White people say, “White people have no culture.”

White people are pretty effed up sometimes. White people often think say things like, “White people have no culture,” and think that there is nothing racist about that statement. Macon D posted another messed up post at Stuff White People Do, quoting a White American named Shelly Tochluk who feels a “sense of loss” because she is white. Tolchuk writes:

However, many of us find ourselves looking at other groups and longing for the connection we imagine they feel with their roots, their homeland, their culture. Many white folks can be heard saying, “We don’t have culture. They have culture.”

Tolchuk is careful enough to write, “the connection we imagine they feel with their roots, their homeland, their culture,” instead of “the connection they feel with their roots, their homeland, their culture.” She also attributes in quotation marks, “We don’t have culture. They have culture,” as the sentiment of white folks, instead of making it her own claim about reality. However, the rest of the excerpt goes on to assume that these white folks’ assumptions about the cultures of people of colour are accurate.

Americans of Color elected Obama. White Americans elected McCain.

Most White Americans voted for John McCain, while most Asian Americans, Latin@ Americans, Black Americans, and Other Americans voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Some White Americans claim that Black Americans voted for Obama because he is black. That is, some White Americans think that non-white people have a “tribal” mentality and that they align with whoever looks the most like them. However, if we consider the fact that most White Americans voted for the white person, and that most Asian Americans, Latin@ Americans, Black Americans, and Other Americans voted for the black person, this hypothesis fails. A better explanation is that Barack Obama was the best presidential candidate, but most White Americans have a “tribal” mentality and aligned with the person who looks the most like them.

Related articles:

• Voters of Color: Unsung Heroes of the 2008 Election at Racism Review (hat-tip)
• Election showed nonwhite voters’ growing power at San Francisco Chronicle

White people assume that non-Western cultures are less civilized.

White people were aware of non-white societies for centuries, and needed to a way to organize this knowledge in relation to themselves. One way white people have historically organized this knowledge was to assume that non-Western societies were inferior and Western societies were superior, and that non-white people were “savages” and white people were “civilized”. White people assumed that societies “progressed” from “savage” to “civilized”, from heathen to Christian, from non-Western to Western. White people believed that African cultures and Native American cultures were “primitive” and that given enough time, these cultures would “advance” to look very much like white, Western societies.

Most white people today still hold the same views implicitly, in that even most white liberals consider non-Western cultures “ancient” and “traditional”. The assumption behind this way of thinking is that non-Western cultures are stuck in the past, and that Western societies live in the present. When white people organize Western and non-Western cultures on a timeline by placing non-Western cultures in the past and Western society in the present, they are assuming that societies “progress” unilinearly from non-Western to Western. That is, to view non-Western cultures as “ancient” and “traditional” is to view Western society as the most culturally advanced and the most evolved. Most white people think that to “Westernize” is same as to “modernize” and improve.

Linus Torvalds supports Barack Obama.

Linus Torvalds, original creator of the Linux kernel, wants Barack Obama to be the President of the United States. In his blog post Black and white, Torvalds writes:

The reason I bring this up is that while I can’t vote, I did want to say publicly anyway that I really really hope that Obama will be the US president elect after Tuesday night. I realize it probably won’t come as a big shock to anybody (yes, I’m a socially liberal open source freak from Europe – so what would you expect?), and others will just be angry.

If anybody wants a reason for that, just watch (or listen to) Obama’s “Call to Renewal” keynote speech from 2006. It looks like it’s split into 5 pieces on youtube – the whole thing is about 40 minutes – but it’s worth it, just to hear something rare: mentioning religion in the US without being black-or-white.

[…]

There are other reasons, but that’s the one that originally made me hope Obama would take the democratic nomination. And what he has done since hasn’t changed that. He’s obviously smart and thoughtful, and he has a very interesting background that makes me believe that he really can see the other side not just when it comes to religion, but when it comes to international issues too.

Of course I’m biased (we all have our quirks), but I think it makes a difference to have actually lived in another culture. I suspect Obama understands the US better because he has seen something else, and has seen it from a wider background. He’s not a black and white person – and ironically, that is probably partly exactly because he is a black and white person in a totally different sense.