#uncultured white thread

[insertspanishhere]

The mutt thing is a definite struggle, trying to figure out how to relate to the world in a rooted way. I've been thinking about this a lot, especially since I read Braiding Sweetgrass, and her way of putting it that white Americans have one foot still on the boat. I'm a quarter Mexican, a quarter Appalachian, and less than a quarter of various other flavors of white. I think part of the way forward may involve somehow restructuring the idea that mixedness means being less of both things, so that as Americans multiply our mixedness, each heritage is whittled away to none. I have less experience and automatic knowledge of any of my ancestors' cultures bc I have fewer sources of each one, but each of my ancestors is still my whole ancestor.

As someone born in New York I am familiar with the effort put in by the Ellis Island Commission to forcefully Americanize those that didn’t speak English. There are countless 1800s short stories from the perspective of new immigrants trying to assimilate linguistically alone, and to protect their children, they shut down any look back at the cultures that they had to shed when they stepped off said boat.

I grew up staunchly in my Colombian culture because my parents chose to stay Colombian, however, they did this in semi private, only discussing their stories with other Latinos and only discussing their INTIMATE experiences with other Colombians, so I’ve experienced the attempt to hide culture as well.

Each ancestor should be your own ancestor. My frustration with the uncultured white person is not that they live as an uninformed hodgepodge of ethnicities that resulted in Pantone of the Year 2025. Lots of people outside the states also live with “I’m a hodgepodge, now what?” Lots of people outside the states, in countries with non white heritages, go around shrugging off even the smallest possibility of looking back.

My frustration is that uncultured white people are ALLERGIC to being shown their ancestors or the ancestors of others in ANY way, shape, or form.

[insertspanishhere]

Ive little knowledge of Clair Obscura but Im sorry somebody tried to claim you as a racist somehow simply for sharing your own personal thoughts about the game, especially since you’re a minority yourself who’s entire blog page here is literally about discussing cultural knowledge and analysis. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were making up half of their claims (like having a french boyfriend) entirely just to try and talk over you and shut you down for even trying to have the conversation. Im not American in anyway but Im a ethnic minority in a Western European country and Ive found your recent posts about uncultured whites really interesting and important topics to be discussed, as somebody who experienced the idea of people trying to get me to give up the culture of the country i'm from in order to assimilate into the dominant social order of the country I live right now or be othered forever. I think you’re more then justified to apply the ideas or theory onto a piece of media of your choosing without being accused of something so serious as bigotry without anything to back that claim up and I hope your holiday season is going a lot better/smoothly

I am going to take this person at his (his? Not sure of the pronouns) word. You may believe the French boyfriend is fake. Hell YOU may be living in France and just opting not to tell me (and that’s okay! Stay safe!)

But seriously. This guy says French minority? What do you MEAN!? Breton? Romani! Basque? Those are the only main ones! Other than that, it’s just immigrants who deserve to call themselves just as French as everyone else! That’s why I made the “uncultured white” posts. YOU as a Western European know what Western European racism looks and feels like.

I’ve visited Western Europe a few times in my life. Those countries, like any other country, like to know about themselves and push their own culture to their own people. You are experiencing what I talked about. You’re experiencing what I felt for a few DAYS in Spain. I was with a group of immigrants FROM COLOMBIA who were being legally ordered by their bosses to stop bringing Colombian food for lunch. I was told to use Spanish standard grammar when out with another Colombian holding a private conversation, and had to flash a passport because a policeman stopped our car and complained about immigration. The urge for overwhelming whiteness to ignore itself is rampant.

Thank you for the well wishes and thanks for taking your time to share and obviously read through the storm that was that reblog. Our experiences are not identical but they’re similar enough that they can be applied.

Lies don’t fly on this blog, and the fact that you guys make my day is not a lie.

[insertspanishhere]

the uncultured white post reminded me of my childhood with a good friend of mine. We were often the only immigrants in our classes due to how white our city was (I am East Asian, he is Ecuadorian) and this led to many instances of white people engaging with the concept of culture on a fundamentally different level from us.

Once we were both out of there and felt distant enough from our traumas to discuss it openly, we both realized that white culture was a celebration that came every year. Cultural meals shared over cultural holidays and traditions. But for us, whether we wanted to or not, our culture was one of the pillars of our everyday identity - because white people would never let us forget it.

Openly insulting the traditional food we packed for lunch, hurling racial slurs, refusing to pronounce our names, appropriating our culture while simultaneously mocking us for it, etc etc. They saw culture as something that should be enjoyed, so being reminded that facing oppression was a fundamental part of our cultural identity was off-putting and wrong. For them, it simply wasn't that deep.

Moving away and reconnecting with our culture was such a monumentous experience. It was like we finally knew who we were - it was an important part of finding our identity. It's something I hope everyone who faced ridicule for their culture gets to feel someday.

Precisely. They’re totally okay with everyone who doesn’t look like them celebrating their own culture, but they don’t want to understand their own wounds.

That whole point of “culture should be enjoyed” is SO true. When I tell people that they can’t participate in something (yet, not until they learn about it) they ask me why and I have to go “well understanding where it comes from is part of the taking.”

My name’s Hebrew but the silliness I’ve gotten from people failing to pronounce my LAST name (it’s common) is annoying at this point.

Thanks for sharing.