What Is White Culture?

The question is apparently difficult for liberals and conservatives alike

A Senate hearing investigated the matter of white culture last week. No, it wasn’t because they sought in good faith to determine what it means. The inquiry was intended to attack a Trump State Department nominee. Jeremy Carl, the nominee in question, wrote a book on the dangers of anti-white racism. That topic outraged Democratic senators and they decided to grill Carl about whether a white culture even exists.

According to Christopher Murphy and Tim Kaine, such a thing is dangerous to believe in and made Carl unfit for government work. The hearing inspired a vigorous debate over what white culture exactly is. Carl offered his own lengthy response on X, saying in part:

The “White culture” then that I was referring to was simply the culture of the overwhelming majority of Americans who lived here prior to the passing of the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965, which radically transformed American demographics. It incorporated everything from the sports we played (football, baseball etc.) to the foods we ate (Hamburgers, Pizza etc.) to the music we listened to and the TV shows we watched.

Essentially, white culture is American culture, according to Carl. A number of conservatives agreed with this take. But others, particularly of a Never Trump variety, were still aghast at the invoking of the word white to describe this culture.

Irrelevant dinosaur Jonah Goldberg claimed “whiteness” is a recent invention and has no connection to western civilization. He argued that this fixation on whiteness is “mostly a leftwing identitarian argument gussied up in right wing clothing.” It’s fitting that the author of “Liberal Fascism” would make such an asinine argument.

Writer Leighton Woodhouse, who has previously claimed that America has always been multicultural because it was founded by different strands in British culture, argued white culture isn’t real. What’s real is various European cultures, such as English culture. Note, this same person says there’s no such thing as a common English culture in other contexts.

It’s expected bad faith arguments will arise in such a discussion. The main contention seems to be labeling American and European cultures “white.” If one calls it “western,” it’s socially acceptable. Compare the freakout over Carl’s opinions with the praise awarded to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Munich Security Conference speech. Rubio argued America and Europe are united by a shared western culture, and cited examples of that common heritage that jibed with Carl’s assessment. But he made sure to say “western” rather than “white.” Both terms are in fact synonymous, but the latter has a taboo around it while the former does not.

Others, such as Woodhouse, will insist white culture doesn’t exist as a unified whole but is rather composed of separate European cultures. (Many of these same people will argue that those cultures aren’t real when defending mass immigration and multiculturalism in those same lands.) That may be the case in a European context, where the continent has struggled for years to build a common continental identity. The people there stress their particular ethno-cultural group over that of a shared white identity.

But it’s different in America. Here, “white” is its own ethno-cultural group. There are varieties of it, as there is with many of the individual European cultures. Just as there are differences between northern and southern Germans, there are differences between New England ethnics and white Southerners. But those two American groups are still white and recognize each other as such–even if not explicitly. Ironically, one of the distinguishing features of American whiteness is its individualism and hostility toward being grouped under such a category. But when selecting schools and neighborhoods, it becomes an important matter to whites.

Whiteness served as the culture for European immigrants to assimilate upon arrival in America. At its base, it was Anglo-Protestant, but it allowed for the adoption of other elements so long as the newcomers spoke English and began to see themselves primarily as American. Goldberg would contend this had nothing to do with race and was all about the individual or whatever. But this assimilative framework was only open to “free white men of good character,” as our first naturalization law spelled out. This only changed in the second half of the 20th century. Blacks and Amerindians, our two largest minority groups for much of American history, were Others who existed outside of whiteness. Whiteness was shaped by the differences between those accepted within the body politic and those that weren’t.

This framing has changed with mass immigration and explicit whiteness becoming more taboo. Now our common culture is changing from the Anglo-Saxon melting pot into an undistinguishable slop bowl. We still speak English, but many of the old norms and customs are discarded in favor of a more “inclusive” American identity. This will change America, and not in a good direction. This is what Carl and others warn about.

Even with those changes, white culture in America still exists. Much to Goldberg’s chagrin, the Left does a decent job of describing it. The Smithsonian’s infamous white culture infographic offered plenty of great examples of what this constitutes. It described rugged individualism, the nuclear family, the common law, rationalism, and a preference for blondes as important elements of whiteness. While denounced by conservatives at the time it was released, it’s actually a good guide on the subject. Its intent was clearly to attack whiteness, but it should be seen as a celebration of it.

The obvious reason people want to pretend like white culture doesn’t exist is because of the social taboo. People get uncomfortable when whiteness is brought up. They prefer calling it American or western culture. That sounds nicer than something tied up with a term that evokes “racist” or “Nazi.” Many white Americans themselves see their own culture as open to all, even if it’s their creation and the people who enjoy it are primarily white. They’d rather focus on the exceptions rather than the norm. It would be akin to blacks focusing on Eminem to insist rap isn’t black culture.

But even if whites don’t want to acknowledge it, whiteness is apparent to non-whites. It’s why the Left is insistent on documenting and deconstructing it. The new Americans want a broader, more inclusive identity than the old American identity. This will cast aside many of the things white Americans cherish but they don’t recognize as specifically white. But the “Others” do.

There are two versions of white culture. There is the broader “western” culture that would include Europe and its settler societies. While it’s something shared, people of the West generally feel more attachment to their specific ethno-cultural group/nation than they do to this broad identity. The second version is that of white Americans, which is its own unique ethno-cultural group. Some call them Heritage Americans, but the more honest term is whites.

This whiteness used to be the common identity of America, but now it’s under threat from demographic and cultural change.

These are obvious facts. People know what white culture is when they see it. It’s just a matter of whether they will identify it as such or pretend it doesn’t exist.

You can now preorder Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.