 Cultural criticism is taboo. In polite company, all cultures are created equally. None is better or worse than any other, they're just different. We aren't responsible for the culture that we were born into, so there's no objective basis for criticism or judgment. In progressive ideology, this idea goes a step farther. Not only must we respect all cultural differences, we mustn't stray outside the norms of the culture we were born into. A white woman with dreadlocks, for example, should respect black culture and shave her hair off rather than steal a hairstyle from a different culture. They even have a special word for this grievance. Cultural appropriation. I think cultural appropriation is a load of baloney based on the most persistent errors in political and social thought. Abstraction errors. Misunderstanding the relationship between people and labels between aggregates and concretes. These errors are not only imprecise, but they are counterproductive, divisive and downright dangerous. The first abstraction error goes like this. All differences between people are benign differences. Some people are born with light hair, some are born with dark hair, neither is superior to the other. In the same way, all cultural differences are benign. Some cultures value monogamy, others are more sexually liberal, neither is superior to the other. This concept is applied across the board. Some cultures are more religious, some cultures value education more highly, some are more hierarchical, etc. These differences should not be judged any more than we should judge somebody for their height or the amount of freckles on their face. Then the story goes, because all cultures are essentially equal, any differences in the socioeconomic status of ethnic groups must be a function of discrimination. Without racism or discrimination, all cultures would be equally represented across the socioeconomic spectrum. Now in reality, we have no reason to believe that this is true. Nowhere in the world, nowhere in history are all cultures represented equally across the socioeconomic spectrum. This idea is an appealing one, it's aesthetically pleasing no doubt, but it's not grounded in the real world. Different cultures value different things, and some skills are valued more highly than others. Throughout the world, Chinese immigrants tend to have the highest average income of any demographic. Why is this? I'd say it's not because they're genetically superior, it's not because of pro-Chinese discrimination. In fact, it's largely despite negative discrimination. It's because Chinese culture heavily emphasizes academic performance in the hard sciences, and the hard sciences tend to pay more than other fields. The purpose of this article isn't to explain the relationship between culture and socioeconomic status, I'll leave that to the fantastic work of Thomas Sowell. My point is to illustrate the concrete fact that some cultures are superior to others in specific ways. So the second abstraction error goes like this. Cultural heritage is intrinsically valuable. Preserving ethnic culture is an end by itself, regardless of the details. Progressives are especially fond of indigenous cultures that are assumed pure because they haven't been polluted by Western society. Whenever a new tribe of indigenous people is discovered, for example, progressives are adamant that we should not disturb or influence their way of life. They want a complete preservation of cultures, the positive and the negative. Well, I have a radically different view. Cultures are not intrinsically valuable, nor should they be preserved by virtue of their uniqueness. Cultures emerge from different groups of people trying to best navigate the world. Sometimes they do a good job, other times they do a bad job. If a bad cultural trait emerges, it should be destroyed and replaced. No different than bad theories about physics or mathematics. In my mind, cultural pride is kind of absurd. You're not responsible for the culture that you're born into. There's nothing to be proud of. By happenstance of birth, you happen to have an ethnicity. It isn't superior or inferior to any other. You have nothing to defend or preserve. If you're fortunate, you'll be born into a positive culture. If you're unlucky, you'll be born into a toxic one. For the sake of human progress, I think we should try to eliminate negative cultural values and promote positive ones. Saudi Arabian culture, for example, promotes beheadings for breaking the law, even for minor offenses. This is backwards, unnecessary, and a toxic cultural phenomenon. It shouldn't be preserved, it should be eliminated. There's a fundamental abstraction error underlying all of this. That group identity is inescapable. Individuals in the progressive worldview are seen as essentially tied to their ethnicity or socioeconomic status. People are white men. They're black women. They're upper-class kids. They aren't individuals with black skin or individuals with Scottish parents. The group identity is foundational. The individual is seen as intrinsically a product of his environment and a larger society. You also see this phenomenon with progressives and their obsession with sexual orientation and gender labels. They self-identify first with their labels. They are fundamentally lesbians or transgender or cisgender. All experiences are first filtered through the lenses that they identify with, as if there's an entire category difference between humans with different sexual orientations. I think this gets it backwards. Group identity is a label. It's a conceptual tool to more easily categorize people. It's not foundational. The individual is the base unit in society and any labels that we attach to them are secondary. And practically speaking, the stronger that people self-identify with labels, the more division it creates in society. Class struggle, for example, is a powerful idea and it's entirely a function of group identity. When you view people as individuals first, the differences between us seem minor and petty. I view my black neighbors as fundamentally peers, not as aliens I can never relate to. Yes, they have a different daily experience than I do as a function of their skin color that's true. But it's not an essential difference and it's absurd to obsess over it. We have far more in common than different. So put all the abstraction errors together and you get the ultimate heresy. Cultural appropriation. Adopting some element from a culture outside the one you were born into. White people having black hairstyles, Caucasians wearing Native American garb, upper class kids using inner city slang. Supposedly cultural appropriation is insensitive. It trivializes the struggle and history of the culture being appropriated. Some have even said blues and rock and roll music is black music and if white people steal it and make money, that's unfair. Ultimately, they are saying you are only allowed to behave in accordance with the culture that you were born into. Again, it's abstractions first, individual second. I find this idea preposterous and counterproductive. It is a tyranny of labels. Based on the happenstance of your birth, progressives will assign you a list of approved behavior because of the genetics of your parents and grandparents. It is involuntary group membership with specific behavioral regulations attached. And to what end? To preserve the divisions between people? To preserve different cultures for aesthetic sake? It seems much more progressive to treat cultures like we do any other set of beliefs. We don't insist that Islamic scientists refrain from doing American science or white philosophers only theorize about white philosophy. I didn't choose my culture at birth and I'll be damned if some progressive with a penchant for labels insists that I must act in accordance with his list of white middle-class behavior. A few years ago, I moved to Atlanta and there's always hip-hop and reggae music on the radio. I love it. I blast it when driving down the road. I also think that afros look fantastic and if I had the hair for it, I would wear one myself. I also love soul food. The black culture in Atlanta has perfected fried chicken and collard greens and in fact, I ate some for lunch today. So here's a healthy response to my love for blues music, soul food and afros. It's wonderful. It helps bridge the gap between white and black people. Every individual is not only a consumer of culture but a creator of culture and I want my behavior to incorporate the best of black culture and hopefully the same is true and reverse. It's an exciting idea. If you see everybody as individuals, then you'll see that we're all trying to do the same thing in life. Different groups of people have discovered different truths and why in the world would we not want to share this knowledge with each other? We can quite literally take the best of all cultures and create something new and better. How many black people have discovered the game of golf through Tiger Woods? How many lives and careers have changed for the better because of it? It's a wonderful thing. How many white people have discovered rap music through Eminem? I did. And it's a wonderful thing. We should celebrate cross-cultural exchanges of information, not lament them because the ambassador has an unapproved skin color. Of course, the same is true about the negative aspects of culture. It is naive to overlook cultural shortcomings because you don't want to offend people. For my experience is I want to emulate parts of Chinese culture in terms of academic excellence. I don't want to emulate their emphasis on hierarchy. In my evaluation, Chinese parents can be too strict on their kids and too focused on family honor. So I want to find a middle ground. Does that make me some anti-Chinese racist because I recognize tendencies in that culture? Of course not. I respect Chinese individuals enough to see positives and negatives in their culture and I want the same treatment in return. The same is true for black culture, Hispanic culture and every other group on the planet. There is absolutely no reason to take cultural norms as all or nothing. There's nothing to preserve for preservation's sake. Let the positive live and the negative die. For almost 20 years, I lived in an economically depressed part of upstate New York. The culture was largely toxic and anti-intellectual. In terms of sorting the good from the bad, I'd say I'm leaving most of it behind. My father was raised by a racist. My mother helped him see through the errors of racist ideas and he raised all of his kids without an ounce of racist bias. That southern racist culture died in my family thanks to my parents and I certainly will not resurrect it for my kids. This is progress and it should be celebrated. And furthermore, before the fairly recent invention of intellectual property, artists took imitation and copying as a compliment. The myriad of variations on a theme from Paganini are all compliments to the wonderful work of the violinist Paganini. The same should apply to cultural phenomenon. Copying is only a compliment. It's an acknowledgement from one human to another that says, hey, this is awesome. You're doing something right. Versus, hey, you weren't born with the ethnic membership to behave that way. Stick to the white or black ways of doing things. Instead, I think we should support cultures having sex with each other, mix the genetics together, if you will, and see what offspring we can produce. If you like another culture's music, imitate it. If you like their fashion, wear it. The language, speak it. If you like how they raise their kids, then do the same. We'll all be better off. Cultures are not delicate flowers that must be preserved until the end of time. They emerge from groups of people trying to best navigate life. Some elements are good, others are bad, and it's about time we grow up and recognize this. A lot of good will come from it. For more books, check out steve-patterson.com.