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White American Culture Essay

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“What do you think of the class’s discussions on culture?”

“Well, it’s a bit of a foreign idea to me, really. The town I’m from, my school was 99% white. Literally, we had two black girls and a half-Peruvian guy in my class of 140. So the emphasis on diversity is interesting to me, more than anything. Because I can’t relate to it. I’ve never seen it in action, as it were.
“A friend of mine expressed that he wouldn’t marry anybody but another Korean. And of course there’s been talk in class about teaching children to speak Spanish and preserve the culture in that way. And in trying to relate to that, I look at my own family’s history. I’m a quarter Polish, a quarter Irish, a quarter Slovak, and a quarter something else. Don’t even know what. Mom likes to think gypsy, but my grandmother has absolutely no idea where her ancestors were from …show more content…

And I had to think, as they danced and sang, what would an American culture show look like? And then, what would a white American culture show look like? You could, to some extent, put on a black American culture show with rap, jazz, and blues. And you could, in some sense, do a Hispanic American culture show using the sort of Passion play we saw in the video (though that might be in bad taste; although the Indian dances and the Japanese taiko drums were originally religious, too). But it would seem more pretentious and racist than anything to start putting together a European American culture show with traditional music like Beethoven or whoever. And maypoles and whatever festivals were held in the Old Country haven’t got any connection to modern Americans. Religious traditions are really no good, we’ve got Gregorian chant, not dancing. But I really think “white” culture is ultimately indistinguishable in that sense. Maybe you could point to certain outlooks on life (the boogeyman individualism) but there’s nothing that presents a visible connection in the same

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