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.)
Today's post, Humans in Funny Suits was originally published on 30 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
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