Does America have a culture?

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In the US, major cities usually have their own "cultures." This is especially true of NYC, Portland OR, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and most other older cities.

I believe places like Atlanta, with considerable recent growth and migration from other areas, have yet to acquire their own "culture." If you disagree with that assessment, I might just agree with you, for I don't live in Atlanta.

It's funny that Green Bay, with a population of about 100,000, has an NFL football team; yet San Antonio, with over a million people, does not. LA has difficulty fielding a football team.

I´ve lived both in Australia and the Netherlands and see many so called cultural differences. If Australia was invaded by Europeans later than America, why on earth won´t America have its own culture? Aussies have many of their own words i.e. : http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html . The Dutch are (according to me) obsessed with birthdays! Regardless of age you are supposed to invite people to your birthday, follow a set order of cake and coffee, 2nd coffee and chocolate, then nibbles. There are call it tradition. The Dutch people in the south have carnival but those in the north do not. Some towns have a carnival tradition of a few hundred years. So some cultural things are universally Dutch (or worldly like birthdays), others are geographical.

My impression of America includes: the flag, the allegiance song everyone is forced to sing, both mums and dads working all the time, buying takeaway or restaurant food every day (as opposed to cooking dinners at home ), kids attending after school clubs, kids going off to school camp for many weeks, cheerleading, American football, baseball, basketball, Nascar, the right to own a gun, houses that can be built in a few days, Gigantic Corporations, American business methods, credit cards, the legal system and suing people, Junk Food, franchises, American tv streamed everywhere around the world, houses without fences – just grass everywhere, big cars and trucks, thanksgiving, fourth of july, contractors, loud talking and shouting as normal sound levels, lots of poor people and a very few rich people, cosmetic surgery and perfect teeth.
This is of course , just my impression.

PS on two cultural points, Disneyland was based on the Dutch theme park "The Efteling"
and the concept of Father Christmas was taken from the Dutch and Belgium Sinter Klaas who still brings presents to kids on the 5th of December.

You should visit some of the East Coast cities of the U.S. .

Also: I don't speak loud. I could care less about the Flag(though I love my country).

In order for me to know the Netherlands, I must visit the Netherlands. Not just Amsterdam.

What you've described is somewhat the situation in rural and suburban parts of the Midwest and South--and to a lesser extent the rural and suburban parts of other US regions.

Kraftiekortie,

Thats the sad thing- people from Non_American countries mostly learn about America through news (mostly Obama and war) and tv programs, many of which the average American would cringe from. TLC chanel, SyFi, Nickelodeon, MTV, CBS reality, Disney Chanel, CI and more are all on Dutch TV. Oh yes, I think movies like the cheeleader movies, Highschool musical, Clueless, the Bring it on cheerleader series and Legally Blonde did a lot in showing girls how to be dumb. ( sadly something many dutch girls are copying) I've notices that tv and films are rarely portraying real people in real situations unless its really emotional or boring or both. TV only shows perfect people in perfect houses not trailer parks or or farms or surburban streets or houseboats etc.

I've only been to Amsterdam once and wasn't that impressed with it. Lots of appartments along canals, all a bit to densely urban city for my liking. There are nicer cities in the Netherlands like s'Hertogenbosch. I live further south - (in carnival territory. )

I'd be interested to visit America- I've seen it looking over the Niagara falls on the Canadian side. We would have driven over for a day but we didn't have visas to enter.

America is very similar to Canada as far as the physical environment is concerned....esepically the northen US.

The politics are pretty different.

Canadians tend to be somewhat more "mellow" than Americans on average.

I actually enjoyed Amsterdam. It's not so nice around Centraal Station, but the museum/park area is nice. We stayed a little bit to the north...about 3 stops on the train from Centraal. They have somewhat bad housing estates just to the north.... But then it gets better.

America has a culture just as everywhere does, as said it might be hard for us that are immerse in it to see it compared to other countries as we see the differences in theirs. American culture predominates the world as far as food, music, movies, clothes, technology, whatever. Americans also share a cultural value in individualism as mentioned, a distrust in government, there is a portion of America that is religious(when compared to Europe) and then at the same time is a part that is very liberal. Things break down into subcultures but people need to understand that America is nearly the size of Western Europe and while we all share to certain degree so there are distinct regional and ethnic differences; obviously everybody knows the South has its own unique values as do the Northeast/Midwest/West Coast/wherever, Blacks have created their distinct culture, there is a LGBT community, there is a Urban/Rural divide. Its a diverse country, I'd America is more alive cultural than most places to tell you the truth. We hear all the time how cultured Europe is but most of old Europe while distinct doesn't add much to the world anymore, the culture seems dead and that why we see American culture leak over there.

Interesting statement!! I found out that many Dutch, and also many English (from watching BBC) are not very curious about the world. They are happy with the way it is and has been and are not able to change, especially the older generations the 60+ people. They talk about local people and local issues and have local friends. They link their identity with the town where they were born and raised in - so someone from a town 5 kms away is not a local, and someone from a town 80kms away is practically a foriegner even if they are in the same provence.
My MIL considers a friend to be: someone who lives about 10 minutes away by bycicle. Anyone further away say 1/2 an hour away by car is just too far away to be a regular friend.
And as for the English! They have invaded Spain in the last 20 years but rejected most of the Spanish culture.

But how does it compare to your home of New Amsterdam?

American culture is a mish-mash of other cultures but that doesn't mean 'no culture'. We are the mash-up country with an emphasis on individualism and fresh starts.

LOL....we haven't been New Amsterdam since 1666!

There are some similarities between the old Amsterdam and the new one. I think Manhattan is more loosy-goosy like Amsterdam--but that the Outer Boroughs are, at times, pretty conservative (though with many "Manhattan"-minded people sprinkled in. Just look at Archie Bunker--he's from Queens!

Obviously, New Amsterdam has many more people--it's about 10 times larger than Amsterdam!

We don't have the canals of Amsterdam. We don't even have the marijuana coffee shops!

The vehicular landscape of (especially) Manhattan is becoming more Amsterdam-like: Much much more bikes! It's because our past Mayor, Bloomberg, wanted us to be a European city. Doesn't work! It's very dangerous to ride a bike on the streets of (basically) anywhere in New York City.

In NYC, the architecture is quite a mishmash; whereas, there is a considerable amount of old-time (Renaissance to Victorian) architecture in Amsterdam.

Then you have the trams (what we call trolleys) in the latter city. We haven't had trolleys since 1956.

The Netherlands is so flat that bycicle riding (pedal power) is easy to do AND they make special bike lanes and bike traffic lights to make it safe. Bike riding in other cities is just dangerous.
And as for the coffee shops, they got rid of the ones in our town although I did see some special police in front of the windowless 'Buddah Lounge" recently (Happend to be right across from a nice looking church lol )

Speaking as a European who has lived, worked and travelled extensively in America, and has many relatives there, I would agree with kraftiekortie and others here that the USA certainly has a culture, but that it tends to be regional or centred on the larger, older cities. Given the country's vast size and population, this is understandable. But then, as has already been mentioned, I can see this because I'm viewing it from the outside. American culture is certainly very diverse and hard to define, particularly for Americans themselves who have grown up in what has been described as one of the many 'sub cultures'.

Being a relatively young country, - at least compared to Europe, which measures its history in thousands of years - Americans can appear to be slightly insecure about what might be called their 'cultural credentials', traditions which have their roots in the early immigrant communities and which were thus 'imported'. In a sense, this insecurity forms part of the wider American culture, which is one of enterprise, challenging norms, questioning, always seeking out new frontiers to conquer, an extraordinary ability to hope. Of course, we Europeans like to mock the USA for its sometimes brash wealth and self-sufficiency, but secretly we're quite jealous of America's culture, which - at least to outsiders - is immediately and uniquely identifiable as one of extraordinary diversity.

If a culture is some where some thing is grown
is the United States of America
benign
or...

There's actually a website that says "How to tell if you're American". They also have info about cultures from other parts of the world, and even different parts of the US and Canada. It says some interesting things like, "You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, or guinea pigs to be food and you don't have a dirt floor. Your house is heated in the winter and you own a washer and dryer. You know you're not going to die of cholera." It reminds me how not every country has such "luxuries"!

I thought it would be interesting to have a "culture" page about Aspies, but since people on the spectrum are all unique and live all over the world it might not work. Although it has descriptions for immigrants to the US and other developed countries.

In the North Eastern part, people tend to speak loudly and quickly and be impatient.
In the Southern part, people speak slowly, are friendly, and like to tell you about 'The War of Northern Aggression.'
In the West, people speak slowly, and are so patient as to be annoying. They also wear odd jewelry made of silver and turquoise stones.
In the Mid-West people are somewhat rural, and not familiar with European customs at all.

Gun ownership tends to be a big deal, along with owning 'pick-up' trucks and drinking lager beer at a very cold temperature. Car racing means driving fast around an oval track in a clockwise direction. Geography is not taught in schools, as the citizens are unsure someone is from the UK or Oz.

They do make some entertaining movies, and the best computers and electronic devices.