Is White American culture just an extension of Anglo culture in reality?

submitted by TheWorldToCome from self.debatealtright

I am asking this question out of genuine curiosity. Before all the current modern degeneracy and when the USA was still supermajority white would American Culture be described as an extension of English culture? How different was American culture, say back in the early 1900's vs culture in the UK at the time? I am not talking about like Hollywood or music, but just how White Americans carried themselves, maybe dining customs, how they treated guests, in their house, that type of culture. Not pop culture

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[–]Wrangel 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Far more so than today but still not. One of the issues that made the US so susceptible to multiculturalism is the lack of a well defined American. English and Scottish are very different. Irish and English are very different. Throw in French, some Scandinavians, some Germans etc and it becomes hard to define an authentic Americanism. Without a strong ethnic identity it was too easy to expand Americanism to include everyone.

Other empires have solved this by having more clearly defined member states. The ottoman empire was incredibly diverse but a Kurdish town was a Kurdish town. The uk was diverse in the 1800s but a town in southern Ireland would have been 99.7% Irish and a town in Wales would have been very Welsh.

The US screwed up by not being a federation of ethnostatws. A US consisting of the Cajun state, the maine fishing town people state, the Swedish farmer state of Minnesota and the Yankee state of Massachusetts would have been more resilient.

[–]send_nasty_stuffNational Socialist 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

American culture in the early 1900's and prior was heavily regionalized. That can't be overstated. It's a huge country. You don't get homogenized american culture until radio, tv, movie, trains, cars and airtravel.

IMO the best way to understand american white people is to look at our four seed groups: cavaliers (anglo royalty fleeing a civil war in southern England), borderers (drunken anglo and scotch irish stuck for centuries between Waring nations), Quakers (hippy protestants), puritans (up tight protestants). Those four groups set the tone and regional cultures for all other groups that came. Another good way to study and learn about americans is to look at Herberg's triple melting pot theory (popularized recently by EMJ) which states that catholic, protestant and Jewish religious traditions created three distinct moral borders and breeding pools that were in fierce competition and over rode European ethnic racial disputes. Long story short Jews and Protestants teamed up and defeated the Catholics and then Jews simply encouraged WASP's not to breed (which they didn't; thus Jews and their moral and cultural proclivities became the dominate culture in the United States.

I would say that american culture is partially an extension of English culture but mostly not. If anything american culture is a result of multiple Utopian movements common in the 1600-1800s. Western European Continental culture also influences the US. Some French but mostly German. Something like 20-25% of the white american population is German. Northern regions have some Nordic influence but German predominates the heartland (Midwest).

[–]NeoRail 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I am not talking about like Hollywood or music, but just how White Americans carried themselves, maybe dining customs, how they treated guests, in their house, that type of culture. Not pop culture

Ironically, this is exactly what popular culture meant prior to the culture industry.

Anyway, your question is very difficult to answer and there are different views on this topic. It also depends on which kind of Americans you take as your model - there were very significant differences between Yankee Puritans and French Southerners, for example. Personally, I think the last time period in which it is possible to find significant overlap between the English and the Americans is probably the 1920s. The overlap was particularly strong with the more bourgeois classes, hence "Anglo-Saxon capitalism". My impression is that Americans were, on the whole, more materialistic than the English and had more of an activist mentality. I also think that the similarities between the two nations diminished over time as political changes deprived them of their unique character.

[–]casparvoneverecBig tiddy respecter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Culture is a product of geography, a people's history, and genetic qualities. While Americans were genetically quite similar to Anglo-Saxons, they developed different cultures due to different geographies.

There are(or were) 4-5 American cultures before the 20th century. The Southern ''dixie'' culture informed by the legacy of the civil war, slavery, and plantation-chevalier culture.

The midwestern culture which was informed by its rural setting, emphasis on agriculture, and Nordic-German descent.

West coast culture characterized by the legacy of the westward expansion, the wild west, capitalist adventurism, and entrepreneurship combined with the desert terrain.

And finally, the northeastern culture informed by Anglo-Saxon descent, the puritan and Anglican legacy, heavy industry, and uptight protestant values. The northeast received heavy catholic immigration from Ireland and Italy later on in the 19th century and developed a parallel catholic culture.

Sadly, these separate cultures have more or less disappeared due to post-ww2 mass culture and homogenization. Everyone watches the same movies, studies the same curricula, plays the same video games, listens to the same songs, and has the same cultural catechism.

Some fragments of the old culture still remain in the south and midwest due to their more rural and less urbanized conditions. However, nothing of the Northeastern and West coast cultures remain.