My cultural heritage

[HankQuinlan]

With the news that Caucasians will become a minority in Vancouver in the relatively near future, I thought about what should be preserved from my own specific cultural heritage:
- white-bread Baptist churches, with passionless singing and endless sermons.
- new clothes for Easter, where the ladies would show off new ridiculous hats, along with extra long church services
- church socials, with pot-luck potato casseroles and jellos containing carrots or fruit, followed by crokinole tournaments
- annual church and family picnics featuring three-legged races and egg tosses
- George Beverly Shea records
- long prayers before each meal
- week-long Bible school in the summer, enlivened by felt-board retellings of Bible stories
- over-cooked vegetables; meals spiced with nothing more than salt and pepper (cinnamon and ginger in baked goods, though)
- instant coffee
- tracts about brave missionaries risking their lives to save the souls of savages

My conclusion? Nothing worth saving there....well, maybe the excellent pies that came with Sunday dinner.

 

[*emmanuelle]

jellos containing carrots ... crokinole tournaments ... over-cooked vegetables

Ouch, the whiteness!! It's blinding me!!!
Don't forget the awkward dancing and sandals with socks. A Proud Part of Our Heritage®

 

[rickoshadows]

Don't forget the awkward dancing and sandals with socks.

The socks must be black!

 

[ThisEndUp]

The socks must be black!

Unless you're wearing a dark suit, then they must be white...

 

[MissingOne]

Don't forget the awkward dancing and sandals with socks. A Proud Part of Our Heritage®

Ahem. I wear socks with sandals.

 

[HankQuinlan]

Ouch, the whiteness!! It's blinding me!!!
Don't forget the awkward dancing and sandals with socks. A Proud Part of Our Heritage®

Q: Why don't Baptists make love standing up?
A: Because it might lead to dancing!

In my specific subset of white culture, there was no dancing, but it would have been awkward if there were. The only "sin" I actually witnessed was my mom eavesdropping on the party line....looking embarrassed at being caught and saying something like "I just wanted to find out how Betty was doing."

The homogeneity of the neighbourhood was, in fact, disrupted by a Dutch family with who knows how many kids, and a Hungarian family that ate food with God-knows-what in it. Neither went to church, so they didn't really count.

(My examples are all very real, and not meant to illustrate any larger aspect of Our Heritage® as whitebread folk.)

I have since graduated to dancing awkwardly, and proudly wearing socks with sandals....always black socks. My socks are all identical, so they are easy to match from the dryer.

 

[Tugela]

With the news that Caucasians will become a minority in Vancouver in the relatively near future, I thought about what should be preserved from my own specific cultural heritage:
- white-bread Baptist churches, with passionless singing and endless sermons.
- new clothes for Easter, where the ladies would show off new ridiculous hats, along with extra long church services
- church socials, with pot-luck potato casseroles and jellos containing carrots or fruit, followed by crokinole tournaments
- annual church and family picnics featuring three-legged races and egg tosses
- George Beverly Shea records
- long prayers before each meal
- week-long Bible school in the summer, enlivened by felt-board retellings of Bible stories
- over-cooked vegetables; meals spiced with nothing more than salt and pepper (cinnamon and ginger in baked goods, though)
- instant coffee
- tracts about brave missionaries risking their lives to save the souls of savages

My conclusion? Nothing worth saving there....well, maybe the excellent pies that came with Sunday dinner.

There is no such thing as "Caucasian culture". There are a hundred different cultures that originated in Europe and all of them are interesting and have value in their own way.

Just go tour around Europe for a while and then have the nerve to say there is no "culture" there

There is plenty, you just choose not to see it.

And please don't confuse your personal upbringing as culture. Allmost everyone, even the non Caucasian population in Vancouver, has been brought up in what they consider to be mundane stifling lifestyle.

Real culture is generally preserved by the elite in any society, not the peasants. That is the culture we see, either in Europe, Asia or elsewhere. The average work-a-day peasant/worker in those societies lives a grubby conservative ignorant closed minded existance, and this is common across all societies.

 

[grusse]

Ahem. I wear socks with sandals.

that's not our fault

 

[DarkRaven18599]

(Forgive my crappy posting skills, I forgot to include the quote I was replying to.)

In response to Rickoshadows claims that the socks must be black,

They must also be at least mid-calf in height up to as high as just under the knee. They are usually also worn in connection with shorts which are much, much too short.

 

[DarkRaven18599]

holy shit, this is ridiculous :doh:

Isn't this the sort of idealism that led to the overthrow of the nobility by those same supposedly ignorant peasants in all those mentioned societies?

 

[jon6491]

What is 'Caucasian culture'. What does it include / exclude?

Is it people of british, german, scandinavian and northern slavic descent? Through in the french.
How about italians, spanish and the greek. Or does it depent on how fair the skin is?; and thus yes to the milanese and no to the sicilians.
I am just curious.

I've always found it odd that if you are mixed black/white in the US you are really no longer considered culturally white. Strange concept this thing of race and culture

 

[Caramel]

I usually define the Caucasians (who have been here for generations) in Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK (UK is usually only in regards to economy and business) as "Westerners". I probably forgot some countries. I categorize them as a separate group than the Caucasians in European countries, because the culture has become more uniform and secular but still retaining some of the characteristics of its ancestral roots.

(This is just the info I keep in my head, I have a map of the world and solar system/galaxy in my head, and the history of each continent/planet/star and human groups that I've learned since I was a child. So it's not factual, just my opinion.)

 

[*emmanuelle]

The homogeneity of the neighbourhood was disrupted by a Hungarian family that ate food with God-knows-what in it.

Those heathens down the road have been cooking with paprika again. That's right, the devil's spice!!

 

[Tugela]

T. Nothing you wrote had anything to do with a single word Hank wrote. His first sentence mentions that Caucasians are heading to minority status. The rest of his post was about touch points in his particular cultural experience within his small corner of White, Protestant Canada.

Actually it does. He introduces the concept, then follows on as though he is representative. The two are not disconnected.

He is confusing (as you do) his personal upbringing with the general culture of his ethnic background.

It is sad that he has had a bland empty childhood. But attaching that to everyone else is wrong.

 

[Tugela]

holy shit, this is ridiculous :doh:

People follow the lead of the leaders of their community. That is not just the rich of the powerfull, it is the people who others admire and try to emulate.

Nothing mysterious about that, it doesnt happen the other way around. That is what drives and preserves group culture.

Think about it.

 

[HankQuinlan]

There is no such thing as "Caucasian culture". There are a hundred different cultures that originated in Europe and all of them are interesting and have value in their own way.

Just go tour around Europe for a while and then have the nerve to say there is no "culture" there

There is plenty, you just choose not to see it.

And please don't confuse your personal upbringing as culture. Allmost everyone, even the non Caucasian population in Vancouver, has been brought up in what they consider to be mundane stifling lifestyle.

Real culture is generally preserved by the elite in any society, not the peasants. That is the culture we see, either in Europe, Asia or elsewhere. The average work-a-day peasant/worker in those societies lives a grubby conservative ignorant closed minded existance, and this is common across all societies.

Despite your interpretation, I was very specific to MY cultural upbringing, and careful not to generalize about European culture. And just so you know, I have travelled widely around the world, been awed by everything from St. Peter's to the Great Wall, from the Vienna Opera to seeing Ray Charles in an ancient amphitheatre with the Parthenon as a backdrop.

And GRUBBY!? Absolutely not....Every Saturday night was bath night for our family. Harrumph!

Your comment about the elite being responsible for culture is demonstrably off-track. The most lasting cultural artifacts specific to North American culture -- jazz, blues, country music -- all originated with the "peasants/workers." Jimmie Rodgers, Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday -- the greatest artists of the last century were all from the working class (or below). (I will grant you Cole Porter, but even George Gershwin came from a modest immigrant family.) Shakespeare's plays and Dickens' serialized novels were subsidized by the rabble who bought the tickets/pamphlets...and I am sure there are many other examples.