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Arts (music, painting, dance, etc) are not culture. They are _expressions_ of culture. Culture is our nature, it's how we form bonds that secure our survival. It is not separate manifestations of individual "genius", ready for consumption. That is capitalism.
Capitalism's function is to maximize access to, and control over, resources, material and immaterial, for a limited group. Separating cultural expression from culture, and culture from nature is a key strategy, with strong racist implications.
As part of the modern racist ideology invented to upkeep the capitalist colonial system, and increase its efficiency, White Westerners had to prove they were more "developed" than other humans. That they were less animal, more refined spirit.
This requires a detached, "objective", and dispassionate relation to the world. A scientific(-ish) approach to everything. Strong emotions, strong intimate and family bonds, strong relations to other life forms were deemed "primitive".
Also upholding tradition in a day-to-day fashion, and as an integral part of your personality and identity. Tattoos, name giving, clothing, family structure, cooking, infrastructure, storytelling, building, etc.
These are cultural expressions. And most of them are shared by all humans. We all cook food and give names to newborns. But whiteness places whites above other people, so white culture must be something else, more "developed".
While the cultural expressions of Others are reduced to something monolithic, "primitive", white culture becomes detached and dispassionate, a matter of consuming samples of chosen cultural expressions. The everyday life of most white people are emptied of cultural meaning.
But culture is our nature. We will form bonds and group affiliations. This is great news for capitalists and nationalists. They can produce "cultural expressions" for consumption, which will make a lot of people bond over brands and nationalities.
Culture is our nature. It's how we survive. We live together, work together, cook and eat together, sing and dance together, travel together. We help and support each other. There are no weak links in a natural human group. We survive together.
Capitalism disrupts these patterns and uses them to secure access to, and control over, resources, material and immaterial, for a limited group. Your love for a company brand or a nation state is a fake group affiliation. It's fake culture.
And your love for "fine arts" is fake culture. Your appreciation of select samples of cultural expressions is fake culture. It is part of capitalism and white supremacy. Your movie star fandom is fake culture. Your admiration for that billionaire inventor is fake culture.
The answer is not to fight our need for belonging in a group, to be part of culture. The answer is to reclaim it. We are social and cultural animals, and that is to be appreciated and nurtured, not exploited. The answer is to dismantle whiteness, which builds on exploitation.
When people say that racism is primitive they speak the language of white supremacy. The hierarchy that presents people as more or less developed is a capitalist-racist construction, and racism is in fact a very modern invention. Primitive is not a thing.
