I don't have a fancy big brain moral or philosophical framework for arguing this thought, but is there any philosophical thinkers who speak on this?
For context I'm in the tech-world and I hear a lot of my peers with kids making sure their kids are always locked-in with their "Gifted kids programs" or "Advance learning" or whatever to make sure they are ready to be the "leaders of the future". Which to me is not bad inherently, as I would expect any parent who gives a damn about their children to do everything in their power to give them everything they can for their future prosperity. I ain't mad at them for that.
However, I also hear these same parents blaming the "culture" on why "kids/students/young people/XYZ group" are bad or why "[insert current boogeyman here] is way ahead of 'us'". Somewhat tangentially I think about how a lot of suffering that black people in America have suffered has been blamed on their "culture", one that was born from marginalization and lack.
I don't think it's fair to say a "culture problem" exists in black America without really examining the structural problems that exists as well. Is that because some people "make it"? Both in the black example or the student example, do people blame "culture" when there are some instances of people that do well their their personal overcoming of bad conditions?
In both of these cases I think that it's really easy to blame "The Culture™©®" rather than look at why things are as they are. I do believe in personal autonomy and choice and stuff, but I feel like this transcends this. When an issues something that's faced by the majority of people in an instance, I feel like it's no longer an issue of personal choices. The general curve of outcomes for most people are getting worse, and I don't think that is a fair argument to say it’s a “personal choice” problem
Sorry for the rambling, I'm not very concise in my writing these days. So I guess my question is "are there leftie philosophical thinkers who have commented on "culture" as a buffer to avoid crtique of the powerful?"
My spouse is a nurse who works in a diverse workplace consisting of basically four groups of people:
She told me once about an extremely awkward interaction when they had a Jamaican patient who was just really dirty. No need to go into details, but this was an exceptionally dirty person with terrible hygiene. One of the white woman nurses asked one of the Jamaican nurses if it was part of their "culture" to just be really dirty. And the Jamaican nurse was just like...what? The white woman had also asked the question like she was just genuinely curious if Jamaicans were naturally dirty, like she was being nice to the Jamaican nurse by taking an interest in her "culture."
I just look at the word "culture" as a way for liberals to talk about race without using the word "race."
My wife's manager is also a hog who has gotten in trouble multiple times for telling racist jokes. I overheard him on a zoom meeting, and he basically sounds like that clip of Alex Jones begging the coach to let him back into the game. This guy is now in charge of making sure that the nurses don't say anything inappropriate in the hospital.