One of my non-white roommates often asks me about white culture, which always brings me up short. I know better than to say that there’s no such thing as white culture, but I definitely have trouble defining it. Or pointing to something other than the usual jokes (can’t dance, can’t dunk) about white people*.
*Which seem kind of racist because they imply that all black people are good at [dancing|basketball|other stereotype]? That’s kind of where I come down on them and I usually avoid them on those grounds.
I’ve been thinking today about help and money, and I think part of white culture is eliding and erasing the help you get in your life- whether that’s from your parents, from your extended family, from the government- and constructing a narrative of yourself in which you’re self-made. There’s the crazy gif you’ve all seen: I was on welfare and food stamps, anybody help me? No. There’s this article about the rural poor which includes a lengthy discussion of “transformative wealth,” the term of art for transfers of family wealth outside of a formal inheritance. About a third of white families might provide their children with cash to buy a new car, college tuition, or a down payment on a house- but most white recipients of this money don’t think of themselves as “inheritors.” There’s the submerged state, which is the phenomenon whereby people receive government tax credits or loans but don’t identify as people who receive ”government benefits.” There’s the fact that white Americans love to talk about the Founders and the Revolution but not the fact that slaves built America.
So in the micro sense, part of white culture is the illusion of being self-made by denying help you get from other white people in your life. In the macro sense, it’s the illusion of being self-made by denying the [stolen|coerced] contributions of people of color in the world.
I actually do this all the time in my own life. I’m embarrassed by all the financial help I’ve gotten from my parents. They paid for my entire college, including the one small student loan I took out in my final semester. They’ve paid for my car and car insurance whenever I’ve had a car. My health insurance for a stretch when I was un/underemployed and only had access through COBRA. And then again after I finished school and couldn’t find a job for a few months, then interned. Living expenses during college.
But whenever I talk about it, I emphasize how I (mostly) went to public college, and how my cars have always been old (but reliable). How our family vacations were always to relatives’ houses or to our camp. How when we were little, my mom drove an old station wagon with a door that didn’t shut.
A few weeks ago, my mom sent me an inheritance from my aunt who passed away, the same one whose estate allows my grandmother to remain in her own home with health aides. It’s in my savings account now, because I don’t want to frizzle it away on Diet Coke and earrings. But I was surprised by how uncomfortable I felt and how I thought it was weird to be a person who got an inheritance.
That’s another white thing: Being tastefully ashamed of your money.
On the other hand, it seems like people of color are forced to account for every iota of assistance they receive. Are you on welfare? Food stamps? Scholarships? Did you get in to this school because you’re black? Are you on the football team? Even if they aren’t receiving that kind of assistance at all.
