I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood? The rest is spot on. I became a parent before I was ready, and man, they are little sponges. They learn everything you do, everything you say, embarrassingly so. My 5 year old would lay on the couch to…
> Like the race or location If all you have is a racism hammer, everything looks like a racist screed I guess. The only point I saw made is that cultures matter. There should be nothing wrong with that. You're reading malevolence into it. Stop that, please.
But this for some reason struck a nerve. I never claimed racism at all?
"It's not racism, it's culture" is literally a white supremacist talking point. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of that.
My claim is that you can't make country wide generalizations, and yes, attempting to do so by culture is doing so by race. I'd bet if I brought up how foreigners in Japan score on tests, you'd then claim it's not real Japanese. Because you meant ethnic Japanese people.
But that's way, way harder in the US. Is it white culture, that doesn't really exist? Would you be surprised to learn that most people born in the US today are not white? Is 'American culture' the hispanic immigrant family getting by in Fresno? Or is the the Indian spelling bee winner from Virginia? Or is it the white farmer kid from Nebraska? Or the black inner city kid in Chicago? At some point you have to pick one, they have little 'culture' in common. But I'm not asking anyone to pick one, or defending any race. I'm saying such generalizations are stupid.
Culture pretty heavily implies race, perhaps not location, unless one pretends to be race blind.