Let us English posted:

Rock & Roll came about as a fusion between African American Music and European American country music.

I'll give you three guesses as to who got all the money.

get that OUT of my face posted:

cool fact: the guy who discovered Elvis said he was looking for a white guy that sounded black so he could sell the music better

using rock n roll as an example: if say that it's bad that it was first sold to the public as white music to make more money, you're good. if you say that it's bad for this kind of music to be allowed to blend in the first place, then you're an idiot. those are pretty much the boundaries

alternatively, it's like porn: you know it when you see it

Patrick Spens posted:

To be clear, I'm not, and have never been Catholic. And the necessity of re-contextualization doesn't change its offensiveness. It becoming a new thing necessarily debases the original meaning.

Wheeee posted:

even in this thread there are people attempting to create arguments which respect the idea of cultural appropriation, and nobody can actually construct a framework, because it is ultimately a facile bullshit idea

culture isnt special, no not even yours, and it is ever fluid and changing and evolving

identity politics is reactionary cancer

RaySmuckles posted:

a bunch of mop-headed british guys?

Futuresight posted:

See, and I've said similar in another thread recently but whatever, but this is why cultural appropriation is a bad concept to use generally. If black artists were rewarded for their work in rock and roll, then that guy discovering Elvis wouldn't be a problem. The problem was not that Elvis made black music and sold it well because he looked white, it's that the artists he was cribbing from didn't sell well because they were black. Eliminate Elvis entirely and it's still messed up the black artists didn't get exposure because of their blackness.

The entire key to the situation being messed up is whether or not the original artists are deprived because of racism. It looks like appropriation is the problem because the point of appropriation is where it becomes clear. Before white artists adopt it and do well you could just think hey maybe white people just don't like rock and roll / rap / whatever, and the white artists proves that's not the case and it was some manner of racism that was keeping those artists down (maybe racism in the audience, maybe racism in promoters/DJs/etc). Thus all the negative gets foisted on the appropriation when it belongs on an earlier much more serious problem.

Much like culture itself, cultural appropriation can be an interesting descriptive area of study for Academia and can tell us things about how different groups behave and why. But it's really not a good idea to use it as a prescriptive concept in society. Nobody should be wondering whether something is part of their culture before they do it, or worry something is appropriation of another culture before they do it. Just do whatever and don't worry about culture, if it's "cultural appropriation" and wrong then it can be explained as wrong for entirely different reasons anyway. Like dude don't wear that headdress because that's an important symbol to some people and you're going to upset them by using it so frivolously. Done. No culture needed.

El Pollo Blanco posted:

Love internet socialists trying to own the libs by handwaving the concept that institutional racism led to non-whites having their art stolen and monetised for white capitalist profit

Because they're mad someone on the internet said their dreds are racist once

Wheeee posted:

read thread? no, post!

Al! posted:

Conch Shell Corp posted:

That limo had a wife and kids



this poor child is now an orphan RIP

Lastgirl posted:

"you're the animals, you're the animals" I insist as I continue to spew vitriolic, divisive and shallow rhetoric

Lindsey O. Graham posted:

mrbradlymrmartin posted:

oh you finally showed up to the thread all about you

Lindsey O. Graham posted:

you know it hon!

Taintrunner posted:

this is such a stretch that it was no surprise you leaned over here from D&D

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

its when corporations turn elements of a marginalized culture into intellectual property op

SimonCat posted:

In an example of how it nothing is authentic, I knew Chinese immigrants to the US who opened a Chinese food restaurant that served the same Americanized Chinese food as everywhere else and their kitchen staff (all the cooks) were Mexicans.

RaySmuckles posted:

the idea of cultural appropriation makes we wonder if any of its proponents have ever been involved in a subculture

the whole experience of being in a subculture is listening to everyone bitch about who is the most pure, how institutional powers seek to oppress and co-opt their subculture, and complain that any mildly successful variant of their genre is a sellout or created by the labels to sell better.

swapping class for race, punk was appropriated too.

but once again, no one cares because the modern concept of cultural appropriation is inherently tied to race, despite the fact that cultural appropriation exists in all facets of cultural exchange. its the pairing with race that gives it the outrage factor and demands that it be taken seriously. but it also damages the idea because by making cultural appropriation exclusively tied to race it fails to be able to give simpler, more obvious answers like "black musicians got screwed because the country was racist and that's how capitalism works," instead opting for some weird sanctification of minority culture and demanding it be protected by segregation.

its all very strange

a funny example is all the people (or maybe just one guy a couple times) who said white people can't open a sushi restaurant. like, lol, come on buddy, people can make whatever loving food they want. lol at the thought that they should put on their menu "OWNER IS NOT JAPANESE". if you prepare japanese food good enough to open a restaurant then loving great.

people in this thread posted things like "the california role is not really japanese or sushi" which is so loving stupid. do you get upset too at modern american's complete transformation of germany's "hamburgers" or "frankfurters?"

after the chinese dress thing there was allegedly a massive outpouring of support from china with people saying things like (not a quote) "we think its great that people in america celebrate our culture!" but then it was argued that "the actual chinese peoples' opinions don't matter because its really more about the immigrants who experienced racism first hand here, and that their experience of ostracization over rules the actual people from china." all of this compounded even more by the fact that the chinese themselves are jumping whole hog onto western culture and absolutely no one gives a flying gently caress about that.

i think it all stems from american exceptionalism. the truth is american culture is sort of closed off, despite ironically being a meltingpot. we're quick to judge and hyper reactionary. we really believe that what we have is already the best. so there is no sharing, only stealing, dominating, appropriating. from what i understand places like great britain had a very different approach to other cultures. they were more than happy to say "dag that indian food is way better than ours. lets just co-opt all their cooking and for generations to come people will think chicken tikka masala is indian!" the originators still get shut out from any economic benefits because that's capitalism. like, maybe if american's were more open to at least paying lip service to the cultures we were stealing from it wouldn't be as much of a deal, or rather, the power dynamics of economics would be more thoroughly apparent

mrbradlymrmartin posted:

dont worry i still how 2 make ur eggs sug

Lindsey O. Graham posted:

El Pollo Blanco posted:

Love internet socialists trying to own the libs by handwaving the concept that institutional racism led to non-whites having their art stolen and monetised for white capitalist profit

Because they're mad someone on the internet said their dreds are racist once

some idiot that doesnt know what shes talking about probably posted:

Within current debates about race and difference, mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgment and enjoyment of racial difference. The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture. Cultural taboos around sexuality and desire are transgressed and made explicit as the media bombards folks with a message of difference no longer based on the white supremacist assumption that “blondes have more fun.” The “real fun” is to be had by bringing to the surface all those “nasty” unconscious fantasies and longings about contact with the Other embedded in the secret (not so secret) deep structure of white supremacy.

...

To make one’s self vulnerable to the seduction of difference, to seek an encounter with the Other, does not require that one relinquish forever one’s mainstream positionality. When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure,the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other.

...

Cultural appropriation of the Other assuages feelings of deprivation and lack that assault the psyches of radical white youth who choose to be disloyal to western civilization. Concurrently, marginalized groups, deemed Other, who have been ignored, rendered invisible, can be seduced by the emphasis on Otherness, by its commodification, because it offers the promise of recognition and reconciliation. When the dominant culture demands that the Other be offered as sign that progressive political change is taking place, that the American Dream can indeed be inclusive of difference, it invites a resurgence of essentialist cultural nationalism.The acknowledged Other must assume recognizable forms. Hence, it is not African American culture formed in resistance to contemporary situations that surfaces, but nostalgic evocation of a “glorious” past.

...

Those progressive white intellectuals who are particularly critical of “essentialist” notions of identity when writing about mass culture, race, and gender have not focused their critiques on white identity and the way essentialism informs representations of whiteness. It is always the non-white, or in some cases the non-heterosexual Other, who is guilty of essentialism. Few white intellectuals call attention to the way in which the contemporary obsession with white consumption of the dark Other has served as a catalyst for the resurgence of essentialist based racial and ethnic nationalism,Black nationalism, with its emphasis on black separatism, is resurging as a response to the assumption that white cultural imperialism and white yearning to possess theOther are invading black life, appropriating and violating black culture. As a survival strategy, black nationalism surfaces most strongly when white cultural appropriation of black culture threatens to decontextualize and thereby erase knowledge of the specific historical and social context of black experience from which cultural productions and distinct black styles emerge. Yet most white intellectuals writing critically about black culture do not see these constructive dimensions of black nationalism and tend to see it instead as naive essentialism, rooted in notions of ethnic purity that resemble white racist assumptions.

RaySmuckles posted:

a funny example is all the people (or maybe just one guy a couple times) who said white people can't open a sushi restaurant. like, lol, come on buddy, people can make whatever loving food they want. lol at the thought that they should put on their menu "OWNER IS NOT JAPANESE". if you prepare japanese food good enough to open a restaurant then loving great.

people in this thread posted things like "the california role is not really japanese or sushi" which is so loving stupid. do you get upset too at modern american's complete transformation of germany's "hamburgers" or "frankfurters?"

...

i think it all stems from american exceptionalism. the truth is american culture is sort of closed off, despite ironically being a meltingpot. we're quick to judge and hyper reactionary. we really believe that what we have is already the best. so there is no sharing, only stealing, dominating, appropriating. from what i understand places like great britain had a very different approach to other cultures. they were more than happy to say "dag that indian food is way better than ours. lets just co-opt all their cooking and for generations to come people will think chicken tikka masala is indian!" the originators still get shut out from any economic benefits because that's capitalism. like, maybe if american's were more open to at least paying lip service to the cultures we were stealing from it wouldn't be as much of a deal, or rather, the power dynamics of economics would be more thoroughly apparent

Wheeee posted:

owning the libs by being white

RaySmuckles posted:

the idea of cultural appropriation makes we wonder if any of its proponents have ever been involved in a subculture

the whole experience of being in a subculture is listening to everyone bitch about who is the most pure, how institutional powers seek to oppress and co-opt their subculture, and complain that any mildly successful variant of their genre is a sellout or created by the labels to sell better.

swapping class for race, punk was appropriated too.

but once again, no one cares because the modern concept of cultural appropriation is inherently tied to race, despite the fact that cultural appropriation exists in all facets of cultural exchange. its the pairing with race that gives it the outrage factor and demands that it be taken seriously. but it also damages the idea because by making cultural appropriation exclusively tied to race it fails to be able to give simpler, more obvious answers like "black musicians got screwed because the country was racist and that's how capitalism works," instead opting for some weird sanctification of minority culture and demanding it be protected by segregation.

its all very strange

a funny example is all the people (or maybe just one guy a couple times) who said white people can't open a sushi restaurant. like, lol, come on buddy, people can make whatever loving food they want. lol at the thought that they should put on their menu "OWNER IS NOT JAPANESE". if you prepare japanese food good enough to open a restaurant then loving great.

people in this thread posted things like "the california role is not really japanese or sushi" which is so loving stupid. do you get upset too at modern american's complete transformation of germany's "hamburgers" or "frankfurters?"

after the chinese dress thing there was allegedly a massive outpouring of support from china with people saying things like (not a quote) "we think its great that people in america celebrate our culture!" but then it was argued that "the actual chinese peoples' opinions don't matter because its really more about the immigrants who experienced racism first hand here, and that their experience of ostracization over rules the actual people from china." all of this compounded even more by the fact that the chinese themselves are jumping whole hog onto western culture and absolutely no one gives a flying gently caress about that.

i think it all stems from american exceptionalism. the truth is american culture is sort of closed off, despite ironically being a meltingpot. we're quick to judge and hyper reactionary. we really believe that what we have is already the best. so there is no sharing, only stealing, dominating, appropriating. from what i understand places like great britain had a very different approach to other cultures. they were more than happy to say "dag that indian food is way better than ours. lets just co-opt all their cooking and for generations to come people will think chicken tikka masala is indian!" the originators still get shut out from any economic benefits because that's capitalism. like, maybe if american's were more open to at least paying lip service to the cultures we were stealing from it wouldn't be as much of a deal, or rather, the power dynamics of economics would be more thoroughly apparent

Al! posted: