much. And they spend most of the time trying to look good. We have beautiful cribs and curtains. We don’t have much connecting going on."

Which is a pretty common critique of what'd probably be more accurately called North American white culture, though it's not Bitch's experience:

Oh. My. Dog. I’m not white! This is so not the way I remember growing up! This is so not how I have and we live our lives. Christ! Sonshine still hugs me and he’s my grown up little boy! I don’t think Sonshine stopped wanting to hold my hand while we walked into a grocery store together until — umn — uh — calculatin’ — lessee. Yeah, he’d have been about 12-13 years old....

But fits my family fer sure and lots of others.  When I was in Colombia I was dating a guy who had a family very UN-like this and I was so enamored.  I loved his family more than him, he complained, and it was probably true.  I mean they actually had these family get togethers where his dad and uncle would play the guitar and sing and we'd be all dancing in the living room.  Geez.  I have never been with a family like that before!  When I was passing through Bogota I could actually stay at his house, share a room with him (and his brother!) and we'd have sex there and it was all just fine.  Can you see now why I wanted to stay?

Anyway Bitch grew up in a family like that.  It wasn't so foreign to her:

I find it hard to believe that most white people are walking around without living in huggy, lovey, touchy families.

All of us? Most of us?

Is this a class thing?

...[maybe] people lead these messed up childhoods and that explains so many of our structural issues such as race, glass, gender [?]

... I guess I’m trying to figure out: what’s a fair claim to make about white people and whether or not we, as a group, lack loving, touching, close families? And, is this a reasonable explanation for expropriation of other cultures?

I think by that last part she means is it a reasonable explanation for why white people so often expropriate other people's cultures.  At least that's how I took it.  So I think this is really interesting 'cause there's at least four questions here: One, is there such a thing as white culture?  Two, is it typified in non-touchy-feely family relations?  Three, does that play a role in our fucked-upness*?  Four, is it a class thing?  So, I say this:

I don’t think it’d be a class thing ’cause I was definitely working class growing up and I almost never saw my dad and there was very little touchy-feely stuff with my mom.

[I was the 5th kid and she spaced us out over 20 years so I can see she was a little tired by then! lol]

Once I was older she was working too and I was pretty much on my own. so I suspect it’d be more a white america thing than a class thing. but whew knows?

Also, I suppose it’s a fair enough claim about white people's culture in that, like any generalization, there are folks who don’t fit the mold and the idea is that it -hopefully accurately- describes a general cultural pattern. I mean, I think it’s fine to make generalizations about a group of people’s culture. It only becomes problematic when you make generalizations about something INHERENT in that group of people, right? Culture isn’t inherent. Anthropologists study it all the time. Although I guess it’d be more accurate to at least say “white American” culture as opposed to white European, or Irish culture or recent white immigrant culture (like the Polish-American communities in Chicago)…

And, is it a reasonable explanation for (a white tendency to the) expropriation of other cultures? I suppose it could be part of it, eh? I mean, there’s definitely a good argument for the soul-less-ness of “white American culture” and I think that’s why you see a bunch of new agey white people “discovering” a Cherokee grandmother (it’s ALWAYS Cherokee and it’s ALWAYS the grandmother -someone oughta do a study of the genderisms of that cliche) and adopting a psuedo-”Native American” spirituality, going to sweats and all that. I mean I can definitely understand recognizing the emptiness of our cultural heritage and wanting to have something different. I just wish they would decide to help create a better white american culture rather than expropriate someone elses. … then, again, how does one person create a culture? I dunno.

So maybe we can't CREATE a culture but I can certainly understand the need to have SOMEthing to fill the gap.  Human beings are social and cultural animals; that's what we do; we operate in groups, we define ourselves in groups, we identify with the group.  So what can we -those of us who recognize the emptiness of typical North American white culture- do to sate that desire for a cultural heritage we can be proud of, for a culture we -as progressives- can identify with?  I guess I might need to clarify that I'm talking about something more than not hugging our kids here.  I'm talking about the legacy of racism, colonialism, imperialism, genocide etc.  And I'm certainly not talking about denying these parts of our past.  I'm saying:

1.) we have to recognize the price we have incurred for what we have done over the years to our brothers and sisters we categorized as different "races" [Hernan and Vera say in their book White Racism, that "Racial categories form part of this Eurocentric culture of off-the-shelf taxonomies that classify and organize certain features of the social world into a coherent whole.  In this sense racial categories are... part of the social blueprint" of white people.] Part of that price is that we now have a cultural heritage that is incredibly painful and hurtful and embarrassing (to say the least). 

2.) the way to respond to the realities of our culture and cultural heritage (that range from being spiritually empty and meaningless to a very real alienation from an enormous segment of the human population) is NOT to discover ways to dis-claim/deny our whiteness (find that Cherokee grandmother to erase your guilt) and appropriate other people's cultures/spiritualities but instead to recreate our own culture. 

History is not over, folks.  We white people do have a horrible past, maybe we have a horrible culture but it's not a finished product.  Culture is a process.  We are still creating our story.  We can make it a painful, beautiful story of redemption, of reconnection with the rest of humanity.  So look back, yes, recognize the past, but don't forget you have to look forward too.  And whether looking backward or forward you have to have a wide-angle lens.  We have to see at least hundreds of years at a time in order to get things in perspective.  Looking at the short term is a distortion.  We are the star-bellied sneetches and we did some horrible things but now we have the gift of potential redemption in front of us.  What an exciting time to be alive!  Of all the periods in history to have been born white, the 21st century is such an exciting time to have been placed!  A potential turning-point in history!  Our grandkids could look back and say "wow, and YOU were there, mama!  You saw the story of white racism and did not turn away.  And now things are different for us.  We are not so ashamed to be white anymore because the story of white people is the story of redemption!"  What a beautiful story!  And then our grandkids' grandkids will ask, "What was white?  What was black?  What was race?"  And we will smile sadly from beyond the grave and think, "it was just a very long detour".

Technorati tags:

racism, race relations, whiteness

Comments

[Hugo]

It's a great post.

You know, I love the family I grew up in -- large and WASPy, where many of the men shake hands all their lives and never hug. But we make a huge mistake when we insist that outer demonstrations of affection and emotion are the only acceptable way to live.

I can grieve that my ancestors did things I'm ashamed of. But there's a difference between renouncing white privilege and rejecting the way one's family related to each other. We were very stereotypically "white" in a lot of ways (my Colombian-American wife reminds me of that constantly), but "WASPy" is NOT a synonym for "miserable and repressed!"

[barb]

hmmmm... I think I see what you're saying, Hugo. Am I conflating culturally-based ways of relating with rejecting white privilege? Good question. First of all, I don't mean just rejecting white privilege, I mean trying to understand white everything (racism, colonialism and genocide). And I guess I'm asking, (like Bitch | Lab) if WASPy (as you say) ways of relating play a role in that story of ours.

BUT you're right. WASPy ways of relating don't HAVE to be miserable and repressed. If your dad never hugged you but you always felt like he loved you, who cares how he expresses it? Sure, I can see that. But I can also see that there'd be some highly dysfunctional families in which it really did matter more the "beautiful cribs and curtains" but there wasn't a lot of connecting going on. In that case, maybe it's more a side effect of wealth and opulence?

Still, it seems the 1950's version of white North American culture does place a huge emphasis on materialism over human relationships -regardless of wealth. (that's what's problematic and dysfunctional, of course.) And that's what makes me think it's not about class it's about culture.

[Anna]

Wow, I got totally thrown when I read your comment on Hugo's site: "We white people do have a horrible past, we have a horrible culture but it's not a finished product".
In the context of your actual post, I recognise that it is just an unfortunate sentence, as you do note that 'white' includes many colours, so to speak... Still I think that you should not use 'white' as a synonym for WASP. It makes about as much sense as using 'Asian' in reference to everyone from Kazakstan through India to Japan. You know, not all of us whites have spent the past centuries conquering and oppressing non-white peoples. And even in reference to US WASPs, to write that "we have a horrible culture"?!

[NYMOM]

Everytime you post on this blog or make a cell phone call or use a microwave, drive a car, etc., you are benefitting from 'white's people's culture' or whatever you want to call it.

You should be damn grateful for it's existence.

[barb]

Anna, yeah it was Hugo that started using the term WASPy culture. I was referring more to kind of something more general like the "American dream", consumerism, television ... you know, all that stuff that kind peaked in the 1950s Ozzie and Harriet type of deal. Doesn't have to be WASPy.

[barb]

NY Mom, personal insults are not allowed. I deleted your last commet. You have been banned. Please go somewhere else.

[kate.d.]

wow, NYMOM is a blast from the (recent) past...she used to comment all the time at hugo's. i think he banned her, which always did seem a bit strange to me, as her comments were not the greatest and often grating, but that can be said about many people who cruise the comment section over there :)

interesting. but bummer overall about the troll problem...hope they get bored and leave you alone...

[vegankid]

great post, barb. So much to comment on i'm sure i won't get to it all. Hmmm... lets start with comments:

hugo - i'm not so sure that its as easy as renouncing White privilege. You're right, we don't have to reject the ways that our families relate to each other, but White culture is about more than how families relate. Its also, as barb points out, about domination, genocide, colonialism, etc. Its great that you recognize pieces of your culture that you like. I think that's really important for all of us to do (otherwise we fall into the trap of coopting others' cultures).

The thing about White culture is that it doesn't really exist. I mean it does, in the way that the White race exists, but it doesn't, you get me? Part of the creation of Whiteness is leading us to accept and believe that we all belong to some sort of monolithic culture - one that transcends hystory, ethnicity, class, immigration status, religion, etc. But what we are talking about is not White culture, but the culture of Whiteness - a culture that erases cultural heritage, assumes dominance, controls through force, etc. Within that culture of Whiteness there are many other cultures. I don't think we can deny the different class cultures, for example. My family's culture seems to be much different from the one that Hugo describes. There's not a lot of laughter in our extended family (in the immediate family, there is a LOT of laughter). The men in my family wear overalls in place of Brooks Brothers. And instead of English horseback riding, its pickin bangos and guitars in the family bluegrass band. But i wouldn't trade those for the world. I also didn't feel that unspoken love that Hugo shared. The men in my family are very emotionally distant (tho that's not a class thing).

For me, its not about creating a new culture of Whiteness. Its my belief that we must rid ourselves of the construct of Whiteness and learn to recognize the multitudes of cultures that exist. And within those cultures, we need to create something more liberatory, anti-imperialist, and compassionate. For many White folks, that will mean learning to recognize culture or reconnecting with culture or, in some cases, creating new cultures. I'd agree that we don't need to destroy what Hugo calls WASPy culture, i just don't think that such a monolithic culture truly exists.

barb, you are so right on in that a lot of the culture of Whiteness teaches us to deny humyn relationships. We are taught to be autonomous (in the individualist sorta way); its the only atmosphere in which the American Dream/pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps bullshit theory can thrive.

anna- its true that not all White people have a family history of cultural domination, genocide, or, say, slave owning. In fact, many White people come from a background of being slaves, refugees of genocide, and victims of cultural domination. Not gonna deny that, in fact, i think its something we need to look at more often. But the fact is that as a benefactor of Whiteness, we now all take on the unearned privileges. And with the complicity of Whiteness comes the responsibility of how Whiteness was created and continues to be maintained - how it is that those privileges came about (slavery, genocide, imperialism, colonialism, etc). That's why i differentiate between white and White. One is a color, the other is a social clumping of sorts.

NYMOM - i'm not sure i follow you. Are you saying that White culture = scientific advancement? Cuz it was actually what you would probably consider arabs who created such things as agriculture, mathematics, and astrology. And are you saying that by driving your car and not dying at busy intersections that you are supporting Black culture? (after all, it was Black men who created the internal combusion engine and the traffic light). Maybe i'm misreading you.

Alright, i know there's more, but this comment is way too long already. Thanks for the great post!

[barb]

Hey vegan, I'm still laughing at your comment to NYMom! That's so great. I'm not that witty; I just banned her ass! She had another comment in there too that was even more obnoxious.

As for the rest of your comment... thanks! Finally someone gets it. you articulate it better I think. I'm thinking maybe even specifying a type of North American white culture (that culminated in the 50s for example) is difficult to do without a lot of explanation. I like the way you put it "a culture of Whiteness". Like I said below, it's like "the American dream culture". I don't think I explained it very well in this post. Maybe I need a different word entirely. Obviously 'cause so many people are not getting it! ...

Actually reading the whole post over again after a few days now, I think if you read it as a whole it makes sense but people are picking out individual sentences and phrases (like white culture is horrible) and then responding to those individual fragments and it kinda misses the point.

Anyway great comments again, thanks!

[vegankid]

like i said, i think the post is great. Its really nice to see such ideas being spread. There's definitely a lot there and its hard not to just pick out a sentence and take it out of context, especially considering our newspaper attention spands that make our eyes glaze after 30 words.

Oh, and i forgot to mention how much i loved this: "Culture is a process. We are still creating our story. We can make it a painful, beautiful story of redemption, of reconnection with the rest of humanity. So look back, yes, recognize the past, but don't forget you have to look forward too." Beautiful! This is actually something i said i was going to write about a couple months ago and i never did. So glad that you brought it up.

[Bitch]

OT: I can't find anything on Butler and my crits of the radfem concept of patriarchy. however, just write at my email address with q's or i can call tomorrow.

==

as for the post, as you know, i'm not rejecting the possibility that there's a 'white culture'. i'm too much of a sociologist to say that you can't make generalizations. I think that particular generalization is way off base.

as you also know, i have a problem with theories that detach cultural analyses from material analyses. thus, if a theory of white culture does not connect it to economic phenom, it's just as bad as any 'culture of poverty theory' explaining why poor people are poor -- a theory which is applied to whites, blacks, etc. it was first applied in the 50s to Mexicans.

And that is why I have a really hard time with criticism of "white privilege" that are so far removed from a materialist analysis that they end up positing it all as a mysterious culture that operates in ways that are never explained.

It's great to analyze white culture -- I wrote an entire essay called "Oppression" that was about precisely the need to do such thing an analysis. But it's also irresponsible to fail to account for gradations within this 'culture' and connect them to a material analysis, as well.

alas, I need to start ranting. a lot of what I have to say on this topic is about as worthwhile as pissing at a hurricane.

[Bitch]

And yeah, I have to say, I pretty much don't care for claims about the "empitness of white culture'. I think these are stereotypes that aren't based in any sort of reality. They slide over into a cultural conservastive that I pretty much reject on the left. As people pointed out in comments, that sort of claim is very much based in the steroetypes perpetrated by the mass media.

But, pissing. hurricanes.

[Me]

One needs to think of race as a series of concentric circles where it starts with yourself, extending to your nuclear family, extended family, village, society, nation, continent, planet, inter-planetary population, universe. I'm assuming that there is life on other planets because mathematically, there should be plenty. That we are all made of extremely ancient stardust is fact, though it does not preclude the other fact that we are different as well. Race is extended family and race is genetically driven. Race actuates culture. So if there is a white race, which most certainly there is, then there is white culture.

[vegankid]

me - your concentric circles seem to be akin to the biological weapons that the US was trying to develop; you know, the one's that could be dropped into a body of drinking water but would only affect people of a certain race. Like this concentric circles theory, the experiment failed. Why? Because you can't cast a net that only catches certain people.

I'd also greatly disagree that race is genetically driven. I'd like to see which eugenics study you're citing. Cuz its pretty understood among respectable geneticists that there is no genetic connection to race. In fact, there are more genetic difference between any two fruit flies than there are between any White persyn and persyn of color. While Whiteness, as a social construct, certainly exists, a white race does not.

[barb]

Bitch, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying here: "i'm not rejecting the possibility that there's a 'white culture'. i'm too much of a sociologist to say that you can't make generalizations. I think that particular generalization is way off base". So, how is that NOT rejecting the possibility of a "white culture"? (I wouldn't blame you if you did reject it, I'm starting to think it's completely the wrong word for what I'm talking about too, but I'm wondering there's a keyword left out in one of those sentences, or if you could explain more, 'cause I don't follow you.)

As for detaching cultural analysis from material analysis, yeah, that's definitely something I would agree with generally. Does this idea here (I'm not ready to call it a theory, really, it was just something I was wondering about) do that? I guess the way I presented it didn't put much emphasis on the material but yeah, I'd definitely think that would be part of it.

I think I'm ready to concede that the terminology I'm using here (probably incorrectly from a sociological or anthropological point of view) of "North American white culture" is not conveying very well what I mean.

But I *know* there's a phenomena here that definitely exists. I've encountered it and I hear a lot of other people talking about it too, so maybe culture isn't the right word but then what is?

There is this sentiment of unhappiness a lot of people have with being (even "having to admit to being") a white European mongrel. There's a great dissatisfaction with having to take on that identity. Maybe it's mostly coming from white liberals, but I've seen it in conservatives too. It has to do with having a heritage of being descendents of slave-owners and colonizers, people who committed genocide. 19th century people who decided to try to categorize the people of the world and invented "race" for the purposes of organizing them into hierarchies of human-ness. I mean so far, the story of whiteness, is not a story that one can be proud of.

And so a lot of white people will do anything to get away from that label "white". Unless you're a Nazi white supremacist, or apparently someone like me (wow, never thought I'd find myself in the same boat as them! lol) white people don't like to think of themselves as white.

And so they say things like "oh, I heard my great-grandmother was half-Cherokee!" and so they suddenly become Native-American based on that. Never grew up on a reservation. Never had to suffer any of the negative consequences of actually being a descendent of survivors of genocide, never nothing! They build sweat lodges in the backyards of their suburban homes and collect feathers and that's their new "Native American" identity. All because it is so painful to admit to being white. [not to say people who actually are descendents of white settlers and Native people don't exist, just that way to many people claim that identity than can actually be the case statistically]

So that's what I'm talking about. Maybe culture is the wrong word entirely but it was coming from my connecting that history of racism, colonialism and genocide to other aspects of the North American consumer society that so many people find so unpalatable: overconsumption, conformity, xenophobia, emotional distance even within families etc. Maybe it's wrong to be connecting these things but like I said, I was just wondering.

[Whitey Ford]

This is "Me". I posted under this pseudonym in Hugo's blog so I might as well maintain one identity as there is no reason for multiple which can only lead to confusion.

Vegankid, your intial comment is a non sequitur. I have no idea what you are talking about nor does it have any basis to what we are discussing here, namely racial reality. I am a political moderate with more leanings toward conservatism though I do have liberal beliefs as well. I am no Bushite, because Bush is a wacko in my opinion. He does not represent conservatives nor Republicans. Just some info.

As to your second paragraph about the validity of race, there is no doubt that race exists and the white race is one of the many. Your assertions are nothing Marxist educator claptrap. I understand why you say it, however by saying it does not make it true. Otherwise we would not have medications that are race specific like Bidil which helps primarily blacks. We would not have evidence that Asians are resistent to certain heart medications and that resistence is genetic. Asians also produce ear wax that is dry and almost only found amongst them. We would not have companies like DNAPrint Genomics that is able to identify the race of people and works with forensics to identify the race of a victim or perp from single strand of hair or fleck of skin. All this is evidence that race is genetically driven. There is much more, however you get the picture.

Also the fallacy of genetic variation within a race is greater than between races or species is just that a fallacy. It even has a name: Lewontin's Fallacy where Richard Lewontin was the geneticist who put forth the idea along with Steven Gould. They asserted, as you state, race is a social construct due to the apparent wide intra-race variation. However his assertion is based on variation in a single genetic locus WITHIN a specific race of humans, which is approximately 30%, he concludes that race is an invalid taxonomic or "social" construct because the the variation BETWEEN races is ~10-15%. Where he erred is that when one takes into account more loci, the probability of racial misclassification rapidly approaches 0%. This has been known for some time now and yet Lewontin's Fallacy is still pushed forth as gospel and evidence of egalitarianism. This is simply not true and every single geneticist knows this. Getting them to put their necks on the line and saying so, well...that is a different story. Academicians have been quite averse to doing ANY race research, let alone stating that racial differences exist. Thankfully that is changing of late, rather rapidly as well.

Finally, all this information can be found from "respectable" sites.

[Jenny]

I've been thinking about this a lot. I think America as a whole, for a very long time, did it's best to homogenize. I'm talking Ellis Island era here where lots of people were proud that their children didn't speak the language from the old country. As time goes by, we find that's not enough. For some people it is (Hugo is clearly happy), but some people will do anything to have deeper roots. That's why my Uncle had a bagpiper at his wedding, even though the last person that we can find in our family tree that was Scottish died in the 1600s. It's not limited to whites. My Filipino friend finds herself wishing her parents had made more of an effort to teach her Tagalog as a kid. I think creating traditions like Kwanzaa or searching for that distant Native American/European ancestor is an attempt to rebuild those roots that were either forcibly severed by unwilling relocation/slavery or willingly given up in search of the "American Dream".

[David Thompson]

"There is this sentiment of unhappiness a lot of people have with being (even "having to admit to being") a white European mongrel. There's a great dissatisfaction with having to take on that identity."

Naah, it's just a fetishization of novelty. "Oooh, it's different! That makes it better!"

"And so they say things like "oh, I heard my great-grandmother was half-Cherokee!"

In the old days, that was the polite way of saying your great-great-grandma was a Negro.

[vegankid]

Whitey - there is much that i'd like to say regarding your comment, but i'll try to keep it short. I have two questions that i'd like to be answered. First, what happens when a Black man and a White womyn have a child? Is that child half and half? What if that child had a child of their own with an Asian persyn? And would it depend if that persyn were East Asian, South Asian, or an Asian Pacific-Islander? How would you classify these children racially? Does each offspring, in effect, create a new race?

Second question (ok, this is already more than two questions, i know). How and when do you cut off the timeline for racial construction? While it is certainly possible to trace back your family roots to some small village in Norway, is that where it begins and is the entire family line taken into account? For example, say you traced back your family heritage starting with your parents, following your mom's matrilinial heritage and your father's patrilinial heritage. Where would the tree take you if you took a detour and started following your father's mother's mother's father? Unless there is a lot of incest in your family, the tree can get pretty big. Even if there is incest in your family, people didn't just pop up in the middle of Norway, they migrated there. And there are two fairly popular theories about where those migrations initiated - the most common one being from Africa, the other being from both Africa and South America. But regardless of the theory, there's no basis for believing that White people were of those originating migrants. Climate is believed to have shaped what we consider to be racial characteristics. Yes, through time, those characteristic became genetic, but they aren't linked to any specific races and they are unmalleable. If they were, the "races" wouldn't be able to breed. Instead, we are a complex makeup of the genes of millions of ancestors, all pointing back to Africa (or possibly South America).

And no offense, but i don't think that political leaning has anything to do with this discussion. Its easy to hate Bush. Its fun and makes you popular these days. Besides, most liberals annoy the shit out of me. I take offense to being called a liberal. But *that* is non sequitur.

Well, that one should bring out some trolls, barb.

[True Liberal]

I'm not Whitey Ford, but I'll take a stab at vegankid's first set of questions. "First, what happens when a Black man and a White womyn have a child? Is that child half and half?" Yes, if you want to look at it that way. "Black" and "white" are two fuzzily distinct categories that we use to conceptualise race, and they, of course, have a common ancestry if you go back far enough. Moreover, if the black man is an African-American, he probably has at least a few ancestors in his recent family tree who were white. However, if you stipulate the races of the parents as "black" and "white" respectively, which seems like a pretty reasonable way to look at things in a lot of everyday cases, then, yes, of course, their child would be half-black and half-white.

"Does each offspring, in effect, create a new race?" Yes. This is what Whitey meant when he wrote: "One needs to think of race as a series of concentric circles where it starts with yourself, extending to your nuclear family, extended family, village, society, nation, continent, planet," etc. Since no other person has exactly the same genes as you, you could use race in a sense which only included you as your own unique race. Or you could look at your only your close family as a very small race (although that would be an unusual definition, because usually people use race to mean a group of people who are somewhat inbred -- e.g., a medieval Japanese person would almost always wind up marrying another Japanese person). More common usages might refer to larger (white, black) or smaller (Lower Slobovonian) ethnic groups, up to the sense in which race is simply the human race. However, this introduces a lot more complexity and potential fuzziness.

Also, is there really a theory that humans originated independently in both Africa and South America?

[sly civilian]

"So maybe we can't CREATE a culture but I can certainly understand the need to have SOMEthing to fill the gap."

I always wonder about this, since i was raised in the upper midwest. No, we don't talk like Fargo, at least most of us. But we do have a very vibrant and distinct regional culture. Much of it is expressed in terms of immigrant heritage (german in the south, scandahoovian up nort), but has for lack of a better word matured in to a largely pan-white cultural idenity, replacing previous rivalries between groups.

If culture, at least on one marker, is about shared cultural experiences...i think it starts making much more sense to start identifying white (and possibly other american cultures) by regionalism. While travel and migration is more and more of a reality, i still find that shared cultural programming is present at a more local level. What all white people share in common, other than white priviledge? That's a short list. But what do i share with the white people who live near me? There's more substance there.

[barb]

Very insightful comment, sly. Thanks for sharing.