#20 Being an expert on YOUR culture
January 23, 2008 by clander
White people are pretty conflicted about their culture. On one hand, they are proud of the art, literature, and film produced by white culture. But at the same time, they are very ashamed of all the bad things in white culture: the KKK, colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow laws, feudalism, and the treatment of native americans.
One way they can make up for it is becoming marginally acquainted with foreign cultures. It is generally acceptable for a white person to learn a few terms in a language spoken primary by non-whites (such as Chinese, Tagalog or Portuguese). They can then use these phrases to order certain ‘more authentic’ dishes in restaurants.
White people can also take passing interest in film, politics, music or art from these countries. When they actually meet someone from that country, or at least who has parents from that country they cannot wait to engage you in all the details that they have learned.
“Have you heard the new Andy Lau CD? It’s awesome!”
It is imperative that you recognize how special and unique this white person is for knowing about your culture. Acceptable responses include “Wow, I’ve never seen a white person order chicken feet,” or “How did you find about that film? I didn’t think they had dubbed it yet.”
These responses will fill white people with that self satisfaction they need. Also, they consider a reminder that they are not racist, which also makes them feel terrific.
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[...] #20 Being an expert on YOUR culture [...]
I still can’t understand why white people (and some black people) think they are the only ones who had a slave owning past:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Slavery
white people should be proud of their culture and all the positive things that came along with it (computers, TV, cars, airplanes, math literature and science, etc…) everyone else is. dont see to many NE asians walking around thinking about how ghengis khan affected europe and the middle east, or blacks thinking about why their ancestors sold them to the whites, or us native peoples thinking about how we killed our own people for the gods.
anyways, really funny site. love it
White people does NOT have a culture (neither does black people or brown or yellow or any other skin colored people)….
skin color does NOT have any culture attached to it….
for the most part, it does
no, it does not. There may be a such thing as African American culture, for example, but this is different from Kenyan culture, which is different from Gambian culture, etc. Race does not equal culture.
I said for the most part. how many whites or blacks are part of hmong culture? How many white or asians are part of the african american culture? Each culture is predominantly one race, except for hispanic which can be white, indigenous american, black, or even asian.
To say whites have no culture is ignorant. There are plenty of cultures which are predominantly white, and always have been. These cultures are what I refered to as white culture. European cultures are white cultures.
Too many white people meet a Hmong , they think “he is a Chinese or a Chinaman”. The Hmong may think “Yankee, round-eye, white-face, hairy barbarian or a colonial Frank”. Both may meet a black person and together they call him (mentally) “Black guy, we hate him, no reason at all.” +
First, who said white people have no culture? I said there are different “white” cultures.
Second, you’re generalizing. I’m saying there is no such thing as “African” or “Asian” culture. There are different cultures within those races.
“First, who said white people have no culture?”
louiecoolgato said “White people does NOT have a culture”
did you read the whole cionversation?
did you even read what I wrote the last time?
“There are plenty of cultures which are predominantly white, and always have been. These cultures are what I refered to as white culture. European cultures are white cultures.”
“Second, you’re generalizing.”
lol… so what?! this whole site is a generalization, if you are so pc about things like this why are you on a here?
that is your opinion that there is no asian culture, it’s my opinion and the opinion of my family (who are asian) that there is.
Try telling a Chinese person (espeically one who was alive during WWII) that their culture is identical to Japan’s. I’m sure they’d have an interesting response.
Or a Korean, the kind of thing Margaret Cho jokes about in her comedy routine about her life as an Asian-American (or correctly, Korean-American). She once said a Midwestern TV station wanted her to speak in her native Korean language, but she just said in English “Hello Iowan viewers, you are watching…” the directors said “Huh?” Margaret Cho smiled and said “English is my native language, not Korean”. +
Ok, apparently you are completely misunderstanding everything I’m saying, so this will be the last time I try this.
I can’t speak for louiecoolgato, but when I say “there is no white culture” I do NOT mean that white people do not have culture, I mean that there are many white CULTURES… just like you said. So whiteness itself is not a culture. I think we might actually agree on this.
Second, when I say “you’re generalizing” I mean like…seriously….really generalizing. Would you say that Indians and Chinese have the same culture? They’re both Asian, so by your logic they both have Asian culture. How about Japanese and Korean? They may both look like what we think of as “Asian” but they have very different histories and cultures.
All I’m saying is that you’re completely conflating race (which we really can’t even define) and culture, which is easy to do. I think you’re taking this a bit too personally. Nobody is saying you don’t have culture… or at least I’m not.
no I’m not. I also don’t care about generalizing white people, they do it to us all the time.
Way to be the better person…
Stupid white people generalize, not all of them do. The whole idea of race is stupid and outdated anyways. Let’s get with the fucking times.
Besides, for the most part, there’s more differences within cultures than between cultures.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not too PC to enjoy this site, or to realize that generalizations can be useful, if they’re positive and are adapated/expanded as one receives new information.
You’re right, they (we) do. I’m trying to avoid that here.
I have a co-worker bring his daughter to work. He was telling her about diversity, different cultures, etc.
Since I was the only brown person in the office, he asked me what I did with my childhood friends on the weekends in the Philippines. I told him my friends and I used hang out at the mall, have lunch at Pizza Hut, Jollibee or McD’s and watch a movie. The exact samething his daughter does with her friends on the weekends.
That’s too funny! I find it annoying when people assume Filipinos still live in huts in the Philippines and that there are no modern-day conveniences at all.
It is also possible a person wants to make conversation so they attempt to discuss an area of common interest or knowledge. A white person can bring up an Andy Lau CD because the conversation has switched to China and that is the only way the white person knows to stay in the conversation. It is also possible that people of color are insecure about this fact and interpret a white persons limited knowledge of their culture as presumptuous and arrogant. The only real solution is open and honest conversation without preconceived bias, something a humor site like this does not support.
half-dutch/puerto-rican because my race will matter to far too many of you
mixed-race, why would a person of color be INSECURE about the fact that a white person has limited knowledge of their culture….. and why would a person of color interpret this lack of knowledge as presumptuous and arrogant UNLESS the white person states something that would give the person of color this impression??
Arrogance and presumptions can only be detected if the person STATES arrogant and presumptuous statements. While it is a good thing to have an open and honest conversation on culture, it is not a good thing to listen to white people tell people of color about their non-white culture….
some white people presume that if they read it in a book or studied it in school, then the book and their studies are more authentic than the people who live the subject they studied…this is what we’d call: arrogant and presumptuous.
PS: arrogance and presumption seeped into your statement at the end……the fact is—most of us could care less that you are half dutch/puerto-rican…..as if this matters.
[...] Additionally, the attempt to redefine what is Latino for our purposes smacks of the phenomenon of knowing someone’s culture better than they would. Apparently, some of us who are not Latino think we know how to define their community for [...]
baha it seems some people have completely missed the point. It’s called SATIRE folks, it’s not supposed to be offensive, nor is it supposed to provide people with an outlet to vent against ‘whites’.
This blog deliberately categorises people in a deliberately stereotypical manner! GET OVER IT!
‘white culture’? haha there IS no ‘white’ culture. I would say what this blog is talking about is the culture of AFFLUENCE and most of the affluent in the world also happen to be so-called ‘whites’. That may sound politically incorrect but it’s also a fact (and im talking per capita stuff here btw).
And coming from Australia, you can only imagine how many ‘kangaroo’ remarks I got when I travelled in Europe (and not just from ‘whites’!) but why would i hate people for that? if they haven’t been here then of course they’re going to stereotype, EVERYBODY does to some extent!
So please, stop your racism and your ranting, understand satire and just appreciate this blog as something thats good for a chuckle but not an outlet for racist abuse.
And yes, there are some people who will go to a country for a week or two and suddenly come back ‘experts’ but ffs just have a laugh and roll your eyes instead of hating them.
Oh, and can I offer anyone a ‘Fosters’? Because we don’t actually drink it over here, and the stuff you guys get is brewed in the EU anyway. It’s called ‘Globalisation’.
Ta’ mates!
Satire yes, but too often painfully unfunny satire. It smugly lampoons what affluent urban white people may seem to like, which most white people are actually not and don’t, and, as a white person, I rather resent being so clumsily lumped into such a narrow stereotypical category. I’m not politically correct and have no objection to a certain amount of whiteface minstrel show shining-on, but satire has to be “truthy” to be funny, and attempts at humor that are mostly mistargeted are merely tiresome. A schtick like “You may be a redneck if…” is, in my opinion, genuinely funny and satirical. It wouldn’t be funny, however, if it were ham-handedly mistargeted as “You may be a white person if…”
Too right! I can;’t believe how many comments this site gets from people who seem totally incapable of appreciating satire for what is, and so quickly jump to rant and judge – I guess they don’t understand irony either
Come on people a lot of you seem fairly intelligent (at least compared to people who leave comments on other blogs who can’t even spell their racial slurs correctly)… Just take a step back and try appreciating what is being said and your own reaction – Trust me we can all learn a lot from meditating on our OWN reactions to things, and there is little else out there that is better at helping us do this than SATIRE!
Peace.
satire |ˈsaˌtīr|
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
It’s too bad that most people on this site mistaken satire as FACT…
fact |fakt|
noun
a thing that is indisputably the case
Since the SKIN TONE of most brazilians became such an issue here, I’ll beep ya FROM INSIDE THE BOX: although official sources state that 50% (or so) brazilians are white, things are not exactly that CLEAR when you see ‘em for yourself. THE FOREMENTIONED ‘official sources’ (the almighty brazilian census, more specifically – which is the basis for the informantion regarding ‘brazilian stuff’ on wikipedia and CIA reports
) are based on self-indentification, which leads to a deceiving trend: in a culture where racism is a lurking shadow that never (or at least ALMOST never) bursts the shell of coexistence – but DOES exist deep in the mind of most people – and interracial relations take 30% of the marritage combinations on the run, A LOT of halfbreeds, brown-skinned and multhiethnic citizens WILL declare themselves as whites.
things seem to be changing, though: the number of blacks and brown self-declared brazilians is rising astonishingly since the eighties (also according to the brazilian census), as education improves and reaches more poor people. It is expected by government specialists that in ten years the number of blacks and browns on the official records will be up to 60%.
in other words: A MATTER OF SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF STEEM, IF YOU ASK ME!
)
(oh, and if you ask me again, I’m a proud, 7 foot tall AFRICAN-BRAZILIAN
Last time I checked Portuguese is a white language – what with Portugal being in Europe and all. I realize you’re probably referring to Brazil but there’s about 300 other languages you could have chosen which don’t originate in Europe. Just sayin’.
Also, your examples of terrible things white people have done is mostly limited to American history. Let’s not forget about the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust, the Vikings, all the various genocides around the globe and the countless other terrible things. Not that most other cultures haven’t done much of the same, whites just do it on a larger scale.
I actually heard two white people ask a Chinese guy about Kitaro and “the sleep giant”.
I guess that got their cultures mixed up.
Baby-steps…
sleeping*
Hahaha, hilarious. After reading this post last week, the exact thing happened to me that weekend where a girl decided to tell me about her trip to China, terracotta warriors, qing dynasty… and all sortsa interesting things about………. My culture. (I secretly suspect instead of visiting China, she really just saw that last Mummy movie)
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