What does it mean to be white? Today and through history. Special guest Charlie Floyd!
And I love that he brought up that point because he also brought up the point that acknowledging that maybe your ancestors came from communities that weren't always considered to be in the privileged, quote unquote white demographic means that you have historical, familial history of also being oppressed. And so by definition, you should have some kind of solidarity with demographics of people today who are oppressed and who aren't considered as white. And I thought that was such an interesting point because it's not to create oppression contest
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 0:53
Does it seem strange to anybody that the United States Census Bureau would consider PG people of Middle Eastern and North African descent as white? What are your ideas about this
And it's all about the people in power defining how they can stay in power. And yeah, it's just the whole idea of race was invented. I mean, I've read books about race being practically invented by scientists to separate people. Right. To find ways to make people believe that they're different from others. It's the whole idea of like, divide and conquer. Right. And I think that's a separate idea from white privilege
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 0:58
Hooey, your response reminds me of Snow Piercer, the movie. And if what you say is true, which I actually think it's true, then white culture has an aspect of imperialistic expansion within it for the sake of economic exploits. To which my question would be, if this is a part of that engine, where is this thing going? As it continues to expand over the globe and to confirm soon as it goes through the process of assimilation
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 0:10
Thank you for your swell. Are you familiar with Edward T. Halls, Cultural Iceberg model
Like, for instance, yoga has largely been colonized by predominantly white people with not little to no credit towards, oh, my gosh, it's hailing outside. How cool. With little to no credit towards the origins of yoga, which came from Indian cultures. Right. Or, for instance, there's a lot of white trust fund babies that like to go to Central and South American countries to start, quote, unquote retreat or artist communes
I think it's really important to not disregard how people identify ethnically because there's a lot of groups of historically and currently oppressed ethnicities that label themselves as such to celebrate and take pride in where they come from and who they are. Like ethnicity, race does matter when certain groups are oppressed and others have more privilege just for the basic fact of the color of their skin or the amount of melanin they have
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 0:30
I've heard this before. This idea that white people do not have culture. Seeing that you're familiar with the culture iceberg model and you said you have seen applied in many different contexts. Why do you believe that people think that white people do not have culture
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 1:00
Thinking again about the cultural iceberg model. The visible cultural practices are often what comes to people's minds when they think of culture. Then there is the unseen part of that and iceberg, or the mental models and patterns and habits which make up the vast majority of a culture. And those contain concepts such as tone of voice, conversational patterns in different social settings, ideas of fairness, cooperation versus competition, ideas about justice, gender roles and perceptions in white culture
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 1:47
What I mean is to consider if given credit for a thing that is extracted from a people group is commensurate compensation for that extraction, or if the people are given credit but are not around to enjoy the fruits of that cultural credit given, does that mean appropriation has not occurred? It comes to minor States like the ones named after First Nations people like Wisconsin come to mind. Credit is given technically, but that was not the result of an ethical cultural exchange
That's a really good point. I think I agree with you that like, trying to make sure you're not appropriating goes beyond just, like, acknowledging the culture you extracted from. Like, they also should be included and be reaping the benefits as well. So I never thought about that before in an effort to not try to culturally appropriate things
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 3:18
Well, I'd say culture helps produce the people from who come from it, and in turn those people return value to that culture. That return can be in the form of evolving the culture, protecting the culture, remembering the culture, and other forms of honoring that culture. But the culture determines if the offering is worthy, not the individual. The question for me is if culture can be appreciated, if a devaluing of the people who produce the culture is practiced
So I think that's actually doing a lot of harm because that's taking a piece of history away from a specific group of people also goes along with how in my African history class, we talked about great Zimbabwe and how whenever it was first discovered, colonists tried to push the myth that it was created by a white tribe, and then that was who built it
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 0:56
I think you're not alone in regards to not knowing what white culture is. I think most people don't think it actually exists. One of the confusing things things about human beings capacity to be inculcated is that it is imperceptible to us when this process is generated. Regardless of this process being imperceptible to us, we faithfully act out and reproduce the actions, behavioral patterns, and cognitions of people within our culture whom we have never met
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 0:25
What you describe is very much thematic of white culture. What do you believe allows for white people to come up with fables such as the pyramids being built by aliens or that it was impossible for African culture to be a part of building Egypt? How do you think that happens
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 1:21
There's also a show on Netflix called Explained that gets into when Europeans began spicing their food. Historically, that's not the central part of that episode, but they make it clear the episode is called Pirates. There's also a book called Birth of a White Nation by Doctor Jacqueline Battleora. It's only 100 pages. That book gives so much information about the origins of white culture, as well as how the of Christian white men as being prototypically white came into existence
Wow. That statement really was profound. The culture gets to determine what's valuable, not the person appreciating it. And I think when I asked you what the difference between appropriation and cultural appreciation is, that really summed it up for me really well, because you're right. Because a lot of modern day white colonialism and appropriation is white people deciding what is worth note and investment and attention
So yeah, I was really excited to make this post and start this dialogue because over time in my own personal life and learning about my privilege and other people's lack of privilege and the social injustices through history, now I'm realizing that whiteness isn't real. It's a political propaganda tool for the people that are already in power to retain their power. So it's interesting. Thank you for your post
But as many people are pointing out, a lot of different European cultures and some other areas of the world, a lot of people with pale skin come from very different cultures and very different communities. So ethically, I don't believe it's a real thing. I think that it is real in the sense where it gives other people's more privilege over others is what I meant to say. I wasn't trying to deny white privilege at all
Charlie Floyd
@damonnomad · 0:44
Listen, I'm very clear it's very salient to me that, you know, fictions have real life consequences. I'm very clear that things like fairy tales have altered people's behavior or contributed to conditioning their behavior in human history. So I'm very clear about that. But let me ask you this question. Do you know of any other type of fiction that generate enough real effects and consequences that would leave one with the sense that it is real
But I have explained whenever you leave a list like that, it becomes very harmful because it's just taking that away group of people who are actually responsible for it. And so we may not know exactly how determinants were built. Whenever you disenfranchised that, certain people say they had no part in it whatsoever, and you kind of simply take that whole aspect of one specific group of people's culture away from them
