What does it mean to be "white?" Is there a uniquely "white" culture? (cross-post from GD) [View all]

To illustrate the point: I am white. How do I know this? Well, I have light, fair skin, and my immigrant ancestors came from certain parts of Western and Northern Europe - England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Luxembourg, and likely others. Furthermore, I come from a solidly middle/upper-middle class background, with parents and grandparents who mostly grew up middle class themselves. That's not an explicitly "white" thing, but if you're an American whose parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents (as is the case for me) who - over time and from generation to generation - acquired or otherwise benefited from their parents having acquired certain historically significant levels of education, property, economic opportunity, and overall social mobility - you're almost certainly a white American. For even the wealthiest and most educated Americans of color don't have the multiple generations and overall levels of social and cultural capital of white Americans.

But going back to the ancestry issue: My European ancestors not only came from many places and particular cultures within Europe, but included both Catholics and Protestants. Those things were certainly very important in terms of social and political dynamics and cleavages in both Europe and in the US in the past, but nowadays, for the average middle-class, suburban or small-town white American? That doesn't matter. Being "white" within the American context not only erodes those particular historical identities, but - more pertinent for this topic - is a synonym for not having your skin, your blood, your history, your very identity being "polluted" by the presence of color.

Because how else could I, a liberal Democratic voter living in the San Francisco Bay Area whose ancestors were from the aforementioned countries, have anything that makes me more similar in any respect to small-town or suburban Republican-voting fundamentalist Protestant of "Scots-Irish" or "American" ancestry in (pick your state) than I am to my (also American) neighbors who are of Indian, Iranian, Israeli, Chinese, Mexican, and a wide variety of other ancestries? (and FWIW, people of those particular ancestries easily make up the majority of my neighbors and my community - Euro-Americans like me are a MINORITY here, as we are in the world as a whole...)

Would love to read any responses in THIS group specifically.