I’m gonna talk out my ass for a minute, I haven’t actually done any focused reading on most of the tidbits I’m about to discuss. Just putting together a lot of disconnected thoughts and anecdotes I’ve collected over the years

I’m remembering that the phrase “white pride” only exists in imitation of the phrase “black pride” and the accompanying explanation for why one is absolutely not at all problematic while the other is unabashedly supremacist. That explanation being that “black” references the culture common to that group of people which, in the case of American black people, can’t really be narrowed down to any one country. While it can be narrowed down (mostly) to one continent, that still represents a fifth of the Earth’s land-area and therefore includes a lot of cultures that don’t have anything in common.

So, “black culture” then is a sort of (the word I’m about to use may be problematic, I don’t know, it makes sense in my head but I’m white and have no idea how it might feel to have someone else describe me this way) “prosthetic” culture. I’m thinking, because they did lose a real part of themselves but, because there are so many others with the same culture-esque background in America, the phrase “black culture” refers to a real thing that exists.

Now, the other direction. “White culture” is problematic because, what culture is it that “white” people share? People who are “white” have a cultural history already, they don’t need a prosthetic. I know I come from something vaguely Scots-Irish. If I could be bothered to look into that more, I could surely find clubs, celebrations, or whatever kind of pageantry I wanted to validate that identity. But what cultural history do I have in common with this other random “white” person who it turns out is actually Romanian?

And that brings me to the best bit! Take all the people who are considered “white” today, put them in a room and have them discuss with each other, looking for the single attribute that their culture shares with the most other cultures in that room. I would guess (totally out my ass here, I have no idea) that the one thing most cultures have in common today even the ones currently considered “white” is that they used to be persecuted for their non-whiteness.

I don’t have any numbers for that. I’m just thinking about how, for example, Italians didn’t used to be “white”, Irish people didn’t used to be “white”, or Romanian people are still kind of struggling to be considered “white”. Or we could take it another way, Jews aren’t “white” regardless of their skin color (though of course the state of Israel is likely to sterilize anyone whose skin is too dark…) and I remember a stereotype about Catholics that sure seemed to fit in the category of non-“white”.

So, now I don’t remember what the subject of the post I’m writing this in was…