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This leads me to the third aspect of white culture: privilege. Please permit me to quote from an earlier piece I wrote about this topic (read the full piece here):
Expressions of privilege are... a choice, a choice to not value or seek to understand culturally different groups, even when members of those groups are our neighbors, our coworkers, our children's classmates, and sometimes even our friends - a choice that, as any race scholar or activist will point out, is available only to members of the majority group. Members of racial minority groups, like members of other visible minority groups, must understand majority culture in order to negotiate it with any degree of success. This, then, is the real privilege of whiteness: The ability to make choices regarding which groups are worth listening to, when, and under what circumstances, and this choice is often so taken for granted that many of us make it with hardly any awareness of doing anything at all. And because this choice-making is silent and invisible, it is easily denied and, for the past decade, has been almost impossible to address in a structural manner, no matter how many writers and bloggers have written about it.
I could go on. Certainly Christianity (namely Protestantism) is an important aspect of white culture, as is being born on U.S. soil (immigrants, even those from Europe, are generally excluded from most expressions of white culture). I left them out because they did not, in my view, distinguish white culture from other U.S. cultural groups. I suppose I could have just as easily included them. My purpose here was not, however, to write out an exhaustive description of white culture but to outline its fundamental tenets: 1. distinction from Black culture, 2. avoidance of self-racialization, and 3. privilege.
What about racism?
You might have noticed I didn't mention racism. I'm not avoiding the subject. It's certainly the case that many white people perpetrate racism -- sometimes intentionally, sometimes not -- but I don't think there is anything particular about white culture that makes it inherently more racist than any other group. I say this with some trepidation, because I am acutely aware of the power dynamics -- the reality that, as the politically and economically dominant group, white people have the power to create and maintain racist systems and structures, as for example, our criminal (in)justice system.
I don't want to minimize this structural racial inequity. It is all too real and much too painful. At the same time, few white people have the power to personally influence these kinds of policy decisions. To the contrary, many feel powerless and helpless, especially in our current economic climate. There is a white elite (with a handful of nonwhite collaborators) that is responsible for maintaining these racist systems, but most white people, including those that most strongly identify with white culture, feel as alienated from this corporate and political elite as do most non-whites.
Glenn Beck (and Rush Limbaugh) aside, most white Americans who identify in some way with white culture are nevertheless quick to denounce anything that even vaguely resembles white superiority or racism. They generally believe in the myth of reverse discrimination and think that they are more likely to be victimized by racism than benefit from it. Moreover, they are tired of being accused of racism and tired of being blamed for the racial inequities, which (if they acknowledge) they attribute to group differences in motivation. As such, they want to live in a world where race doesn't matter and they tend to act accordingly, denying the reality of race and racism, not just in their own lives but in the lives of people of color. We can call this racism. Some do. But in the absence of malice -- and I do think that malice is the exception, not the rule these days -- I think the term "privilege" is more appropriate, as well as more constructive. I have just one remaining point to make.
Who gets to decide on membership?
You'll note that, based on my definition, Glenn Beck falls easily and comfortably into white culture. That doesn't mean that all, or even most, white people do. Just as there are many different Black cultures, so are there many different white ones, including a small but growing culture of white people committed to doing anti-racism work. The degree to which any particular person identifies with any of these cultures is simultaneously a matter of individual choice and a matter of public perception. That is, I can choose to interact with and value the opinions of non-whites and in so doing publicly distance myself from white culture, but if I am widely perceived as separating myself from non-whites and as expressing the other tenets of white culture, I will generally be perceived to be a member of this cultural group, whether I think of myself that way or not. Got that, Mr. Beck?
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