Cultural Appropriation

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Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Jakcson posted:

'Das Kapital', volumes 1, 2, and 3, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

It's not cool. Please stop appropriating communist culture unless you're born in Eastern Europe or China.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 08:19

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 17:32

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

icantfindaname posted:

Asian-Americans are the ones making the complaints about kimonos and kanji tattoos and poo poo. Asian-Asians don't give a poo poo. So explain to me how those things are fine and dandy unless you completely disregard the Asian-American perspective. It's hilarious you're accusing me of denying them agency when you're denying them ownership of their own heritage. I'm not the one who decided that kimonos and kanji are part of their heritage, they are

How is it different than kimonos and kanji tattoos? Symbols don't mean anything without interpretation, and Asian-Americans have determined that those things are close enough to gross racial caricatures to complain. The definition of 'gross racial caricature' is entirely subjective.

That's pretty much SJW.txt - the notion that a guy whose grandparents immigrated to the States from Osaka, doesn't speak Japanese and has never been in Asia, somehow gets more right to decide who can use kanji than a person born and raised in Japan.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 17:31

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Jarmak posted:

Really? This is what you were getting at? No, some 2nd and 3rd generation kids who are a minority within their own minority group do not get dictatorial powers over what people are allowed to appropriate from a culture they never actually lived in. Also trying to tie diffusion of the culture of immigrant groups to stuff like the destruction of the Native American culture through the label of "cultural appropriation" would be offensive if it wasn't so laughably stupid.

The best thing is that this mindset fits the definition of cultural appropriation like a glove. You have a group who is relatively privileged by speaking a more popular language and being able to disseminate their ideas faster. They took an element of the culture which they don't participate in and redefined its meaning to their needs. The whole reason they are able to be angry at white dudes getting kanji tattoos is because they took an alphabet commonly used by an entire nation and presented it as a set of sacred and mysterious symbols which only people of Asian descent can use. :irony:

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 18:57

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Obdicut posted:

This is pretty simple. You're actually learning Chinese. So it's not appropriation.

Most of the problems people have in this thread with the concept of cultural appropriation (But isn't it just racism? Yes, it often is. So what? Am I appropriating if I become a professor of Chinese and name my house something in Chinese? No, you didn't appropriate, you participated) would be solved by thinking about it for five seconds before posting.

The tattoo thing is trivial. It's a trivial annoyance. it's still an annoyance. A very mildly racist thing is still racist. Nobody is saying that any bit of cultural appropriation is just as wrong as some huge gigantic bit of it.

The person who said that it doesn't matter because people are far away is still my favorite, that poo poo was hilarious. And who used 'but the Japanese appropriate culture so it must be okay', that was also a knee-slapper.

How does your definition hold up to Americans with Japanese ancestors who barely even know katakana, but still feel obliged to defend the sanctity of their people's mysterious, inscrutable character set? Because that's what was established within this thread - people in Japan are perfectly OK with this and this issue is most grating for people who don't use kanji in their everyday lives (and probably don't even do this often).

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 22:07

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Obdicut posted:

It's not about 'sanctity' at all, or about actually using it. One of the aspects of the integration of the Japanese into American society was that Japanese were forced to abandon their culture, language, etc. in order to integrate into the US. Part of this is natural assimilation, but a lot of it was due to intense hostility to Japanese culture--and lack of sufficient numbers/constant immigrants to refresh the culture. So it acts as a reminder that the reason they've lost this connection is that there was a huge social and cultural penalty to their ancestors here in the US for acting/speaking Japanese.

It seems that their connection to Japanese culture is very tenuous and the reason of their outrage is that they didn't get to participate in it? Wasn't cultural appropriation supposed to be bad because it takes away the control over a particular culture from the people who actually use it and changes it without their consent?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 22:54

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

blackguy32 posted:

I disagree. Just because a bunch of people agree on something doesn't make it right. You are no one to judge if people's claims about Katy Perry are bullshit. People say the same thing about Iggy Azalea and people have real grievances against her. You are basically taking the "stop being so sensitive" stance instead of simply being respectful of people's wishes.

Who are you to say a wolf otherkin is bullshit? Just a bunch of people agreeing on something doesn't make that rigbt. You are no one to judge it. People say the same thing about blackface and people have real grievances against it.

If someone wants something to be true, who are you to say otherwise? Unless it's bigoted according to my personal definition, of course, then no holds barred.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 09:50

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Obdicut posted:

Everyone, including me, has said that cases should be judged on a case-by-case basis. Remember, the 'remedy' for most cultural appropriation is 'participate, rather than appropriate', and I can't see why that'd ever be resisted as an idea.

If you are an outsider, the boundary between appropriation and participation will always be blurred, though. Your interpretation of the culture you try to understand will be influenced by yours and, by being able to communicate faster and be understood by more people, your interpretation will always trump theirs. A dominant culture will always do that by definition. You can either avoid any contact with a minority culture entirely, or accept the fact you're going to contaminate it simply by interacting with it.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 12:37

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Obdicut posted:

Sure. I don't know why people obsess over this. It is true about anything. There are no sharp dividing lines.

You're not 'contaminating' it. The point isn't to keep that culture pure, it's to make the transmission voluntary, and a real exchange. A big part of this happens at the economic level, and you're focusing only on the cultural bits. There can be cases where the cultural transmission is completely voluntary, like with Brubeck giving black musicians the chance to learn from him by integrating his bands. But it doesn't end with that, it's also the decision of Time Magazine to choose Brubeck and not Ellington for their cover, it's the choices of owners of music venues to segregate, and in the end the unwillingness of the culture as a whole to listen to black music because of moral panic, which wasn't just some gestalt of human consciousness, but was an active policy pursued by outspoken racists. Human beings are not naturally fanatically racist. Humans may or may not be naturally kinda racist, but the amount of racism in the US was insane. It got that way because of actual people doing actual things, fomenting hate, using it for political ends, and making money off of it, sometimes by directly ripping off black songs and sometimes by just not fighting to integrate, to get white audiences to listen to black music, to just going along with the racism while shrugging and saying there's nothing they can do.

It's worth noting that these transactions will never be really voluntary, in the sense that the dominant culture will always have more clout. Even by encouraging majority consumers to listen to minority music creates an economic pressure on minority musicians to cater to the needs of the majority. Obviously it's much better than just copying everything and never crediting your inspiration, but it doesn't leave much control in the minority hands anyway.

The problem begins when crediting original authors is not possible, because the copied element is a part of the public domain, like Kanji or kimonos. Cultures are not organizations, there is no committee that could approve your derivative work. This thread's general stance is that even if one person gets offended by you using elements of their culture, this offence is fully legitimate. Even if the person in question has only a tenuous link to the culture in question, it doesn't make their outrage invalid. In practice, this means you should probably steer clear from other cultures unless you want to offend someone.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 14:36

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Obdicut posted:

It makes it all the more ethical imperative to try your absolute best to include that minority group, on every level, I agree.

My stance is that 'fully legitimate' is a dumb thing to call someone getting offended. If someone is actually offended, they're actually offended. It may be dumb, but it's an actual emotion they're experiencing. Some people are offended by white people marrying black people. We're not going to do anything about that, because they're offended at something that's good. All we can do is take a look at the offense on a case-by-case basis and make a decision. If wearing cross-cultural fashion matters more to you than offending a group of people, then go for it. It's hardly some huge sin, and it's arguable that you're doing good, despite appropriating, by challenging the dominant norms. At a certain trivial point, it's like people becoming 'fans' of the Red Sox when they started doing well--those of us who were fans knew they weren't, know their interest was fake, and it kind of hosed up some of our environments and was irritating. I'm perfectly happy agreeing that we should focus on larger issues of cultural appropriation than clothing, but if we happen to be talking about cultural appropriation, might as well cover that too. However, as I've already stipulated, it's a trivial thing, as is the kanji tattoo stuff.

We're doing much better in this era about the appropriation of hip-hop and rap, versus to how well we did with the appropriation of rock and roll. Progress is possible. Nifty.

Outrage can totally be illegitimate and you even provided a suitable example in the bolded part of your post. You even seem to agree with that, given that you told it's perfectly OK to ignore someone's indignation from various reasons. It's natural to shun some values and opinions and even the most stalwart social justice activists tend to do that. A half of this thread is composed of angry posters calling others names for not agreeing with their definition of cultural appropriation. The only time when some of them pretend that judging others is wrong is when their side is attacked.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 19:14

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

Let us English posted:

Engagement rings are "down payment on a virgin vagina" http://www.salon.com/2013/10/08/engagement_rings_are_barbaric_partner/

(For the record, all the "villains" on Thomas and Friends are the dirty diesel engines. I'd like to think there was a good environmental message in there, but when the good engines pump out white smoke and the bad engines pump out black smoke � and they are all pumping out smoke � it's not hard to make the leap into the race territory.)"http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/22/thomas-the-tank-engine-children-parents#start-of-comments "

If someone decides that the color of smoke in a children cartoon is a veiled insult against their race, who are you to tell them otherwise? Have you noticed that the coal they burn in their furnaces is always black? Take that, reactards.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2015 11:04

Gantolandon: Aug 19, 2012

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