American Culture

A problem we have with race–and it’s a subject that bugs most Americans–is that we don’t seem able to recognize that black America is both an absolute, indelible part of American culture and a very strong culture/subculture of its own. When you have people who have their own dielect, musical styles, modes of dress, even modes of worship, you HAVE a culture and an identity there, and so you can’t say that it’s always and everywhere an irrelevancy; it’s something quite real, like being Scottish is in the United Kingdom.

I have generally found that if you recognize that black culture is both real and legitimate, a lot of discomfort over discussing at least some race issues simply evaporates. Noticing a difference in body language, spoken language, habits, etc. isn’t racism, it’s just noticing what IS. There seems to be an inbuilt assumption that just noticing a difference must have some “racist” undertone but that’s nonsense; you cannot turn on a black radio station in any major metropolitan area and not notice that you’re tuning into a culture that is both uniquely American AND distinctly different from mainstream white culture.

The grand liberal vision is/was/has been that we see everybody equally in a “color blind” way, but one of our discomforts comes from the fact that this doesn’t always work.

I think a similar discomfiture is evident in the subject of feminism. Noticing a difference is not the same thing as forcing a difference or drawing conclusions about a person’s innate superiority or inferiority.

What I find is that black people actually tend to understand all this better than white people, because white people seem to have been trained over the last generation to be fearful that noticing a difference is going to get them tagged as racist, or, they actually get offended themselves and see things as racist that aren’t.

I don’t know if I’m explaining this very well…

Yes, the maddening linguistics are part of it. Because in truth, if you ask black people if there is a distinctly black culture, they will (usually) say there definitely, absolutely, overwhelmingly is. Some are hostile to it, some are proud but critical of it, some embrace it, some are fiercely proud of it, some are relatively (or even completely) indifferent to it, but whatever the attitude, “it” is there.

And what they call it, is black culture and black identity. Black music. Even sometimes black cuisine (e.g. “soul food” although old-school southern whites may tend to grumble that to them “soul food” is what they always just called “food”).

A big part of the tension white Americans can see and sometimes be baffled or tripped up by is when there are black people themselves who can’t get it together on all the who’s, whats, wheres, whens, and hows on all this. But the most easily baffled to me appear to be whites who embrace the “we’re all the same under the skin” mantra and then find themselves shocked to find black people who are only so interested in that, because for many (most?) black people, that strong, strong, STRONG sense of American black culture is an indelible part of their character and something they very much resent having people try to get them to change as part of a sort of liberal (or conservative) agenda to homogenize the country.

I honestly think we’re reaching a point where race relations are such that these discussions CAN take place, conservative whinging about the evils of multiculturalism notwithstanding. There is no more reason for a Louisiana Cajun or Bronx Italian or Los Angeles Indian to simply reject his cultural heritage in order to “be American.” Neither does any black American have to do that. The problem is, so many people have trouble dealing with the fact that “black” actually IS an identity and is NOT merely a genetic type. It IS a culture, and one that will not (and probably SHOULD NOT) just “go away” or become “irrelevant.” Irrelevant for some things, yes, but utterly irrelevant? Hell no.

Navigating these waters is tricky business though, no doubt about it, although if you ask me it seems to be getting easier all the time…