I realized I've become allergic to the word "culture". I don't mean art & food, I mean the usage of "culture" to explain social problems or advocate policy. Two reasons:
First: Those who use the word as a catch-all for "what's wrong". As if by pushing all problems into the box of "culture" we've taken a stop forward, when in fact we haven't. "Changing the culture" as a proposed solution often perpetuates problems rather than solving anything.
Second: Those racists who have finally learned that it's no longer socially acceptable to be racist, so they just took their racism as-is and repurposed it as cultural supremacism. Hey we're not racist! We're not talking about biology, we're talking about culture!
(Not that there's anything wrong with talking about culture, and not that all cultures the same. But be smart - *very* often these conversations are not innocent, they're using culture as a collective term, as a stand-in for "race" or "the other").
So yeah, the moment someone talks about "culture" a part of my brain tenses up and becomes hyper-critical.
