So Glenn - the mouth and tear duct that whined - got real damn quiet when Katie Couric called him out for his references to "White Culture." Well, I don't have Glenn's shyness problem.
Glenn Beck may not be willing to identify what “White Culture” is, but I will.
Here’s your definition: White Culture is no more and no less than the totality of the distinctive and unifying attributes of the American caste and oppression system’s favored class.
Doesn’t roll off of the tongue, does it?
Maybe this is easier: White Culture is what mostly or absolutely unifies “White people” while simultaneously excluding non-Whites. That’s the definition of “identity” – that which distinguishes reliably, including all members of the “set” while excluding all others outside the “set”.
So, folks, what is reliably AND DISTINCTIVELY true in terms of culture, customs, worldview or perspective of
White Orthodox Jews in Crown Heights,
secular-minded White liberals in suburban Seattle
White ministers in the churches within the Southern Baptist Convention
White Polish-American blue collar workers in eastern Baltimore County
Bob Eubanks
Sandra Bullock
Trig Palin
Bill Clinton
Orly Taitz
Susan B. Anthony
Marisa Tomei
Johnny Carson
Bobcat Goldthwaite
Will Rogers
David Duke
Will Farrell
Mark Twain
Mary Lou Retton
Gloria Steinem
Carol Burnett
Mary Jo Buttafuoco
George Burns
Robert E. Lee
Barbra Streisand AND
Richard Milhous Nixon?
What cultural or other attributes unite all of these White people in a way that reliably excludes non-Whites? Describe their Whiteness in detail, if you can.
At most, only one thing unites all of these folks: White privilege, i.e. the unifying and distinctive attribute of American apartheid’s dominant class/caste.
This is not to say that everyone on the list (or their ancestors) got treated as “White” at all times and all places. The membership base of “Whiteness” has changed over time. In some periods of U.S. history, some groups now considered “White” were not: the Irish, Southern Europeans, Hungarians, Swedes (an example which surprised me), Arabs, Persians and others have at different points enjoyed (if that’s the best word) “White” or “non-White” caste status. Jews from Europe were once treated as less than White; except among hardened antisemites, Jews with fair complexions get treated and considered as “White” in American apartheid today. Analogously, French-Canadians were once considered “non-White” by some English-speakers, which fact inspired Quebecoise poet Michele Lalonde’s “Speak White” (French with some specific English content); now French-Canadians have "earned" Canadian Whiteness pretty unambiguously, it seems.
But the core point remains: Whiteness is not about culture, not about “being an American.” It’s about caste.
The closest thing to a non-pernicious, non-caste-based “White Culture” might be, ironically, in the former states of the Confederacy, a republic established with the specific intent of keeping American apartheid alive in its most extreme form (per the secession declarations of the various seceding states.) Today, while there are many aspects of White Southern Culture that are very similar to the culture of Black Southerners, one can identify some religious traditions, cultural practices, entertainment that comes close to being distinctive of Southern Whiteness and Southern White Culture. Country music would probably have to be at the top of that list (not that all Southern Whites like that genre.) However, Southerners do not deny “Whiteness” to “Whites” from other regions; if you are from Wisconsin and you are “White” in Wisconsin, Southerners will not and would not reject your “Whiteness” on account of your northern origins.
To put it another way, when Gone With The Wind premiered in Atlanta in the 1930s, Blacks in Atlanta (including the actress Hattie McDaniel who played “Mammy”) were not permitted in the theatres with Whites, but White-caste New Yorker and Bostonian Yankee Scum, being perceived as White and entitled of course to White privilege despite their Yankee Scumitudinousness, were admitted past the box office without incident at that premiere. For all of their hatred of Northern Scum, Southern states never inflicted the one wound that would have upset the race/caste applecart nationwide: denying White privilege to White Northern carpet-baggers and travelers as they did to Black visitors seeking lodging, a movie ticket, etc. There are just certain things that you “can’t do” to White people; that’s what White privilege and White Culture mean.
Back to White Culture. There is no White food; try to order some or buy a $15.00 cookbook of White entrée recipes if you think I am wrong. Most of the White Southern kitchen can be found in the kitchens of Black Southerners of similar region and income. How about White music? There is certainly music that pretty much has only White fans, but those genres are delimited sharply by specific ethnic or regional origins, economic class and age. Hank Williams, Jr., of “If the South Woulda Won the War We Would Have Had it Made” fame and his fan base are extremely White, but his identity is as a White Southerner; he pretty much doesn’t have a fan base in the country-music bereft Northeast, urban Northwest or Midwest. I doubt klezmer music has a lot of non-White fans in the U.S., but very few non-Jewish Whites either. Even White-leaning heavy metal doesn’t have a very broad base at all; it doesn’t fare well among more affluent or educated Whites or among Whites over age 40. Don’t get me started on the Osmonds; they prove the rule in their largely LDS fan base, that Church holding explicitly racist beliefs and enforcing them in their churches for most of its history.
While the website Stuff White People Like is quite funny, the reality is that its owner describes mostly his own culture – suburban, liberal, consumer-oriented, civic-minded, affluent – and not the culture of Orthodox Jewish life in Brooklyn, or rural poor Southern White or “Swamp Yankee” life, or hardscrabble White blue collar life in Baltimore’s post-industrial “honky” wasteland of near-dead steel mills and industrial morgues. "Camping", for example, takes a lot of money and a lot of time off from work; hourly workers often cannot afford vacations and cannot afford neat gear from REI or L.L.Bean.
What makes a culture? Heroes, jokes, history, prejudices, habits, language, religion to a large extent, customs, traditions, values, priorities, unstated assumptions about the world. Other than the trappings of White privilege itself, historic and present, White people have very little culture in common that distinguishes them from designated non-Whites. Even cultural attributes that are thought of as “all-American” and therefore common to most White people are really not distinctively White. Baseball? The Negro leagues played to loyal, raucous all-Black crowds for decades. Football? Ditto; the efforts of Redskins owner George Marshall to keep Washington’s team all-White despite a supply of Black players have not been forgotten among Blacks in DC, some of whom cheer for the Cowboys to this day due to that team’s (relatively) more equitable history on race. Hot dogs? Pizza? Chinese food? :-)? Nah; you find plenty of all of the above even in poor Black neighborhoods to this day. Thanksgiving? Black folks and new Americans of every race/caste enjoy the holiday; even Orthodox Christians from throughout Eastern Europe, the Levant and North Africa who normally fast from meat at the end of November through Christmas usually get a dispensation from their bishops, and enjoy a turkey.
The point is that Whiteness is, ultimately, a political construct. Whiteness has nothing to do with the cultural diversity of Europeans or others who crossed the Atlantic by boat or jet to build their lives here; rather, it is a false construct designed to eliminate those cultures in favor of a (White-dominant) melting pot (sic). It remains a political construct to this day. While one can reasonably identify at least common and distinct cultural affinities of African-American culture that mostly embrace most or all of Black America, one cannot do so for White Americans in 2009. All that Whiteness tells you is that the White person experiences the realities of White privilege in America in some way; it tells you little else. And THIS fact – having to identify White privilege explicitly as the beneficiary of his bitchy, whining “concern troll” pearl-clutching – is why Glenn Beck stammered and balked and wimped out at doing what this essay has (very imperfectly) done: define White Culture.
To conclude, this doesn't mean that all cultural values held by White people is "White culture." Exactly the opposite is the truth in the vast majority of cases. Most of what "White people" might think of as "their" culture is simply American culture writ large. The point is that Whiteness itself is a fraud, a piece of historical buncombe sold to European immigrants; waived by asshole race-baiters; inflicted on this continent's inhabitants. When my German ancestors arrived in Baltimore's Fell's Point, it took them some time to buy into "whiteness." Their children bought into "whiteness" as a concept more easily, sadly. Their grandchildren, even worse - so much so that the granddaughter of a German immigrant would refuse to shake the hand of the most prominent and respected African-American physician in Annapolis - the late State Senator Aris T. Allen, M.D. - because he was of non-White caste. But, ironically, Dr. Allen and my racist aunt probably enjoyed most of the same culture - baseball, the Fourth of July, etc. She had no "White culture" linking her to other "White People" other than the caste label of whiteness itself, which would have been unknown to her grandfather at her age back in the Black Forest.
Implicitly, we know that this is true. Were it not true, White Pride Parades would be positive events with positive culture to celebrate like St. Patrick's Day or African-American cultural festivals are, not events for violent losers selling Skrewdriver tapes out of the back of their early-model Dodge Darts, or David Duke or American Renaissance or the Council of Conservative Citizens - the folks who are in the White Privilege business. You want to celebrate Greek life? Go for it, save me some baklava. A Jamaican cultural festival? Sure, I am there, though I will stick to the beer and pass on the goat. In DC their are enough Ethiopian-Americans to have a cultural pride day, though I understand Ethiopian culture itself is very complex and somewhat divided. Point being, Irish and African-American and Greek and Jewish and Ethiopian and Jamaican cultures are real. White Culture describes only one reality: the cultural legacy of White Privilege itself. That's why Beck froze: he cannot afford to defend White Privilege explicitly at the risk of getting fired by his last advertiser, and he knows that jokes about chewing tobacco or Wonder Bread are simply a FAIL, Q.E.D.