Welcome to Caucasia:
Is There Such a Thing as White Culture?
Story and Art By Troy Curtis

While searching for a soccer pick-up game on Craigslist's activity page, I came across a group of South Bay residents asking themselves, “Can white people have their own group?” The conversation began when a Caucasian man posted a message seeking other Caucasians who would enjoy outdoor activities. Almost as soon as this message appeared people were using the activities page to post comments.   It seemed people couldn't resist expressing their opinion on the assumed topic. Person after person posted their gut reactions to the original posting as well as each other's posted comments. Ultimately, the conversation grew into many topics and seemed too big for the Craigslist activities page. People began asking complex questions that couldn't be answered in that simple make-shift forum. Many things in the conversation seem to brake down to one question: Do white people have a unified culture that they actively participate in? With all this diversity in this minority majority City of San Jose, is white culture anything more than the mall and “Friends” reruns?

Maybe it's hard to get a good look at white culture because it is the primary American context. It surrounds and invades all of us like bright sun light. And like the sun “white culture” is blinding in it's totality making it hard to gain an outside perspective.   Like the sun, will white culture continue to feed on itself until it burns out?

Even the derogatory term “cracker” comes from a perception that white have no culture. The comparison is meant to play on the concept that white people have no flavor, no slide in their glide. If a group of people creates an image or belief system to follow are they a culture? The United States are full of peoples who have created and manifested their own culture. Chicanos, hip-hop heads, drag queens, Afro-Americans, Bloods, and Crips for example.   But have white people created and participated in a culture they came together to create, or have they just accepted there upper class citizenship and complied with the Capitalism that supports our class system?

White people make up the status quo and this country has made it real easy for white people to support the system.   The underlying message is that everything will be alright as long as you are still spending money. Who has the money? Who's buying stuff? That's the deal.   White people basically pay to keep the system in place and in turn the government, police and the business sector make white people feel comfortable, safe and “in control.”

The problem is there are no such things as being white.   Being a white person is a by-product of slavery and racism. Because European forefathers fostered a hatred for what they called black people, they became defined as white people. People who identify as “white people” now-a-days do not want white identity to be associated with this country's murderous past. They only want to connect themselves to the present comforts afforded by that past.   The term “white” people is just as backwards and loaded as the term “black” people. Stop calling yourself a white person if you don't want to be associated with slavery and the soulless consumerism. That's what African-Americans did.   Do white people feel the urge to change their social persona? Why would they? The term “white people” holds little discomfort for them. When people cling to the concept of being white, they are holding onto something because of a fear that the identity is all they have or all they know.   This reaction only impairs ones understanding of who they are, as well as they're abilities to discover and become a deeper more conscious human being.

I like to ask people if the think they consider themselves good people. The reply I most often get from white people is, “ Well, I'm not a bad person.” The reality becomes that you are not a good person either, you're just a comfortable one.   I am Scottish and French-Canadian, amongst other things. Never in my life have I considered myself white, not because of my tan skin but for the same reason that nobody is really “white,” because we all have ancestry and heritage and roots.

Post a Comment:
(De-Bug will publish e-mails on this page as soon as possible.)

Past Questions of the Week:

Could the riots in France happen here in the United States?
(Click to see what folks said)