Effectronica posted:

This is why the Holocaust never happened- Jews and Roma are a fiction, a fable, having been assimilated centuries beforehand.

Gantolandon posted:

Sure thing dude, the Holocaust is a great example of cultural appropriation. Which integral elements of Jewish culture did the Nazis appropriate by murdering them?

Gantolandon posted:

Sure thing dude, the Holocaust is a great example of cultural appropriation. Which integral elements of Jewish culture did the Nazis appropriate by murdering them?

Effectronica posted:

Would you be kind enough to read what was actually written? This is not what I said.

Gantolandon posted:

What was written was a cryptic one liner, which main function was to appear edgy and funny at the same time.

BottledBodhisvata posted:

Is drinking coffee cultural appropriation?

7c Nickel posted:

It wasn't revived by people freaking out about cultural appropriation, it was revived by people dropping disingenuous images and questions poo poo and run style.

Effectronica posted:

Interesting attempt at telepathy, but the point was that if your theory was right, Jewish cultures and Romany cultures would have been destroyed centuries before, instead of existing to this day, and the Holocaust could never have happened. In other words, your theory, put out to sail the seas of history, immediately hit a reef and sank.

Gantolandon posted:

Actually, Jews lived in relative isolation until 19th century and their economy was at least partially separated from other Europeans. They were the people who did the jobs Christians thought as dishonorable - like usury or innkeeping. Even then their culture dissolved a lot in European, but it fared pretty well compared to others.

The Roma, on the other hand, they were the group with their own economy that barely participated in the European one and lived in isolation, so I'm not sure why their continued existence would disprove my point.

Brannock posted:

What do you find to be disingenuous about those images?

7c Nickel posted:

Because no one but trolls are claiming that poo poo like "Cultivation of Rice" is cultural appropriation. You might have just as well posted a big picture of a strawman 3 times in a row.

Brannock posted:

I'm not sure on the specifics of that person's argument about it, but quinoa was brought up earlier in this thread as an example of cultural appropriation. The difference to me between rice and quinoa seems to be one of longevity of presence in our culture, similar to how new religions are viewed with disdain but old religions get, so to speak, "grandfathered" in.

blowfish posted:

can a few more people please vote this thread 1? it's at 1.53 and despite my best efforts it's not back at poo poo rating yet~~~

Morkyz posted:

voted 5

Gantolandon posted:

Except that this presents it as more intentional and shrewd than it usually is. People just like to spread their cultures, no matter what. Cultures have to promote being spread, because without new people they are going to stagnate and die.

When two cultures intersect, the only way the ideas from one culture could enter the other is to make them more palatable. Or rather - the ideas that aren't palatable enough don't get an influx of new hosts who could spread them even further. This is how a lot of historical cultural appropriation used to be done - Roman adopting gods of the conquered people to their pantheons, or Christian missionaries adopting native legends to their religion. There were probably many Romans and Christians who didn't want to dilute their message, but it didn't matter because there were some who did and their ideas were the ones that got spread.

There is also the matter of cultures being closely connected with economic systems, which are in turn hard to separate from material world. Adopting the dominant culture is easier, because you can find its traces everywhere around you. It is also a no-brainer - it means more opportunities, more social contacts, better access to goods, etc. Everything else becomes a non-concern. Trying to preserve a culture without giving it their own resources and leaving it relatively isolated (so it could develop its own economy) is impossible. Without this, those cultures will inevitably dissolve, leaving at best some ideas without context that are going to be picked up by the dominant culture.

That's why fighting cultural appropriation is pointless. It's not what causes minority cultures to dissolve, it's just a symptom of their dissolution.

Effectronica posted:

You just described them as being fully integrated into the European economy as a distinct caste, but then you go around to how their "culture dissolved a lot", which uh, seems to deny the possibility of cultural change. Interesting, but no one will whirl on you and denounce you as a racist from the whiner camp.

So now we move on to the idea that Roma populations were economically isolated from Europe overall, which is something that requires a very unusual definition of "isolation" and relies primarily on an inaccurate stereotype borne of Western European attempts to deal with the Roma migration. In most of Eastern and Southern Europe, where the policies differed, substantial parts of the Roma population established sedentary or semi-nomadic lifestyles while retaining a Romani cultural identity. In any case, even the nomadic tinsmith-fortuneteller model from old horror movies is still a picture of a marginal caste that nevertheless is economically integrated.

Exclamation Marx posted:

Is this a model of cultural change that you developed yourself? Because treating it like the obvious truth when it's just based on your reckons is pretty weird.

Gantolandon posted:

If you live within a pretty insular culture that shuns unnecessary contact with outsiders, if people outside your culture at very least distrust you because of either real or imagined slights performed by your compatriots, if your only option to live decently in the bounds of the dominant culture is to completely uproot your previous life and lose support of your compatriots without any guarantee you'll be liked or even trusted, it's still isolation. It's hard to see someone as integrated if the society doesn't see them in any other role than an outsider and occasional scapegoat. Their economic relations with the rest of the Europe magnified their isolation even more, because even the roles they were able to perform were stereotypical.

Same with Jews - they were a part of European medieval economy, even an important one. Still, it amounted to performing roles considered impious by Christians and they didn't have many more career choices unless they converted (and even then were considered suspicious). For a long time, there were not many reasons for them to reach outside their culture, because they couldn't have expected anything good there anyway. A lot of them still integrated and lost their cultural identity, but enough remained to preserve it. There are still pretty different from the people who left Judea near the beginning of the first millenium.

Also, I'm not sure why did you bring Holocaust, because it was racially motivated, not culturally. Practicing Jews and easily identifiable Romani people were an easier target, but people who considered themselves Germans with wrong ancestors were still persecuted. It had nothing to do with integration or lacking of thereof.

Effectronica posted:

First of all, no they weren't. Stereotypes against Romani have been aimed at other nomadic groups like Travellers on the British Isles for a long time and the most likely conclusion is that stereotypes about Romani (thieves, tinsmiths, etc.) are derived from this association with other nomadic peoples rather than the other way around, apart from some mystical stereotypes (eg Tarot) which appear to relate to the belief that Romani were "Egyptian".

Second of all, you're using a very malleable definition of "isolation", since initially it seemed to require an independent economy, and now all it requires is simply being placed into an inferior caste.

Thirdly, if Jewish and Romani identity had disappeared centuries before, it would be hard, nay, impossible for antisemitism and antiziganism to survive, since they'd be aimed at invisible targets that would have disseminated themselves throughout the community and thus implicated most of the society. So there would be no Holocaust because none of the ideology that supported it would have any traction. It would be like trying to purge descendants of Robert the Bruce today.

Gantolandon posted:

I'm not sure how your first paragraph counters what I've written. Could you elaborate?

I never claimed that isolation required an independent economy, only that a culture can't survive unchanged with its economy completely integrated into the dominant one.

As for the Nazis, they considered everyone who didn't conform to their definition of racial purity as inferior. Slavs weren't targeted because of their distinct cultural identity, but because they were considered a lesser race and happened to live where Nazi Germany wanted to expand. Existing antisemitism made it easier for Hitler to begin purges, but even without an existing Jewish culture, the Jews could still have become a racial boogeyman.

Gantolandon posted:

I'm a bit baffled, because the way I presented my opinion wasn't very different from how anyone else did it within this thread.

quote:

When two cultures intersect, the only way the ideas from one culture could enter the other is to make them more palatable. Or rather - the ideas that aren't palatable enough don't get an influx of new hosts who could spread them even further. This is how a lot of historical cultural appropriation used to be done - Roman adopting gods of the conquered people to their pantheons, or Christian missionaries adopting native legends to their religion. There were probably many Romans and Christians who didn't want to dilute their message, but it didn't matter because there were some who did and their ideas were the ones that got spread.

SedanChair posted:

Exclamation Marx posted:

The replacement of a dominant culture is an inherently violent thing. It's not a matter of a conquering group watering down their culture to make it more palatable and then ingratiating themselves into the already existing one; rather an intentional suppression of the 'victim' culture (banning cultural practices, language ban, actual murder etc.) until it becomes damaged to the point of being unable to become a dominant culture again. Some residual elements of that culture might later become absorbed into the dominant one, like your Roman god and Christian festival examples, but those are fairly meaningless concessions in the wider scheme of things.

rudatron posted:

The fight against cultural appropriation is the fight for strict boundaries of cultural identity and, therefore, segregation.

rudatron posted:

But the acts you listed are distinctly different from cultural appropriation: language bans, murder and banning cultural practices and so on. They are specific actions of a state apparatus that is directly acting against a minority group (Or, in the case of murder, sometimes leniency against perpetrators of hate crimes). Cultural appropriation is distinct from those actions and, were you to model it, you would end up with something similar to what you quoted (culture-as-mind-virus).

In fact, cultural appropriation is the only way for two distinct cultures to actually mix: Each approach of one culture against 'The Other' must by definition be misinformed (they would not be 'Others' were it not). Elements are removed from context, some are kept and others are thrown away. This is normal. The fight against cultural appropriation is the fight for strict boundaries of cultural identity and, therefore, segregation.

TheImmigrant posted:

Yes. Thank you for putting this so succinctly.

rudatron posted:

But the acts you listed are distinctly different from cultural appropriation: language bans, murder and banning cultural practices and so on. They are specific actions of a state apparatus that is directly acting against a minority group (Or, in the case of murder, sometimes leniency against perpetrators of hate crimes). Cultural appropriation is distinct from those actions and, were you to model it, you would end up with something similar to what you quoted (culture-as-mind-virus).

In fact, cultural appropriation is the only way for two distinct cultures to actually mix: Each approach of one culture against 'The Other' must by definition be misinformed (they would not be 'Others' were it not). Elements are removed from context, some are kept and others are thrown away. This is normal. The fight against cultural appropriation is the fight for strict boundaries of cultural identity and, therefore, segregation.

Exclamation Marx posted:

I actually took out a paragraph saying that I didn't think this type of change is cultural appropriation, because upon reflection I wasn't sure one way or another — the suppression and then adoption/bastardisation of the pagan festivals we now call Easter or Christmas isn't that far removed from playing dress-up in a war bonnet. I think that in general there is a view that the "lesser" cultures are unable to evolve by themselves, so you see this kind of "look at the poor savages, thank goodness that they were forcibly civilised" attitude.

The cultural appropriation line is (obviously, looking at the discussion itt) hard to pin down. For me there is a clear but difficult to articulate difference between an "authentic" X cuisine restaurant; a restarant that finds X cuisine trendy and so has decided to replicate it; and a circumstance where X cuisine has become an accepted part of the melting pot. 1 isn't CA, 2 is, and I dunno about 3 but I feel like it isn't.

Effectronica posted:

No, it isn't. Like, you can't just blithely ignore all the other terms sociology has developed to understand cultural interactions (transculturation, syncretism, cultural exchange, etc.) in order to declare everything appropriation because you, personally, are unwilling to distinguish between Thai takeout and New Age "vision quests". Furthermore, what you're really saying is that cultures must inevitably destroy one another in a pseudo-Darwinian conflict, when you say appropriation is the only way for cultures to mix, but that does not happen. People who read Finnish-language newspapers today should not exist under this model. There should not be any sort of regional subcultures. Alternatively, you're responding to someone who defines appropriation as "inherently damaging cultural borrowing" with "appropriation is all cultural borrowing".

I mean, seriously, what you're proposing is that the Rolling Stones could not exist without the suppression of black rockers by a racist American society, and that allowing black artists to make rock-n-roll would prevent white artists from doing so. Somehow.

rudatron posted:

Equating appropriation with cultural destruction is disingenuous, and I'm not sure darwin has much to say about culture. But that is not the meat of the issue. The examples presented so far ITT to distinguish Proper Cultural Exchange (good) from Cultural Appropriation (bad) have either depended the dividing factor being ignorance, commodification or as part of economic oppression.

The first is, as I said, misguided, but it's also somewhat elitist. The two acts are, in this case, not different in kind but in degree, and the distinction between them seems arbitrary (most likely based on what the original author regards as as their own knowledge on the subject). But engagement of individuals from one culture with elements of another culture will always exist on a spectrum on information/ignorance (and the distribution will probably be Gaussian) - to regard everything to the left of some arbitrary point as 'bad' is to place a barrier of engagement for the less informed that, functionally, only serves to reduce cultural mixing. "You Must Be This Informed To Partake In Cultural Exchange". In its enforcement, it also places very hard boundaries on cultural identity. This is adequately a part of This Culture and this is not. That's not normal, and it leads inevitably to segregation.

But one of the first few pages in this thread says the difference is based on conspicuous consumption, which is ludicrous: All culture is used as conspicuous consumption, even within itself. Elements of cultures are already commodities as soon as they are distributed, either by status or price. Kimonos aren't cheap, and not everyone is allowed to wear the headdresses. Signalling to others your own level of acculturation has always been intertwined with status, wealth and class.

Economic oppression is the most obviously least associated with the appropriation itself - black rockers were suppressed, but them being suppressed had nothing to do with the cultural exchange of rock music in the first place. The Rolling Stones might still exist absent that suppression (but who knows, butterfly theory and all - maybe they become landscape artists). Quinoa being priced out of the locals is again a function of an already existing economic inequality between the locals and the wider economy. In this sense, demanding an end to cultural appropriation here is literally arguing for segregation until the economic inequality is over - as long as that economic inequality exists, any cultural exchange will produce a 'gentrification' effect, simply based on the buying-power disparity. But the buying-power disparity cannot be a result of of the chronologically-later cultural appropriation.

Effectronica posted:

People are using appropriation to refer to (a class of) destructive cultural interactions, because those are the only ones they consider to be bad. Nobody thinks that Americans eating schnitzel is bad, because it doesn't impinge on the cultures that originally produced schnitzel at all. People think that white Americans wearing kimono as a fashion statement is bad because they believe it impinges on Japanese-American (and the broader Asian-American) cultures and damages them. People that are informed generally agree that "spirit animals" is a bad thing because it damages Native religions and cultures.

rudatron posted:

The fight against cultural appropriation is the fight for strict boundaries of cultural identity and, therefore, segregation.

7c Nickel posted:

In the same sense that Black History Month is segregation.

blowfish posted:

loving lol

~japanese-american~ culture, a distinct culture, which is furthermore different from true nipponese japanese culture

also all asian cultures are a monolithic block and an attack on one of them is an attack on all of them

in addition if all other japanese-americans were still to [asian country]-americans what the japanese are to [asian country]'s population (who we will consider a mysterious uniform oriental block of superior culture) relates to the japanese they would totally not laugh out loud in schadenfreude at fifth generation japanese in amerikkka getting butthurt about weaboos


Holy gently caress, this thread is poo poo, as are all posters in it except maybe rudatron
_{but hey, at least it shows that the only culture of most goons is bacteria}

Effectronica posted:

People are using appropriation to refer to (a class of) destructive cultural interactions, because those are the only ones they consider to be bad. Nobody thinks that Americans eating schnitzel is bad, because it doesn't impinge on the cultures that originally produced schnitzel at all. People think that white Americans wearing kimono as a fashion statement is bad because they believe it impinges on Japanese-American (and the broader Asian-American) cultures and damages them. People that are informed generally agree that "spirit animals" is a bad thing because it damages Native religions and cultures.

In fact, your basic problem is that you think of culture solely in terms of cash, and warp everything to fit within this money-monomania. Thus, since we can warp everything to be about economics, we can ignore culture because economics is the "real issue". This is bizarre when you consider the issue that basically made cultural appropriation part of pop leftist discourse, the wearing of buckskin fringe, because economic motivations were very distant from why it was worn and why it was abandoned. It's bizarre when you consider historical cases.

Effectronica posted:

This thread started with an article by a Chinese-American dude complaining about kimono. You should probably complain to him, instead of to me. Also, if you really think immigrants either exactly replicate their mother culture or abandon it entirely, you're... actually of average intelligence for this thread. Not to mention that I didn't even endorse it as a true statement, even. So, in conclusion, you and the rest of the people that obsess solely over money money money should get the reward of Crassus.

Miltank posted:

How does the Disneyland spirit animal attraction damage native culture and religion? What is the harm? I honestly don't understand.

The American pop left is garbage. The economic motivation for why buckskin were being worn was the economic investment of a marketing campaign, and the reason why it was opposed was because the Navajo claimed the exclusive right to sell them. It all really does come down to economics I'm sorry to say.

blowfish posted:

prepare to be assimilated