White Culture and its Discontents

Progressives argue that white culture doesn't exist, but they also blame it for many of the world's evils.

Written by Bo Winegard.

White culture is a good thing and worth fighting for.

In a recent confirmation hearing, Democrats interrogated Jeremy Carl about white culture. They seemed befuddled by his claim that modern immigration policy and elite attitudes are a threat to that culture. Indeed, the very notion of “white culture” was puzzling to them. What could this mean?

On X, many echoed this bemusement, attacking the idea that white culture is a coherent idea. Perhaps there is Italian culture, Irish culture, German culture, but there is not white culture. Yet for many progressives, the argument that white culture is some illusion, some racist will-o-the-wisp, disappears once it is the subject of criticism rather than praise. In that case, white culture, or “white supremacy culture” as it is sometimes called, is not only real but a monstrous force for evil that must be resisted and ultimately abolished.

This is because modern progressivism is largely antithetical to white culture. It promotes an “inversion of values” where that which was once noble in the United States, namely white culture, is seen as wicked—violent, intolerant, bigoted, exploitative, imperialistic. White culture must be abolished and replaced by a “polyglot majority” promoting a “multicultural America” in which traditional art, traditional heroes, traditional values will be radically transformed. Shakespeare and Dickens must give way to a more diverse canon. Bogart and Newman, a more diverse Hollywood. Whiteness must be destroyed by diversity.

The New York Times embraces replacement theory. Source.

White culture is not mysterious, though many pretend it is when attacking those who defend it. In its broadest and most coherent sense, it is traditional Western (European) civilization, the civilization that white people created or absorbed and synthesized. It is Christian, individualistic, analytical, rational. It values law, order, liberty, knowledge, impersonal norms and self-restraint. It is the heritage of Greek philosophers, Roman jurists, Medieval theologians, Renaissance artists, Protestant reformers, Enlightenment political theorists, Romantic poets, constitutional framers, jurists, scientists and other myriad defenders of ordered liberty. But it is also the heritage of millions of unsung, unremembered men and women who received that inheritance and faithfully passed it on to their children¹.

The progressive agrees that white culture is a coherent idea, at least when he is assailing it for its supposed sins. Sometimes derisively called “white supremacy culture”, it is defined by progressives as “the idea (ideology) that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people are superior to those of People of Color.” Some features of this culture include: rugged individualism, emphasis on scientific method, protestant work ethic, and respect for authority. Like the whale in Moby Dick, the whiteness of white culture is an almost metaphysical evil for progressives. In more aggressive moods, they dream of abolishing it altogether.

An image illustrating features of white culture. Source.

One might pushback. Surely this is an exaggeration. Maybe a few fringe academics fantasize about replacing whites, but this is certainly not a mainstream progressive position! Surely I’m mistaking a snowy day in Florida for its weather.

It is true that most progressives explicitly reject the claim that they want to replace white people, at least when challenged by conservatives. In fact, they often argue that “replacement theory” is a racist conspiracy promulgated by paranoid whites who are desperately clinging to the 1950s. They admit, of course, that America (and the West more broadly) is changing; but they apply a kind of Marxist logic to migration, arguing that demographic change is the result of nearly inexorable laws, not of conscious deliberation. It is not replacement; it is change. And only racist whites resist such change.

The progressive thus largely avoids the term replacement; but he does use another term that functions similarly in discourse: diversity. At first, of course, the word “diversity” seems innocuous or even vaguely positive. A diversity of skills is often good for a business or a sports team. A diversity of beliefs is often good for philosophy or science. And so on. But this is the subterfuge, the innocent surface that hides the rather more unpleasant reality. For, in practice, diversity means “fewer white people” or “more black and Hispanic people.” Diversity is about replacing whiteness.

Don’t believe me? Consider Dr. Richard E. Lapchick’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. They issue report cards that grade the diversity of sports leagues, and their sole criterion is the proportion of non-white people in the league. The greater the proportion of non-white people, the higher the grade. Or, put differently, the smaller the proportion of white people, the lower the grade!

The percentage is the percentage of non-whites. Any league 40% or above receives an A, which means a league with no whites would get an A for diversity. Source.

The same duplicity is evident in immigration discourse. Progressives welcome increasing diversity with panegyrics. Diversity is our strength. And immigration is making our country more diverse! Thus it must be celebrated. But diversity means that whites are a dwindling proportion of the population. And indeed, many progressives applaud this shrinking share of whites explicitly. Michael Moore enthusiastically announced that the decline of whites in the 2020 census was “the best day ever in U.S. history.” One does not need the imagination of Tolkien to understand how different the reaction to a fulsome celebration of the demographic decline of blacks would have been. (Moore would surely have been cancelled.)

Moore celebrating the decline of whites. Source.

For a more recent example, consider the reaction to the Sidney Sweeney advertisements for American Eagle. An article at MS Now entitled “Sidney Sweeney’s ad Shows an Unbridled Cultural Shift Toward Whiteness,” noted that “the internet was quick to condemn advertisements as noninclusive at best and as overtly promoting “white supremacy” and “Nazi propaganda” at worst.” And the sin that provoked this condemnation, of course, was using a beautiful blue-eyed woman to sell jeans with the double entendre “Sidney Sweeney has great jeans.” In other words, the sin was portraying whiteness positively in a country that was founded by white people. For white beauty like white authors must make way for a brave new image of beauty and a new, diverse, non-white pantheon must represent the country.

You might think she’s selling jeans, but you are wrong. She’s selling white supremacy. Source.

So, yes, progressivism is an anti-white ideology because it is driven by the desire to replace the whiteness of America with a more diverse, more multicultural country, a country in which the “the ‘right’s traditional way’ of life is a goner.” Because of this, progressivism often belittles anything related to traditional white culture while extolling the virtues of other cultures—their uniqueness, their dynamism, their vitality, their authenticity. White culture seems so staid, dull, insipid. Other cultures seem so real and alive. Shakespeare is boring; Rap is exciting. Ballet is staid, hip-hop dance is invigorating. And so forth.

Conservatives should, in my view, defend white culture and whiteness—they should, in other words, conserve it. But this raises an important moral objection: America is already multi-racial, so is not the defense of white culture inevitably hostile to other races? Is not the defense of whiteness just white supremacy or white nationalism? Certainly this is what many on the left will say. Be an ally or be a bigot. Accept diversity, accept replacement, or get crushed by the wheels of history. But there is an alternative that accepts the importance and value of white culture while recognizing the reality that America is a multi-racial country.

To embrace white culture does not exalt race, but inheritance. For white culture is not exclusively white. It is true, of course, that white culture would perish without white people, for it is unlikely that culture is only arbitrarily related to the characteristics of the people who created and sustain it. But white culture in America is open to everyone. And inevitably as more peoples participate in white culture, it will change. The reactionary may lament this, and we may sympathize with his lament, seeing in it a natural and even poignant response to loss. But we must also recognize that without change there is stasis, and with stasis, a culture that is unable to meet the challenges of the future—a culture that, like an unchanging organism in a novel environment, will perish because it refuses to adapt.

Other groups are not merely allowed to have and celebrate their own culture, they are encouraged to do so. Meanwhile, whites are told that celebrating their culture is doubly stupid, stupid because it is racist, but more stupid still because it does not even exist. But like that elusive electron in a quantum mechanics experiment, white culture does exist when critics look for it. It exists and it is wicked, the bloody heritage of unceasing conquest and exploitation.

This double standard is too much. White culture exists. It gave birth to the United States. It continues to flourish. And it deserves to be applauded and defended. Nobody should apologize for taking pride in their cultural inheritance.

Bo Winegard is an Editor of Aporia.

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1. Obviously any concept as capacious as “white culture” will be complicated and will admit of edge cases with fuzzy boundaries. Compare this to the concept “religion.” Certainly religions exist. And there is a difference between a religion and an ideology. If I were to say, “Sarah takes religion very seriously, but hates ideologies,” nobody would be confused. But trying to articulate exactly what a religion is and how it differs from an ideology is no simple feat. Similarly, if I said, “Thomas Smith is a proponent of white culture,” most people would know what that meant, even if they would have a difficult time precisely articulating it.

One might argue that “white culture” is a misnomer since other races can participate in and share this culture. Why associate it with white people? Because it is the culture that white people created/absorbed/synthesized and spread. Replace white people, and white culture would cease to exist pretty quickly. But culture is not the same as race, so other peoples can indeed participate in and promote white culture. Just as, for example, a white person can participate in black culture (think Eminem), so too a black person can participate in white culture.

And if the term “white culture” is too contentious, then another term is fine. But, it is often progressives who use the term “white culture” derisively. And my view is that rather than fleeing defensively from the term, conservatives should defend it.