What is White Culture?

Is white culture offensive or absent?

Do white people lack culture? White culture is hardly noticeable because it is currently banned, but it is still the background, the canvas, the infrastructure. It provides the platforms we perform on. It is a selective history and discovery without becoming what is discovered. It is appreciation. It isn’t perfect, as compared to other options, whatever those are.

It is said that white people can’t dance, but what they do is make dance floors. True there is not much típico tradition now associated with white culture. That is like saying it isn’t noticed because it is everywhere, but it also builds the soapbox’s people complain from, about them.

White culture is also an economic system of slavery on its own color. This system is desirable to color culture too, because it produces a lot of shiny things, and technology that most people want when they are introduced to them. But it comes at a cost. It is a stressful way to live in this system of tax burden, broke, or bust, we must pay the man.

A select few, hyper driven individuals beat the system then become the cog in it, ie; if a man develops a successful software and becomes a billionaire, suddenly he is also an expert on education, vaccinations, farming, and land grabbing. In reality his money is all he’s worth. He caught a lucky break with good timing and aggression and now he is above celebrity, while simultaneously being a dummy. Cash is king in white culture. And it spreads inversely. This type of person gets special privilege because others want his money, which he deals out piecemeal to keep his fame in tact.

It isn’t a culture but the culture, currently. But it is also cultured. It is art, music, movies, literature, and entertainment. Because it is the dominant culture, it can also mean “customs” and “social behavior.

Ethnic vs White Culture. It may not look like it, but white culture is the result of many ethnicities melded into one. There are still sub groups, regionally diverse foods and customs, just as Black African ethnicities are not one, but many. For instance—

Where do you find the tallest people in the world? Where do you find the shortest? Of course “Africa” has more genetic diversity than anywhere else in the world, so it is with culture. Migration is where subspecies came into play. People not accustomed to diverse, black ethnicity, grouped all blacks in one category, which they are not. The same is true of white—Irish and Poles, or Dutch and Russian, are as diverse as the variety of Native Americans, or First Nations people.

VS Tradition—while white is a planning future using final religion, while ethnic is more based on traditions, the past, and ancestors which are many. It is good food and hair, drum circles and a variety of clothings, tattoos, musics, and mythologies, that all stand out in amazing color on a white background. It is supposed to be the best of everyone and everything. It is the Mola and the leathern drum, the Pollera and Montuno, or the Shuka cloth.

All idolized and memorialized by the underlying culture which even white is subject to, benefits from, and is oppressed by its homogeneous variety.

Shedding Colonialism

Insights of a Filipino-Panamanian working in religious small town America.

The double insult of colonization from my experience in just one week of work.

I can’t speak for everyone, I only speak for myself and my point of view.

As I went to work, I centered myself for the upcoming chaos of being the new local high school secretary. Many things to learn and handle at once, with minimal training and a large dose of survival tactics.

I open the doors, make the coffee and enjoy the quiet ritual of gently waking our building up so that it may have a welcoming atmosphere.

One by one the teachers arrive and we have genuinely pleasant banter of our evening and the plans for the day.

Then the buses arrive. The students with their chatter and questions.

I love these moments.

As my day progressed I was speaking in Spanish to a student. She was concerned that her lack of being able to speak to anyone in Spanish was making her forget her words. Then a staff member walks in and interjects. “Isn’t it wonderful that our local school has provided you with someone to speak in Spanish to?” The student and I lock eyes and flinch. The staff member goes on, “ I’m sure you are very grateful for this opportunity. How does it make you feel to be able to speak in Spanish here in our little town?”

By then she and I are in a full side conversation just using out eyebrows and pointing with our noses. The student stops and puts her hand to her jaw and searches for the word she wants to share with the staff member. She voices without a doubt, “Awkward “

I knew she was talking about the situation and was not answering the questions being asked. The staff member told her she should not feel awkward about her English skills. I shook my head because this situation was way to big to handle and the phones were ringing.

I dismissed the student and told her not to pay any mind to what had just happened. She was welcome to come back and we’d talk about this situation later.

The student returned and was asking me a question—it was a silly one about her day and we giggled. As we did, another staff member walked in and slammed her hand on the counter repeatedly and yelled, “Speak English!! We live in America!”

The student and I were not pleased. I really wanted to ask her, “Why does it matter if I speak in another colonizers language?” I held my tongue. I apologized to the student on behalf of the staff member’s ignorance and she went back to class. Turning to the staff member who sat there with a huge grin as she celebrated her dominance and superiority, I said to her, “ I spoke to her in Spanish in a private conversation. Her shirt was not buttoned correctly and she would have been embarrassed if I had pointed it out in front of everyone in English.”

I felt weak, small and frustrated. How does one combat ignorance? My whole life has been confusing. Brown skin, white mind. I am a square peg trying to fit into a circular hole. I work twice as hard to get half as far as my Anglo coworkers. I try to convince myself that it’s just my work ethic. This is a whole other subject. The serviceable brown lady stereotype. Ugh.

I continue to navigate through life and find my footing, my voice and my strength. As I shed the colonization mindset that I was cloaked in as a child, I’m working on being kind and patient. It’s hard. I’m tired of making excuses for white privileged people and excuses for being me. This is going to be an interesting journey.

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