Wednesday, May 16, 2007

So when does "culture" stop being an excuse?
A friend of mine from Grace was an MK from Germany. Germany is far different culturally from the United States. My friend told me that he used to take girls down to the lake his freshman year, and Gracies excused it because "he didn't know better" or "Germany is a different culture, it's okay to do that kind of thing there."
"Actually," he said when telling me about it, "I knew perfectly well that it was unacceptable here. It also would have been unacceptable there. In Germany, all my friends would have teased me, trying to find out if I'd 'been getting any.' The Culture isn't an excuse.


Culture: a) "The ideas, customs, skills, arts, etc. of a people or group, that are transferred, communicated, or passed along, as in or to succeeding generations" b) such ideas, customs, etc. of a particular people or group in a particular period; civilization" c) "the particular people or group having such ideas, customs, etc."

How does that definition fit in with this article? What I mean by this is: since when have racial slurs of any kind, been deemed "cultural." If culture is going to be used as an excuse, it can be fit to almost anything.
Bull.

1 comment:

Melody said...

I guess to me it seems odd that at grace we were often expected to be very conscious of other people's cultures...but it was assumed that they couldn't be the same towards us.