Acorn

Issue date: 2/22/08 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Shaina Mirsky

Why is everyone so afraid to admit that some cultures are wrong? Human sacrifice. Female circumcision. The degradation of women. If one person were guilty of these things, we'd call it murder, torture and bigotry. But a few million people practice them and all of a sudden it's called culture. And somehow, we have no right to tell people what's acceptable just because it's part of their tradition

If that's the case, then cultural tolerance is stupid. I am glad I'm not white, not because it should matter what my race is, but because everyone has this stigmatic image of self-righteous, white Americans running around imposing "western" culture on poor, old third-world countries.

I admit that at times Americans do get self-righteous, but at the heart of our rampant idealism is the simple fact that we love freedom. We don't tell our kids who they can marry, we don't force our daughters to undergo genital mutilation and we certainly don't sacrifice our enemies in attempts to stop droughts. Does portraying these practices as primitive make me a bigot?

Hell, no. These practices are wrong, and the fact that millions of people have practiced them for thousands of years doesn't change that.

So why are Americans so afraid to claim that on issues such as this we are right? Because cultural pluralists have taken something that started out as a great idea-tolerance-and perverted it into an excuse for massive human rights violations.

Today, everyone seems to think that Americans are forcing "Western" culture on societies that are perfectly happy living on their own. But something tells me that all those women being forced into circumcision along with a lifetime of subversion aren't too happy. And there is nothing inherently "Western" about human rights.

Not too long ago, Americans ripped peoples' arms off, drowned or burned them alive because they thought they were witches. So given the fact that "white" or "Western" culture has been here for thousands of years, it doesn't make any sense to say that the human rights movement is only a "Western" thing.

In the greater scheme of things, no country has had the human rights movement for very long. When Americans promote these rights to other cultures, they are not shoving their "Western" values down other people's throats. In fact, they are promoting something that challenged and dismantled what had been typical of Western culture for thousands of years. So why is it imperialistic to demand that other countries stop practicing their stupid, primitive traditions?

Continued...

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