What is "white culture," anyway?

Summary of What is "white culture," anyway?

by NPR

27m•February 21, 2026
Listen to Episode

Overview of "What is 'white culture,' anyway?" (Code Switch — NPR)

This episode of Code Switch (host Gene Demby) responds to a recent Senate confirmation hearing where Jeremy Carl — author of The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart — struggled to define “white culture.” The episode uses that moment to examine what “whiteness” has meant historically and today, with historian Nell Irvin Painter (author of The History of White People) explaining how race and whiteness are constructed, fluid, and politically shaped rather than fixed biological categories.

Key points and main takeaways

  • Whiteness is not a stable, scientific category but a social and political construction whose boundaries have shifted over time to serve economic and power interests.
  • Race was created to justify and organize systems of inequality; as the episode puts it, “racism created race.”
  • Historical “race science” (e.g., Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s skull typologies) produced terms like “Caucasian” that made little geographic or factual sense but stuck and influenced public thinking.
  • Groups that are considered “white” today (Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.) were not always seen as fully or equally white; “becoming white” often meant moving into the dominant category after immigration and assimilation.
  • Political events and leaders (e.g., the Obama presidency, Trump era) can alter how people perceive racial identity — for many white Americans, Trump intensified a sense of being a racial group rather than simply individuals.
  • Black American identity has historically included a stronger ethos of solidarity across class and region, though immigration and generational change complicate that picture.
  • Discussion about “white culture” often fails because the category contains vast internal differences (religion, foodways, regional practices); expecting a single coherent “white culture” is misleading.

Notable insights and quotes

  • “Race did not create racism. Racism created race.” — framed in the episode to emphasize the origin of racial categories as political/economic tools rather than scientific truths.
  • Nell Irvin Painter: “It depends on who's speaking, to whom, for what reason, when and where.” — on the question “What is whiteness?”
  • Painter on scientific naming: Blumenbach’s “Caucasian” label arose from a preference for a skull he considered beautiful, not from geographic or genetic truth.
  • On modern politics: “The Trump era gave white people race.” — describing how political rhetoric and leadership made racial consciousness more explicit among many white Americans.
  • Historical note: Early 20th-century Americans believed in multiple ranked “white races” (e.g., Saxons/Nordics at the top, southern and eastern Europeans lower), showing how mutable whiteness has been.

Topics discussed

  • Jeremy Carl’s confirmation hearing and his book arguing anti-white discrimination is predominant
  • The incoherence of defining “white culture” in the face of internal diversity among white Americans
  • Historical development of racial taxonomy (Blumenbach, skull measurement, early race science)
  • How immigration and assimilation reshaped who counts as “white” (Irish, Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans)
  • The role of slavery and economic systems in making whiteness consequential in the U.S.
  • The impact of political moments (Obama presidency, Trump era) on racial self-identification
  • Differences and continuities in Black solidarity and how African immigrants complicate the category “Black American”
  • How scientific and pseudo-scientific racial theories (and their misuse) influenced policy and violence (including Nazi adoption of U.S. race science models)

Practical takeaways / recommendations

  • When discussing race, distinguish between race as an identity/category and racism as a system of power and material consequences.
  • Be cautious of essentializing “white culture” — specify which regional, religious, or class group you mean instead of treating whiteness as monolithic.
  • Understand historical context: many racial categories and hierarchies are products of changing politics, immigration patterns, and economic systems.
  • Read broadly to understand competing narratives:
    • Nell Irvin Painter — The History of White People (recommended for historical origins and the malleability of whiteness)
    • Jeremy Carl — The Unprotected Class (to hear the contemporary conservative argument being discussed and critiqued)
  • Focus policy and analysis on measurable outcomes (who has power, who is disadvantaged) rather than reifying race as biology.

Suggested further reading / listening

  • Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (2010)
  • Coverage/transcripts of Jeremy Carl’s confirmation hearing and The Unprotected Class (to understand the claims the episode critiques)
  • Introductory works on race as social construction and systemic racism (scholarship cited in the episode context)

Closing note

The episode’s core message: “White culture” appears to many as self-evident but unravels under scrutiny. Whiteness has been invented, redefined, and politically deployed over time — so debates about discrimination and culture are best served by historical precision and attention to power and consequences rather than by assuming fixed, biological definitions.