The Culture in Question

Part 3 of 4. [Originally posted on December 12, 2011, in order of composition. Reposted on January 10, 2012, in reading order.] 

My theory is this: a culture seeking a place within an established, dominant culture must either come to terms with that culture or else itself be distorted. In the present case, the dominant culture is white and the newer culture is black, or better, urban Midwestern black.

This newer culture, the theory continues, falls into two parts, a majority, who have “come to terns” with white culture, and a rather small but disproportionately active minority, who haven’t.

Obviously a lot depends on whether a culture, or a subculture, manages to “come to terms.” We’re not talking about assimilation here. So how do you do it? Do you have to join the dominant culture? like it? appreciate it? respect it? Merely tolerate, understand, or attempt to understand it? I Think the last condition alone is sufficient. And the condition is reciprocal: it applies both to the dominant and to the newer culture.

Just for instance, what happens if you do come to terms? Lots of white immigrants have come into, say, Milwaukee, as a new culture: Germans, Irish; then Poles, Italians; Jews; more besides. Though always identifiably different, they had the advantage of being white, which must have made it somewhat easier to come to terms. But make no mistake, the Yankee worker was no less afraid of the Germans in the middle of the 19^th century, than both were afraid of the Italians and Poles at its end. And then they all became afraid of the black worker in the next century; and finally everyone together, regardless of race, of the Latino. In other words, real economic interests may be, and usually are, behind ethnic and race antipathies between dominant and newcomer cultures.

Think of this phenomenon as coming to terms in a negative sense: versus a perceived common enemy. In a positive sense, the coming to terms is a natural and normal process by which the dominant culture first becomes more inclusive, and finally becomes more diverse, as understanding passes into appreciation and respect.

What happens if you don’t come to terms? What sort of people don’t? and why not? Where does that leave them? Do they ever form a genuine, permanent culture of their own? Hard questions, the answers to which could be parsed nearly infinitely over a nearly infinite series of examples.

There’s another series of questions.

We know whom we would like to hold responsible. Though we can’t hold a demographic responsible, we can ask what the demographic of the malefactors is. But aren’t they already pretty well known? Anyone can easily make a top ten list on their own. And then we could ask, which of the items on the list are causes, and which are effects?

It’s the same with remedies. The demographics are also lists of problems, social problems, economic problems – real human suffering, deprivation, mental and physical disease – that public policy has from time to time, more or less, tried to remedy. Anyone can make their own list of such attempts; the longer your memory, the longer your list. Most anyone can see that first the public patience, and next the public money, are running out.

That’s one of the reasons why some would like to deal individually and legally with the malefactor, and not socially and politically with his or her culture. Maybe that might seem easier and cheaper. My theory says, try to understand the culture first as a defective culture, one that hasn’t come to terms and has thus become distorted, then formulate your remedies.

So accept for a moment the theory that a defective culture is not a valid culture. Assume it’s a culture that produces almost complete alienation from the dominant culture, indeed, turns everything on its head. With respect to the subculture in question, I’ll mention a couple things I have direct knowledge of, and a couple of things I have inferential knowledge of.

“Kill cops.” They spray painted it on my garage. But if you even try, you get arrested. Thirty years later, if you’re still alive, you can’t live it down.

On a traffic sign: Stop “snitching.” I suppose the snitch police will be your judge, jury, and executioner if you do. And then they’ll be judged.

These are among the most tactically improvident ways imaginable of establishing a viable culture within a dominant culture that employs, and deploys, the cops.

In no particular order: The law is meaningless. The family is meaningless. Education is meaningless. All lies of the dominant culture or illusions of the majority black culture.

No contradictions. Adolescent judgments. Then you get caught. You can hope it’s not too bad a deed. I suppose the worst thing is light treatment for the first offense. They should be put to shame before all the socially responsible elements instead. They must feel shame. Somehow they manage to shame each other.

The dominant culture is rejected as a measure of what it is right or wrong to do – and not just in a moral or legal sense, but in a practical sense, in the sense of what it is possible and advisable to do today. With feeble understanding, they try to set up the opposite as their standard. If the dominant culture is evil, so are all its manifestations. Truly the world turned upside down, but worse, because if you act on these premises, you come into direct conflict with the dominant culture and those who are able to coexist with it – a world that now becomes terribly and finally real.