Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
Of course you can engage a culture without belonging to it. Open cultures exist. What do you define ethnicity as? "Ethnic food" is a common way to refer to the food of other cultures and the term clearly has nothing to do with people's race. Eating a ton of Italian food won't make me Italian, but moving to Italy could make me Italian, and I wouldn't change my ancestry in either case.
The United States has many different ethnicities sharing a common American history, literature, and art; the same is true in many countries that are built on a foundation of civic nationalism. In an ethnostate premised on ethnic nationalism, there is a deliberate conflation between culture and ethnicity; there it becomes the dominant groupthink, set in stone by government policy, and endlessly rammed down your throat by propaganda.