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I usually think of myself as a pretty hard line leftist but I've never really been comfortable with the conversation around Cultural Appropriation, maybe we can finally hash out this topic once and for all in this thread and close the book on the issue till the end of time. Usually the term describes the adoption of elements of a minority culture by that of a more dominant culture, in academia it's meant to be neutral term but as always happens the term has been appropriated (!) by regular people, especially on social media, and the term seems to be used almost entirely in a negative context in that setting. Now it seems to be a particularly conductive to extremely heated but very petty arguments on the internet about dresses and food where the real life negative effects of Cultural Appropriation can be very difficult to articulate, as well as more involved discussions about the use and abuse of symbols that have totally different meaning and contexts between culture. I'll start things off with a couple of short pieces on the issue, from opposite sides: A Guide to Understanding and Avoiding Cultural Appropriation In Defense of Cultural Appropriation I also thought this was an interesting, kind of in the middle take: I've Written About Cultural Appropriation For 10 Years. Here's What I Got Wrong. Let's have at it goons, how should we approach Cultural Appropriation?
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Aug 3, 2018 02:36
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With a level of nuance and sensitivity that excludes the naive notion that there is one hard and fast rule for how we can handle and appraise every single example of cultural appropriation.
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Aug 3, 2018 02:45
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It seems like the sort of thing where no one is ever going to make it illegal or arrest you or something and it's just a case you can do whatever you want but if you hurt people by misusing symbology that is important to them in some way in a way that is disrespectful that you are not going to be able to lecture them that they have to stop being upset because someone said you could do it or something.
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Aug 3, 2018 02:56
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I'm the whitest of white dudes so it's a topic I struggle with. But I have a close friend who is native and explained it to me quite passionately in the context of a wine tasting event that featured a 'make-your-own-dream-catcher' activity. Paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of "you came in and crushed my culture and tried your best to eradicate it and sent my grandmother to a boarding school and tried to make us white people with tans. You continue to spread the myth that we've passed into the sunset and are a gone but not forgotten people who exists in history books. Now you want to take the parts you like or find aesthetically pleasing and reuse them in your culture without any thought to what they actually meant." That always stuck with me. There are other arguments and it goes much deeper, but that particular sentiment always made a lot of sense to me. Edit: Boy my embarrassing avatar I've meant to get rid of for a while looks even worse next to this post...
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Aug 3, 2018 03:10
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I think the central problem with cultural appropriation discourse is that some people conflate "bad cultural appropriation" with "cultural appropriation," while the term and definition are morally neutral. This causes two problems. First, some people wrongly infer that something is bad because it is cultural appropriation. This opens both their arguments and the entire discourse to attacks on the legitimacy of the concept. Second, it disguises the reasons that particular instances of cultural appropriation are bad. I think activists would argue from a better position if they dropped the moralistic notion of cultural appropriation, and instead argued that particular instances are bad because of their effects on the relevant populations.
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Aug 3, 2018 03:52
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xrunner posted:I'm the whitest of white dudes so it's a topic I struggle with. But I have a close friend who is native and explained it to me quite passionately in the context of a wine tasting event that featured a 'make-your-own-dream-catcher' activity. Paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of "you came in and crushed my culture and tried your best to eradicate it and sent my grandmother to a boarding school and tried to make us white people with tans. You continue to spread the myth that we've passed into the sunset and are a gone but not forgotten people who exists in history books. Now you want to take the parts you like or find aesthetically pleasing and reuse them in your culture without any thought to what they actually meant." I have a lot of respect for the argument that there are some specific parts of a culture like, as you point out, Dream-catchers or War Bonnets associated with some Native American cultures where they had very deep spiritual and honorific significance in those cultures that are then grabbed and tossed around by wider American White culture in a way that trivializes their significance in the cultures they came from and divorces them of almost all of their context, the drunken idiot on Halloween with a cheap costume shop War Bonnet is like the very picture of the worst sort of cultural appropriation. But I feel like the conversation has increasingly moved onto much shakier ground where we get to things like some of the controversy surrounding Kimonos which often feels like it takes customs that really don't have that kind of baggage and history associated with them and ends up fetishizing them in a very problematic manner.
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Aug 3, 2018 04:01
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khwarezm posted:I have a lot of respect for the argument that there are some specific parts of a culture like, as you point out, Dream-catchers or War Bonnets associated with some Native American cultures where they had very deep spiritual and honorific significance in those cultures that are then grabbed and tossed around by wider American White culture in a way that trivializes their significance in the cultures they came from and divorces them of almost all of their context, the drunken idiot on Halloween with a cheap costume shop War Bonnet is like the very picture of the worst sort of cultural appropriation. But I feel like the conversation has increasingly moved onto much shakier ground where we get to things like some of the controversy surrounding Kimonos which often feels like it takes customs that really don't have that kind of baggage and history associated with them and ends up fetishizing them in a very problematic manner. Oh yeah, this is pretty much the main problem people have with the concept. I am all fine and good with Native Americans being able to control what is left of their culture after such a long time of attempts to destroy it, but trying to apply it to food or to large cultures perfectly happy with people participating in traditional customs is where cultural appropriation selfdestructs. Food has lots of cultural variations because people substituted local/favorite ingredients and spices into a foreign dish, and stuff like Tex-mex or California rolls are regional variations on food.
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Aug 3, 2018 06:31
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Without cultural appropriation you never get cool as gently caress music. Or food.
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Aug 3, 2018 06:58
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Problem probably is that 'cultural appropriation' is yet another one of those terms that escaped from academia and was appropriated by extremely online culture warriors as a bludgeon to be used in the most petty possible fights. Pretty much every indication of harmful cultural appropriation you can just call 'racism'. Or at the very least 'bad taste'. Because that someone is using cultural signifiers from a culture they don't apparently belong to is not necessarily what makes it bad, especially when you have to start drawing up racial spreadsheets and investigating bloodlines to figure out who is allowed to do what and/or making a massive fuss over something that the actual culture supposedly being appropriated doesn't care about in the slightest. (the kimono thing)
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Aug 3, 2018 07:15
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Pharohman777 posted:I am all fine and good with Native Americans being able to control what is left of their culture after such a long time of attempts to destroy it, but trying to apply it to food or to large cultures perfectly happy with people participating in traditional customs is where cultural appropriation selfdestructs. The problem is that "what is left of their culture after such a long time of attempts to destroy it" and "[applying cultural appropriation] to food or to large cultures" doesn't clearly delineate neutral from bad instances of cultural appropriation. It does raise issues about who the dominant culture should be responsive to, however. The canonical example would be the difference in attitude towards cultural appropriation (by Western cultures) between Japanese people and Japanese-Americans. For example, should Americans poll Japanese people to determine whether an American celebrity wearing a kimono is bad, or should they poll Japanese-Americans (the affected group). Should it matter whether the Japanese-Americans have retained their parents or grandparents culture? Perhaps they should poll all Asian-Americans (but then are we really talking about cultural appropriation?). I think this reinforces my point above that the moral discourse about cultural appropriation is pretty vacuous - it stands in for a collection of ways that minority groups are negatively affected by dominant groups. quickly fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Aug 3, 2018 |
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Aug 3, 2018 07:16
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quickly posted:The problem is that "what is left of their culture after such a long time of attempts to destroy it" and "[applying cultural appropriation] to food or to large cultures" doesn't clearly delineate neutral from bad instances of cultural appropriation. It does raise issues about who the dominant culture should be responsive to, however. The canonical example would be the difference in attitude towards cultural appropriation (by Western cultures) between Japanese people and Japanese-Americans. For example, should Americans poll Japanese people to determine whether an American celebrity wearing a kimono is bad, or should they poll Japanese-Americans (the affected group). Should it matter whether the Japanese-Americans have retained their parents or grandparents culture? Perhaps they should poll all Asian-Americans (but then are we really talking about cultural appropriation?). I think this reinforces my point above that the moral discourse about cultural appropriation is pretty vacuous - it stands in for a collection of ways that minority groups are negatively affected by dominant groups. The idea of Asian-Americans being a homogenous culture is extremely insensitive, and a famously good way to piss off basically any Asian person. Kinda goes with how a lot of the people most vocal about 'cultural appropriation' are woefully under-equipped to actually handle the topic and make anything resembling a good judgement.
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Aug 3, 2018 07:30
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All human culture belongs to all humans, use whatever you want however you want. There is no sure thing as "culture appropriation" it's all ours. Sure the word might exist as some academic concept for how cultures mix, but functionality it's nonsense. Anyone who gets mad about "cultural appropriation" (especially white people) is just attempting to satisfy thier moral desire to feel "pure" see: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind/transcript?language=en KingFisher fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Aug 3, 2018 |
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Aug 3, 2018 07:30
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The idea of Asian-Americans being a homogenous culture is extremely insensitive, and a famously good way to piss off basically any Asian person. Kinda goes with how a lot of the people most vocal about 'cultural appropriation' are woefully under-equipped to actually handle the topic and make anything resembling a good judgement. I hope this was clear from my post, but I wasn't implying that Asian-Americans have a homogeneous culture (the opposite, in fact). I was arguing that because some Americans believe that Asian-Americans have a homogeneous culture, when evaluating whether an instance of cultural appropriation from some Asian culture is bad, we might want to consider the opinions of Asian-Americans from other cultures (because they are an affected group). This was supposed to service my argument that when people say "x is bad because it is cultural appropriation," they usually mean "x is cultural appropriation and is bad because y," where y is something we agree is bad.
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Aug 3, 2018 07:43
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here’s how we should approach cultural appropriation: if a member of the group whose culture you’re appropriating says it’s not cool, it’s not cool, period like wow that’s so easy (ps white “culture” doesn’t count because of power dynamics, do whatever you want with white people poo poo)
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Aug 3, 2018 07:46
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stone cold posted:here’s how we should approach cultural appropriation: There is a reason that white people wearing cornrows is often "not cool," and it isn't because one (or two, or three, ...) black people said it's "not cool."
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Aug 3, 2018 07:58
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quickly posted:There is a reason that white people wearing cornrows is often "not cool," and it isn't because one (or two, or three, ...) black people said it's "not cool." well no, the reason it’s not cool is that because when black women wear cornrows (or any number of traditional black hairstyles) they get fired for “looking ghetto” while kylie jenner does it and makes millions doing it as a lovely white girl and that it’s stealing a rich cultural heritage from a marginalized group because one thinks it looks cool. it’s simultaneously stealing and dehumanizing. the “not cool” was shorthand, hth
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Aug 3, 2018 08:04
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Cultural appropriation is the kind of term you get from liberals that like capitalism too much to use words like commodification, and get nervous about their kids racemixing.
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Aug 3, 2018 08:12
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I am non-white and I couldn't give a gently caress about cultural appropriation and in fact enjoy it (tandoori chicken pizza is delicious - mix and match all you like). Where cultural appropriation is harmful, we already have a term for it "racism"
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Aug 3, 2018 08:32
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Eminem's cultural appropriation of rap music is an unforgivable hate crime. I know this, because I'm woke.
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Aug 3, 2018 08:42
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Sneakster posted:Cultural appropriation is the kind of term you get from liberals that like capitalism too much to use words like commodification, and get nervous about their kids racemixing. Yeah, this about sums it up. It's a holdover from the dying strain of liberalism that was dominant not long ago that created all kinds of awkward terminology and overcompensation to make up for having surgically excised all concerns about income inequality. (and incidentally, was created and pushed almost entirely by bourgie white people)
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Aug 3, 2018 08:53
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Culture isn't some static unchanging thing, every culture in the world is still developing itself, coming up with new traditions and symbols and beliefs. Mixing cultures is how we learn to love our neighbors, how they go from "the other" to "one of us". Culture mixes on the basis of people looking at their neighbors and saying we love how you do this so much we're going to do it too. Those are all good things. Cultures have swapped gods and food and clothing since those things existed. The only problem that seems honest is when a powerful culture takes ideas or symbols from a culture it has badly hurt and doesn't even give that culture credit or respect those ideas or symbols. Or when someone can use an idea or a symbol (like the famous white girl with cornrows) that the original culture is mistreated for using. That's not cool. The reason it's not cool is because it takes something that should be a loving, sharing relationship between friends and makes it stealing from your neighbors (and bragging about it.) Basically the only way to make it okay to use those ideas and symbols is to correct the power imbalance.
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Aug 3, 2018 09:05
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Even the cornrows thing seems misguided in that it'd possibly help normalise the hairstyle, but I've got no idea if that'd work.
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Aug 3, 2018 09:11
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I actually thought about that but the problem is, if the reason it's okay for black women to wear cornrows is that white women are doing it, you aren't actually making things any better for black women because being black isn't any less of a negative social marker. It's rear end-backwards of how things should be going, which is make being black a positive social marker and suddenly everyone can wear cornrows, as a sign of respect for black culture. And I say this as a white woman who absolutely LOVES traditional black hair braids and wishes dearly that someday I'd be able to wear them without being a total rear end in a top hat.
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Aug 3, 2018 09:18
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...it seems like it'd be easier to de-stigmatise the hairstyle first, though.
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Aug 3, 2018 09:35
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in case anybody really wants to learn about cultural appropriation, there is an entire (closed) thread in TGRS: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3806535&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 and another currently active one: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3855920 you know, just in case you want actual minorities weighing in on the topic that's about minorities.
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Aug 3, 2018 10:16
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Yeah, this about sums it up. It's a holdover from the dying strain of liberalism that was dominant not long ago that created all kinds of awkward terminology and overcompensation to make up for having surgically excised all concerns about income inequality. (and incidentally, was created and pushed almost entirely by bourgie white people) Liberalism isn't socialism, and as far as most of them are concerned, as long as those people don't move in and lower property values, a slightly more diverse aristocracy is an egalitarian society. Don't punish my success with taxes, thats just crabs in a bucket mentality. botany posted:in case anybody really wants to learn about cultural appropriation, there is an entire (closed) thread in TGRS: Sneakster fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Aug 3, 2018 |
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Aug 3, 2018 10:31
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xrunner posted:I'm the whitest of white dudes so it's a topic I struggle with. But I have a close friend who is native and explained it to me quite passionately in the context of a wine tasting event that featured a 'make-your-own-dream-catcher' activity. Paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of "you came in and crushed my culture and tried your best to eradicate it and sent my grandmother to a boarding school and tried to make us white people with tans. You continue to spread the myth that we've passed into the sunset and are a gone but not forgotten people who exists in history books. Now you want to take the parts you like or find aesthetically pleasing and reuse them in your culture without any thought to what they actually meant." If you did all that you were a very industrious and long lived individual.
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Aug 3, 2018 10:40
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Sneakster posted:Is it full of middle class suburbanites posting nothing but sassy gifs and vacuous materialism worshiping celebrity gossip that consciously avoids discussing anything involving material interests for the sake of piping hot takes and epic slam dunks? no it's discussions of cultural appropriation and related topics you'd know that if you clicked the links
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Aug 3, 2018 10:49
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OwlFancier posted:If you did all that you were a very industrious and long lived individual. sick pedantry against a third party bro
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Aug 3, 2018 10:50
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End boss Of SGaG* posted:sick pedantry against a third party bro By which I am trying to point out that assigning people complicity with events they had nothing to do with based on your beliefs about their race is pretty stupid. Manifestly not actually going to harm anyone in the case of white people, but still stupid. Not a basis on which you can construct a very strong argument.
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Aug 3, 2018 10:55
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botany posted:in case anybody really wants to learn about cultural appropriation, there is an entire (closed) thread in TGRS: Oh hey these are good threads. Thank you! Ghost Leviathan posted:...it seems like it'd be easier to de-stigmatise the hairstyle first, though. Only if "white people get to wear the hairstyle" is your goal. Acceptance of cultural things should come as a result of acceptance of that culture, not as theft.
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Aug 3, 2018 11:24
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OwlFancier posted:By which I am trying to point out that assigning people complicity with events they had nothing to do with based on your beliefs about their race is pretty stupid. I don’t think you get to say "oh but all that’s in the past!" while the social structures born of white supremacy are still so vibrant - especially when it comes to Native Americans.
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Aug 3, 2018 11:31
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Since I'm guessing most of us live in a culture that is 95%+ white European (language/architecture/dress/lifestyle/art/economics/music/film/tv/cooking/literature etc etc) there are a lot of benefits to everyone within this culture to respectful absorption of other cultures. At the moment restaurants and other eateries are the only real cultural phenomenon that gives us a daily window into other cultures and even that feels heavily sanitised for white appreciation. I think it would be wonderful if there was a way to give other cultures more real space in our society.
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Aug 3, 2018 11:33
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Leftists are doing a pretty good job at reclaiming intersectionality. Apparently a lot of the old idpol tumblr crazies are starting to become full-on tankies just to try to outflank the leftists constantly dunking on them for their total failure to address income inequality.
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Aug 3, 2018 12:27
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Someone take curry away from the Brits, it's getting way out of hand
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Aug 3, 2018 12:44
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Flayer posted:Since I'm guessing most of us live in a culture that is 95%+ white European (language/architecture/dress/lifestyle/art/economics/music/film/tv/cooking/literature etc etc) there are a lot of benefits to everyone within this culture to respectful absorption of other cultures. At the moment restaurants and other eateries are the only real cultural phenomenon that gives us a daily window into other cultures and even that feels heavily sanitised for white appreciation. I think it would be wonderful if there was a way to give other cultures more real space in our society.
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Aug 3, 2018 12:52
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botany posted:in case anybody really wants to learn about cultural appropriation, there is an entire (closed) thread in TGRS: Like, legit my favourite about that framing of "minorities having their culture taken" is that while this applies well to some parts of the yankee discourse (your native Americans and African-Americans) it does not apply at loving all to the rest of it and makes you look like loving idiots. (People protesting at museums that honkies get to wear kimonos, "white people shouldn't learn Spanish", Bindis are insulting and so on) Ghost Leviathan posted:Leftists are doing a pretty good job at reclaiming intersectionality. Apparently a lot of the old idpol tumblr crazies are starting to become full-on tankies just to try to outflank the leftists constantly dunking on them for their total failure to address income inequality.
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Aug 3, 2018 13:22
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I went to Japan and I felt awkward because I went on a boat ride during golden week with a poo poo tonne of Japanese people and they forced me to wear a conical hat and took what felt like thousands of photos with me while laughing. I posted the pics online and I was promptly told off by a white friend who watches a lot of anime for being culturally insensitive. Anyway that's the story about the time I wore a conical hat.
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Aug 3, 2018 13:30
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JBP posted:I went to Japan and I felt awkward because I went on a boat ride during golden week with a poo poo tonne of Japanese people and they forced me to wear a conical hat and took what felt like thousands of photos with me while laughing. surprising, I know
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Aug 3, 2018 13:41
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Dolphin posted:ha yeah it turns out a lot of people take pride in their culture and like sharing it I always find it funny being 2nd gen Irish Australian when white people whine about this kind of thing, then I say "well maybe other cultures are like the Irish and get a kick out of seeing people enjoy it" but apparently the non-white western brain doesn't work like that. There are good examples of destroyed and abused people like in America and particularly in Australia with our indigenous population where I think the argument stands. Don't take what little they have left, don't steal any more of their poo poo. On the other hand, buy all the katanas and Guinness leprechaun hats you can afford.
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Aug 3, 2018 13:48
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