Although I immediately empathized with your uneasiness (Brazilian here, mixed-race here) I have to argue that most of what we consider cultural — defined as “free from direct genetic determination” — is still largely immune to political initiative, too deeply unconscious or complex to be affected by anything we could call purposeful intention, design, artifice. This is the realm of ethnicity and other things.

You poke it, and it punches you back. You cut it, and it slices you.

“Cultural” things are also natural things, even though not biologically natural. “Nature” itself is not a binary concept, there are levels of naturalness. This is, in my experience, a disturbing notion for most people.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling anybody to just do nothing. What I’m saying is that I am not a Utopian on these matters. The most effective ways to go about it are those that navigate the changes that spontaneously happen — and ours is a world on which they do happen, that’s the good news.