How many people here actually know any African-Americans?
How many people here actually know any African-Americans?
Not like "I went to school with one" but have had an actual friendship?
I've had a couple of conversations recently where people have confidently said things about the Black community that are ridiculously incorrect. The kind of shit where you can tell they grew up in a very white community and learned about Black history as a college freshman.
Disclaimer: I am white, but I grew up in a Black neighborhood. I was one of 3 white kids in my elementary school lol, including my brother.
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I don't get out a lot period, but my friend is black. They live out of state, but we talk on the phone a couple times a week.
Now, on one hand, its a sample size of 1. On the other hand, that's a solid 50% of my social circle.
That being said, "black culture" varies just as much as "white culture". You're trying to generalize a massive number of people, and you'd probably be surprised how hard that is. I don't think you could pin down any single cultural element as being ubiquitous among black Americans.
Nothing is ubiquitous among any large group of people, but to suggest it's useless to speak about people as groups because of it is silly. People of similar cultural background have commonalities.
I'm not saying its totally useless, I'm saying gets harder and harder the larger the group gets. The commonalities get fewer and less universal as group size increases.
It doesn't get harder, it just gets more general. Statements made about groups are not intended to be universally applicable to every single member of that group, just generally applicable.