When Appreciation Becomes Acquiescence
The Two Cultures We Must Learn to Distinguish
Last month, a school district in suburban Minneapolis celebrated International Heritage Week with the usual fanfare: samosas in the cafeteria, traditional dances in the gymnasium, colorful displays of clothing from around the world. Parents applauded. Teachers beamed. Everyone agreed that diversity had been celebrated. Yet just weeks later, that same district struggled to address why several families had withdrawn their daughters from co-ed physical education classes, citing cultural objections. The administration, paralyzed by a fear of appearing intolerant, quietly granted exemptions.
This tension reveals something fundamental about how we discuss culture in America today. We have learned to celebrate the saris and samosas, but we have lost the language to discuss much less defend the deeper structures that make a free society possible.
The Confusion at the Heart of Our Discourse
Walk through any American city and you will encounter what appears to be successful multiculturalism: Vietnamese pho shops next to Mexican taquerias, Diwali celebrations in public parks, mosques standing alongside churches and synagogues. This is often held up as proof that diversity is our strength. And in many ways, it is. The problem is not with this kind of diversity. The problem is that we have convinced ourselves that all cultural differences are of this same harmless variety.
They are not.
What we fail to distinguish is that culture operates on two entirely different levels. The first level call it performative culture is what we see and taste and hear. It is the realm of festivals, cuisine, music, dress, and language. These are the accessories of identity, rich and meaningful to those who practice them, but ultimately portable and adaptable. A person can enjoy Korean barbecue without adopting Korean inheritance laws. One can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of a sari while rejecting arranged marriage. Learning Spanish does not require abandoning the First Amendment.
Performative culture enriches us. It adds color, flavor, and texture to the American experience. There is no moral hazard in celebrating it, and considerable moral failure in scorning it out of prejudice. When someone attacks another person for their accent, their clothing, or their food, they reveal not cultural confidence but provincial insecurity.
But beneath this visible layer lies something else entirely: structural culture. This is the invisible architecture of belief and behavior that determines how a society actually functions. It includes attitudes toward authority and individualism, concepts of gender and family structure, approaches to child-rearing and education, standards of personal responsibility and communal obligation, treatment of dissent and difference of opinion, and understandings of law, justice, and human rights.
Structural culture is not decorative. It is determinative. It shapes whether children grow up expecting freedom or submission, whether women live as equals or subordinates, whether innovation flourishes or withers, whether trust or corruption lubricates daily transactions.
And unlike the harmless pluralism of food and festivals, not all structural cultures produce the same outcomes.
Why This Matters: The Real Stakes
Consider several concrete examples that American communities have faced:
In Dearborn, Michigan, city officials grappled with requests to enforce gender-segregated swimming hours at public pools, with some community members arguing that mixed-gender recreation violated their cultural norms. This is not a question of dietary preference. It asks whether American civic institutions should institutionalize gender segregation a structural principle fundamentally at odds with Title IX and generations of civil rights progress.
In parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Somali community leaders have had to actively combat cultural practices around female genital mutilation that some families attempted to continue on American soil. The CDC estimates that more than 500,000 girls in the U.S. are at risk of or have undergone this practice. This is not about cuisine or clothing. It is about whether bodily autonomy and child protection laws can be superseded by cultural tradition.
In several states, courts have confronted cases where immigrant families defended physical discipline that rose to the level of abuse under American law, citing cultural norms that view corporal punishment differently. Texas, California, and New York have all seen such cases. The question is not whether different cultures have different parenting styles. The question is whether the line between discipline and abuse can be redrawn based on country of origin.
In certain religious communities, pressure has mounted to recognize religious tribunals for civil matters like divorce and custody. New York has wrestled with this for years. While religious arbitration is legal when both parties consent, the practice raises profound questions: Can parallel legal systems coexist without eroding the equality and due process guarantees that make American law legitimate?
In the realm of speech and conscience, American universities have faced demands to cancel speakers, punish offensive expression, or create “safe spaces” that insulate students from challenging ideas. While this is sometimes characterized as progressive politics rather than cultural difference, many of these demands come from students raised in societies where dissent is restricted and conformity enforced. The collision is not between left and right but between structural cultures that view free speech as dangerous versus those that view it as sacred.
These are not hypothetical dilemmas. They are playing out in school boards, courtrooms, and city councils across America. And in too many cases, officials freeze, terrified of being labeled intolerant.
The Trap of False Equivalence
The contemporary discourse on multiculturalism operates from a flawed premise: that criticizing any aspect of another culture is inherently bigoted. This assumption collapses performative and structural culture into one undifferentiated category. If all culture is merely expression, then all criticism becomes prejudice.
But this is a category error with profound consequences. Not all structural arrangements produce human flourishing. Some systematize oppression. Some institutionalize corruption. Some normalize violence. To pretend otherwise is not sophistication it is moral cowardice dressed up as tolerance.
Consider the question of women’s rights. American structural culture, hard-won through centuries of struggle, now holds that women possess equal legal standing, equal access to education and employment, equal voice in civic life. This was not always true, but it is true now, and it is not a matter of arbitrary preference.
Yet there exist cultures where women cannot travel without male permission, cannot testify in court with equal weight, cannot choose their husbands, cannot refuse their husbands, cannot inherit property on equal terms. To say that these systems are simply “different” rather than inferior is not cultural humility. It is a betrayal of every woman living under such constraints.
The same logic applies to freedom of conscience. American structural culture protects the right to believe, to doubt, to convert, to leave one’s faith without punishment. This principle cost blood to establish and constant vigilance to maintain. There are societies where apostasy is a crime, where blasphemy is punished, where religious minorities live as perpetual second-class citizens. These are not morally equivalent systems that we can afford to treat with indifferent neutrality.
What Assimilation Actually Means
This brings us to the uncomfortable word that has nearly disappeared from polite conversation: assimilation. The term has been so thoroughly demonized that many Americans now view it as synonymous with cultural erasure or ethnic prejudice. This is a tragic confusion.
Assimilation does not mean abandoning your grandmother’s recipes or forgetting your mother tongue. It does not require erasing ethnic identity or pretending that you do not remember where you came from. What it does require is alignment on structural fundamentals the weight-bearing principles that make a free, prosperous, and peaceful society possible.
A nation can welcome a thousand cuisines while insisting on one Constitution. It can accommodate many religious holidays while maintaining separation of church and state. It can hear dozens of languages spoken in homes while conducting civic business in a common tongue that allows democratic participation.
But it cannot accommodate structural norms that contradict its foundational principles without fracturing its own coherence. A country that accepts honor killings in the name of cultural sensitivity will cease to protect human life. A legal system that bends toward gender subordination will betray half its citizens. A society that excuses corruption as someone’s cultural background will rot from within.
The distinction is simple but essential: Welcome performative diversity generously. Examine structural differences rigorously.
Where Immigration Policy Goes Wrong
American immigration policy reflects our confusion on this point. We have constructed elaborate systems to verify that newcomers do not have criminal records or communicable diseases, but we are squeamish about asking whether they share our fundamental commitments to individual liberty, equality before the law, and democratic governance.
This is not because such questions are inappropriate. It is because we have lost confidence in our own values. We have been taught that asserting the superiority of any system is cultural imperialism. But this is absurd on its face. Systems that protect religious freedom are better than systems that impose religious conformity. Governments that respond to citizens are better than governments that exploit them. Societies that educate girls are better than societies that confine them.
These are not matters of taste. They are matters of fact.
When we admit newcomers from societies with incompatible structural cultures whether regarding gender equality, free speech, rule of law, or religious pluralism integration requires more than language classes and civics tests. It requires a genuine transfer of allegiance from old structural norms to new ones. This is not asking immigrants to hate where they came from. It is asking them to love where they are going enough to embrace the principles that make it worth coming to.
The alternative is not happy coexistence. It is the gradual erosion of the very liberties that made America attractive in the first place.
Lessons from Abroad
Other Western nations offer cautionary tales. Sweden, celebrated for its generous refugee policy, has seen the emergence of parallel societies in cities like Malmö, where Swedish law is routinely ignored and women face restrictions on movement and dress their Swedish neighbors would never tolerate. The Swedish government, reluctant to appear racist, allowed structural incompatibilities to fester until they became crises.
France has struggled for decades with tensions between republican values of laïcité strict secularism in public life and communities that view religious law as superseding civil authority. The result has been neither integration nor genuine pluralism, but a kind of cold standoff punctuated by periodic violence.
Germany’s experience with mass migration since 2015 has forced difficult conversations about sexual assault patterns, attitudes toward women, and the limits of Willkommenskultur when structural values clash. The infamous New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne in 2016 were not about ethnic prejudice. They were about behavioral norms specifically, norms regarding women’s bodies and public space.
These are not stories about the failure of performative diversity. They are warnings about the cost of ignoring structural incompatibility.
Rebuilding Moral Confidence
America’s greatest asset has always been its clarity of purpose. E pluribus unum out of many, one was never a promise that many separate peoples could coexist without common bonds. It was a declaration that many origins could unite around shared principles.
Those principles include:
Individual liberty: The primacy of the person over the collective, with rights that precede and transcend government.
Equality before the law: No person’s ethnic or religious background exempts them from or diminishes their standing under law.
Freedom of conscience: The right to believe, question, speak, and persuade without fear of punishment.
Limited government: Power constrained by constitution and dispersed through federalism.
Rule of law: Justice administered by blind procedure, not personal favor or group identity.
Gender equality: Women as full citizens with complete agency over their lives.
Protection of children: Minors shielded from abuse, exploitation, and forced labor.
These are not suggestions. They are not negotiable. They are the structural culture of the American experiment, and they must be transmitted to every generation native-born and newcomer alike.
This requires recovering moral confidence. Not arrogance, but clarity. The willingness to say: this is good, this is harmful, and this we will not bend on. A nation uncertain of its own values cannot integrate others. A society ashamed of its accomplishments will not preserve them.
Cultural confidence is not the same as ethnic prejudice. It is possible necessary, even to welcome the stranger while teaching them the house rules. A home can host many guests, but it cannot surrender its foundation to each visitor’s preference.
The Path Forward
What does this mean in practice?
For policymakers: Immigration policy should include frank assessment of structural cultural compatibility, not just skills and education. Applicants should be asked clearly about their views on women’s rights, religious freedom, free speech, and equality before the law. Those who cannot affirm these commitments should not be granted entry. This is not bigotry. It is basic prudence.
For educators: Schools should teach American structural culture explicitly and unapologetically. Children should learn not only that the First Amendment exists but why it matters. They should understand that gender equality was hard-won and must be defended. They should study civics not as a graduation requirement but as the foundation of citizenship. And when performative culture conflicts with structural values, the structural values must prevail.
For communities: Religious and ethnic organizations should be partners in integration, not obstacles to it. Leaders should actively combat practices incompatible with American law, even when those practices are traditional. This is not betrayal of heritage. It is responsible stewardship of the new home.
For citizens: We must recover the ability to distinguish bigotry from discernment. Mocking someone’s accent is bigotry. Opposing forced marriage is justice. Rejecting ethnic food is prejudice. Rejecting gender apartheid is principle. The difference is not subtle.
For all of us: We must reject the lie that tolerance requires approval of all practices, and that diversity means abandoning judgment. True tolerance knows what it can celebrate and what it must never surrender. Real diversity includes the diversity to say no, to insist that some things are right and some are wrong, and that America stands for something more than the lowest common denominator of world cultures.
The House and Its Foundation
A society survives not merely by what it celebrates but by what it preserves. The United States can host a rich tapestry of performative cultures languages, foods, festivals, dress, music precisely because it maintains a strong structural culture underneath. The moment we confuse the two, we endanger both.
Cultural appreciation is an act of curiosity and respect. Cultural acquiescence is an act of surrender. We can admire the beauty of another tradition without importing its injustices. We can learn from other societies without adopting their failures. We can welcome the world to our shores without losing our soul.
The choice before us is not between openness and xenophobia. It is between confident integration and aimless disintegration. Nations that forget what they stand for cease to stand at all.
If we lose the courage to defend the structural culture that made America exceptional the culture of liberty, equality, and human dignity we will eventually lose the freedom that made welcoming others possible in the first place. A house can host many guests, but it must keep its foundation intact.
The question is not whether America will continue to be diverse. It already is, and will remain so. The question is whether we will have the wisdom and courage to distinguish between the diversity that strengthens and the differences that fracture. Between the cultures we can celebrate and the structures we must never compromise.
Our future depends on getting that distinction right.