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Originally posted by M. Spector:
I used to listen to CBC Radio 2 until it got taken over by the Philistines...

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Philistines? Like my cousin Julie? I've been listening to her the last couple of days. Nesrallah rawks!

My culture also includes gardening and Bix Beiderbecke's cornet...hence my radio programme. By the way, the show is again safe to listen to, now that the fundraising drive is over.

My fellow travelers constitute about 2% of the elkvalley's population. 99.9% of them are middle aged.

[ 08 October 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 08 October 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

What I ended up deciding was distinctive for where I from is multiculturalism(not just the ability to eat the cuisine of a different origin every day of the week if I so choose). what it means for me....living in a place where most of the people I encounter on a daily basis came from somewhere else and if not their parents likely did. It means having a large portion of the population without a large extended family living locally. It means forming/joining clubs and associations, and interests groups to creat your 'family' instead. It means a lot of people caught between trying to hold on to old traditions and realizing there is a lot of people in that boat and it's just as easy to go make new traditions.

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being a really large empty land mass.

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How did you fit inside the classroom?

[ 09 October 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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My culture is in its roots as Saskatchewan as you can get.

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When I was a kid, everyone I knew was descended from homesteaders. I've been lucky enough to have worked the same land as my great-grandfather, who emigrated here with the mass migrations of the late 1800s. My kids don't have the same ties to the land, unfortunately.

Then again, it's possible that I have more DNA in common with my East African neighbour than I do with my equally WASPY neighbour.

I never drew identity from such things. But I eat what I grew up with. Roast beef. Yorkshire pudding. But my favorite spice is Garum Masala, and my favorite thing to cook is speghetti sauce.

And I have been to Wales, Scotland and England. And I do not belong.

I'd like to say working class is my culture. But then, my love of learning or it's own sake is viewed sometimes suspiciously by my peers. I am at times, a curiosity to them. I am more than tollerated by them. I think there is some genuine affection. But, I do not belong.

Perhaps I could point to the culture of science and the company of scientists as something to identify with. But then, my math skills betray me, and I have hung out with actual science dudes and dudettes. And I do not belong.

I once explored a sexual sub culture thinking that a sexual excentricity was something I could identify with, culturally. But, well, I do not belong.

I am at heart, a disciple of experience. I try to adhere to what I understand as the spirit of the Enlightenment.

But, my namesake and all the others are long, long dead. There is no one there to belong with.

Aside from family, I just don't belong.

And you know, it's rare that I even long to belong.

[ 11 October 2008: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:
People who put the word ethnicity in quotation marks, feeling it doesn't really apply to them, are generally White. We racialize others.

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The longer people have been here, the more likely it is that their culture has succumbed to the non-culture that pervades north america. So people whose families came over here a long time ago often cannot identify themselves ethnically or culturally. It's a loss - I'm not sure they think it's a "good thing".

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The longer people have been here, the more likely it is that their culture has succumbed to the non-culture...

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We do have a culture, it's just that white left wingers on this contenant are so embarassed by how tacky and consumerist it is, that many of us deny its existance.

[ 11 October 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 11 October 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

It may have something to do with when we were taught or became politically aware. Today, we see positive results from people who use their ethnic backgrounds for celebration, or to draw strength from. I come from a time when to identify ethnicity or identify with ethnicity opened up the flood gates of racist thinking.

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The longer people have been here, the more likely it is that their culture has succumbed to the non-culture...

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In the West, when my grandparents were kids, there was a conscious effort by the State, through the school system, to subordinate the immigrants' culture to British culture. Some of this was fairly practical, like teaching English to children whose mother tongues were German, Ukrainian, Icelandic, Finn, or in some rare cases, Arabic.