White culture essays

White culture essays In Adam Cornfords essay from 1997 Colorless All-Color: Notes on White Culture, the author makes the argument that white culture is more of an attitude and a set of ideas than a culture that has a long history and is based in race and customs. To make this argument Cornford applies the rhetorical tactics of Logos and Ethos but seems to ignore Pathos. You cannot use the traditional meaning of culture, which is an independent body of language, belief, behavior, rituals, and other factors, when you talk about white culture. There are so many people lumped under the term white and they all have their own traditional cultures that one does not apply to the entire group. The history of being white goes back to the sixteen hundreds when the classification was used to determine who could own African slaves in the English Atlantic colonies. In the United State today many groups are said to have a certain whiteness including all Europeans and culturally assimilated groups such as Asians and some middle class and light skinned Latinos and Africa Americans. In reality American whiteness is a variation of the work ethic and idea that money and material possessions are all that matters which came from the Protestant ideas of the merchant classes of England, Holland, and Germany. So the white culture is based purely on capitalism and the soci al classes that it creates and has no cultural aspects that are unique or original. White culture is defined by its insipidness and fakeness. Especially in the workplace white culture demands that people be polite, cheerful, sensually numb, unendingly busy, and they must take everything thrown at them with a smile. Whiteness is the acceptance of the sacrifice of ones individuality and personal flare all in the pursuit of money and power, which is supposed to make them happy. The rhetoric tools of logos and ethos are used effectively throughout Cornfords essay....