Culturism is the new Racism

Over the course of the past century, it would seem that racist attitudes amongs peoples have largely been rolled back by an increasingly globalized world, yet at the same time Culturism seems to have filled the gap where racism used to occupy.

Let me discuss what I mean by the term "Culturism" so you'd know what I am talking about (There are already other definitions for the term, but there are only so many words in the universe):

Culturism is:
- demanding loyalty of individuals to their native culture (and condemning those who 'mingle' with other cultures)
- rejecting, attacking, and looking down on other cultures (either implicit or explicit)
- attacking attempts to alter the culture in significant ways
- rallying social movements in the name of a culture (ie, not in the name of what is reasonable, or even what is 'good')

First let me state that I do not believe that any of the points listed above are rationally justifable (although it's a little more complicated than just that, I will leave that discussion for another day). I will refrain from bringing up specific examples of this issue as you probably already have a few in mind.

What I do want to do is to consider what might be the possible causes of this trend of replacing 'racism' with 'culturism' (which I would argue is pretty much the same can of worms that's been repackaged). Some of my thoughts on the issue are the following:

- Culturism receives far less criticism than racism due to a lack of a history of social movements behind it (people have been trying to combat racism for a long time, but when was the last time someone stood up and clearly said "let the man who wishes to switch his cultural loyalties be equal to the man who is loyal to his culture"?)

- Cultural Relativism has prevented any objective comparsion between cultures, and thus opening the door for anyone to arbitarily state that their culture is "the most superior".

- The state of affairs is such that many individuals on the planet are attracted to western culture, and this allows third world Culturists to play the role of the victim and accuse the cultural conversion of being some sort of "imperialist conspiracy" (where if someone from western culture were to enter into some third world culture, usually no such accusation will be feasible)

Some predictions about the future of Culturism:

- If nothing is done to address Culturism, it may well be that every evil that was the result of racism will also eventually be emulated by Culturism

- Given the current state of affairs, it would seem that in the short term, very little attention will be paid to the issue of Culturism, as Cultural Relativism stills seems quite prevalent

- It may will be that only after some great atrocity has been committed in the name of culture, that people will seriously turn their attention to this issue