Culture Is Not a Moral Argument
Culture usually has a positive connotation.
People often speak about culture as if it is automatically a good thing, something that deserves respect simply because it is old, traditional or shared by many people.
Yet there are a lot of things that are justified by being cultural.
Being late by 25 minutes to a coffee meeting with a friend might be acceptable in certain Latin American cultures, but it is certainly not in the parts of Europe where I live.
It being a cultural thing does not automatically make it okay.
In Japan, foreigners are treated with respect but are never integrated into society fully. Many long-term residents of Japan have written and spoken about this feeling of always being an outsider, regardless of how long they have lived there or how well they speak the language.
It’s something “cultural” in Japan.
In Europe we would call it xenophobic or racist.
In certain parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, female genital mutilation is part of the culture.
That does not make it okay.
For centuries, slavery was also part of many cultures.
That did not make it okay either.
Don’t get me wrong. Europe has a lot of negative cultural habits too.
The way we treat animals is often justified by culture. Hungarians are big meat eaters. It’s part of their culture.
Which is the same thing as saying that systematic rape, exploitation and slavery of animals is part of our culture.
I listen to a lot of France Culture radio. They have excellent shows.
Yet I can’t help but think of “culture” as an inherently loaded term.
France, with its long history of colonization, racism and intellectual snobbery, is a reminder that even the countries most obsessed with culture have often used it to justify treating other people as inferior.
The fact that something is cultural, traditional or widely accepted does not automatically make it moral.
Culture can explain why people do certain things.
It cannot answer the question of whether those things are right.
