Never use culture to defend violence

I lost a friend a few months ago. She did something that I cannot abide. Ever. And when I called her out on it – and, yes, I did, because she said it publicly – she dumped my ass. 

She very publicly defended an act of violence, saying that it was justified because it is a part of a particular group’s culture, and because I am not a part of that culture, I had no right to speak out about it. She’s someone that considers herself deeply progressive and culturally mindful, so when she said it, I was flabbergasted. And she double downed on it when I called it a racist idea. Which it is. 

I’ve heard it from people on all parts of the political spectrum, from right to left: the idea that a murder, a punch, a slap, a public humiliation, is something we have to somehow tolerate and accept and not condemn because that’s the culture of the person doing the murdering, the punching, the slapping, and since we’re not from that culture, we have to be silent. That somehow, this person, because of his culture and, implied, because of his race, cannot be reasonable in that circumstance and I shouldn’t expect him to. 

I’ve heard culture used to defend: 

• bombings
• mass shootings
• “honor killings” (the murder of women)
• female genital mutliation
• domestic violence
• abuse of children
• a physical altercation between two people or a group of people
• rape, including child “marriage” and forced “marriage”
• kidnapping
• hazing
• abuse of animals purely for people’s entertainment, like dog fighting or bullfighting
• racism

It’s not easy to have this mindset when you work in international development. I went to a colleague, a gender specialist from a certain very conservative country in the Northern Hemisphere and I don’t mean North America, and told her I was really struggling with hearing these kinds of comments from aid workers, domestic and foreign, in our duty station. She made it clear to me that she does not tolerate such comments herself – her respect for local culture ends when that culture engages in violence. Period. And she gave me tips on how to respond to comments about it when confronted with it. She also made it clear that, if you are committed to human rights, you have to be ready to say, “That’s unacceptable” even to a group you are trying to help. 

If the translation of whatever you are saying can be boiled down to “Well, that’s just how THOSE people are,” I’m going to respond with something you are not going to like hearing from me. So, to avoid it, don’t say it around me. Just don’t. 

And for the record, the thought enters my mind sometimes when I am seeing something. It’s taken a lot of work, and will take a lot of ongoing work, to undo that idea of those people. Every person on Earth is raised with it, and it is reinforced in a thousand different ways for all of us, through media, through society, through ourselves. My struggle continues in that regard. And there is NOT just one good way to be compassionate, to be mindful, to be caring and to act with care, nor to resolve conflict. Absolutely, there are cultural differences in how all of those things happen, and I hope there always are. But not when it comes to the acceptance of violence.