You ever been at the lunch table when someone makes a joke, and everyone laughs except you? And later, someone says, "You just had to be there." To me, that is culture. Or more succinctly, culture is just a combination of inside jokes.
You can think of the mechanics of an inside joke like this:
Children of immigrants inherit the delivery, the language, and the rituals. We think we have the setup too, because we were raised in it. But our context is lacking in some sense. We weren't there when the joke was made. So when everyone else laughs, we're stuck contemplating instead of enjoying. Eventually, you start to suspect the whole thing isn't for you, even though you've technically 'been there.'
I used to think that once I learned Igbo fluently, I'd be able to pass my culture on to my children comfortably. But language is just the delivery. And while my kids might inherit some of the setup, it's not guaranteed. Without a conscious effort to make the laughter commonplace, the jokes won't land for them either.
Culture helps create an otherness for those who don't "get it". This is the core tension that anyone with multiple histories deals with. You need to be able to balance your inclusion in one group with the consequential exclusion of others from that same group, namely, other parts of yourself.
An obvious solution to this tension would be to make society (read: yourself) more homogeneous. But the problem is when everyone's in on the joke, nothing is funny. Culture requires differentiation. We have to do it while others don't. That's why, as black people, we're quick to retire language that gets co-opted by others. So there's an element of the inside joke as a force for driving change. 1
However, it can also be the same force that maintains consistency. To rise in any organization or society, you have to prove that you get it. Inside jokes explain why we make our best followers leaders. In particular, inside jokes motivate tradition. When a cultural practice no longer serves us, there can be immense pressure to maintain the status quo. But "That's just the way we've always done it" is not the kind of phrase that's concerned with longevity. It cares more about distinction. When people worry about losing culture, they worry about losing what makes them different from others.
This idea that clinging to culture is important should help you understand that the default is not to become more homogenous over time. If anything, homogeneity over time gets treated as a social ill. That's why you see people react so violently to immigration. The "melting pot" of America still needs to have its distinct flavors. When we accuse others of "having no culture", we're really saying that there are no jokes that only they get. Their "culture" is really just water to us fish.
The 'no culture' comment is interesting because invisibility can come from opposite directions. For some, the group's culture disappears because it's everywhere. Owning the cultural capital makes it the default. But for others (usually black people), it shows up as covert prestige. Power that is recognized in adoption rather than by institutions. AAVE is embedded in Gen Z slang, but still missing in corporate America.
I guess my point in all of this is two-fold. To start, having the language of jokes as culture makes it easier to spot exactly where culture plays a role in our lives. Anything that can be understood without explanation is culture.
Culture is funny in that way. It can help us create meaningful relationships with others. It can instill a sense of belonging. It can even help us understand who we are. But it does so by telling us who we are, and showing us who we aren't.