Monday, May 7, 2018

Hybrid Vigor and Cultural Colonialism

Outbreeding enhancement (hybrid vigor) is the improved functioning of any biological offspring whose parents have crossbred. More vigor and other improved qualities are often but not always the outcome. This is an established fact in science. 

I’m bringing this up in connection with a problem raised by Michael Wong in a comment about cultural appropriation vs. diversity. 

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of the customs, practises, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another.  For example, a Californian eats Lima beans without acknowledging that they were developed near Lima, Peru. Or, more to the point, Pat Boone sings songs developed by Little Richard. That was a very bad thing, believe me.

On TV I watched a Vietnamese-American USC professor say, as an aside, that the problem with his having English as a first language was that it was a form of colonial appropriation. (He apparently believed that he should have grown up with Vietnamese as his first language.)

In short, if the West adopts something from another culture, that may be an inappropriate thing for the West to do. And if another culture adopts something from the West, that may be an inappropriate thing for the West to allow (colonialism). (For some reason the West takes the blame in both directions,)


Nations like Canada and the United States, formed by mixing and borrowing from all sorts of cultures, are, in a sense, inappropriate, I suppose. Do they get big doses of something I might call cultural hybrid vigor? Was the super-burrito invented in San Francisco? Do beavers have orange teeth? (yes)

No comments: