Culture

Culture is a broad term-some people might define it as a group's beliefs, others might say it is what is accepted as appropriate within a particular society, and the list goes on and on.  An intangible term like culture is, like leadership, difficult to define because it is so general.  However, for the purposes of this post, I am going to go ahead and define it exactly that way-broadly.  To me, culture can simply be stated as all of the social aspects that define a group of people, and that way the definition includes nearly everything someone could think of.  Regardless of the exact definition, culture generally includes the terms "social", "group", and "characteristics", but by extension the definition itself raises a problem with what we covered in class.

This week in class we discussed inclusivity and its relation to culture, specifically terms such as privilege and majority/minority.  One major theme we discussed was the importance of blending cultures and making everything more inclusive, but personally I actually disagree.  By accepted definition, culture is what socially defines a group of people, in various terms including art, food, social norms, etc.  But then, isn't cultural inclusivity regressive?  If culture itself is specifically what socially characterizes a group of people, then to me integrating culture could be a bad thing if it gets to the point where people lose their sense of identity.  Everyone wants their own sense of belonging, which is part of what culture provides.  However, inclusivity is all about combining elements of different cultures, peoples, etc.  What is to stop it from getting to the point where everything has been combined?  By that point, there would not be "a culture", there would only be "the culture".

This is already present in many cases, my own life being a striking example.  Being Chinese, actually born in China, and immigrating to the United States at the age of 3 means that I literally grew up in two cultures.  I think I turned out pretty well, being able to participate in both without integrating either-my house used almost only Chinese, while I led an average American life at school.  Unfortunately, I also see many Asians who have been so integrated into American culture that aside from their faces, a stranger would never know that they were a different race.  More examples-the Native Americans were notoriously (and forcibly) integrated into "white culture", which continues to this day.  Elsewhere in the world, many other western countries are widely known for large minorities that have integrated into the mainstream culture.  All of these situations have presented a common, acknowledged effect-resentment.

I am certainly not speaking out against inclusion, because the flip side to my argument means that everyone is so intolerant of everyone else that eventually we humans would probably kill each other and die off as a species.  However, I think it is important that everyone retains their own culture, because for many people with culture comes a sense of identity and belonging.  When cultures are integrated with others, inevitably many things become lost, and if left unchecked could lead to unfortunate situations.