Culture and the Death of Racism

Did you know that racism died? It’s true! The far right doesn’t want to do a racism anymore, because racism is irrational. Melanin doesn’t have any cognitive impact! That’s crazy talk, and the far right prides itself on prioritizing facts over feelings! However, if the far right isn’t racist anymore, then nobody is racist anymore, and if nobody is racist anymore, then racism no longer exists! We did it!

And yet, despite the death of racism, disparities still exist! It’s just the darnedest thing! Black people are still disproportionately incarcerated; Indigenous people still have worse health outcomes; the Middle East is still perpetually at war. These pesky things need an explanation, and it can’t be the effects of racism, so what are we left with? Luckily for us, the far right has given us an answer. It’s just their culture! Have you even listened to a rap song? They’re all about crime; Black people just have a culture of criminality! Indigenous people get so much from the government, they developed a culture of dependence; since they don’t have to work to support themselves, they just stay at home and drink all day! And don’t even get me started on Islam; at its core is a culture of violence.

This is why groups like the Proud Boys define themselves as “Western chauvinists;” Western culture is superior! It has nothing to do with race. If white people adhered to a culture of criminality, dependence, or violence, they would be in the same situation! They just don’t! That’s where those discrepancies come from. White people inherently know better than to follow inferior cultures. There’s just something smarter and better about white people – they know to avoid these cultural traps that other, lesser races haven’t figured out yet. Case closed!

Of course, this is a very silly notion indeed if you think about it. First of all, are you suggesting that the practices of Islam in Somalia are the same as those in Indonesia on the other side of the world? That the Sunni, Shia, and Sufi sects are all the same? That urban and rural black people share the same culture, or that Caribbean immigrants, African immigrants, or hell, all the different cultures across the different countries in those areas are all somehow the same? That the different Indigenous bands with hundreds of different languages among them all practice the same culture? Do you know what culture means? What are some of the festivals that are celebrated in these cultures? What are some of their traditional foods? What rituals do they practice? Culture is a very deep human artifact, and can vary from household to household, and even from individual to individual. Unfortunately, the education of foreign cultures (or even domestic alternatives to the mainstream) is usually done through polemics spoken over frightening YouTube videos of genital mutilation or whatever.

The thing is, this approach misunderstands Western culture as well. Do they think all of Western society is good, or are they picking and choosing specific aspects? Which aspects exactly are they looking at? Communism, postmodernism, and feminism are all Western constructs, and these are loathed by the far right. These ideologies are even criticized on the left for the way other Western constructs (such as colonialism and white supremacy) have influenced them. That’s why intervention in Middle Eastern countries to “save their women” is criticized by leftists. Imperialism blended with feminism is still imperialistic. This is baffling stuff, I know! You’re supposed to support women, and Muslims are horrible to women! It’s part of their culture!

Weirdly enough, Western culture only has continuity thanks to its mingling with other cultures. Hellenistic culture survived because the Arabs held on to it when the West decided to purge itself of paganism. We also got algebra from the Arabs, so whenever you tell a communist to thank a capitalist for their iPhone, you’ve got to thank an Arab for the math that allowed the history of physics to even begin. Pretty much all of modern Western music has its origins in Black culture. The fact that we even have an American continent is thanks to the generosity and collaboration of the Indigenous populations that certainly got the worse end of that deal.

This isn’t to say that cultural practices can’t be criticized. I mentioned genital mutilation earlier. It’s perfectly reasonable to criticize practices without expanding a single strand of a culture as a representation of its whole. Or conflating it into places where it doesn’t belong (genital mutilation has closer ties to the regions where it is practiced than it does to Islam, for example). Just as it should be okay to criticize cultural practices of the West, which the Western chauvinists would call treasonous (police brutality, an essential staple of Western culture, cannot be kneeled against, for example).

Social problems ought to be criticized, but they ought to be criticized with the intention of social change. I can criticize Western culture because I’m a member of Western culture. I have a stake in how that turns out. The change I’m going to impact is really only going to be felt here, anyway. I could want the lives of people in Saudi Arabia to improve, but I don’t live there. I don’t know enough about their culture to really say what would work or not. I’m an outsider. That’s why legitimate cultural intervention requires local cultural leadership. If the far right really wanted to help Indigenous, Black, or Muslim people, they would listen to and amplify those voices rather than talk over them. The far right is not presenting good faith criticisms of cultural issues because their goal isn’t social change, it’s exclusion. I mean, if you really want to know why disparities exist, you can look into it! Make informed criticisms! Or, I suppose, you could continue believing what an outrage peddler on YouTube tells you.

Racism is an ideology that holds one race supreme and dominant over all the rest. As an ideology, it can get very complex and nuanced. Nobody likes either of those things, so racism often gets boiled down to the hatred of races other than one’s own. Lynchings, cross burnings, all that fun stuff from about a hundred years ago, and about five years from now, serve as the framework for what racism looks like. If the far right isn’t doing that, then I guess it’s not racist!

The thing is, the far right is trying to disengage from the measurable manifestations of racism because it carries such negative connotations. But that doesn’t stop their ideology from actually being racist. Islamophobia is the best example of this because they will say that Islam is not a race, and they are technically correct. Checkmate to all the liberals! However, the culture that they’re pointing to doesn’t actually exist. They don’t know anything about it. The reason that hate crimes against Sikhs increased after 9/11 is because they were Brown people who wore turbans, just like Osama Bin Laden!! It had nothing to do with their culture because culture is just the veneer used to overlay the actual ideology of white supremacy. White people are safe; Black and Brown people are not. Let’s call it Islam because we don’t want to be seen as racist. That’s why bad faith criticisms of Islam are called racist; good faith criticisms usually originate within Islam itself and end up looking much different.

Right wing ideology is often based in fear. It’s afraid because the bogeyman is coming for us, and so we have to make sure to keep the bogeyman away. The best bogeymen are the ones that look different from us, and race does that super well. Turns out racism never really died, as hard as Obama tried to president it away. It will be with us for a long time, and “Western chauvinism” really shouldn’t be fooling anybody.