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Here is what happens, in my opinion.

Culture is inspired, informed, by certain higher values (well, if we are fortunate). Whatever your cultural background, whatever there is to admire in it is informed by some higher value that works itself out over time in the cultural life of a people.

When you love what is good in your culture, it is easy to focus on the cultural expression of those values rather than the values themselves. That is human. There is nothing sinister about that. What is toxic, and which also happens in every culture, is to seek to divorce the culture from the higher value by focusing exclusively on the culture.

An example would be Mussolini focusing on Roman-ness, and wrapping himself in Italian culture as a way of denying the effects of 1900 years of Christian tradition in molding whatever there was to admire about Italian culture. I see it in leftists in Latin America who associate themselves with common cultural icons in order to hide the fact that they don't believe in the values that formed whatever is decent at the heart of those cultures.

The academic, left-oriented drive for "authenticity" is usually a way of shifting the focus away from the higher values by focusing on the culture itself.

Leftists in the US occasionally do it, laying on thick the "good-old-boy" mannerisms to hide the fact that they do not believe in the things most good-old-boys believe in. People become experts on making hand-built banjos to hide or compensate for the fact that they despise what traditional America stands for.

America will be lost, not because Mexicans cross the border, but because people who despise the higher values we believe in are the ones teaching our kids. The barbarians at the gate, the teeming masses who do not believe in the founding principles of our nation, are the kids graduating from the average high school or college. Thats the problem.

The average Mexican crossing the border probably has a better idea what America is about than the average kid lining up to get his diploma.