Culture

White American Culture

Here’s a guy, someone I watch now and then on YouTube, complaining that White Americans have no culture. It’s hard to know what to make of this. It’s an idea generally associated with White Supremacists, but I don’t think that’s his point. He says most white Americans lack a sense of culture and a sense…

Culture

Learning the middle ages

I pulled this old article by James Palmer out of my bookmarks last night. I’ve found my interests wandering lately from the Middle Ages to the American West. Don’t know why that is. If I had wanted to do western history, my parents were total geeks. I was mysteriously attracted more to medieval stuff, and…

Culture

American Exceptionalism

White supremacists make a basic mistake about history. They imagine we live in the same world our ancestors did. They’re just wrong. Our ancestors in America had to learn how to live on the Frontier. The Indians knew how to live here, but the settlers didn’t. In the process of adapting the settlers created a…

Culture

2020 Census

I wrote a little piece called “American Identity” back in 2008, looking to the 2010 Census. Now here it is, almost the 2020 Census. If I hadn’t written it then, I’d want to write it now. Not changing a thing.

Culture

Lost Alphabet Letters

In the modern Western world we use the Roman alphabet with 26 letters. Usually. The Swedes actually have 29 letters. What’s surprising to some folks is that we might have had more letters ourselves. Who thinks about what might have been? Except when you see an extract from an olde manuscript and spot a letter…

Culture

Think About Culture Changes

Let’s take some time to think about how culture changes over time. Justin King talks a bit here toward the beginning about White American Southerners who tried to save their culture by moving to Brazil. It didn’t work. They assimilated. And that’s exactly what happens to people in the European diaspora. Our ancestors might have…

Culture

CE and BCE

I use CE and BCE rather than AD and BC. Surprisingly, that causes some people pain. They seem to have the idea it’s somehow an assault on Christianity. I don’t have time to argue. I roll my eyes and move on. I first encountered CE and BCE as an undergraduate in the 1970s. I didn’t…

Culture

Remembering Russell Means

Russell Means died 7 years ago today. I thought he was one of the truly great men of our time. Not everyone agreed. His obituary in the New York Times said, “He styled himself a throwback to ancestors who resisted the westward expansion of the American frontier. With theatrical protests that brought national attention to poverty…

Culture

Faerie Lore Among the Scots-Irish

More from Barry McCain on faeries. I look forward his posts, and I like the way he introduces the idea of faeries and faerie lore: After talking about the immigration of Ulster Scots to America in the 18th century, he says, “Some of the Faeries from Ireland followed these people to the Colonies. From the…

Culture

Romanticizing Cowboys

In the 1880s, “America was no more impressed by a cowboy than by a railroad employee or a shopkeeper,” according to Lynn Jacobs. That will come as a surprise to almost everyone I know, because cowboys are the embodiment of our regional heritage and culture. But that all comes from Teddy Roosevelt’s deep-seated insecurity about…