I ask this having been to events with national/ethnic dress, food, and other cultures. What can a white American say their culture is? It feels that for better or worse it’s been all melted together.
Trying to trace back to European roots feels disingenuous because I’ve been disconnected from those roots for a few generations.
This also makes me wonder was their any political motive in making white American culture be everything and nothing?
Ehhh, I don’t think there is a unifying “white” culture.
Plenty of regional cultures that are predominantly white, and definitely city level ones, but that’s different from a “white culture”.
Hell, it’s hard to even say there’s am American culture because it’s just so damn big. Even regional cultures, like the general southern culture I came up in, I can’t say is a single one. There’s to much different between adjoining counties sometimes, and states can be even further apart.
If I point to the Appalachian culture I’m also a part of, you can’t really rely on that as much as you’d think, because five hundred miles in the mountains is a huge barrier to culture connections, even though much of the population shares common ancestry that informs the local cultures.
So, nah, I can’t buy the idea of “white” culture any more than I can any singular racial culture. They just don’t work when in reality, though they’re temping on paper.
Shit, even “ethnic” cultures vary too much between specific cities to rely on them translating fully, so why would arbitrary skin color groupings? The Irish folk here in the hills have kept and/or adapted the culture of their ancestors different than those in Boston, or New Orleans, or New York. Just looking at my maternal and paternal families, there’s enough differences that I wouldn’t give credence to an Irish, Scots-Irish or German culture being fully passed down in the same way.
The UK is way smaller than the US, and every city has its own distinct culture. Some are big enough cities that there’s multiple versions in each one.
If I had to lay claim to a national culture of the US, it would have to be adaptability. The overall culture of the US is to take what comes here and mix it around until it sticks. And that’s not a very distinct thing at all.