To write a culture that isn’t just like your own culture, you have to be able to see your own culture as a special case—not as a norm which all other cultures must take as their point of departure.
Most North Americans that fall into the rather arbitrary “white” category do not see their culture as a special case. “White” North Americans tend to see themselves as the “plain vanilla” universal human. Everyone else is a “flavor.” In truth, vanilla is also a flavor, of course.
How do I know this? Because I’m of Korean extraction, and I’ve been playing Irish Traditional music for the past 23 years. For some reason, the fact that I play such music is more notable than “white” people of Hungarian, German, English, Polish, and French extraction that I’ve met—but only in the cases where such persons do not have “funny” accents. In this context, a “funny” accent that isn’t from the British isles is just as good as different skin tone and facial features.
There’s more to this I could say. I’ve also been walking around as a well educated middle class native-born member of this culture, while wearing different facial features. I grew up in isolation from my “own” ethnic community. In this, I have a certain advantage concerning awareness of my own culture. (And even so, I became aware of how unaware I usually am of it when travelling abroad.)
Most North Americans that fall into the rather arbitrary “white” category do not see their culture as a special case. “White” North Americans tend to see themselves as the “plain vanilla” universal human. Everyone else is a “flavor.” In truth, vanilla is also a flavor, of course.
How do I know this? Because I’m of Korean extraction, and I’ve been playing Irish Traditional music for the past 23 years. For some reason, the fact that I play such music is more notable than “white” people of Hungarian, German, English, Polish, and French extraction that I’ve met—but only in the cases where such persons do not have “funny” accents. In this context, a “funny” accent that isn’t from the British isles is just as good as different skin tone and facial features.
There’s more to this I could say. I’ve also been walking around as a well educated middle class native-born member of this culture, while wearing different facial features. I grew up in isolation from my “own” ethnic community. In this, I have a certain advantage concerning awareness of my own culture. (And even so, I became aware of how unaware I usually am of it when travelling abroad.)