Hm. I see what you mean--Maori culture is important to Pakeha, so Pakeha seem to find themselves culture-less.
In America, what I find to be true is that white Americans tend to identify with their original (European) cultural group--in fact, everyone but slave-descended black Americans do the same. Like my family. We do not usually think of ourselves as white Americans. We would prefer the phrase Franco-Americans, or Italian Americans, because that is our pre-American cultural history.
Native Americans, on the other hand...you're right, they don't have much voice. They mostly live on reservations, at least, full and half-Native Americans do. But then you have the unique thing about Maine and New England, which is that EVERYBODY shares a little Native American blood, because the colonials tended to a) rape b) marry Native women.
The question of black/white? In some places it's bad. In others it's not. Portland, for example, is pretty good. But then you take the example of the small rural town where I grew up, and it's quite different. I had a friend there who was biracial (her father was black, mother white) who didn't even want to admit in public that her father was black until the very end of my aquaintance with her.
So yeah, the struggle here is mostly one of racism, not really culture.
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Date: 2006-03-07 01:12 pm (UTC)In America, what I find to be true is that white Americans tend to identify with their original (European) cultural group--in fact, everyone but slave-descended black Americans do the same. Like my family. We do not usually think of ourselves as white Americans. We would prefer the phrase Franco-Americans, or Italian Americans, because that is our pre-American cultural history.
Native Americans, on the other hand...you're right, they don't have much voice. They mostly live on reservations, at least, full and half-Native Americans do. But then you have the unique thing about Maine and New England, which is that EVERYBODY shares a little Native American blood, because the colonials tended to a) rape b) marry Native women.
The question of black/white? In some places it's bad. In others it's not. Portland, for example, is pretty good. But then you take the example of the small rural town where I grew up, and it's quite different. I had a friend there who was biracial (her father was black, mother white) who didn't even want to admit in public that her father was black until the very end of my aquaintance with her.
So yeah, the struggle here is mostly one of racism, not really culture.