Many have wondered why you see lots of "black pride," "Latino pride," and whatnot, but only Neo-Nazis or Klan members go around advertising white pride. Say you are proud to be Asian, and it's okay. But say you are proud to be white, and people think you are a racist. Is this a form of reverse discrimination? No, not really. It comes from a radical difference in the way whiteness is valued and interpreted in Western society. White is the default, the standard, the "non-race" if you will. People don't have white pride because the cultural interpretation of whiteness gives nothing to be proud of. People are proud of their race because it's part of their cultural identity--but no one identifies with whiteness because it is, in a sense, the absence of culture.
What does the adjective "white" tend to suggest? Usually things like regular flavor, such as vanilla.
Michael Bolton at the Grammy Awards
Michael Bolton en el Palau de la Música de Barcel...
The Isley Brothers on the Clay Cole Show in 1962You know, plain stuff. Well, that's also what white means as a subculture. White culture is mayonnaise on white bread, it?s John Grisham and Tom Clancy, it's Disney's latest watered-down adaptation of a folk tale, it's Phil Collins and Michael Bolton. It's uninspired, derivative, and bland, bland, bland.
And one thing that most identifies white culture is that it doesn't identify itself as white. Friends, Seinfeld, Cheers--those aren't white comedies. They're just comedies, everybody likes them. But you might be surprised to find that amongst Latino or black audiences, these shows rarely even cracked the top 50. Sure, their audience isn't entirely white, but then there are some white people that watch Live from L.A., too.
Or white culture will steal from other subcultures. Obviously Michael Bolton is a perfect example of this--did that bastard ever even pay the poor Isley Brothers back? But even if the rumors I've...