[g4t0r]

"White people" do not have culture.

Irish people, German people, Scandivian people: yeah, sure, of course they have culture.

But "white" is not a culture, it's a social construct that exists primarily for exclusion. CF: people who are now, and previously weren't, considered white (Poles, Italians, some Jews, etc).

If whiteness exists only to delineate the in groups/out groups, the only "culture" of whiteness is that of protecting the power of those deemed to be "white".

So, yeah, I think "maintaining the culture of white people" inherently requires a concept of white supremacy.

[snowpid]

Interesting point and in the European context I do agree. I like to add that if people consider themself as "white", their respective culture is "white culture" though as I know only the USA has such a strong race concept in their culture in opposite to Canada, Brazil, Australia or Germany (all immigration countries)

[charcircuit]

>"White people" do not have culture.

This is a rude statement to claim as you are denying the existence of a group of people. Just because a group can consist of other subgroups that does not mean a larger group does not exist.

>it's a social construct that exists primarily for exclusion.

Everything can be a social construct if you want to try and frame it as one and while the actual definition may be complex it is not any more complex than other groups of people like Chinese which also consist of subgroups which people may or may not consider the same Chinese as one another. To say that the term of white is used primarily for exclusion that is wrong and I think more reflects the kind of content you consume.

[coolkewlcuil]

Focus on something useful like cheaper healthcare not culture wars

Culture = practice of a cult

I thought cults were considered bad?

Pearl clutching over words is little more than advocating a religious like dogma for the living

Well I am not Christian and similarly to not caring to chant their screeds I have no interest in yours

In fact the status quo in the US keeps me off the hook for paying for your healthcare; I am off thr hook for your life itself.

You might focus in changing that, because as-is all of us can let you end up living in your car

Culture war crap is intended to obfuscate and deflect away from those kinds of real problems our biology faces

Be smarter than the politicians and mouth breathers who wave flags

[dqv]

Ok, but the people who look like me, who have historically been called "white people", do have a distinct, shared culture (or the people who aren't "white" wouldn't be able to point out how we act and what we do and our manner of speech). So what are these people called? What is their culture called? What are we renaming white-people tacos to? (and, no, tostadas are not the same thing as white-people tacos)

While I don't think my culture needs to be preserved nor do I care about being a "racial minority" (I live in a neighborhood where the majority of the people who live here are "non-white" - and, no, I didn't gentrify, it's actually just a very young neighborhood), I do want to be able to share my culture and traditions with other people. That's the whole basis of culture... sharing it with others.

And there's another thing. People who don't look like me call me "white people". What should they be calling me instead?

I think it would be a lot easier to shut white supremacists down if we had competent answers to these questions instead of thought terminating cliches like "white people don't have culture".

[archagon]

As a Russian person, my cultural heritage is Slavic, not "white". Ignoring skin tone, I’m not sure what my Slavic background has in common with — for instance — Italian or Irish culture. In fact, Italians, Irish, and Russians would not have been considered fully white in America during various parts of the last century.

The notion of a "white race" is a recent invention borne of slavery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people

What are your cultural traditions? How much do they overlap with mine as a fellow "white" person?

[dqv]

> As a Russian person, my cultural heritage is Slavic, not "white". Ignoring skin tone, I’m not sure what my Slavic background has in common with — for instance — Italian or Irish culture. In fact, Italians, Irish, and Russians would not have been considered fully white in America during various parts of the last century.

Well, yes. If you weren't dispossessed of your culture generations ago, then you won't identify with a grouping of people who were dispossessed of theirs in service to the idea of "whiteness".

You are caught up in the racial definition of whiteness, but I'm talking about culture. For the same reason a Ghanaian expat isn't black, neither would you be white. There is a reason many black Americans reject the term "African-American": it makes no sense - they were systemically dispossessed of their African roots generations ago.

> The notion of a "white race" is a recent invention borne of slavery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people

Yes, we know. I am specifically talking about the resultant culture that derived from this invention. If you can understand that black culture developed out of this invention through racist policy, then it should be possible to understand how this artificial separation did the same to white people.

> What are your cultural traditions? How much do they overlap with mine as a fellow "white" person?

What are my cultural traditions? I don't have a complete answer to that. We don't exactly have a "whiteness studies" major at colleges, and I wouldn't want one without serious and thoughtful consultation with the groups of people hurt by colonization.

To study even part of a culture is lifelong work. It took black academics decades to create a complete definition of racism as we know it today. And many more decades to describe black culture, which still hasn't been fully mapped out. To untangle what white culture is and what it isn't will also take many decades.

[bigbadfeline]

> "White people" do not have culture.

Keep in mind, you replied to a comment that claimed that "the West" is used as another name for "White" and that's precisely how it's used in those circles.

So, to paraphrase, you deny that there's Western culture and it's part of European Culture. That is, you deny that there are cultural threads common for most of Europe and more so for Western Europe. I hope, I've said enough to convince you that you're wrong.

> But "white" is not a culture, it's a social construct that exists primarily for exclusion.

And? Using your logic, one can say that "German is not a culture, it's a social construct that exists primarily for exclusion" - if you were consistent, you'd also question the right of Germans to have a culture given that Bavaria, Saxony, etc do have cultural differences. The hair-splitting can go even further but the point should already be clear.

> So, yeah, I think "maintaining the culture of white people" inherently requires a concept of white supremacy.

So you claim that "maintaining the culture of Chinese people" inherently requires a concept of Chinese supremacy? Replace Chinese with German, Saxon, whatever... it doesn't compute.

Culture can be used as an excuse for supremacy and there are many other excuses too but fighting excuses instead of fighting supremacy can only help the supremacists.