i never thought you were a racist until today. You are born with your skin tone, you are NOT born with culture.
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True. The guys who get paid to invent big words call it enculturation.
It starts as a child. You naturally attach to your parents. Your survival depends on you remaining safe and secure while you develop.
Your parents are part of a group. Whatever that group may be, you will likely assimilate the norms of this group. The larger your world expands you see more groups and eventually a society with a culture residing within. You may find multiple cultures.
People, in general, tend to seek an identity within one of these cultures. Your level of fear tolerance will influence how you view and interact with these multiple cultures.
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Seems to me that culture could be defined any way a definer wants to do it…whatever is convenient for propping up their narrative.
Is it based on common food, music, dance, literature, language, religion, sports? If it is, then there cannot be any culture based solely on skin color (or religion, or language, etc.).
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Yes, all of this. Everything that makes humans humans counts. It’s what we value.
Jingoism and religious fanaticism can be more associated with the dark side in all of this.
Typically, culture is where people identify.
Age and prolonged exposure to indigenous assholes can vary the level of attachment you may feel within a given culture.
My point is that, if (insert name of culture here)ism is based on one or more of these attributes then the culture itself is often whittled down to comparatively minute or even nonexistent communities.
Is there, for instance, a Scottish culture? What’s it based on? Bagpipes? Caber tossing? Eating haggis? Scottish Gaelic fluency? Because not even the majority of people with ‘Scottish blood’ does these things. What is a cultural Jew? Does s/he keep kosher? Does he get circumcised?
What are the attributes of any given culture? To what degree must one participate in a collection of attributes to be considered a member of a given culture?
The culture evolves, mutates and adapts. Certain influences bring change that is welcomed, some bring change that isn’t.
Either way, the dynamic is always shifting. It’s the resistance to the dynamic that creates the friction.
One thing I’ve noticed in immigrants to America is that no matter how much of their old culture they shed, the food is the last thing to go. This used to be great for finding a new restaurant in Chicago back in the day…
If attributes of a culture are whittled down by either assimilation or decimation, it’s just a natural part of social evolution.
I concur. That’s one among the many reasons I throw up in my mouth a little every time I hear white culture
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Wish I’d thought of that.
If I were racist, Wouldn’t you expect me to believe or argue that the white race is superior to others? Or that other races were inferior to the white race?
I expect racists to use the phrase: white race. You didn’t disappoint.
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There is no such thing as “the white race”. As I tried to explain, it’s an arbitrary concept, not a biological one.
Okay. So there are no races?
Is there a race of people belonging to the South Asian subcontinent? The East Indians? Perhaps a group of people who identify with each other and associate and mate and live together based on shared appearances, shared genetics, ancestry, and history?
if you’re a white racist.
i don’t. I get along just fine with other races. I respect all cultures and customs. I don’t differentiate between humans based on the colour of skin or other characteristics. What I do believe is that people of white ancestry are facing an existential threat of extinction in their native lands. And I think that as a person myself of white ancestry I’m justified in being concerned about that.
Define “native lands”.
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Race is a social construct, not unlike memes, nationalities, etc. They aren’t real, and they aren’t fake; it is just a useful concept (particularly useful if you want to hate on people who look differently than yourself).
That’s just silly. What is the actual damage done to humanity when (not if) the dna that determines skin color gets shared to the point that all folks’ have some of each? Explain to us exactly how that hurts the human species.
As a white person, my response is, WTF.
I’m just a human / man / husband / whatever who happens to be white from a particular family background and if I were hypothetically the last of my “kind”, so what?
Besides whatever it is to be white constantly evolves. It’s not static. So it’s nothing to try to hold on to anyway. It’s different now both generally and for me specifically than it was 50 years ago and a year from now it will have changed some more. 200 years ago it was totally different still. In fact if I had been born in 1857 instead of 1957 I suspect I wouldn’t even think in terms of “white” so much as “German”. That is how my father’s forebears who came here in the 1830s identified.
What’s important IMO to hold onto in life is not some trivial thing like whiteness or some arbitrary and (and ephemeral) suburban middle class shtick, but to things like love, empathy, kindness, integrity. And those things have absolutely nothing to do with culture or skin color or custom. I suppose those things can influence how you express your humanity, but the central thing is to be a good human.
Interesting you should mention the German side of your family tree and if you were born in the 1800s. My ancestors’ name was originally Von Sidow and they dropped the “Von” part of their name so as not to be associated with Hitler and his militia. (They were not)! Also, what I tell people is that I’m HUMAN before I’m anything else. I’m so sick and tired of people being biggoted against whites, blacks, Asian, leftists, rightests, wokes, or any other label. How are we ever going to see peace in this world if we don’t stop that horse shit!? Come on people! We all shit on the toilet the same way!
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