Thank you, Rhyd. I am enjoying your ideas and writing more and more. Also that beautiful photograph of where you ride your bike every day, trying your best not to get run over by Germans speeding. This piece of yours expanded my understanding of the microcultures of Europe and was a great read. I am also a US person - white, female, retired and ‘resting on my laurels.’ But I haven’t lost my interest in the world and I love nothing more than your curious insights. Like the term ‘white people’ in my cultural context as a southerner has little to nothing in common with what that term would mean to someone from the Balkans or Turkey or Greece. I got your point immediately but I’m not sure I would ever have made it there on my own. So, thank you. A new concept is a pearl beyond price. Keep thinking and sharing. And congratulations on your marriage. Y’all make a stunning couple.
Thanks so much for the kind words. The photos, incidentally, are public domain and not taken by me, but the second one was taken in a field about a kilometer from my home.
As someone who grew up in Germany but now lives in the US, it still feels so odd to me when I am considered part of a group called "white". I speak American English fluently and with small enough of a German accent that most people think I am from the US. But I am not. I only moved here when I was 19 and the way Americans talk about race and "whiteness" and even Europe still feels a little foreign to me. I've touched on some of the points you make here myself, Rhyd, but I had not put it all together in the way you do in this piece. Thank you for writing this, it's helping me make sense of the big picture more deeply.
Aren’t the Ural Mountains what divides Europe and Asia, rendering Russia and Turkey (Turkiye?) both occupying two continents?
My experience as a Bulgarian living in the US is that there’s a generalization of the Balkan Peninsula by Americans that it includes the former Yugoslavian countries because of the term “balkanization”, now applied to other regions whenever a country splinters up. But, Bulgarians and Romanians very much think of ourselves as ‘Balkan’ and it’s the preferable descriptor to ‘Eastern European’ (as it usually infers a lesser than ‘Western European’ or just ‘European’).
Of course your article went into much greater depths but I could resist interjecting my POV.
Perhaps this is not relevant, but I think there is thought to be had on the phenomenon of the "Left Coast" in this discussion. One thing that has always seemed off to me about Woke ideology is that I am a Mainer by birth. I know my families' history going back to England, Ireland, and France. My families all had adapted to New England over hundreds of years. They belonged and belong to communities which are failing and fading but that were very real and vibrant at times. In Maine, there is still a strong strain of regionalism, seen in the local food movement and the ways in which Maine lawmakers from both parties are always trying to push for legislation that brings more power into local hands and always getting slapped by the federal government for doing so. (Recent attempts include a bill to allow local muncipalities complete control over food regulations and a law to allow Mainers to buy prescription drugs in Canada.) It's very hard to try to explain to an outsider, but New England is not California. I've driven many times past the stone house my great-grandfather built. My grandmother in her old age lamented the days when she and her "pals" as she remembered them swam all day every day in the summer, hopping up on any fisherman's dory for some sunshine when they wanted. Now her town is a yacht town, owned by the rich. A childhood friend's grandmother can only afford her property taxes because her five grown children all chip in. The children and grandchildren of the fishing families are prime targets for police harassment and brutality since the rich people would prefer those types not sully "their" town. Gentrification in New England often means white fishing families being replaced by white millionaires. And from the perspective of a Mainer, Woke-ism just doesn't fit. The obsession with race is somewhat irrelevant to a state which never imported slaves or attracted Black people during the Great Migration due to a lack of industry. The race issues endemic to Maine are more conplex and harder to handle. For an example, a recent law allows local tribes unlimited lobster harvests. This was seen as racially progressive nationally, but was terrible from a local perspective. Local communities are dying out due to overfishing and global warming destroying lobster, fish, and shrimp stocks as well as the pressures of capitalism that are destroying communities globally. All the local fishermen have quotas. Now the state has given unlimited license to Native communities. How, as a leftist, can I view this? On the one hand, Native people certainly deserve justice and not to be kept from their traditional harvests. However, there is now no way to prevent a Native person from starting a business which harms the lobster population at a time when it is already under critical threat. All it takes is one asshole with a boat and a tribal ID and they can legally dodge all the laws that already fail to adequately protect the fisheries. Under a Woke framework, greedy assholes are universally white, while Native people are universally nature- oriented and benevolent (Woke ideology isn't racist at all /s) so this is all a good thing. In the real world, families which have been fishermen for generations are now worried that their conservation efforts (which have already destroyed their income) will be nullified because of racial politics. I really don't know how to communicate the difference. Californian politics seem to have taken over America- two rootless groups of immigrants battling over words and hardly ever saying what they mean. I grew up in a place where wage labor was mostly undertaken to pay taxes or a mortgage and the sources of life were hunt-garden-fish. People would call our family assuming we had telephone numbers for other people with the same last name. People knew the personality type associated with some families. Family cultures had adapted to their trades and necessities. So I guess if I have to put a finger on it: I'm mildly annoyed by the assumption that Americans are rootless immigrants. We aren't Europe. But parts of America do have cultures and communities and traditions and they are alla being destroyed by capitalism and industrialism. And how can we fight to save or mourn for what we can't admit ever existed? The Woke like to say "white people have no culture". And they are wrong. There is no "white culture"- nor should there be. But many white people had or have a culture they are desperately trying to hang on to. And the Left's only answer for them is a middle finger.
The matter of tribal fishing and hunting rights (including whaling) is a difficult one, and I think what's missed is that the tribal groups themselves had rules and rituals about not taking too much. Turning it over to individuals with tribal ancestry or connections--rather than to the groups themselves--is just doing more harm and replicating the capitalist individualist model.
You're definitely correct about the perception that "white people have no culture" misses the fact that whiteness itself in essentially an erasure of cultural differences among people who are labeled white. The same happens with 'blackness' as well, but the one time I drew attention to both being the same problem I was harassed quite severely online. Thank the gods the online isn't actually real.
I find that quite ironic, as my experience with Black culture is one of diversity. Are we talking the Black churches? Rap? Rural Black southern communities? Black cultures in other countries or continents? How is it not obvious to anyone to assume that my friends who go to the AME church are culturally the same as Massai herders, Caribbean creole speakers, or Snoop Dog because they all happen to have more melanin than me?
Enjoyed this and posted it to my Facebook page.
Thank you, Rhyd. I am enjoying your ideas and writing more and more. Also that beautiful photograph of where you ride your bike every day, trying your best not to get run over by Germans speeding. This piece of yours expanded my understanding of the microcultures of Europe and was a great read. I am also a US person - white, female, retired and ‘resting on my laurels.’ But I haven’t lost my interest in the world and I love nothing more than your curious insights. Like the term ‘white people’ in my cultural context as a southerner has little to nothing in common with what that term would mean to someone from the Balkans or Turkey or Greece. I got your point immediately but I’m not sure I would ever have made it there on my own. So, thank you. A new concept is a pearl beyond price. Keep thinking and sharing. And congratulations on your marriage. Y’all make a stunning couple.
Thanks so much for the kind words. The photos, incidentally, are public domain and not taken by me, but the second one was taken in a field about a kilometer from my home.
This is so beautifully written and so true.
As someone who grew up in Germany but now lives in the US, it still feels so odd to me when I am considered part of a group called "white". I speak American English fluently and with small enough of a German accent that most people think I am from the US. But I am not. I only moved here when I was 19 and the way Americans talk about race and "whiteness" and even Europe still feels a little foreign to me. I've touched on some of the points you make here myself, Rhyd, but I had not put it all together in the way you do in this piece. Thank you for writing this, it's helping me make sense of the big picture more deeply.
I'm glad you found it so helpful. :)
Aren’t the Ural Mountains what divides Europe and Asia, rendering Russia and Turkey (Turkiye?) both occupying two continents?
My experience as a Bulgarian living in the US is that there’s a generalization of the Balkan Peninsula by Americans that it includes the former Yugoslavian countries because of the term “balkanization”, now applied to other regions whenever a country splinters up. But, Bulgarians and Romanians very much think of ourselves as ‘Balkan’ and it’s the preferable descriptor to ‘Eastern European’ (as it usually infers a lesser than ‘Western European’ or just ‘European’).
Of course your article went into much greater depths but I could resist interjecting my POV.
Love the photos, too.
My slovenian interlocutor hadn't actually known about the term "balkanization" and thought it was hilarious.
The photos, incidentally, are public domain and not mine, but the second one was taken in a field about a kilometer from my home.
Perhaps this is not relevant, but I think there is thought to be had on the phenomenon of the "Left Coast" in this discussion. One thing that has always seemed off to me about Woke ideology is that I am a Mainer by birth. I know my families' history going back to England, Ireland, and France. My families all had adapted to New England over hundreds of years. They belonged and belong to communities which are failing and fading but that were very real and vibrant at times. In Maine, there is still a strong strain of regionalism, seen in the local food movement and the ways in which Maine lawmakers from both parties are always trying to push for legislation that brings more power into local hands and always getting slapped by the federal government for doing so. (Recent attempts include a bill to allow local muncipalities complete control over food regulations and a law to allow Mainers to buy prescription drugs in Canada.) It's very hard to try to explain to an outsider, but New England is not California. I've driven many times past the stone house my great-grandfather built. My grandmother in her old age lamented the days when she and her "pals" as she remembered them swam all day every day in the summer, hopping up on any fisherman's dory for some sunshine when they wanted. Now her town is a yacht town, owned by the rich. A childhood friend's grandmother can only afford her property taxes because her five grown children all chip in. The children and grandchildren of the fishing families are prime targets for police harassment and brutality since the rich people would prefer those types not sully "their" town. Gentrification in New England often means white fishing families being replaced by white millionaires. And from the perspective of a Mainer, Woke-ism just doesn't fit. The obsession with race is somewhat irrelevant to a state which never imported slaves or attracted Black people during the Great Migration due to a lack of industry. The race issues endemic to Maine are more conplex and harder to handle. For an example, a recent law allows local tribes unlimited lobster harvests. This was seen as racially progressive nationally, but was terrible from a local perspective. Local communities are dying out due to overfishing and global warming destroying lobster, fish, and shrimp stocks as well as the pressures of capitalism that are destroying communities globally. All the local fishermen have quotas. Now the state has given unlimited license to Native communities. How, as a leftist, can I view this? On the one hand, Native people certainly deserve justice and not to be kept from their traditional harvests. However, there is now no way to prevent a Native person from starting a business which harms the lobster population at a time when it is already under critical threat. All it takes is one asshole with a boat and a tribal ID and they can legally dodge all the laws that already fail to adequately protect the fisheries. Under a Woke framework, greedy assholes are universally white, while Native people are universally nature- oriented and benevolent (Woke ideology isn't racist at all /s) so this is all a good thing. In the real world, families which have been fishermen for generations are now worried that their conservation efforts (which have already destroyed their income) will be nullified because of racial politics. I really don't know how to communicate the difference. Californian politics seem to have taken over America- two rootless groups of immigrants battling over words and hardly ever saying what they mean. I grew up in a place where wage labor was mostly undertaken to pay taxes or a mortgage and the sources of life were hunt-garden-fish. People would call our family assuming we had telephone numbers for other people with the same last name. People knew the personality type associated with some families. Family cultures had adapted to their trades and necessities. So I guess if I have to put a finger on it: I'm mildly annoyed by the assumption that Americans are rootless immigrants. We aren't Europe. But parts of America do have cultures and communities and traditions and they are alla being destroyed by capitalism and industrialism. And how can we fight to save or mourn for what we can't admit ever existed? The Woke like to say "white people have no culture". And they are wrong. There is no "white culture"- nor should there be. But many white people had or have a culture they are desperately trying to hang on to. And the Left's only answer for them is a middle finger.
The matter of tribal fishing and hunting rights (including whaling) is a difficult one, and I think what's missed is that the tribal groups themselves had rules and rituals about not taking too much. Turning it over to individuals with tribal ancestry or connections--rather than to the groups themselves--is just doing more harm and replicating the capitalist individualist model.
You're definitely correct about the perception that "white people have no culture" misses the fact that whiteness itself in essentially an erasure of cultural differences among people who are labeled white. The same happens with 'blackness' as well, but the one time I drew attention to both being the same problem I was harassed quite severely online. Thank the gods the online isn't actually real.
I find that quite ironic, as my experience with Black culture is one of diversity. Are we talking the Black churches? Rap? Rural Black southern communities? Black cultures in other countries or continents? How is it not obvious to anyone to assume that my friends who go to the AME church are culturally the same as Massai herders, Caribbean creole speakers, or Snoop Dog because they all happen to have more melanin than me?
"Asia begins at the eastern end of the Ring Road" - Franz Josef I.