Two epiphanies I had today

[sqbr]

First, a rant:
I came across a post today with white americans whining about having no culture, because they're a bunch of immigrants with mixed backgrounds, a dark history they feel ambivalent about, and an emphasis on both conformity and individuality and consumerism. Other cultures, on the other hand, are distinct and uniform and well defined and have a wholly positive effect on people's lives.

Now as someone from a culture with similar issues who finds american culture distinct and rather alien (in an interesting, sometimes cool sort of way) I find this annoying (Australians may whine about not having any culture too, but we don't tend to act like it's a Special Unique Pain Noone Else Understands)
It's like the question of "How do non-white/non-American people feel about their cultures, and what does it have in common with how we feel?" doesn't even register.

For a start, afaict pretty much every non-American in the world has angst about the difficulty of being "modern" without becoming American, of defining ourselves without relying on rigid outdated jingoism. And no culture is an unchanging monolith, everyone has to balance tradition and change, personal preferences with accepted social mores, multiculturalism with flattening and uniformity. Every choice along those continuums has both benefits and costs. And pretty much every culture has dark patches in their past, unethical social practices(*), and just plain unappealing expectations that make it difficult for a lot of people to embrace their "people" unselfconsciously and without caveats. Afaict being a POC makes this more complicated, not less, since you have external and internalised racism to contend with telling you your culture is worthless.

The second is a bit advanced, and is only really annoying (to me!) when I see it from, say, feminist bloggers who should know better. Or myself :)
Hopefully a lot of people have gotten their head around the fact that only people who experience Xism are qualified to say if something is Xist or not. But a lot of people who get that have trouble understanding that even if you do notice something someone did is Xist all by yourself that doesn't mean you get to judge whether or not they apologised well enough for it. On seeing an apology for Xism of a sort you don't experience but still found personally offensive, your first priority should not be "Do I think this is good enough given how offensive I found their behaviour?" but "What do the people who experience Xism and were hurt in the first place think?".

And now I feel better :)

(*)According to ones own personal ethics, whatever they may be

Comments

[nicholii.livejournal.com]

Afaict being a POC makes this more complicated, not less, since you have external and internalised racism to contend with telling you your culture is worthless.

How does the colour of your skin have anything to do with this? Of course you could argue that there is an inherent pro-Western bias in terms of accepted vs. non-accepted culture, but this has little to do with them being white or black or whatever. Our own Australian society thinks disparagingly of the cultures of Slavic immigrants, for instance, and Italian and Greek cultures have only become mainstream in the last generation or so. Non-European cultures do get a harder time, but I would argue that the only way skin-colour really comes into play, is when people make generalisations that are ignorant of the similarities between other cultures and our own: assuming that just because people look different, their culture has different ideas of hygiene or the treatment of women, or whatever.

If you take 'race' as a social/cultural grouping, rather than one of appearance, then the story is of course different. And I can accept that the generalisations that racism within our society makes will lead many people to believe that their culture is frowned upon, when it is only a matter of ignorance, rather than anything actually "wrong" with that culture, that is to blame.

But when you get to the aspects of other cultures which actually do diverge from the accepted customs, the issue becomes more difficult. Female circumcision is something that our Western values cannot accept, and our ideas of universal human rights are inherently bias towards our own culture's views of what is, and is not, fundamental. We can argue that there are some basic things shared by all people, such as murder being evil, but where does that put "honour killings"?

I do realise that I am simplifying things, but, like it or not, our "enlightened" values demand us to reject parts of other cultures.


(Which is why I don't actually agree with exporting democracy etc. I don't want to tell other cultures:
"It doesn't matter about the colour of your skin, you can still be white inside! Please bring your food, festivals, language, and pretty costumes, just as long as you change to our system of values! You want to be free, you just don't know it!"
But I am over-simplifying again :P)

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, I was oversimplifying a bit and once again conflating race ethnicity and culture as is unfortunately my wont. What I meant was that if there are racist or culturally intolerant stereotypes about your culture held by the people around you (and I do think this is worse when racism is involved, though I agree that's not all there is to it) it would presumably make figuring out how you feel about it yourself more fraught. I get the feeling this is a huge issue for australian aboriginal people: there's such a strong belief that their culture is outdated and useless and destructive. Of course you can cut yourself off from the rest of society and just to talk to people from your own cultural/ethnic group but that has it's own problems.

Are you arguing that cultural intolerance is sometimes justified? Because, no.

You can be against particular behaviours associated with a given culture (such as honour killings) without making assumptions about everyone in that culture or saying the whole culture is bad, especially since afaict(*) those behaviours are roughly equivalent to gay bashings in australia eg part of the culture and a sign of broader intolerance but still rare and considered too extreme by most people.

Anyway, my point was that if you're IN the culture, and don't want to give it up, it can be hard to work out how to deal with those aspects you don't like, ie the way you and I would feel about gay bashing.

(*)And I have no idea, really. But I do know I'm too ignorant to make generalisations or judgments.

[nicholii.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I can agree with that, especially with the example of Aboriginal culture.

Are you arguing that cultural intolerance is sometimes justified? Because, no.

Basically, what I think is that we have to decide where our priorities lie. I think that there are times when our values and those of others will contradict each other. We have to decide whether we are willing to stand back, or if our values demand that we interfere. I don't really feel comfortable with interfering.

You can be against particular behaviours associated with a given culture (such as honour killings) without making assumptions about everyone in that culture or saying the whole culture is bad

Yes, of course. But I just feel that if we keep separating abhorent practices from the rest of the culture, and saying that someone's culture consists only of the customs that we can tolerate, then we are not really being culturally tolerant.

I am not accusing you of doing such, but I am commenting because I feel that this is an inherent contradiction that lies in our ideals of tolerance and equality. But perhaps I am seeing a contradiction where there is none.