The Problems with “That’s Their Culture”

The phrase “that’s their culture” has many problems, depending on context.

It conflates description with justification. “That’s their culture” is often used as if explaining a practice also defuses criticism of it. But identifying a cultural origin doesn’t address whether the practice is harmful, coercive, or unjust. Descriptive facts don’t automatically generate normative conclusions; an argument that moves from what a culture believes to what is morally so commits a logical error (Rachels & Rachels, 2019).

It treats culture as monolithic. Cultures aren’t unified, static systems — they contain internal dissent, competing factions, historical change, and coerced conformity. Invoking “culture” as an explanation often papers over the people within that group who oppose or suffer from the practice in question. Treating a culture as a clearly delineable, internally homogeneous whole is, as Benhabib argues, a view imposed from the outside rather than an accurate account of how members experience it (Benhabib, 2002).

It immunizes practices from scrutiny by geography or ethnicity. If a practice would be criticized when done by group A but excused when done by group B because “it’s their culture,” you’ve created an asymmetric standard. The same moral logic should apply regardless of which group is doing it. This is the standard objection to cultural relativism: if right and wrong are merely relative to a society’s code, there remains no vantage point from which to criticize any practice or to recognize moral progress (Rachels & Rachels, 2019).

It can silence the voices of insiders. People within a culture who object to a practice are often the ones with the most at stake. Invoking “culture” as a conversation-stopper tends to privilege external observers’ romanticized view over insiders’ lived dissent. Okin makes precisely this point about group-rights claims: one must inquire into the perspective of the less powerful members within a group — not simply defer to self-styled group leaders (Okin, 1999).

It essentializes identity. It implies that members of a culture are defined by, or bound to, particular practices — making it harder to recognize that individuals can reject aspects of their own cultural inheritance without betraying their identity. Sen describes this reduction of a person to a single, inherited affiliation as the “illusion of singular identity,” which ignores the plural affiliations and capacity for reasoned choice that people actually have (Sen, 2006).

It’s often selectively applied. The phrase rarely gets applied to practices in dominant or Western cultures; it tends to show up specifically when discussing practices of minority, foreign, or historically marginalized groups. That selective application reveals it’s doing ideological work, not analytical work — reifying “culture” as a fixed attribute of certain groups while leaving others unmarked (Phillips, 2007).

It forecloses the relevant question. The question isn’t “is this cultural?” — almost everything humans do is cultural in some sense. The question is whether the practice causes harm, violates consent, or undermines autonomy. On a harm-based standard of the kind Mill articulated, the operative test is the effect of a practice on the interests and liberty of those subject to it, not its provenance (Mill, 1859). “That’s their culture” doesn’t touch those questions.

The legitimate kernel in the phrase is the reasonable reminder that context matters when analyzing practices — what a thing means, who benefits, what alternatives exist. Interpretive analysis of this kind, attentive to the meaning a practice holds for participants, is a real methodological commitment (Geertz, 1973). But that is an argument for careful analysis, not for suspension of moral reasoning.

References

Benhabib, S. (2002). The claims of culture: Equality and diversity in the global era. Princeton University Press.

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Basic Books.

Mill, J. S. (1859). On liberty. John W. Parker and Son.

Okin, S. M. (1999). Is multiculturalism bad for women?(J. Cohen, M. Howard, & M. C. Nussbaum, Eds.). Princeton University Press.

Phillips, A. (2007). Multiculturalism without culture. Princeton University Press.

Rachels, J., & Rachels, S. (2019). The elements of moral philosophy (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Sen, A. (2006). Identity and violence: The illusion of destiny. W. W. Norton.