Race and Culture are not synonymous

When I was growing up my best friend was named Brad.  His father was a Nissei (a second generation American of Japanese descent) and his mother was from Japan itself.  So racially Brad was 100% Japanese. But not once did it occur to me to think of him as anything other than an American because that is what he was culturally.  He was just another kid on the street who loved baseball, rock music, skateboarding, and all the other activities American kids enjoyed at the time.  

True, there were some Japanese influences but they were never strong enough to overcome the environmental influences of being born and raised in America.  The result is that although he could physically blend in on any street in Japan, he would be the proverbial fish out of water culturally.  This was clearly demonstrated when, in university, he minored in Japanese and failed.  Of course, he had no problem in the English-based classes and graduated with high honors.

Through this and similar experiences I learned that there is a huge difference between one’s race and one’s culture.  That one is a product of nature while the other is the result of nurture.  Furthermore, at an early age, I understood that there is no inherent connection between the two.  This is clearly shown in the definition of the words.  As Webster’s College Dictionary defines them:

Race refers to a group of persons related by common 

descent or heredity 

Culture is the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another [Author’s note: usually through language] 

From these definitions it is clear that neither one has anything to do with the other.  So you can imagine my surprise (make that shock) when I see people use the words as if they have the same meaning.  For example, when the French interior minister, Claude Gueant, recently declared some “civilizations superior” to others he was called a “cultural racist” by some political groups.  The racist label is also applied to anyone who opposes multiculturalism or supports an English-only agenda.  

I myself have been called a racist because I believe that there is a distinct American culture that needs to be cherished and protected.  I take this view because I understand that America was never based on race but on ideas and culture is what holds it all together.  Remember that culture is the “sum ways of living” and “transmitted from one generation to another” and language is the primary method of transmission.  Without a common culture and common language to transmit the culture there is no America, just pockets of distinct and separate groups trying to get along with each other.  (This is the destructiveness of multiculturalism and I hope I am not around to see the end result of such nonsense bred out of ignorance.)

Of course, it is not uncommon for those with political agendas to manipulate words in order to gain support from those who do not know any better.  But recently I have been seeing this misuse of the words 'culture' and 'race' from people who should know better.   

I am currently reading Why Nations Fail by two very highly educated and knowledgeable men.   Daron Acemoglu is a Professor of Economics at MIT, while James Robinson is a Professor of Government at Harvard.  Clearly, these men should know the definitions of words like race and culture.  Yet, they confuse the two.  In chapter 2 they discuss the Culture Hypothesis on why there is economic inequality in the world.  They use several examples to illustrate that this hypothesis does not work.  One example is the fact that people of Mexican descent live and dominate both the Mexican and American sides of Nogales, a city which straddles the border.  Yet, the Mexican side is impoverished while the American side is relatively prosperous.  From this they conclude that culture plays no role in the development (or lack of development) of either side.  

By using this logic, my friend Brad should have traditional Japanese values, attitudes, and behavior.  Yet, as I explained above, since he was raised and educated in the United States—and not Japan-- he was and is culturally American.  This is the same for most of those living in the American side of Nogales.  They may look like and share many cultural similarities with their neighbors to the south but they are not the same.  Their upbringing in the United States altered them culturally, even though they may remain racially intact.

In another example, the authors use the degree that Latin American countries still have indigenous populations (race) to discredit the Cultural Hypothesis.  They highlight the fact that Colombia has a small indigenous population relative to those of Bolivia and Ecuador, yet all have about the same per capita income level.  Therefore, they claim, culture cannot be a factor.  This argument is so faulty that I do not know where to begin.  It completely ignores the fact that, since all three were Spanish colonies, they all now have similar cultures.  The only other way this argument can work is if we assume that the indigenous population has remained unchanged by those colonial experiences.  But to accept this argument is to go to a place like central Mexico and expect the people there to be dressed in Aztec garb, waving obsidian swords, and making human sacrifices to the gods.  I have been there and this does not happen, except in the shows for tourists.  The cold truth is that, while many are racially indigenous, the indigenous culture has been completely eradicated and replaced (or modified) by the Spanish culture.

The inability to distinguish culture from race is very dangerous and it is disturbing that academics fail to recognize the differences.  On a macro level it destroys the bonds that hold the modern nation-state together.  On a micro level it is racism in its purist form since it forces us to see race as a determinant of behavior.  This misunderstanding has led to some very dark moments in history.  A victim of one of those moments was Brad’s dad.  He was forced to spend several years of his childhood in an internment camp because people could not discern between being racially Japanese and culturally American.  It is shocking and sad that over 60 years later we still suffer from the same ignorance.