Yes, some cultural practices are more “valid” than others

The unhinged reaction to Kemi Badenoch’s recent comments exposes the moral confusion of her critics.

One wonders what cultural relativists would make of the Aztecs. If they could travel back in time, how might they console the bawling infants who were being sacrificed to Tlaloc, the god of rain and earthly fertility? “Don’t complain,” they would probably say, “this is just your culture”.

These are the sorts of people who this week have taken to social media to berate Kemi Badenoch for denying that “all cultures are equally valid” in an article for The Telegraph. For context, here is the quotation in full:

“Culture is more than cuisine or clothes. It’s also customs which may be at odds with British values. We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.”

With depressing predictability, these remarks have prompted many to decry Badenoch as a “fascist”, a “racist”, an “extremist” and all those other epithets that have been denuded of any significance through continual misuse. And yet she was entirely right.

The folly of cultural relativism is usually tied to a loathing of Western imperialism and a reluctance to criticise any nation that has faced historical mistreatment at its hands. Opponents of cultural relativism see it as the manifestation of a superiority complex, a sour vestige of Empire and the paternalistic assumption that our civilisation is best. At a time when words and violence are deemed to be synonymous, the condemnation of unfamiliar cultural mores is seen as an extension of colonial oppression.

It is of course true that ethical standards vary according to time and place, but this does not mean that we should not be able to make moral judgements about the value of one cultural norm over another. The cohesion of our way of life depends upon it. If we decide that all morality is relative, then the very notion of Right and Wrong becomes redundant. We may as well abandon the concept of a moral compass altogether.