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You may have heard someone—maybe a cultural commentator on a news show, an activist writing on a blog, or a stranger commenting on Facebook—declare that we live in “a white supremacist society” or “a white supremacist culture.” If you’re white, it’s natural for your first reaction to be either “huh?” or to get really defensive because hey, you’re not a neo-Nazi or a member of the Aryan Nations.
Allow me to point out a very important distinction.
What you may think they’re saying, if you’re white: “You are a white supremacist!”
What they’re actually saying: “We all live in a society that has been built to accommodate white people’s preferences, habits, and values. Accordingly, white people experience greater privilege in this society and have an unfair advantage.”
To be clear, the person sharing this claim has not accused you of being a white supremacist. Instead, they are inviting you to consider the ways white people have benefited from—and people of color are disadvantaged, harmed, or put in existential danger by—a constellation of social structures and practices.
So what is culture, exactly?
Culture comprises shared knowledge, language, attitudes, social habits, communication styles, religion, foods, gender norms, social structures, and more.
A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ)
Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.
For example, when you think of Mexican-American culture, you might think of delicious foods like enchiladas or pozole, a particular version of Catholicism, Dias de Los Muertos, quinceañeras, and extended, close-knit families. Even if you don’t know much about African-American history and culture, you probably know about barbecue and collard greens; jazz, hip hop, or gospel music; Black churches and women’s fancy church hats; and that many African-American communities emphasize the importance of knowing family and communal history.
What is white American culture?
What, then is white American culture? That’s harder to define. If you’re white, you might think about your own family’s ethnic or national heritage—Scandinavian, German, Celtic, Polish, etc.—and be able to point to certain foods, celebrations, or holiday traditions that emerge from your ancestral past.
However, while those specific cultural traditions may have influenced or been synthesized into white culture, they don’t by themselves constitute white American culture. Over time, these values and cultural practices have melded together and evolved to create a white culture that is difficult to define because it’s invisible to most of us who are white. (People who are not white, on the other hand, often can easily list “things white people do,” “things white people like,” or “things white people don’t understand,” which suggests there is indeed a shared white culture.)
In the U.S., white culture is, to put it plainly, the norm.
When you hear, say, Fox News anchors or conservative publications refer to “mainstream America” or “mainstream American values,” they’re talking about the things white Americans traditionally have tended to do or value. Some of these practices and values tend to be conservative, while others are more moderate. If you ever saw the old TV series Leave It to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, Bonanza, or Little House on the Prairie, you’ve seen some pretty pure manifestations of white American culture. Other common white cultural elements include a belief in particular kinds of protestant Christianity; defense of gun rights; homeschooling; a belief in meritocracy; country music; classic and lite rock, as well as heavy metal; the vast majority of movies produced by Hollywood, especially in the twentieth century; foods that aren’t too spicy and/or that contain a lot of dairy products; and visiting art museums and attending symphony performances.
This is not, of course, a comprehensive list, and because there are so many white people in the U.S., the preferences of individual white people vary. However, white people are more likely to enjoy, participate in, or otherwise partake of the cultural elements above than are nonwhite Americans.
White culture is acquisitive. Instead of creating its own cultural productions, it tends to borrow from elsewhere, adapt practices as its own, and then overwrite or erase the original versions. Rock and roll, for example, emerged from African-American culture. Ideas appropriated from indigenous American cultures include our system of government (adapted from the allied tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy), foodways and farming practices (including corn, potatoes, and beans, as well as melons and squash), and even individual words (for example, hammock, chipmunk, barbecue, and hurricane). Many popular forms of recreation adopted by white people also came from elsewhere: canoeing, snowshoeing, and lacrosse originated in Native American culture, for example, and yoga’s roots are in northern India.
What is white supremacist culture?
White supremacist culture privileges the preferences, practices, beliefs, and values of white people over those of others. It builds systems based on whites’ habits, beliefs, and values.
So, for example, holidays in public schools tend to be built around Christian holidays rather than those of Judaism, Hinduism, or Islam. Students of those religions whose families want to observe holidays often end up missing tests, assignments, and important instruction.
Similarly, white students in literature and social studies classes have no problem seeing themselves represented in the curriculum. The vast majority of people profiled in U.S. history textbooks and state content standards are white, and most of the events and phenomena represented as progress in these texts have white people at their center. Students of color are also less likely to see their specific cultures represented in the literature taught in K-12 schools, beyond perhaps a few novels or poems focused on African-American experiences. Students of Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, or Latin American heritage are far less likely to see their U.S. American families and experiences represented in course content.
Finally, standardized tests tend to privilege, intentionally or not, the kinds of knowledge and skills developed by white students. The history of IQ tests and the SAT in particular are steeped in racism.
So what?
You might be thinking, “Doesn’t every nation have a dominant culture? Aren’t shared values what unify us as a country? Shouldn’t all residents and citizens of the U.S. be encouraged to assimilate to traditional, mainstream values?”
The short answer to all of those questions is simply “no.” The vast majority of nations comprise many cultures of varying influence internally, and almost all nations are influenced by other countries’ cultures. In fact, just a handful of countries tend to have a tremendous cultural influence globally. All of them are predominantly white and are, or were, colonial powers.
As a nation, we don’t benefit from a single dominant culture. Homogeneity makes us less interesting and also less successful economically. Countries with a dominant culture tend toward homogeneity in thought and practice, and they’re less open to immigrants and the amazing intellectual and cultural capital newcomers bring with them. For example, researchers have documented repeatedly that more diverse companies are both more innovative and generate greater profit.
Plus, white supremacist culture leads us to devalue other people based on their cultural practices—from how they name their children to how they speak—and this discrimination has economic repercussions. Even having a nonwhite name can be a major disadvantage. People of color have been pushed to “whiten” their résumés to get interviews.
More examples of white supremacist culture
The cultural favoring of whiteness runs deeper than education and the economy. In 1989, Peggy McIntosh wrote “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In it, she made a list of 50 large and small ways she benefitted from being white, from having adhesive bandages approximate her skin tone to not being followed while shopping in stores. Here are a few highlights:
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
Those are all examples of white supremacist culture. Here are some other, higher-stakes manifestations. And of course, left unchecked, in its most extreme forms, white supremacy leads to other kinds of violence.
Why does white supremacist culture persist?
White supremacist culture is difficult to reverse or undermine for these and other reasons:
- White supremacist culture is invisible even to well-meaning white people. The people who can see it—primarily people of color—don’t have the power to change it.
- White people benefit from white supremacist culture, and many of them incorrectly see society as a “zero sum game”—if people of color advance, white people must lose ground—so they’re loath to give up their privileges.
- White people aren’t comfortable talking about race. That’s because many of us lack the appropriate vocabulary, we don’t know the relevant history, and we’re afraid of offending people of color. We remain quiet out of a combination of ignorance and fear.
- White people get defensive when someone suggests we’re participating in any form of racism. (I’d wager that if you’re a white person, you felt defensive at least once while reading this article.) As Robin DiAngelo has pointed out in countless articles, as well as in her books White Fragility and What Does It Mean to Be White?, white people have difficulty disentangling our culpability as individuals from larger racist systems and cultures. We know racism is bad, so when we learn we have inadvertently said something racist, or if someone points out we have benefitted from racist social structures—and thus seems to be implying we are racist ourselves—we do everything we can to prove ourselves innocent of these charges. We should be shutting our mouths and learning how to improve, but instead we’re worried about our reputations, so we get defensive.
Where can I learn more?
There are so many great resources out there to learn how white people in the U.S. benefit from white supremacy culture, as well as tools to help us level the playing field for, and generally improve the everyday experiences of, people of color. Here are a few:
- Check out SURJ—Showing Up For Racial Justice—”a national network of groups and individuals working to undermine white supremacy and to work toward racial justice.” The SURJ website is full of great information, but you’re going to learn more if you show up to join the discussions at SURJ events. Find a chapter near you—or start one.
- Read Robin DiAngelo’s What Does It Mean to Be White? If you’re looking for things you can do—or rather stop doing—immediately, pay special attention to chapter 12, “Common Patterns of Well-Meaning White People.”
- Read enough so that you really understand what white privilege is, how it operates, and how you can interrupt it.
- Read fiction and nonfiction and watch movies by people of color.
- On social media—especially Twitter—follow people who don’t look like you or share your experiences. You don’t need to engage with them, but you can observe and learn a lot about other people’s experiences and culture in unintimidating, bite-sized chunks.
- Find the courage to speak up against unearned white privilege and white supremacist culture. It can be uncomfortable at first, but I’ve found there are so many people who appreciate when I call it out and propose specific steps to remedy white supremacist habits or practices. (Pro tip: You’re going to have more success if, instead of calling individuals racist, you point out that some people are benefitting from and perpetuating unfair practices. Demonstrate sympathy if you can; add that you understand white people are doing these things because they grew up with them and have never had the opportunity to learn about or reflect on them—but now is the time to learn about these issues and change those practices.)
Prompt for reflection
If you’re white, take a moment to write a response to these questions:
- How have I benefitted from white supremacist culture?
- How might I be inadvertently supporting white supremacist culture in my school or community?
- What social structures have kept me from seeing or learning about white supremacist culture?
- What will I do to learn more?
- What simple steps might I take to make my world, as well as that of my children or students, more just and equitable?
