Do races represent hard-coded divisions in the human race, such that two or more races can never cohere in a common culture or society? Clearly racial ethnicity is hard coded, genetically speaking. But does race mean cultural hard coding in an ethnic or genetic sense? Clearly not. If a white child is adopted and raised in a black family, the adopted child will inevitably adopt the family cultural patterns, mores, and behaviours. And vice versa.
When people speak of a "black culture" or an "Asian culture" the terms may well be descriptive. However, they are definitely not prescriptive. Some years back we used to hear references to the blues being "black music"; whites could not play the blues nor sing them. That was until whites broke barriers and some became premier blues musicians.
The key question is this: do racial distinctions generate hard coded barriers between people, such that they can never share a common culture into which diverse ethnicities can become integrated into one culture? The racist would answer no; it is impossible (and wrong). The multi-culturalist end ups implying that such is the case.
Those who believe that culture, rather than race, is a defining characteristic of people are often smeared with the charge of "racism". Yet their position is the exact opposite of the argument of the bigots with whom they are being corralled. Why is racialism wrong . . . ? It is wrong because it is not true. The worst thing about racialism is its hopelessness, the dismal assumption that there are unalterable barriers between peoples decided by birth and heredity. If this theory were true, then a thousand years of integration would mean nothing. Worse still, hostility between racial groups, if it existed in the first place, could never be expected to die. [Peter Hitchens, The Broken Compass: How Left and Right Lost Their Meaning (London: Continuum, 2009), p. 94.]The hard-core ideological multi-culturalist opposes the concept of a mono-cultural society. The differences must be preserved forever. Fusion cuisine is out. It represents a dishonouring of race and culture. But culturalism, as opposed to racism, represents the belief that cultures can change and merge and fuse until they become one or commonly held.
The culturist--and a good example of this view, plainly stated, is the American conservative thinker, Thomas Sowell--believes something wholly different. He think that under the influence of history, economics, climate, religion, language, law, education, landscape, music and morals, people of any racial background can become one through the accumulation of a common cultural capital. [Ibid]When cultures fuse and merge to become one--that is, when a society integrates cultures successfully into a mono-culture or dominant culture--the sin of racism, or more accurately, racialism is defeated.
The Church of Jesus Christ is the most powerful redeeming force combating racialism and facilitating the emergence of a common, integrated culture in a particular area or country.
Here [that is, in the Church] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. [Colossians 3:11]Christ has made all His people into one new people. This means that Christians are always conscious of their oneness in Christ, regardless of race, history, or culture. And that oneness is more important than life itself. It will outlast life in this world.
When the Christian faith and culture is truly dominant in a region or country, cultural integration and respect for all races will be far more easily achieved.
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