Thanks for explaining. I never understood the American outrage about cultural appropriation but it's just about respecting sacred symbols from other cultures? Sounds about right, please feel free to dress as a Frenchman with beret and baguette as long as you respect our no-tipping policy.
Next item to discover on my list: why are Americans so upset about "black face".
That's because of minstrel shows. They were American comedy acts where actors would paint their faces black and act out racist stereotypes. The premise was "look at me! I'm a black person!" and then they'd do something stupid and everyone would laugh. Note that black people were slaves at the time. When slavery was (mostly) abolished after the civil war, the shows and makeup became symbols of racism.
It's kind of like how a swastika in a Buddhist temple is fine but a swastika tattoo on a white American isn't. The swastika doesn't have to be racist symbol, but there are few places you could display one without it being interpreted as a racist symbol.
The other comment explains most of it, but when it comes to acting specifically there’s also some level of “why didn’t you just get an actual black person”
To add to that explanation, dressing as a French person in a mocking way is not the same because the French were not enslaved people in the Americas. In fact, they were taking part in the enslaving. It is basically continuing to show that you are the superior party in the power dynamic in an extremely hurtful way.
I may be mistaken but I don't think I've ever seen a French guy painted in black. However I don't think it's in anyway related to historical reasons, it's mostly because it looks dumb and out of place.
Transferring your argument to the Sevilla parade where black faces were the norm last week, I believe they played a relatively minor role in the slave trade. And I have not seen a single black guy in the street the duration I was there, apart from one frenchman.
Only abolished by Spanish royal decree in 1887. One of the last European colonies in the Americas to abolish slavery. Only Brazil came afterward two years later.
It’s also when someone takes from other cultures and then claim it as their own without acknowledging the origin. Like how Elvis covered songs from black artists and didn’t credited the original artists and now white people think they solely invented rock n roll.
He didn't credit the white artists he covered either. But the fact that he gets the credit for inventing rock and roll when you had black people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe doing the crazy shit with guitar that Chuck Berry would later emulate all the way back in the 1930s. By the 1940s, she was playing what I think you could arguably say was as much rock and roll as what Elvis was doing.
Here in the Netherlands it was brown immigrants from the former Dutch Indies who introduced rock n roll to the Dutch audience. Like the Blue Diamonds And at the time people, even politicians, would call them heathens and such. But now that historic fact is mostly forgotten. And people think it was British bands like the Beatles who brought rock to the Netherlands, even though these immigrant bands paved the way for rock acceptance and for bands like the Beatles.
I'd say this goes a little deeper than that, because American black people literally invented the art form while being actively segregated from white audiences (and much of society in general) and then all the credit goes to a white Southerner.
I wouldn't say it offends me, but it is a bit annoying when someone wears a weirdly modernized/made-sexy version of the traditional clothes of my region, when they're from somewhere else and don't give a shit about the history. Like, it's not problematic or anything, like it would be with religious items or clothing of marginalized groups, but I'd still prefer they don't.
To an extent, like (as a Mexican) I don't give a shit if people wear sombreros or ponchos as a form of clothing, but I see them wearing specifically as a costume especially on days like Cinco de Mayo (which is not a sacred holiday) and it pisses me right off.
My culture is not a costume, and that's where I draw the line at appropriation. If you want to wear a sombrero or poncho cause you think it looks cool and you wear it as a part of your daily wear, that's fuckin weird bro, but you do you.
I think the more important factor is taking ownership over something that originated elsewhere.
Even though it isn’t sacred, I would argue that the association between Great Britain and tea comes from appropriation. It wasn’t necessarily appropriation for the Portuguese to bring tea back to Europe, but it certainly was when the British used Chinese seeds and cultivation techniques in India to push China out of the trade.
I think the more important factor is taking ownership over something that originated elsewhere.
This describes virtually every tool, food, piece of clothing, etc you have ever used that was invented before the 20th century. Most of them originating somewhere else and being copied, rebranded, and modified over and over for decades or centuries until they reached their current forms. The only real difference is how recently it happened and if you can wedge it into a power hierarchy in such a way as to be able to blame someone who's an acceptable target for that blame.
This is one thing ive never understood about "cultural appropriation." If someone is partaking in your nations/cultures traditions, apperal, food, etc. Why is that a bad thing? Wouldnt people want their traditions known and shared and experienced by many?
Idk im just a white guy who loves dia de los muertos
Enjoying other cultures isn't appropriation. I think the line where it becomes appropriation is profiteering. If you are commodifying and profiting off someone else's culture that's pretty shitty. Obviously that's not a perfectly clear cut line (who 'owns' culture?), but it's a good place to start.
I think that’s still tricky. For instance, most parts of the world have few Japanese migrants, yet Japanese restaurants are almost everywhere. Usually these are owned by other Asian migrants. This is clearly profiteering, but I don’t see it as particularly problematic.
I think you can apply the socioeconomic and derogation lenses here. Socioeconomically, Japan has been ahead of nearly every other Asian country for a long while, with only places like China and Singapore recently catching up to them. So, I think that makes it feel okay. And derogatively, I don't think these restaurants are successful because they specifically aren't being run by Japanese people. So that's good on the front as well. So I'd say, yeah, overall it feels fine. However, I'm not Japanese and don't have a wealth of additional context that might provide counter arguments.
So is every company making and marketing tortilla chips and salsa appropriating culture if they are from New York City? Is every pizzeria that isn't in Italy profiteering off of Italian culture? Is a French Bistro in Kansas City wrong? Is it wrong to wear a Scottish Kilt made in Viet Nam?
I think each of the described situations has a different specific answer because the topic is nuanced. As stated above, it can sometimes to be messy to say who owns some piece of culture. But beyond that, the most useful tool is an examination of socioeconomic power dynamics.
If there is a cultural group that is poor, and an outsider from a rich/wealthy group commodifies and sells their culture, while giving nothing to those people, you'd probably agree that that's a shitty thing to do. Their culture obviously had some kind of material wealth value that they received none of.
However, if you take a situation where both parties are well off it seems a lot less shitty. Especially if the cultural group in question is already commodifying and profiting off the same piece of culture.
If you can't unravel the knot of cultural ownership, then does anyone really own it? It would appear to me that "everyone" owns it at that point and can partake in it freely and adapt it to their wants an needs. And no matter the culture, there is always socioeconomic disparities within that group. No matter how small or downtrodden they may appear to you. Someone is always going to be a little bit better off than you and someone else is always going to have a little more power than you.
So is Tostitos racist for not mailing checks to every Mexican person everywhere? Because they sure as hell are making bank selling those chips and Salsa to you. OMG! are YOU part of the problem?
The know of cultural ownership is absolutely unravel-able in many situations, just not all. In some situations it's exceedingly clear and in others, not. I think you're trying very hard to find hard-and-fast, absolute rules for these situations, but they don't exist. The keyword is nuance, nuance, nuance. Each situation is different and each situation deserves scrutiny as to whether or not it crosses the line. This is a judgement call made by each and every person.
If you really want me to engage on the specific situation of Tostitos/chips and salsa I will, so you can see the process of my scrutiny.
First, I think that as any item of culture becomes more and more diffused (ethically or not), it's original ownership becomes diluted. Things that were once appropriation in the distant past, if done today, would not be considered as such as the context around them changes (in a myriad of ways).
So, if Tostitos started as a company today, I'd say making chips and salsa is not appropriation. But, if Tostitos was founded a long time ago, before chips and salsa were a foodstuff ubiquitous across the US and Tostitos was created by one outside of that cultural ownership, then I'd say it likely was appropriation. It also might be fair to argue that in the modern day for Tostitos specifically, "the damage has been done" and there really isn't much fixing it, so consuming their products isn't necessarily problematic. But this would be a point as to why identifying appropriation early on and stopping it is especially important.
As to whether I'm part the problem - for Tostitos no, but for other things almost certainly yes. I'm human and I don't know everything, and I've certainly made mistakes in this area, but that's okay. What's important is that once I've learned something is in fact a mistake, I own up to it and stop making that mistake.
Sorry for the double reply, but another useful perspective in this is derogation. I often forget this idea because I'm very class minded, but it's also very important. This is the idea that a culture can be profited off of while simultaneously despising the people that practice it. In practice, this exists as a business around a specific cultural item succeeding specifically because the business is NOT owned/operated by the original cultural group. Some of the best examples of this are around Black American culture in the US. Some cultural products were only valuable AFTER they were owned, operated, and proliferated by White Americans. Which is kinda just Racism Classic™ but allowing certain useful things to cross the cultural line for profits sake.
I think academically, derogation is often considered as a component. Like profiting off a culture while simultaneously despising the culture and the people who own it.
It's a tough line to draw, because even if they aren't the main profitees, the culture where the thing originated often still profited. e.g. AFAIK rock'n'roll getting popular with white americans was pretty good for black americans, even though many of the best selling artists (e.g. Elvis Presley) were white.
The popularization of Black American music is indeed a complex topic in this arena. Like, obviously a lot of cultural outsiders made a lot of money off of the situation, but there were at least some benefits to the arrangement, although whether or not they outweighed the cons is perhaps difficult to say. For example, if outsiders had abstained entirely from profiting, what would have changed? Obviously more of the money made percentage-wise would've gone to the owning culture, but would there have been less money overall? Would it have reached the same levels of popularity? If so, it almost certainly wouldn't've happened as quickly, right? These are difficult questions to answer and I'm not educated enough in this area to really offer any. So, while not worth a damn, my gut feelings is that there are at least some strong arguments as to why overall the absence of outsider profiting would've been better for the owning culture.
With rock'n'roll, it was not even just about money, it also did a pretty good job of bridging the gap between black and white people - I don't think it's realistic to say that this would have worked equally well if all the bands had been black.
I have no problem with that at all. Please dress up for the 16th of September, the Mexican Independence Day, or as a catrín on Día de los Muertos. My Korean friend looked so good as an Adelita and I was so proud of her.
I guess I'd only have a problem with a Halloween costume that exaggerates a negative and unrealistic stereotype but I don't think people make those anymore, or at least I haven't seen one.
It's a thin line between celebrating indigenous cultures and heritage and exploiting it. The Washington Redskins being something I feel everyone can clearly see was over that line, but wearing a sombrero is clearly nowhere near it.
I mean I'm Bavarian and if people wear Lederhosen and set up their own Oktoberfest it's kinda lame. Not that I think it's bad, it's just that I'm not a fan of that stuff here either.
You can totally have all of that. I keep the many many small breweries making fantastic beer.
Yeah, but lederhosen are just kind of neat. Who doesn't like their men in short leather shorts, right? (Seriously though, the construction for very traditional lederhosen is kind of neat. I've tried it, and it's a challenge without being able to skive all your seams.)
"Cultural Appropiation" is the single dumbest thing I've ever fucking heard.
All cultures grow by learning about and adopting customs of other cultures, or in other words by appropiating things from other cultures.
And if they did that didn't we wouldn't have things like anime (Japan took the art of animation from America, not only did The US invent cartoons, but anime evolve from styles used on early Disney cartoons), rock music (Rock musicians are predominantly white, but rock itself evolved from distinctly black forms of music), or really most food in general (Pizza's from Italy, French Fries are from Belgium, Hot dogs are from Germany..... Need I go on?)
At best, demonizing cultural appropiation is just encouraging segregation.
Now if you're wearing the colors or clothing of another culture specifically with intent to insult or in a less-than-glamorous way... That's a different story. (I'm talking about those of you who think putting on an ET Mask and a Sombreo and claiming you're an illegal alien is hillarious)
This is the kind of Neo Liberal nonsense that makes me wish I had a party to root for that wasn't the Democrats
“Cultural Appropiation” is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.
Really? Because I'd say it's the perfect term to describe shit like this.
Because that is not respecting an indigenous culture. That is taking something extremely important to them and perversely twisting it into some corporate sports team bullshit.
What else is that asshole doing if not appropriating someone's culture?
But can't we just call that racism? "Haha, I'm an Indian" is just racist. Making a new term of cultural appropriation then leads to all sorts of things getting that label that aren't problematic. A lot of it I think actually veers back into racism. Like as a white guy, can I eat, for example, Cherokee dishes? Can I open a Cherokee restaurant? I'm not pretending to be from their culture, I just like the food and think other people would too. If I can't do these things, you are reinforcing that Cherokees are a different group than all other Americans, which is where racism comes from. Being exposed to other cultures is how you combat racism, that's why cities tend to be less racist.
I guess, but there are many different types of racism and this is not the same as, for example, burning a cross on a black family's lawn.
This is not active hate. This person very likely has no animosity toward indigenous Americans. He probably has no idea about the significance of the war bonnet or why it's offensive.
So I think this is a subcategory which needs to be highlighted specifically because of people like that.
Some people just love to find reasons to get offended.
Hell, a way to carry a baby was called cultural appropriation by some black people where I live when first Nations have been carrying their baby the same way on our territory since way before any black people set foot in northern America but we don't hear them complain.
Clothing and food are surface, but important, cultural signs. It can be easy to observe and emulate these for one's own gain either socially or econically. All the while the culture from which these signs are derive are ignored.
Dressing up like a war chief for Halloween is partaking in the costume, but not the culture.
But who cares, right?
It's important to root these in a history of colonial exploitation, marginalization, and erasure. A group of people whose way of life has been noted as barbaric, backwards, or savage were often the same reasons colonial powers saw it fit to steal from them, enslave, and murder them. Donning a cultures dress or making their food tastes "better" has done nothing to restore connection with that culture. It is just a more polite form of their erasure. They have been robbed of their soveignty.
Another phenomena, as noted in the comic, is the chill acceptance of this by the appropriated culture. Here, they face no real erasure. Heck, you don't really see this in newly immigrated peoples who want to make a better life for themselves. Being seen is success. But you speak to their first generation children and having their culture flattened to the surface signs can be infuriating if you are the type who views assimilation as a type of loss.
I personally think there is space for a member of the dominant culture to appreciate the culture if they've been invited. But it is important to be careful here as well. Because you may have earned that right with one group from within the culture, but that is not transferable and that exception must be earned again.
Heck, it gets even more complicated when people looking to just keep their schools open and working sge adults employed couldn't care less when asked, but will ask if there's anything that can be done to stabilize their community.
So I've written a lot and feel like I missed so much and glossed over much of what is important. What have you read about the subject that really attempted to wrestle with the concept?
I am Latin American. We couldn't even give an atomic sliver of a speck of fuck about gringos using part of our culture or the intention behind it.
If anything it's enjoyable, one more for the family.
And if we get offended? Don't worry. We don't need anyone from a "dominant culture" to look down on us, thinking about saving us because we are oh so weak, or speak for us.
Good thing I'm not part of the "dominant culture". Would hate to speak for you. Just speaking for myself. But there are Latin Americans who disagree with you.
Obviously intent comes into it, where wearing a reductive costume without any awareness (your Halloween costume example) is callous and ignorant of that person. I think some ignorance can be excused if this person couldn't reasonably be expected to understand all the implications of a costume, even if it's someone who should be expected to (thinking Trudeau Jr or Prince Harry when younger).
Regardless of the hypothesised (or real) impact to the community of someone wearing clothing arguably offensive to minorities with ancestry in the culture being mocked, those aspects aren't what this cartoon is about. It's about idiots who don't understand nuance and repeat shit they see on social media unthinkingly until you get this absurd situation where someone wearing a hat and wearing it well is screamed at in public for no discernible reason.
Lots of people seeing it will do the same kind of wrong-generalisation in the opposite direction though, and take the valid point the cartoon makes to write off all concerns with cultural appropriation, including the valid ones you just made in your first paragraph.
The world is nuanced, and that's nearly never conveyed well in our current public communications systems...
IMO it's appropriation if it's done disrespectfully or in an exploitative or profiteering way. Otherwise, it would just be cultural segregation. Imagine liberalism turned full apartheid.
So if I want to open a Pinata factory, I can only sell them to Mexicans? Or can I sell them to anyone, but only to non-Mexicans at a profit? Or must every Pinata be made at home by a loving Mexican Grandmother for her Grandchildren only?
Yeah. I see and experience this a lot from collectivists. It's like they try to cover it under a thinly veiled hypocritical facade of "niceness" but still stinks like shit under it
I don't have to go too far, just me mentioning that I am from Venezuela and that I know for a fact that the leftists destroyed my country, is enough for them to let go of that facade and go into a tirade of vindicative slurs.
Of course, I understand them. From thousand of kilometers away and armed with all of 15 minutes of a collectivist ideology pamphlet, they clearly know more about the struggles and history of the country I've lived all my life.
As a Quebecois, I like that Canadians like poutine. I don't like that they pretend they have invented it. I also like that they like maple syrup and the traditions surrounding it (cabane à sucre). I don't like that they appropriate it as a thing of their own (we produce 90% of global maple syrup).
You may not like it, but as a Quebecois you unfortunately remain part of Canada and thus are part of the set of Canadians and the creations and practices of Quebec are Canadian as a consequence.
To change that, you'll need to double down on that Free Quebec stuff and cut yourselves away from your English neighbors. Though I don't think that's even won an opinion poll in the last twenty years, and I don't think it's ever been closer than the failed resolution in 1995.
So it's fine for a culture to pretend to have invented something or take something as their own as long as that something is from a culture that happens to be in the same country?
To me, that's cultural appropriation, no matter whether it happens within the same country or not.
Besides, no one here knows what the deal is with getting offended on behalf of someone else. If anyone has a problem, they speak up their minds.
I can explain. In theory the person who SHOULD be offended is a member of a minority and speaking their mind would open them to backlash from the majority so they say nothing. Its mental gymnastics that let's a member of the majority "be a hero" for a minority even if that person doesn't exist. But who cares about that as long as the white lady can think she is a good guy.
Its stupid and is not really about the appropriated culture.
Also, plenty of Latin American culture was basically forced on the indigenous by the Spanish. There's a reason why poor people in countries like Bolivia dress more like 16th century Spanish peasants than their indigenous ancestors. Those bowler hats people wear in Bolivia aren't part of Incan culture.
If you dress like what people consider to be traditional Bolivian dress these days and you're American, I guess you're appropriating Spanish culture from centuries ago? I don't think anyone would give a shit.
That was either Super Mario Odyssey or Paper Mario: Sticker Star (Mario can wear a sombrero in both). In Odyssey it's just a themed cosmetic that can be bought with coins. In Sticker Star, it's an attack.
Cultural appropriation is a broad enough term to functionally be meaningless, but I've found it helpful to think through 4 distinct interests at play, that I think are legitimate:
Proper attribution/credit. We don't like plagiarism or unattributed copying in most art. Remixes, homages, reinterpretations, and even satire/parody are acceptable but we expect proper treatment of the original author and the original work. Some accusations of cultural appropriation take on this flavor, where there's a perceived unfairness in how the originator of an idea is ignored and some copier is given credit. For a real world example of this, think of the times the fans of a particular musical artist get annoyed when a cover of one of that artist's song becomes bigger than the original.
Proper labeling/consumer disclosure/trademark. Some people don't like taking an established name and applying it outside of that original context. European nations can be pretty aggressive at preserving the names of certain wines (champagne versus sparkling wine) or cheeses (parmigiano reggiano versus parmesan) or other products. American producers are less aggressive about those types of geographic protected labels but have a much more aggressive system of trademarks generally: Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks. In a sense, there's literal ownership of a name and the owner should be entitled to decide what does or doesn't get the label.
Cheapening of something special or disrespect for something sacred. For certain types of ceremonial clothing, wearing that clothing outside of the context of that ceremony seems disrespectful. Military types sometimes get offended by stolen valor when people wear ranks/ribbons/uniforms they haven't personally earned, and want to gatekeep who gets to wear those things. In Wedding Crashers there's a scene where Will Ferrell puts on a fake purple heart to try to get laid, and it's widely understood by the audience to be a scummy move. Or, one could imagine the backlash if someone were to host some kind of drinking contest styled after some Christian communion rituals, complete with a host wearing stuff that looks like clergy attire.
Mockery of a group. Blackface, fake accents, and things of that nature are often in bad taste when used to mock people. It's hard to pull this off without a lot of people catching strays, so it's best to just avoid these practices. With costumes in general, there are things to look out for, especially if you're going out and getting smashed.
Using "cultural appropriation" to drag down regular people is kind of pointless, like freaking out at someone for putting the wrong recyclable type of plastic trash in the garbage.
Cultural appropriation matters at the corporate level, where media shapes what regular people do. Do you want to talk about cultural appropriation? Talk about Disney, talk about Hollywood, talk about Jeep Cherokee, and Decathlon Quechua. To keep with the recycling analogy: your problem shouldn't be ordinary people messing up their trash sorting, it should be vendors mass producing plastic trash for everything.
Bingo, Im white and Mexican born. I can dress up in traditional Mexican stuff and no one gives a crap. If I tried to be a rastafarian, whose faith is focused on the return of African descended people back to Africa, itvwould be wrong.
Indeed. The author of the comic misrepresents it as appreciating another culture. But really it is intentionally misrepresenting or stealing a culture. Like black Cleopatra. Or Israeli Hummus.
The reason feelings of cultural appropriation exist is because the children of immigrants feel like society treats them as foreigners because they're not white, despite growing up all their lives in the US/UK etc. This leads to feeling like some dipshit is enjoying the food and fashion of your home culture while rejecting it's people. Think about a Maga moron voting to kick out all the Mexicans while wearing a sombrero and eating tacos; it's a hypocrisy of culture vs race.
That's just racism and you're not going to fix it by isolating the immigrants more by chastising people that enjoy their culture.
It makes zero sense if the goal is to fight racism. If anything you'd want there to be MORE immersion and exchange of cultures so the immigrants are seen as part of the new fabric instead of separate from it.
I'm telling you how people feel, I'm not writing a manual towards a post race society. When people feel ostracised because they look Mexican, they get salty about the same society who routinely rejected them and made them feel like outsiders gleefully housing down Mexican food and cosplaying at being Mexican.
I know a bunch but they are in (sub)cultures that either get popularized and have very specific dictates for membership. The clearest example of this are how Rastas feel about non-black people appropriating the imagery of their faith whoch is dedicated to bringing the African diaspora back to Africa.
As with most things, it's a continuum. Some assimilation is good, a hairstyle, a clothing style, food, even customs. Sometimes certain people can go too far, and it gets more problematic. Think the jeweler in Snatch that isn't Jewish but pretends to be. The episode of The Neighborhood with Nicole Sullivan. Rachael Dolezal.
Exactly, no Scottish person is getting bent out of shape if Im wearing tartan plaid shirts but dressing up and pretending to be Rastafarian would be inappropriate as Im white.
Isn't race at least as much a social construct detached from any physical or biological reality as gender is? If so, why wouldn't transrace people be valid for essentially the same reason that transgender people are?
You can go down the rest of the radqueer rabbit hole from there, since most of their positions are just taking positions related to mainstream LGBTQ identities and extending them to ones less accepted by the mainstream LGBQ community, like xenogenders and being trans-things-other-than-gender.
This gets to the question of what racial identity is and I would argue that someone who isn’t of recent African ancestry, who was not raised by people who have recent African ancestry, who then pretends to not just have recent African ancestry but then claims that their family aren’t the people who raised them (because they are white) is very clearly not stable.
Race and gender are both social constructs, but they aren't analogous. Race is inherited in a way gender isn't. You are the race you are because your parents are the races they are. But you aren't a boy because your dad is a boy, and you aren't a girl because your mom is a girl.
Incredibly generally: gender is the expression of gender identity and is a social construct while gender identity seems to be largely influenced by biological factors. Sex is the biological differentiation, and while the delineation between the sexes is culturally defined (if someone has xxy sex chromosomes, high testosterone, a penis, and a vagina it's a cultural decision if we say they're male, female or intersex), it's a classification based much more on observable factors.
Race and ethnicity are more akin to sex than to gender identity, which would be better compared to cultural identity.
What distinguishes races is a social construct, but within a context racial classifications are relatively consistent. Racial markers that mean nothing in the US might be quite significant in Rawanda.
Similarly ethnicity, being a blend of race, language, culture and heritage is socially constructed but relatively objective within a context.
Culture on the other hand is, like gender identity, more to do with subjective feelings, opinions, and choices on the part of the individual, with the distinctions between them being cultural.
The woman in question mislead people about her race and ethnicity by misidentifying her relatives and heritage. Her cultural affiliation is harder to dispute, although being a chapter president for the NAACP shows at least a degree of acceptance by the African American culture in the area.
What "idiots complaining about cultural appropriation"? It's not exactly a common thing, despite what caricatures of them might make you think. No one is getting upset that anyone eats food from another culture.
The only actual examples I can think of that I've actually heard discussed are "please don't dress as my race as a costume, it's basically blackface" and "my religion was systematically driven to the brink of extinction, I'd appreciate it if you didn't use it as a fun activity to express your creativity".
These things always seem chock full of getting defensive about something that doesn't really happen, or acting like the smallest pushback to the dominant culture doing whatever they want is incredibly terrible.
Appropriation isn't an issue when it's just cultures sharing. It's an issue when people reduce the culture to the things in question, forget that there's actually people involved who deserve respect, or outright claim ownership of the thing in question.
Don't go to a Halloween party dressed as a Puerto Rican. Don't grab a random assortment of native American religious practices, mix them with crystals and use it to showcase your creativity.
The not-puerto-rican editor of the magazine bon appetit went to a Halloween costume dressed as a caricature of a Puerto Rican with his also not Puerto Rican wife.
It came into my head as an example of something less obviously problematic than blackface, but more obviously problematic than dressing as a Disney character that's a depiction of a different race.
Feel free to substitute any other ethnicity or race into my example as it makes sense to you.
In isolation it would be racist to assume a man wearing a baseball jersey was Puerto Rican or dressed as a one as a caricature. It's not when it's labeled as such by the people in the photo, and when asked about it they admit that's what they were doing, and then apologize and then ultimately resign.
To be honest, all that just seems like an incident blown out of proportion
As I see it, someone else is referring to this dude as papi, which is basically daddy but in Spanish, and then added a hashtag on Instagram that says "boricua", which might as well be related to food as the guy is apparently a chef?
It never says he is cosplaying as a Puerto Rican. At least in the picture they post, nor it looks like it's the intention.
Then there is a lot of people saying something about brown face or black face? What, can't people be tanned? Or somehow do they think everyone from LATAM is brown or black?
Alright. It's entirely incidental to the point I was making so I don't feel particularly invested in defending his actions being the way he said they were.
Replace it with one of the news stories about a politician wearing blackface if it makes you feel better, or fill in what you think would work better as a racist caricature outfit depicting someone from Puerto Rico.
I stand by my original statement that if you think to yourself "I'm going to go to this Halloween party as a Puerto Rican (or any race)" you honestly shouldn't do that, regardless of what comes into your mind when you picture that race, since races aren't costumes.
I'm not sure why you would think Boricua is related to food. It means a person from Puerto Rico. It's like arguing that "#new-yorkers" is about food. If it was about food, or his costume wasn't what it was, why would the picture just randomly be labeled with either this unknown food term despite no food being in the picture, or why would you go to a costume party not wearing a costume or as a generic baseball fan and post a picture of yourself labeled "Puerto Rican"? And then resign, referencing the Halloween costume amongst the list of racial insensitivities behind that choice?
The person in the article who used the term brownface is a person who actually worked with him and would presumably be able to tell if he had put on makeup to change his skin tone.
It's kinda funny when some crazies are asking to see your family tree and genealogy sample to know if it's alright for you to wear a certain piece of clothing.
The concept of cultural appropriation seems to be pretty useless in practice.
The cases I've encountered where it makes some bit of sense fit better under the concepts of racism or exploitation. The complaints about cultural appropriation online seem to more often attack innocent behaviour or someone genuinely appreciating another culture.
Drink tea, make tacos, wear a kimono, don't be an asshole
The actual complaints I see about cultural appropriation online are mostly directed at corporations trying to sell ethnic stuff. But that's not as controversial.
The silly personal attacks are common in memes just like this one, serving as centrist strawmen to vilify progressives. People love to talk about and ridicule it so much that it seems a lot more common than it actually is.
I think a big part of appropriation is either pretending the thing is from a different culture or just divorcing it from any existing cultural context. People just don't think about what an actual effect is so just knee jerk accuse anything vaguely similar of cultural appropriation.
Agreed on the first point. But even in progressive circles I hardly ever actually see this kind of behavior. Rather we want it to be a thing because it's so satisfying to dunk on those ignorant and self-righteous morons.
So it's been memed hard to the point that the term has become a favorite tool of right-wing pundits pushing culture war narratives.
Just something to consider as we accept and reinforce the trope.
Absolutely, or it's like an internet liberal thing not a real person thing.
I was at a puzzle meet and had brought a harry Potter puzzle and had a moment of "oh shit, JK Rowling is not the best choice for this group" but no one actually cared for something that tangentially transphobic.
Its a real person thing, I have had the displeasure of interacting with them.
Of course, they were young college kids who heard the term for the first time in class and were eager to prove how enlightened they were, but holy shit have I heard some hot takes. The college culture at an administrative level also plays into it, since they had an incident where one of the undergrad history professors told students it wasn't their job to educate the class on racism.
You sometimes see it on social media, where people dogpile on someone wearing a piece of clothing. But while there's plenty of that sort of lunatics, I think there's way more people out there calling those people loons
It IS controversial. Its just controversial for the same chuds who demand the right to throw on brown-face and call it cosplay. As soon as a beer company starts releasing their label in Spanish or putting a foreign flag on a product or otherwise identify with the wrong kind of foreigner, a big segment of the population loses its mind.
A good example I heard once was concerning the tagelharpa. It's an Estonian instrument, historically used in Estonian culture, however if you hear it you'll probably think Vikings. The modern viking/pagan/neofolk music scene uses it prominently, and as it has a much broader reach than Estonian culture, this has lead (through no fault of the musicians I must add) to situations where many people think of it as a "viking" instrument, even though it never was. Thus, a piece of Estonian culture is widely appreciated as belonging to another culture, due to popular media influence.
I don't know if this is really an example of cultural appropriation, but that example helped me grasp the concept (if it is a good example).
...and then over the coming years, decades, or centuries adjust those things either for differences in practical use or cultural tastes and that's where a lot of things in most cultures come from. Some things tend to independently evolve in lots of different places though because the idea is simple and the need it fills practically universal (like spears or fermented foods).
But don't be shocked by the sheer amount of our people modified this thing that those people we traded with used who modified this other thing that some other people used, etc, etc and that's why our cultural thing is really some ancient Babylonian thing repeatedly stolen, rebranded and iterated upon over centuries. You know, like how we measure time. Or for anyone of European ancestry, writing.
That's an interesting one. It's not like you can stop music and explain the instrumentation in the middle of a song. I have seen in live shows when they use uncommon instruments they'll explain it either at the start or between songs.
And katana just means "one-sided blade." But when you deliberately use a foreign word in English to describe something, you're talking about a specific kind of that thing.
I understand that it's a loan word, but my point was that a kimono's cultural meaning is largely similar to how we would say, "Let me go find something to wear". A kimono is a specific way to cut a single piece of cloth into a garment, but the result is still just clothes.
It's like policing what is or isn't "queso cheese". It's really not that big of a deal.
If I had and it was that easy, we wouldn't have this neverending stream at someone getting offended because someone did something associated with a culture they don't have obvious blood ties to.
I think there is asshole behaviour that could be described as cultural appropriation, but I think the vast majority of them also fit under "exploitation" or "racism".
It's also apparent that if you tell people "cultural appropriation is bad", you get pretty silly outcomes. Suddenly you have protests because a restaurant serves sushi without being ethnically japanese, or someone yells at you because you post a photo of a california roll.
Given those examples I should probably go have lunch
Nobody has ever yelled at me for eating or posting a picture of my American Midwest grocery store sushi, get the fuck outta here.
The irony here is that the term cultural appropriation has been politically appropriated, the same way that many of these explorative racial theories are, like woke, like social justice, like critical race theory. They are taken from their academic settings and eventually used to suppress actual concerns raised by denegrating it and reducing it to something that is both laughable and fundamentally not what it is.
I think there's a mix. I get the impression that cultural appropriation as a thing to be offended about is well past its peak and dying out, but back when it was popular I knew people in real life angry about these things. Not bad people either... well meaning people who spent a bit too much time online and didn't think things through themselves.
Culture is meant to be shared, as long as you're respectful and you're not caricaturing or mocking the culture you're trying to portray, most people from said culture would be flattered.
Yeah context and intend make all the difference. Cultural appropriation is when you try to clad yourself in something that is a facsimile of another culture, usually for marketing or influence purposes, but you neither understand nor have any intend to understand the culture itself or the meaning behind the parts you use for your (usually financial) gain.
IDK, even then, I don't think you need to understand the culture about it so much. E.g. there was some incident about a white girl wearing a qipao to prom and she got called out for it. In the end, it's just a piece of clothing that looks nice. It isn't some deeply symbolic thing for people.
I don't expect her to try to understand Chinese culture before wearing a qipao (which originated in Mongolia before Chinese appropriated it BTW), and I don't expect Chinese to understand Western culture before wearing a suit and tie.
But obviously there are some cases, as you said where context does matter.
I found this after a quick-ish google. Looks like occasionally people do, but they mostly get laughed at as the native cultures seemed to find it a sign of respect. And actually felt hurt when a helicopter dropped the naming convention.
Like how WB quietly shelved Speedy Gonzalez and the Latin community was like "No, fuck you. He was OUR GUY, we had representation! Now his cousin, the lazy slow one... yeah that shit can go."
You'll love this example of using native language. During the meeting where federal officials proposed the creation of an Indian Territory, the Choctaw tribe delegate Rev. Allen Wright suggested naming it “Oklahumma”. In the Choctaw language “okla” means “people” and “humma” means “red.”
As a result, the area would be named Oklahoma Territory, or literally “Territory of the Red People.”
There are some arguments that "Homma" can also be a war title given for not retreating, but within the context of our racial history I don't think that's what they were going for.
And then of course, they named the main university’s mascots/fight song/etc after the “Boomers” and “Sooners” - people so eager to steal indigenous land that they couldn’t bother waiting for the government to make it legal.
There was a group that tried to get them to change it, but culture wars crowd absolutely pissed and shit themselves - they were already pissed after the chemistry building stopped being named after a Klan member.
When I was growing up in the 80s and some frat-bro types ran around town dressed like the Three Amigos while swilling beers and fumbling their Spanish, parents and teachers would call it "tacky" and "annoying" and "juvenile".
Now, in the 20s, the children of those frat-bros puts on the same outfit and does the same stupid shit. But their peers are the ones rolling their eyes and telling them that they don't look cool, while the parents clap and take pictures and get off on a romanticized youth lived vicariously through their frat-bro kids.
So the frat-bros become resentful. They go home, pull out their crayons, and make up a naked brown man to give them permission to behave miserably. And then they go on podcasts and make Instagram reels explaining how - um, aktuly - if you don't think the tourist-trap Spirit Halloween tier get-up I'm wearing on Cinco-De-Drinko to celebrate getting wasted is cool, you're the real racists.
Then Budwiser releases an "Authentic Mexican Logger" and the same frat-bros lose their fucking minds because their favorite beer company just Went Woke.
Only superficially. Dune deconstructs the entire heroic archetype. Paul Atreides’ emergence as the hero and leader of the Fremen is completely artificial and engineered for colonialist purposes (so that House Atreides can control the supply of spice with minimal resistance from the population of Arrakis).
The plan backfires, of course, as the Fremen jihad ends up being more successful than they’d anticipated and spreads off-world and out of Paul’s ability to control it.
If you go around being publicly offended for another group because you saw someone wear or eat something YOU think they shouldn't becuase "That's not YOUR culture". Then YOU might be a "White Savior".
White saviorism is the belief that you understand and know how to address a community and its problems in spite of not having any involvement with or ties to that community because you are white abd educated. Me thinking I can fix Puerto Rico’s issues because Im an educated white guy who has a poli sci degree would be an example of this as my Spanish is trash, I have never been to Puerto Rico, and Im unfamiliar with their history.
Cultural appropriation is utilizing imagery or concepts from a foreign culture. It can be good, bad, weird, or neutral depending on multiple factors.
At my wedding reception, my wife’s cousins plopped a giant black and gold sombrero on my head to welcome me to the family. I’m expected to bring said sombrero to family get togethers and smash beers con mi familia
Probably because he always outwits his opponents and always wins. He's not any more crazy than the other Looney Tunes, he's as smart as Bugs, and unlike Bugs, he's never cruel and remains firmly heroic.
He was also the exact opposite of the other stereotype of the "lazy Mexican" - which, for anyone who's ever worked construction with actual Mexicans, is comically inaccurate.
I wonder how much of the 'lazy Mexican' stereotype comes from a combination of an afternoon siesta (...to avoid the hottest part of the day, which could be deadly prior to air conditioning), and the chronic anemia that could be caused by hookworm infestations that used to be common in areas with poor sanitation (incl. the American south; some of the same stereotypes existed regarding rural southerners for many decades)?
When I was 12 or 13, we took a trip to Mexico and took public transportation and stayed in small non-touristy places where the people staying in the hotels were more likely to be Mexicans than Americans (not to save money, my parents just thought it would be more fun). I remember sitting in a hotel lobby with a TV on and some Mexican kids sitting around watching Speedy Gonzales cartoons dubbed into Spanish with their parents casually chatting and I was like, "WTF? Isn't Speedy Gonzales racist? They don't care? They like it?"
Like VindictiveJudge says, he's the hero who outwits his opponents and always wins. I'd add that the opponents are always American.
I don’t think it’s offensive, but if you’re wearing that just to make a point then maybe you’re just looking to offend people. This is less directed to the comic and more directed to the YouTube clips I have seen of similar scenario.
Usually it is the Yankees who take offense at the expense of us Latinos. We will always love to see others enjoy a part of our culture (as long as it is not in an exploitative and fetishistic way).
We will always love to see others enjoy a part of our culture (as long as it is not in an exploitative and fetishistic way).
I think this is a big part of the reason why some people get all white-knight about cultural appropriation. It can be quite difficult to know, as a cultural outsider, and from a glance, when something is being done in an exploitative and/or fetishistic way.
Definitely. Innocent until proven guilty. But then, the conversation does still have to happen, sometimes. That's how people (on both sides of the debate) learn the difference in the first place.
Usually, to solve that, what I do is look at who did it and ask (the person directly or myself) why they did it.
A practical example: You know that new DC animated series? I think it's called Creature Commandos. I haven't seen it, but I hear it's very good. Mind you, if you have seen it, can you tell me if anything happens, anything at all, related to Venezuela?
What happens is that they used as intro a very famous and beloved Venezuelan song: "Moliendo Café" (grinding coffee). All the other Venezuelans I've seen have loved it, but I remain skeptical, because I can't help wondering: Did they chose that song because it's somehow related to what is told in the story? Because Gunn just wanted to? Or because it sounded "very Latin" and different enough from the Mexican songs they always reuse? If it's the first, great; if it's the second, no problem; but the third...?
And the thing is, if I happen to come across the Youtube channel of some Swiss guy doing a electric guitar cover of "Moliendo Café", I wouldn't even go to his comments and yell "Cultural Appropriation!", because he's just an individual and what he does is harmless (and pretty neat). But a big company like Warner/Discovery...?
Unless the main people responsible are from or have roots in the country where the cultural expression comes from, it can't be anything but exploitation and, of course, cultural appropriation.
I'm unfamiliar with the show, but thank you so much for engaging with the nuance of the situation, here. I agree with what you have to say regarding context surrounding “Moliendo Café”. Context matters. OP's comic is a bit too "strawman" for my tastes.
There's discussion to be had, for sure, but this comic squeezes all the nuance out of a complex topic just to score an easy gotcha.
Well, is just a Small comic, it hasto be this way or else it would not be funny. But yeah, the real world is a lot more complex that any piece of entertainment could ever portrait.
I've had so many people claim I'm racist online for saying stuff about China. Even after I point out that I'm Chinese, it still doesn't help for some reason.
It seems like literally every Chinese person I’ve talked to is absolutely delighted when a westerner is interested in Chinese culture. I remember being assigned a trip to a buffet for a high school Chinese class, and my atonal 你好 got about as much praise as a baby sputtering out “da-da” for the first time. I posted some calligraphy on 小红书 a couple days ago and I am getting gassed up for it.
You can say the most basic phrase in mandarin and completely screw it up both grammatically and pronunciation-wise and they'd absolutely love it and applaud you for it
Provided you're white
Although the Chinese on XHS are actually quite annoyed at the waiguoren invasion right now
Although the Chinese on XHS are actually quite annoyed at the waiguoren invasion right now
My feed is mostly english speakers, but every post I saw to the effect of "gtfo this is a chinese space" was getting mocked by chinese people pointing out IP indicated it was posted from America.
I think it's NIMBYism in a way. Sure, they like to talk to Laowai and like it when they do something Chinese, but they don't really want them intruding on their social media network. The Great Firewall exists for a reason- Chinese culture and attitudes are vastly different to that of the west. There was a joke going around that watching Chinese short-form videos "is like tuning into interdimensional cable"
This reminds me of a comic, which obviously should be taken playfully with a pinch of salt:
Two Italian men are joined by a visitor trying to ask a question in Italian. "Ah, they're trying to speak Italian!" and so they turn to the visitor and welcome them in Italian.
Two German men are joined by a visitor trying to ask a question in German. "Ah, they're trying to speak German!" and so they turn to the visitor and welcome them in English.
Two Parisian men are joined by a visitor trying to ask a question in French. "Ah, they're trying to speak French!" and so they turn away and ignore them.
There's a far cry between me criticising the CCP for things like the Uyghur genocide and other political issues, and your made up strawman argument. Anybody should be free to criticise any country in the first place, without having to worry about skin colour.
I know someone who said that America is racist for siding with Taiwan on things and then I pointed out to them that (except a minority) Taiwan is predominantly Han Chinese
Yes, but if it's trolling don't engage. If it's genuine, you have to acknowledge when they are correct. You don't get a free pass to be racist, even against your own kind, just because you're a minority. However, you are better positioned to be critical of a particular minority if you are part of it.
You implied that being Chinese is a counterpoint to people calling you racist. That's what I was commenting on.
Whether what you said to those people was racist or not is out of the point. I was criticizing the fact that you consider that being Chinese would prevent you from being racist, which is absurd.
I think pretty much everybody can agree that being of a certain race gives you a lot more leeway and defense against accusations of racism against that race. It would take an extremely radical statement to go beyond that.
... at least, that's what my black friends tell me when they call each other 'nigga'.
This is just completely tone-deaf bullshit. Equating modern working conditions (in western countries) to slavery is like comparing a contemporary Scandinavian prison to Auschwitz. It's by very far not the same.
I've never heard about "cultural appropriation" outside of jokes making fun of it. And it's one of the right's favourite strawmen. Maybe it's time to let it go?
It's not a strawmen in that it doesn't ever happen but it's just that those who get upset about it aren't very numerous so it gets drowned out by those making fun of them. And then others see all those jokes and get the sense it happens a lot more than it does.
I got some Malian clothes. Beautiful patterns on them. They were tailor made for me as a birthday gift from my roommate who was Malian, who's family in Mali owns a textile business.
I've received some... interesting reactions to me wearing that clothes.
I remember seeing a child have a japanese themed birthday. Some white person was giving off to her parents for cultural appropriation while Japanese people were flattered
She's wearing chopsticks in her hair which is generally frowned upon. She could've used a broach or a traditional kansashi instead which would've made her look more elegant.
I'm more concerned that they're dressing their kid up to look like what is essentially a member of an escort service (albeit a traditional one) than that they're appropriating Japanese culture.
It turned out that although she looked white and her parents looked white, her extended family was actually asian. So it wasn't even appropiation to begin with.
Still everyone needs to chill, my fellow honkeys, please stop getting offended on behalf of others. Playing the role of the "White Savior" comes off as more bigoted than progressive.
You, and the rest of the posters on here, completely misunderstand. I, a white guy, don't get offended "on behalf of others" - the fact that white people have to constantly reference other cultures because we sterilized and sacrificed our own for the sake of white supremacism and "westernism" so long ago is offensive, period.
The way I tend to feel about this is that it's a jerk move if you're mocking some other group, or reasonably could be seen as mocking them, or try to claim that you/your group invented the thing you're using, but otherwise, borrowing stuff people like from other cultures is just one of the ways cultures evolve.
I can see some people objecting on the grounds that imitating something distinctive makes that thing less unique to the original group, or that an imitation by outsiders won't include some aspect important to the original and then that people that see the imitation won't get that aspect.
I can certainly understand why those feelings could lead to frustration, but applied strictly, the idea that certain things belong exclusively to the cultures that invented them both requires forcing people into precise boxes as to which culture they belong to, and sort of resembles a type of socially enforced intellectual property, which, being against IP as a concept, is something I feel like I'd be hypocritical agreeing with.
Has me hella curious. Can you elaborate? Is it the capitalist aspect of patents/trademarks and licensing or something else? I believe that people who invent a concept/character/world should have ownership to develop it into what their grander vision may be before someone else can come and write the story/use of their tool. Id love to hear your side of this though because I don't know anyone thats ever told me their against IP as a concept
“Intellectual property” – patents and copyrights – have become controversial. We witness teenagers being sued for “pirating” music – and we observe AIDS patients in Africa dying due to lack of ability to pay for drugs that are high priced to satisfy patent holders. Are patents and copyrights essential to thriving creation and innovation – do we need them so that we all may enjoy fine music and good health? Across time and space the resounding answer is: No. So-called intellectual property is in fact an “intellectual monopoly” that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps. This book has broad coverage of both copyrights and patents and is designed for a general audience, focusing on simple examples. The authors conclude that the only sensible policy to follow is to eliminate the patents and copyright systems as they currently exist.
ETA: It's written from the perspective of believers in the broad capitalist structure. The authors are serious economists that support the free market in no uncertain terms.
I would argue that IP doesnt need to be purly capitalistic though. Yea i agree that if we have a life saving drug, dont let 1 company monopolize the shit out of it and let people die for an extra dollar, but i dont know that ill say IP shouldnt exist.
If someone writes a story, creates a character or world, i want that content creator to be able to develop it without people infringing. If someone created a great game, i dont want a bunch of shit companies racing to put out the next title in the interest of making a buck off someone elses idea. I want who ever created that game to own the franchise long enough that they can make a second, third, or 4th game (or what ever media they adapt) to continue telling their story before other people put out low quality content that spoils the franchise
And the authors aren't really saying that, either.
To be clear, I don't agree with all of the authors' positions. I also think it's worth noting that the authors are not advocating for an elimination of the patent and copyright systems without replacing them with systems better suited to ensuring creator prosperity while also allowing for speedier human innovation.
It's worth a read, if you're interested in the subject matter. It challenged my opinions on intellectual property, but didn't change them entirely. Things they discuss, such as patent trolling and patent squatting, are worth contemplation. How can we change IP law to disincentivize such antisocial intellectual property law use by bad-faith actors?
ETA:
The economic burden of today's patent lawsuits is, in fact, historically unprecedented. Research shows that patent trolls cost defendant firms $29 billion per year in direct out-of-pocket costs; in aggregate, patent litigation destroys over $60 billion in firm wealth each year.
(From the above article.... and that was in 2014!)
It's mainly just that, since information can be copied without removing access to the original from the current possessor of that information, I don't see a good justification to restrict use of it. If you steal something, the original owner loses while you benefit. Since the unexpected loss is probably felt worse, this is a net negative and therefore a bad thing. But, if you copy information (which IP by nature is), you can give it to an arbitrarily large number of people without even taking it from the original, enough benefit to in my opinion outweigh the frustration that loss of control causes. Capitalism adds another element given it also ties monopoly over a given bit of information to artist compensation, but even without capitalism, I don't think information should be seen as property
20 years ago I had white-boy dreadlocks. African-American Christians told me it was cultural appropriation. Jamaican Rastafarians would stop me in the street to share their weed and offer me a ride.
Wait, last time I talked to the Mexican that speaks on behalf of Mexicans, he said the opposite. I'm confused. Maybe you guys were talking to illegitimate, fake representatives? My Mexican had official documents and holograph marked Latino passes he was giving out.
Yeah generally dress up is fine, I think people shouldn't be barred from wearing a costume just because their race doesn't match. And for children especially, if they dress up to be a hero of a certain race, I think that is more representation of diversity in a good light.
However, IMO there is some due respect for that culture and it would be better to understand the significance of a dress one may wear, but if it's intended well most should be fine with it. Using casual stereotypes and jokes cheapen the outfit which I think can be in bad taste.
Like as long as they don't accompany it with racial slurs, I don't think it's a hate crime, just a bit cringey. It would be about the same level as if someone were to dress up as the Catholic Pope, a cardinal or a bishop and give people silly blessings.
I agree mostly with your general point, but I want to talk a bit about your example. I think it's okay to mock the Pope because I think religion is silly and ought to be mocked a bit. Of course, if you're Catholic, you might disagree. It's a good example for that reason. However, Catholics have a lot of power in society. They are not as marginalized as many other groups. So the example might not hit for everyone because intuitively, they don't think mocking Christianity or Catholicism is going to cause much harm in a western country where these groups are incredibly powerful.
Appropriation, and/or, as you said, stereotypes and jokes, are often mocking a culture or a people too. If they are a marginalized group, which often they are if they're being mocked, then it can add insult to injury
To clarify, here's a good example: As another commenter pointed out; appropriation is actually about making fun of things that other cultures hold sacred. An example I have heard of (but am pretty ignorant about myself) is wearing a native american feathered headdress.
I have heard it's reserved for specific people that indigenous Americans want to honor with it. It's like wearing a medal as a general. So, wearing a feathered headeess and cosplaying as native is belittling something they hold sacred.
I agree with you the main faux pas is trivializing things others hold sacred. Using costume to mock and make fun of any race or faith is different than wanting to embody it, which is where I think some cultural sensitivity policies sometimes mistakenly conflate. There is some nuance when it comes to historical and current power dynamics, certain costumes rooted in racism (e.g. blackface), which would be suitable justification to allow or bar certain specific costumes. However on the whole, I think ethnic cultures should be able to be expressed by anyone, when done in a positive, respectful manner.
On one hand certain things have certain meaning in the culture and maybe some people will look sidewise but on the other hand people that practice that culture probably don't expect some random dude to know everything it their culture. But "cultural appropriation" has mostly been used to virtue signal
Great, let's mindlessly retread the right-wing's favorite progressive strawmen for the lulz. Any other culture war bullshit I can feel smugly self-righteous over?
Funny that i'm chinese and living in asia as well and i support that. Western folks have a weird sense of justice that they want to protect everyone, to a point i feels like they're seeing us as a lesser kind that need protection.
to a point i feels like they're seeing us as a lesser kind that need protection.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with that observation.
Speaking in accordance with someone's wishes when they're not around to advocate for themselves in a private conversation is fine. Someone publicly speaking on behalf of an entire demographic that they know little to nothing about is bigoted as hell. It shows a complete lack of respect by assuming they know what's best for others without actually taking the time to learn about their values and culture. And it's super condescending, treating people of the demographic as if they lacked the capacity and autonomy to speak up for themselves.
One thing to note that the one who accused the girl for cultural appropriation is chinese themselves, but even then, who are they to gatekeep our culture?
I think a good rule of thumb for getting offended is to first ask yourself: does this really offend me, or am I acting offended on behalf of some other theoretical person who's not actually here? And if it's the latter, then you probably shouldn't be offended.
It's just a rule of thumb tho. Like if someone is saying "death to jews", you still have every right to oppose that even if you aren't a jew of course.
What everyone forgets on both sides is it is about NON-ETHNIC companies making profits on ETHNIC traditions.
Imagine if your uncle Jeffy, a staunch republican who is against native American rights to their lands, starts using his multimillion dollar garment company to make native American headdresses and sell them on Amazon. THATS the root of the cultural appropriation craze.
This. The social Justice warriors that are peddling the cultural appropriation line are not representative of the culture or the people of that culture, their opinions, or feelings on the matter.
What we, as a society, need to do, is let cultures be offended when they feel offended, and not assume that they will be offended by something that we think they should be offended by.
Short version is: don't be offended on behalf of someone else.
You don't know them.
You don't know their culture.
You don't know what they see as offensive.
Snowflakes: "It is offensive for a westerner to wear a Japanese kimono. You are not Japanese!"
Native Japanese: "We insist you wear this kimono so you feel like part of the group."
Based on a true story.
Cultural appropriation is when you take something sacred or special and don't treat it with respect. Sombreros and parkas are just clothes.
Thanks for explaining. I never understood the American outrage about cultural appropriation but it's just about respecting sacred symbols from other cultures? Sounds about right, please feel free to dress as a Frenchman with beret and baguette as long as you respect our no-tipping policy.
Next item to discover on my list: why are Americans so upset about "black face". And that's what I witnessed in Sevilla (Spain) recently which did not seem racist to me at all: https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2023/01/05/polemica-espana-blackface-reyes-magos-trax/
That's because of minstrel shows. They were American comedy acts where actors would paint their faces black and act out racist stereotypes. The premise was "look at me! I'm a black person!" and then they'd do something stupid and everyone would laugh. Note that black people were slaves at the time. When slavery was (mostly) abolished after the civil war, the shows and makeup became symbols of racism.
It's kind of like how a swastika in a Buddhist temple is fine but a swastika tattoo on a white American isn't. The swastika doesn't have to be racist symbol, but there are few places you could display one without it being interpreted as a racist symbol.
Great explanation, thank you very much!
The other comment explains most of it, but when it comes to acting specifically there’s also some level of “why didn’t you just get an actual black person”
Fair enough!
I’m a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!
To add to that explanation, dressing as a French person in a mocking way is not the same because the French were not enslaved people in the Americas. In fact, they were taking part in the enslaving. It is basically continuing to show that you are the superior party in the power dynamic in an extremely hurtful way.
I may be mistaken but I don't think I've ever seen a French guy painted in black. However I don't think it's in anyway related to historical reasons, it's mostly because it looks dumb and out of place.
Transferring your argument to the Sevilla parade where black faces were the norm last week, I believe they played a relatively minor role in the slave trade. And I have not seen a single black guy in the street the duration I was there, apart from one frenchman.
Are you fucking kidding me?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Cuba
Only abolished by Spanish royal decree in 1887. One of the last European colonies in the Americas to abolish slavery. Only Brazil came afterward two years later.
Well I can be quite clueless you know 😂 No need for hyperbole there, we're not on Twitter
It’s also when someone takes from other cultures and then claim it as their own without acknowledging the origin. Like how Elvis covered songs from black artists and didn’t credited the original artists and now white people think they solely invented rock n roll.
He didn't credit the white artists he covered either. But the fact that he gets the credit for inventing rock and roll when you had black people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe doing the crazy shit with guitar that Chuck Berry would later emulate all the way back in the 1930s. By the 1940s, she was playing what I think you could arguably say was as much rock and roll as what Elvis was doing.
Here in the Netherlands it was brown immigrants from the former Dutch Indies who introduced rock n roll to the Dutch audience. Like the Blue Diamonds And at the time people, even politicians, would call them heathens and such. But now that historic fact is mostly forgotten. And people think it was British bands like the Beatles who brought rock to the Netherlands, even though these immigrant bands paved the way for rock acceptance and for bands like the Beatles.
This kind of erasure happens everywhere.
I'd say this goes a little deeper than that, because American black people literally invented the art form while being actively segregated from white audiences (and much of society in general) and then all the credit goes to a white Southerner.
I wouldn't say it offends me, but it is a bit annoying when someone wears a weirdly modernized/made-sexy version of the traditional clothes of my region, when they're from somewhere else and don't give a shit about the history. Like, it's not problematic or anything, like it would be with religious items or clothing of marginalized groups, but I'd still prefer they don't.
To an extent, like (as a Mexican) I don't give a shit if people wear sombreros or ponchos as a form of clothing, but I see them wearing specifically as a costume especially on days like Cinco de Mayo (which is not a sacred holiday) and it pisses me right off.
My culture is not a costume, and that's where I draw the line at appropriation. If you want to wear a sombrero or poncho cause you think it looks cool and you wear it as a part of your daily wear, that's fuckin weird bro, but you do you.
I think the more important factor is taking ownership over something that originated elsewhere.
Even though it isn’t sacred, I would argue that the association between Great Britain and tea comes from appropriation. It wasn’t necessarily appropriation for the Portuguese to bring tea back to Europe, but it certainly was when the British used Chinese seeds and cultivation techniques in India to push China out of the trade.
This describes virtually every tool, food, piece of clothing, etc you have ever used that was invented before the 20th century. Most of them originating somewhere else and being copied, rebranded, and modified over and over for decades or centuries until they reached their current forms. The only real difference is how recently it happened and if you can wedge it into a power hierarchy in such a way as to be able to blame someone who's an acceptable target for that blame.
According to you.
Yeah this comic is just for snowflakes trying to feel better.
Literally no Latin American is going to be bothered Or annoyed in any way whatsoever if you don typical dresses of their culture.
We love our culture and love it even more when we influence gringos to dress as our ancestors did.
The joy is palpable. It makes you part of the family. And that's plenty
Besides, no one here knows what the deal is with getting offended on behalf of someone else. If anyone has a problem, they speak up their minds.
Slurs? Motherfückêr, that's half our language.
This is one thing ive never understood about "cultural appropriation." If someone is partaking in your nations/cultures traditions, apperal, food, etc. Why is that a bad thing? Wouldnt people want their traditions known and shared and experienced by many?
Idk im just a white guy who loves dia de los muertos
Enjoying other cultures isn't appropriation. I think the line where it becomes appropriation is profiteering. If you are commodifying and profiting off someone else's culture that's pretty shitty. Obviously that's not a perfectly clear cut line (who 'owns' culture?), but it's a good place to start.
I think that’s still tricky. For instance, most parts of the world have few Japanese migrants, yet Japanese restaurants are almost everywhere. Usually these are owned by other Asian migrants. This is clearly profiteering, but I don’t see it as particularly problematic.
I think you can apply the socioeconomic and derogation lenses here. Socioeconomically, Japan has been ahead of nearly every other Asian country for a long while, with only places like China and Singapore recently catching up to them. So, I think that makes it feel okay. And derogatively, I don't think these restaurants are successful because they specifically aren't being run by Japanese people. So that's good on the front as well. So I'd say, yeah, overall it feels fine. However, I'm not Japanese and don't have a wealth of additional context that might provide counter arguments.
So is every company making and marketing tortilla chips and salsa appropriating culture if they are from New York City? Is every pizzeria that isn't in Italy profiteering off of Italian culture? Is a French Bistro in Kansas City wrong? Is it wrong to wear a Scottish Kilt made in Viet Nam?
I think each of the described situations has a different specific answer because the topic is nuanced. As stated above, it can sometimes to be messy to say who owns some piece of culture. But beyond that, the most useful tool is an examination of socioeconomic power dynamics.
If there is a cultural group that is poor, and an outsider from a rich/wealthy group commodifies and sells their culture, while giving nothing to those people, you'd probably agree that that's a shitty thing to do. Their culture obviously had some kind of material wealth value that they received none of.
However, if you take a situation where both parties are well off it seems a lot less shitty. Especially if the cultural group in question is already commodifying and profiting off the same piece of culture.
If you can't unravel the knot of cultural ownership, then does anyone really own it? It would appear to me that "everyone" owns it at that point and can partake in it freely and adapt it to their wants an needs. And no matter the culture, there is always socioeconomic disparities within that group. No matter how small or downtrodden they may appear to you. Someone is always going to be a little bit better off than you and someone else is always going to have a little more power than you.
So is Tostitos racist for not mailing checks to every Mexican person everywhere? Because they sure as hell are making bank selling those chips and Salsa to you. OMG! are YOU part of the problem?
The know of cultural ownership is absolutely unravel-able in many situations, just not all. In some situations it's exceedingly clear and in others, not. I think you're trying very hard to find hard-and-fast, absolute rules for these situations, but they don't exist. The keyword is nuance, nuance, nuance. Each situation is different and each situation deserves scrutiny as to whether or not it crosses the line. This is a judgement call made by each and every person.
If you really want me to engage on the specific situation of Tostitos/chips and salsa I will, so you can see the process of my scrutiny.
First, I think that as any item of culture becomes more and more diffused (ethically or not), it's original ownership becomes diluted. Things that were once appropriation in the distant past, if done today, would not be considered as such as the context around them changes (in a myriad of ways).
So, if Tostitos started as a company today, I'd say making chips and salsa is not appropriation. But, if Tostitos was founded a long time ago, before chips and salsa were a foodstuff ubiquitous across the US and Tostitos was created by one outside of that cultural ownership, then I'd say it likely was appropriation. It also might be fair to argue that in the modern day for Tostitos specifically, "the damage has been done" and there really isn't much fixing it, so consuming their products isn't necessarily problematic. But this would be a point as to why identifying appropriation early on and stopping it is especially important.
As to whether I'm part the problem - for Tostitos no, but for other things almost certainly yes. I'm human and I don't know everything, and I've certainly made mistakes in this area, but that's okay. What's important is that once I've learned something is in fact a mistake, I own up to it and stop making that mistake.
Sorry for the double reply, but another useful perspective in this is derogation. I often forget this idea because I'm very class minded, but it's also very important. This is the idea that a culture can be profited off of while simultaneously despising the people that practice it. In practice, this exists as a business around a specific cultural item succeeding specifically because the business is NOT owned/operated by the original cultural group. Some of the best examples of this are around Black American culture in the US. Some cultural products were only valuable AFTER they were owned, operated, and proliferated by White Americans. Which is kinda just Racism Classic™ but allowing certain useful things to cross the cultural line for profits sake.
also when it becomes an issue is influenced by how accurate it is, how overused it feels, and (obviously) if it was made with the intent to insult
I think academically, derogation is often considered as a component. Like profiting off a culture while simultaneously despising the culture and the people who own it.
It's a tough line to draw, because even if they aren't the main profitees, the culture where the thing originated often still profited. e.g. AFAIK rock'n'roll getting popular with white americans was pretty good for black americans, even though many of the best selling artists (e.g. Elvis Presley) were white.
The popularization of Black American music is indeed a complex topic in this arena. Like, obviously a lot of cultural outsiders made a lot of money off of the situation, but there were at least some benefits to the arrangement, although whether or not they outweighed the cons is perhaps difficult to say. For example, if outsiders had abstained entirely from profiting, what would have changed? Obviously more of the money made percentage-wise would've gone to the owning culture, but would there have been less money overall? Would it have reached the same levels of popularity? If so, it almost certainly wouldn't've happened as quickly, right? These are difficult questions to answer and I'm not educated enough in this area to really offer any. So, while not worth a damn, my gut feelings is that there are at least some strong arguments as to why overall the absence of outsider profiting would've been better for the owning culture.
With rock'n'roll, it was not even just about money, it also did a pretty good job of bridging the gap between black and white people - I don't think it's realistic to say that this would have worked equally well if all the bands had been black.
I have no problem with that at all. Please dress up for the 16th of September, the Mexican Independence Day, or as a catrín on Día de los Muertos. My Korean friend looked so good as an Adelita and I was so proud of her.
I guess I'd only have a problem with a Halloween costume that exaggerates a negative and unrealistic stereotype but I don't think people make those anymore, or at least I haven't seen one.
which would just be racism really
Yeah, I wanted to set some parameters for it. I thought it'd be unhelpful without specifying where I draw the line.
It's a thin line between celebrating indigenous cultures and heritage and exploiting it. The Washington Redskins being something I feel everyone can clearly see was over that line, but wearing a sombrero is clearly nowhere near it.
There's a big difference between participation and appropriation, and the "anti-woke" hive mind goes out of it's way to conflate the two.
I mean I'm Bavarian and if people wear Lederhosen and set up their own Oktoberfest it's kinda lame. Not that I think it's bad, it's just that I'm not a fan of that stuff here either. You can totally have all of that. I keep the many many small breweries making fantastic beer.
Yeah, but lederhosen are just kind of neat. Who doesn't like their men in short leather shorts, right? (Seriously though, the construction for very traditional lederhosen is kind of neat. I've tried it, and it's a challenge without being able to skive all your seams.)
How dare you
"Cultural Appropiation" is the single dumbest thing I've ever fucking heard.
All cultures grow by learning about and adopting customs of other cultures, or in other words by appropiating things from other cultures.
And if they did that didn't we wouldn't have things like anime (Japan took the art of animation from America, not only did The US invent cartoons, but anime evolve from styles used on early Disney cartoons), rock music (Rock musicians are predominantly white, but rock itself evolved from distinctly black forms of music), or really most food in general (Pizza's from Italy, French Fries are from Belgium, Hot dogs are from Germany..... Need I go on?)
At best, demonizing cultural appropiation is just encouraging segregation.
Now if you're wearing the colors or clothing of another culture specifically with intent to insult or in a less-than-glamorous way... That's a different story. (I'm talking about those of you who think putting on an ET Mask and a Sombreo and claiming you're an illegal alien is hillarious)
This is the kind of Neo Liberal nonsense that makes me wish I had a party to root for that wasn't the Democrats
Really? Because I'd say it's the perfect term to describe shit like this.
Because that is not respecting an indigenous culture. That is taking something extremely important to them and perversely twisting it into some corporate sports team bullshit.
What else is that asshole doing if not appropriating someone's culture?
But can't we just call that racism? "Haha, I'm an Indian" is just racist. Making a new term of cultural appropriation then leads to all sorts of things getting that label that aren't problematic. A lot of it I think actually veers back into racism. Like as a white guy, can I eat, for example, Cherokee dishes? Can I open a Cherokee restaurant? I'm not pretending to be from their culture, I just like the food and think other people would too. If I can't do these things, you are reinforcing that Cherokees are a different group than all other Americans, which is where racism comes from. Being exposed to other cultures is how you combat racism, that's why cities tend to be less racist.
I guess, but there are many different types of racism and this is not the same as, for example, burning a cross on a black family's lawn.
This is not active hate. This person very likely has no animosity toward indigenous Americans. He probably has no idea about the significance of the war bonnet or why it's offensive.
So I think this is a subcategory which needs to be highlighted specifically because of people like that.
Some people just love to find reasons to get offended.
Hell, a way to carry a baby was called cultural appropriation by some black people where I live when first Nations have been carrying their baby the same way on our territory since way before any black people set foot in northern America but we don't hear them complain.
Clothing and food are surface, but important, cultural signs. It can be easy to observe and emulate these for one's own gain either socially or econically. All the while the culture from which these signs are derive are ignored.
Dressing up like a war chief for Halloween is partaking in the costume, but not the culture.
But who cares, right?
It's important to root these in a history of colonial exploitation, marginalization, and erasure. A group of people whose way of life has been noted as barbaric, backwards, or savage were often the same reasons colonial powers saw it fit to steal from them, enslave, and murder them. Donning a cultures dress or making their food tastes "better" has done nothing to restore connection with that culture. It is just a more polite form of their erasure. They have been robbed of their soveignty.
Another phenomena, as noted in the comic, is the chill acceptance of this by the appropriated culture. Here, they face no real erasure. Heck, you don't really see this in newly immigrated peoples who want to make a better life for themselves. Being seen is success. But you speak to their first generation children and having their culture flattened to the surface signs can be infuriating if you are the type who views assimilation as a type of loss.
I personally think there is space for a member of the dominant culture to appreciate the culture if they've been invited. But it is important to be careful here as well. Because you may have earned that right with one group from within the culture, but that is not transferable and that exception must be earned again.
Heck, it gets even more complicated when people looking to just keep their schools open and working sge adults employed couldn't care less when asked, but will ask if there's anything that can be done to stabilize their community.
So I've written a lot and feel like I missed so much and glossed over much of what is important. What have you read about the subject that really attempted to wrestle with the concept?
I am Latin American. We couldn't even give an atomic sliver of a speck of fuck about gringos using part of our culture or the intention behind it.
If anything it's enjoyable, one more for the family.
And if we get offended? Don't worry. We don't need anyone from a "dominant culture" to look down on us, thinking about saving us because we are oh so weak, or speak for us.
We can speak and do speak for ourselves.
Good thing I'm not part of the "dominant culture". Would hate to speak for you. Just speaking for myself. But there are Latin Americans who disagree with you.
Lol no jaja
Obviously intent comes into it, where wearing a reductive costume without any awareness (your Halloween costume example) is callous and ignorant of that person. I think some ignorance can be excused if this person couldn't reasonably be expected to understand all the implications of a costume, even if it's someone who should be expected to (thinking Trudeau Jr or Prince Harry when younger).
Regardless of the hypothesised (or real) impact to the community of someone wearing clothing arguably offensive to minorities with ancestry in the culture being mocked, those aspects aren't what this cartoon is about. It's about idiots who don't understand nuance and repeat shit they see on social media unthinkingly until you get this absurd situation where someone wearing a hat and wearing it well is screamed at in public for no discernible reason.
Lots of people seeing it will do the same kind of wrong-generalisation in the opposite direction though, and take the valid point the cartoon makes to write off all concerns with cultural appropriation, including the valid ones you just made in your first paragraph.
The world is nuanced, and that's nearly never conveyed well in our current public communications systems...
I wasn't responding to the cartoon, but to one comment asking why cultural appropriation is a bad thing.
IMO it's appropriation if it's done disrespectfully or in an exploitative or profiteering way. Otherwise, it would just be cultural segregation. Imagine liberalism turned full apartheid.
So if I want to open a Pinata factory, I can only sell them to Mexicans? Or can I sell them to anyone, but only to non-Mexicans at a profit? Or must every Pinata be made at home by a loving Mexican Grandmother for her Grandchildren only?
It's awesome, racists and progs have the same end goal
Segregation.
It's called White Savior Complex.
"Only I, a white person can save you from-- pick a thing. Because I believe you are incapable of fending for yourself, I shall be offended for you!"
Yeah. I see and experience this a lot from collectivists. It's like they try to cover it under a thinly veiled hypocritical facade of "niceness" but still stinks like shit under it
I don't have to go too far, just me mentioning that I am from Venezuela and that I know for a fact that the leftists destroyed my country, is enough for them to let go of that facade and go into a tirade of vindicative slurs.
Of course, I understand them. From thousand of kilometers away and armed with all of 15 minutes of a collectivist ideology pamphlet, they clearly know more about the struggles and history of the country I've lived all my life.
As a Quebecois, I like that Canadians like poutine. I don't like that they pretend they have invented it. I also like that they like maple syrup and the traditions surrounding it (cabane à sucre). I don't like that they appropriate it as a thing of their own (we produce 90% of global maple syrup).
You may not like it, but as a Quebecois you unfortunately remain part of Canada and thus are part of the set of Canadians and the creations and practices of Quebec are Canadian as a consequence.
To change that, you'll need to double down on that Free Quebec stuff and cut yourselves away from your English neighbors. Though I don't think that's even won an opinion poll in the last twenty years, and I don't think it's ever been closer than the failed resolution in 1995.
So it's fine for a culture to pretend to have invented something or take something as their own as long as that something is from a culture that happens to be in the same country?
To me, that's cultural appropriation, no matter whether it happens within the same country or not.
It's damn true. I ran a crew of workers that were Spanish speaking. After two years all I gotta say is, is there a word that isn't used as a dick?
Everything means dick in Spanish if you try hard enough
It applies to everything btw.
To date, "the thing from the thingy" is the most sought spare part in all of Latin America.
You don't know what it is, no one knows, but it means nothing and everything at the same time.
Our hardware store dependents are fluent in trillion of languages at this point
I can explain. In theory the person who SHOULD be offended is a member of a minority and speaking their mind would open them to backlash from the majority so they say nothing. Its mental gymnastics that let's a member of the majority "be a hero" for a minority even if that person doesn't exist. But who cares about that as long as the white lady can think she is a good guy.
Its stupid and is not really about the appropriated culture.
So, virtue signaling?
Ah, as expected
I was with you until the last sentence. Can't say I agree with the n word being a beautiful expression of English.
We in LATAM breath slurs and eat bullying for breakfast
Ew.
Yeah, it's awesome 😎
So what does bullying taste like?
Also, plenty of Latin American culture was basically forced on the indigenous by the Spanish. There's a reason why poor people in countries like Bolivia dress more like 16th century Spanish peasants than their indigenous ancestors. Those bowler hats people wear in Bolivia aren't part of Incan culture.
If you dress like what people consider to be traditional Bolivian dress these days and you're American, I guess you're appropriating Spanish culture from centuries ago? I don't think anyone would give a shit.
That was either Super Mario Odyssey or Paper Mario: Sticker Star (Mario can wear a sombrero in both). In Odyssey it's just a themed cosmetic that can be bought with coins. In Sticker Star, it's an attack.
Yeah and one of the reasons why we will never get again paper Mario references in other Mario games
God-damnit
Cultural appropriation is a broad enough term to functionally be meaningless, but I've found it helpful to think through 4 distinct interests at play, that I think are legitimate:
Proper attribution/credit. We don't like plagiarism or unattributed copying in most art. Remixes, homages, reinterpretations, and even satire/parody are acceptable but we expect proper treatment of the original author and the original work. Some accusations of cultural appropriation take on this flavor, where there's a perceived unfairness in how the originator of an idea is ignored and some copier is given credit. For a real world example of this, think of the times the fans of a particular musical artist get annoyed when a cover of one of that artist's song becomes bigger than the original.
Proper labeling/consumer disclosure/trademark. Some people don't like taking an established name and applying it outside of that original context. European nations can be pretty aggressive at preserving the names of certain wines (champagne versus sparkling wine) or cheeses (parmigiano reggiano versus parmesan) or other products. American producers are less aggressive about those types of geographic protected labels but have a much more aggressive system of trademarks generally: Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks. In a sense, there's literal ownership of a name and the owner should be entitled to decide what does or doesn't get the label.
Cheapening of something special or disrespect for something sacred. For certain types of ceremonial clothing, wearing that clothing outside of the context of that ceremony seems disrespectful. Military types sometimes get offended by stolen valor when people wear ranks/ribbons/uniforms they haven't personally earned, and want to gatekeep who gets to wear those things. In Wedding Crashers there's a scene where Will Ferrell puts on a fake purple heart to try to get laid, and it's widely understood by the audience to be a scummy move. Or, one could imagine the backlash if someone were to host some kind of drinking contest styled after some Christian communion rituals, complete with a host wearing stuff that looks like clergy attire.
Mockery of a group. Blackface, fake accents, and things of that nature are often in bad taste when used to mock people. It's hard to pull this off without a lot of people catching strays, so it's best to just avoid these practices. With costumes in general, there are things to look out for, especially if you're going out and getting smashed.
Using "cultural appropriation" to drag down regular people is kind of pointless, like freaking out at someone for putting the wrong recyclable type of plastic trash in the garbage.
Cultural appropriation matters at the corporate level, where media shapes what regular people do. Do you want to talk about cultural appropriation? Talk about Disney, talk about Hollywood, talk about Jeep Cherokee, and Decathlon Quechua. To keep with the recycling analogy: your problem shouldn't be ordinary people messing up their trash sorting, it should be vendors mass producing plastic trash for everything.
Bingo, Im white and Mexican born. I can dress up in traditional Mexican stuff and no one gives a crap. If I tried to be a rastafarian, whose faith is focused on the return of African descended people back to Africa, itvwould be wrong.
Your freedom to worship (or not) doesn't mean you're free from the social consequences, though
Indeed. The author of the comic misrepresents it as appreciating another culture. But really it is intentionally misrepresenting or stealing a culture. Like black Cleopatra. Or Israeli Hummus.
Complaining about sharing cultures IS racism. These idiots complaining about cultural appropriation have gone too far up their own ass.
Melding, sharing food clothing and customs makes everyone better! These bullshit micro divisions need to stop.
Sharing culture isn't cultural appropriation.
Yes, that was the point.
The first paragraph implies they're the same thing.
The reason feelings of cultural appropriation exist is because the children of immigrants feel like society treats them as foreigners because they're not white, despite growing up all their lives in the US/UK etc. This leads to feeling like some dipshit is enjoying the food and fashion of your home culture while rejecting it's people. Think about a Maga moron voting to kick out all the Mexicans while wearing a sombrero and eating tacos; it's a hypocrisy of culture vs race.
That's just racism and you're not going to fix it by isolating the immigrants more by chastising people that enjoy their culture.
It makes zero sense if the goal is to fight racism. If anything you'd want there to be MORE immersion and exchange of cultures so the immigrants are seen as part of the new fabric instead of separate from it.
I'm telling you how people feel, I'm not writing a manual towards a post race society. When people feel ostracised because they look Mexican, they get salty about the same society who routinely rejected them and made them feel like outsiders gleefully housing down Mexican food and cosplaying at being Mexican.
I've never seen anyone that wasn't lily white complain about cultural appropriation.
I know a bunch but they are in (sub)cultures that either get popularized and have very specific dictates for membership. The clearest example of this are how Rastas feel about non-black people appropriating the imagery of their faith whoch is dedicated to bringing the African diaspora back to Africa.
Selection bias
Maybe you need to interact with more minorities, bro?
"We got to keep them seperate but treat them equal!"
Hmm wonder where I heard that before.
In the end, progressives and racists shared the same end goal: Segregation
As with most things, it's a continuum. Some assimilation is good, a hairstyle, a clothing style, food, even customs. Sometimes certain people can go too far, and it gets more problematic. Think the jeweler in Snatch that isn't Jewish but pretends to be. The episode of The Neighborhood with Nicole Sullivan. Rachael Dolezal.
Exactly, no Scottish person is getting bent out of shape if Im wearing tartan plaid shirts but dressing up and pretending to be Rastafarian would be inappropriate as Im white.
Isn't race at least as much a social construct detached from any physical or biological reality as gender is? If so, why wouldn't transrace people be valid for essentially the same reason that transgender people are?
You can go down the rest of the radqueer rabbit hole from there, since most of their positions are just taking positions related to mainstream LGBTQ identities and extending them to ones less accepted by the mainstream LGBQ community, like xenogenders and being trans-things-other-than-gender.
This gets to the question of what racial identity is and I would argue that someone who isn’t of recent African ancestry, who was not raised by people who have recent African ancestry, who then pretends to not just have recent African ancestry but then claims that their family aren’t the people who raised them (because they are white) is very clearly not stable.
Race and gender are both social constructs, but they aren't analogous. Race is inherited in a way gender isn't. You are the race you are because your parents are the races they are. But you aren't a boy because your dad is a boy, and you aren't a girl because your mom is a girl.
Incredibly generally: gender is the expression of gender identity and is a social construct while gender identity seems to be largely influenced by biological factors. Sex is the biological differentiation, and while the delineation between the sexes is culturally defined (if someone has xxy sex chromosomes, high testosterone, a penis, and a vagina it's a cultural decision if we say they're male, female or intersex), it's a classification based much more on observable factors.
Race and ethnicity are more akin to sex than to gender identity, which would be better compared to cultural identity.
What distinguishes races is a social construct, but within a context racial classifications are relatively consistent. Racial markers that mean nothing in the US might be quite significant in Rawanda.
Similarly ethnicity, being a blend of race, language, culture and heritage is socially constructed but relatively objective within a context.
Culture on the other hand is, like gender identity, more to do with subjective feelings, opinions, and choices on the part of the individual, with the distinctions between them being cultural.
The woman in question mislead people about her race and ethnicity by misidentifying her relatives and heritage. Her cultural affiliation is harder to dispute, although being a chapter president for the NAACP shows at least a degree of acceptance by the African American culture in the area.
What "idiots complaining about cultural appropriation"? It's not exactly a common thing, despite what caricatures of them might make you think. No one is getting upset that anyone eats food from another culture.
The only actual examples I can think of that I've actually heard discussed are "please don't dress as my race as a costume, it's basically blackface" and "my religion was systematically driven to the brink of extinction, I'd appreciate it if you didn't use it as a fun activity to express your creativity".
These things always seem chock full of getting defensive about something that doesn't really happen, or acting like the smallest pushback to the dominant culture doing whatever they want is incredibly terrible.
Appropriation isn't an issue when it's just cultures sharing. It's an issue when people reduce the culture to the things in question, forget that there's actually people involved who deserve respect, or outright claim ownership of the thing in question.
Don't go to a Halloween party dressed as a Puerto Rican. Don't grab a random assortment of native American religious practices, mix them with crystals and use it to showcase your creativity.
How do Puerto Ricans dress up?
In reality? Like anyone else.
As a costume?
The not-puerto-rican editor of the magazine bon appetit went to a Halloween costume dressed as a caricature of a Puerto Rican with his also not Puerto Rican wife.
It came into my head as an example of something less obviously problematic than blackface, but more obviously problematic than dressing as a Disney character that's a depiction of a different race.
Feel free to substitute any other ethnicity or race into my example as it makes sense to you.
How is that being dressed as a Puerto Rican?
You'd go to Venezuela or Colombia and see people dressed the same as well
Hell even Ecuador or Peru I think
Baseball is very popular in Latin and central America, is not unheard of that someone is fan of a baseball team from another country
I don't see how being dressed with something resembling merchandise of a baseball team means you are Puerto Rican or dressed like one
And to go further, I believe it is EXTREMELY racist to think so.
Well, it's what he said he was doing, so that's why I went with that. Also note the specific terminology associated with Puerto Ricans.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/872697289/chief-editor-at-bon-app-tit-resigns-after-racially-offensive-photo-surfaces
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/dining/bon-appetit-adam-rapoport.html
In isolation it would be racist to assume a man wearing a baseball jersey was Puerto Rican or dressed as a one as a caricature. It's not when it's labeled as such by the people in the photo, and when asked about it they admit that's what they were doing, and then apologize and then ultimately resign.
To be honest, all that just seems like an incident blown out of proportion
As I see it, someone else is referring to this dude as papi, which is basically daddy but in Spanish, and then added a hashtag on Instagram that says "boricua", which might as well be related to food as the guy is apparently a chef?
It never says he is cosplaying as a Puerto Rican. At least in the picture they post, nor it looks like it's the intention.
Then there is a lot of people saying something about brown face or black face? What, can't people be tanned? Or somehow do they think everyone from LATAM is brown or black?
Alright. It's entirely incidental to the point I was making so I don't feel particularly invested in defending his actions being the way he said they were.
Replace it with one of the news stories about a politician wearing blackface if it makes you feel better, or fill in what you think would work better as a racist caricature outfit depicting someone from Puerto Rico.
I stand by my original statement that if you think to yourself "I'm going to go to this Halloween party as a Puerto Rican (or any race)" you honestly shouldn't do that, regardless of what comes into your mind when you picture that race, since races aren't costumes.
I'm not sure why you would think Boricua is related to food. It means a person from Puerto Rico. It's like arguing that "#new-yorkers" is about food. If it was about food, or his costume wasn't what it was, why would the picture just randomly be labeled with either this unknown food term despite no food being in the picture, or why would you go to a costume party not wearing a costume or as a generic baseball fan and post a picture of yourself labeled "Puerto Rican"? And then resign, referencing the Halloween costume amongst the list of racial insensitivities behind that choice?
The person in the article who used the term brownface is a person who actually worked with him and would presumably be able to tell if he had put on makeup to change his skin tone.
It's kinda funny when some crazies are asking to see your family tree and genealogy sample to know if it's alright for you to wear a certain piece of clothing.
Let's observe the chart
Oh good grief. Of course the Nazis had a chart. I hardly know any German, but there sure is a lot of "verboten" on that.
Makes me wonder if there was a similar thing for Jim Crow laws in the deep south.
They had an official "one-drop rule", so no need for a chart I guess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
The concept of cultural appropriation seems to be pretty useless in practice.
The cases I've encountered where it makes some bit of sense fit better under the concepts of racism or exploitation. The complaints about cultural appropriation online seem to more often attack innocent behaviour or someone genuinely appreciating another culture.
Drink tea, make tacos, wear a kimono, don't be an asshole
The actual complaints I see about cultural appropriation online are mostly directed at corporations trying to sell ethnic stuff. But that's not as controversial.
The silly personal attacks are common in memes just like this one, serving as centrist strawmen to vilify progressives. People love to talk about and ridicule it so much that it seems a lot more common than it actually is.
I think a big part of appropriation is either pretending the thing is from a different culture or just divorcing it from any existing cultural context. People just don't think about what an actual effect is so just knee jerk accuse anything vaguely similar of cultural appropriation.
Agreed on the first point. But even in progressive circles I hardly ever actually see this kind of behavior. Rather we want it to be a thing because it's so satisfying to dunk on those ignorant and self-righteous morons.
So it's been memed hard to the point that the term has become a favorite tool of right-wing pundits pushing culture war narratives.
Just something to consider as we accept and reinforce the trope.
Absolutely, or it's like an internet liberal thing not a real person thing.
I was at a puzzle meet and had brought a harry Potter puzzle and had a moment of "oh shit, JK Rowling is not the best choice for this group" but no one actually cared for something that tangentially transphobic.
Its a real person thing, I have had the displeasure of interacting with them.
Of course, they were young college kids who heard the term for the first time in class and were eager to prove how enlightened they were, but holy shit have I heard some hot takes. The college culture at an administrative level also plays into it, since they had an incident where one of the undergrad history professors told students it wasn't their job to educate the class on racism.
You sometimes see it on social media, where people dogpile on someone wearing a piece of clothing. But while there's plenty of that sort of lunatics, I think there's way more people out there calling those people loons
It IS controversial. Its just controversial for the same chuds who demand the right to throw on brown-face and call it cosplay. As soon as a beer company starts releasing their label in Spanish or putting a foreign flag on a product or otherwise identify with the wrong kind of foreigner, a big segment of the population loses its mind.
A good example I heard once was concerning the tagelharpa. It's an Estonian instrument, historically used in Estonian culture, however if you hear it you'll probably think Vikings. The modern viking/pagan/neofolk music scene uses it prominently, and as it has a much broader reach than Estonian culture, this has lead (through no fault of the musicians I must add) to situations where many people think of it as a "viking" instrument, even though it never was. Thus, a piece of Estonian culture is widely appreciated as belonging to another culture, due to popular media influence.
I don't know if this is really an example of cultural appropriation, but that example helped me grasp the concept (if it is a good example).
That's really interesting! Nice sounding instrument
It's not. People use stuff from other places and call them different names all the time
...and then over the coming years, decades, or centuries adjust those things either for differences in practical use or cultural tastes and that's where a lot of things in most cultures come from. Some things tend to independently evolve in lots of different places though because the idea is simple and the need it fills practically universal (like spears or fermented foods).
But don't be shocked by the sheer amount of our people modified this thing that those people we traded with used who modified this other thing that some other people used, etc, etc and that's why our cultural thing is really some ancient Babylonian thing repeatedly stolen, rebranded and iterated upon over centuries. You know, like how we measure time. Or for anyone of European ancestry, writing.
That's an interesting one. It's not like you can stop music and explain the instrumentation in the middle of a song. I have seen in live shows when they use uncommon instruments they'll explain it either at the start or between songs.
now i want a t-shirt/tote-bag with that line.
Kimono literally just means "thing to wear".
I've heard multiple Japanese people tell me how funny it is how much foreigners concern themselves over wearing... Clothes.
And katana just means "one-sided blade." But when you deliberately use a foreign word in English to describe something, you're talking about a specific kind of that thing.
I understand that it's a loan word, but my point was that a kimono's cultural meaning is largely similar to how we would say, "Let me go find something to wear". A kimono is a specific way to cut a single piece of cloth into a garment, but the result is still just clothes.
It's like policing what is or isn't "queso cheese". It's really not that big of a deal.
Congratulations, You just defined cultural appropriation.
If I had and it was that easy, we wouldn't have this neverending stream at someone getting offended because someone did something associated with a culture they don't have obvious blood ties to.
I think there is asshole behaviour that could be described as cultural appropriation, but I think the vast majority of them also fit under "exploitation" or "racism".
It's also apparent that if you tell people "cultural appropriation is bad", you get pretty silly outcomes. Suddenly you have protests because a restaurant serves sushi without being ethnically japanese, or someone yells at you because you post a photo of a california roll.
Given those examples I should probably go have lunch
Nobody has ever yelled at me for eating or posting a picture of my American Midwest grocery store sushi, get the fuck outta here.
The irony here is that the term cultural appropriation has been politically appropriated, the same way that many of these explorative racial theories are, like woke, like social justice, like critical race theory. They are taken from their academic settings and eventually used to suppress actual concerns raised by denegrating it and reducing it to something that is both laughable and fundamentally not what it is.
oh yeah, as an academic term it's probably useful
You're being trolled, there's nobody saying that unless online trolls convinced them. It's concern trolling to stoke division.
I think there's a mix. I get the impression that cultural appropriation as a thing to be offended about is well past its peak and dying out, but back when it was popular I knew people in real life angry about these things. Not bad people either... well meaning people who spent a bit too much time online and didn't think things through themselves.
There's things like native American sports mascots which are but some Native tribes say it's ok, but they also don't speak for every native American.
I can see how it's extra sensitive, given the genocide
Culture is meant to be shared, as long as you're respectful and you're not caricaturing or mocking the culture you're trying to portray, most people from said culture would be flattered.
Yeah context and intend make all the difference. Cultural appropriation is when you try to clad yourself in something that is a facsimile of another culture, usually for marketing or influence purposes, but you neither understand nor have any intend to understand the culture itself or the meaning behind the parts you use for your (usually financial) gain.
IDK, even then, I don't think you need to understand the culture about it so much. E.g. there was some incident about a white girl wearing a qipao to prom and she got called out for it. In the end, it's just a piece of clothing that looks nice. It isn't some deeply symbolic thing for people.
I don't expect her to try to understand Chinese culture before wearing a qipao (which originated in Mongolia before Chinese appropriated it BTW), and I don't expect Chinese to understand Western culture before wearing a suit and tie.
But obviously there are some cases, as you said where context does matter.
Mocking cultures is fine. Mocking anything is fine.
Obviously, but the intent is important.
And also the representation of that culture. An ignorant attempt at mocking a culture can be offensive even if the intent is purely comic or positive.
It doesn'tIt does
Lol, you got me there.
I'm not, I even edited the prior comment I made.
It's real simple; is the group in general okay with you wearing doing thwir traditions? If yes, then it's okay.
So Kimonos, mostly okay, Native American Headdresses, mostly not okay.
I found this after a quick-ish google. Looks like occasionally people do, but they mostly get laughed at as the native cultures seemed to find it a sign of respect. And actually felt hurt when a helicopter dropped the naming convention.
Building an attack helicopter and naming it after a group of people who absolutely fucked your shit up seems like a sign of respect to me.
Like how WB quietly shelved Speedy Gonzalez and the Latin community was like "No, fuck you. He was OUR GUY, we had representation! Now his cousin, the lazy slow one... yeah that shit can go."
Just not a football team I guess.
Just imagine a football team using the quaker oats guy as a mascot and calling them "The crackers."
You'll love this example of using native language. During the meeting where federal officials proposed the creation of an Indian Territory, the Choctaw tribe delegate Rev. Allen Wright suggested naming it “Oklahumma”. In the Choctaw language “okla” means “people” and “humma” means “red.” As a result, the area would be named Oklahoma Territory, or literally “Territory of the Red People.”
There are some arguments that "Homma" can also be a war title given for not retreating, but within the context of our racial history I don't think that's what they were going for.
And then of course, they named the main university’s mascots/fight song/etc after the “Boomers” and “Sooners” - people so eager to steal indigenous land that they couldn’t bother waiting for the government to make it legal.
There was a group that tried to get them to change it, but culture wars crowd absolutely pissed and shit themselves - they were already pissed after the chemistry building stopped being named after a Klan member.
Lol, what a bunch of snowflakes.
It's called White Savior Complex.
When I was growing up in the 80s and some frat-bro types ran around town dressed like the Three Amigos while swilling beers and fumbling their Spanish, parents and teachers would call it "tacky" and "annoying" and "juvenile".
Now, in the 20s, the children of those frat-bros puts on the same outfit and does the same stupid shit. But their peers are the ones rolling their eyes and telling them that they don't look cool, while the parents clap and take pictures and get off on a romanticized youth lived vicariously through their frat-bro kids.
So the frat-bros become resentful. They go home, pull out their crayons, and make up a naked brown man to give them permission to behave miserably. And then they go on podcasts and make Instagram reels explaining how - um, aktuly - if you don't think the tourist-trap Spirit Halloween tier get-up I'm wearing on Cinco-De-Drinko to celebrate getting wasted is cool, you're the real racists.
Then Budwiser releases an "Authentic Mexican Logger" and the same frat-bros lose their fucking minds because their favorite beer company just Went Woke.
Fuck, my back
Behold, i have drawn you as the soyjack savior complex.
No, that's an entirely different thing
A closer example might be the literal plot to Dune
Only superficially. Dune deconstructs the entire heroic archetype. Paul Atreides’ emergence as the hero and leader of the Fremen is completely artificial and engineered for colonialist purposes (so that House Atreides can control the supply of spice with minimal resistance from the population of Arrakis).
The plan backfires, of course, as the Fremen jihad ends up being more successful than they’d anticipated and spreads off-world and out of Paul’s ability to control it.
They meant the literal meaning of literal, as in "you took her too literally" not the common meaning of "real" or "actual"
If you go around being publicly offended for another group because you saw someone wear or eat something YOU think they shouldn't becuase "That's not YOUR culture". Then YOU might be a "White Savior".
White saviorism is the belief that you understand and know how to address a community and its problems in spite of not having any involvement with or ties to that community because you are white abd educated. Me thinking I can fix Puerto Rico’s issues because Im an educated white guy who has a poli sci degree would be an example of this as my Spanish is trash, I have never been to Puerto Rico, and Im unfamiliar with their history.
Cultural appropriation is utilizing imagery or concepts from a foreign culture. It can be good, bad, weird, or neutral depending on multiple factors.
That's a different thing, you should google these words you're using.
At my wedding reception, my wife’s cousins plopped a giant black and gold sombrero on my head to welcome me to the family. I’m expected to bring said sombrero to family get togethers and smash beers con mi familia
I see muchos Modelos in your future!
Are you sure it was black and gold and not white and blue?
It was definitely black and gold or their name isn't Yanny.
Case in point: Mexicans loved Speedy Gonzalez.
Probably because he always outwits his opponents and always wins. He's not any more crazy than the other Looney Tunes, he's as smart as Bugs, and unlike Bugs, he's never cruel and remains firmly heroic.
That's the crux. He's a Mexican stereotype, but at the time, it was rare to have a good guy who looked like that.
He was also the exact opposite of the other stereotype of the "lazy Mexican" - which, for anyone who's ever worked construction with actual Mexicans, is comically inaccurate.
I wonder how much of the 'lazy Mexican' stereotype comes from a combination of an afternoon siesta (...to avoid the hottest part of the day, which could be deadly prior to air conditioning), and the chronic anemia that could be caused by hookworm infestations that used to be common in areas with poor sanitation (incl. the American south; some of the same stereotypes existed regarding rural southerners for many decades)?
Interestingly, they also made a heroic "lazy" Mexican in the form of Slowpoke Rodriguez. (He pack a gun.)
Rodríguez cousin knew how to pack heat
I think he was a Salamanca.
When I was 12 or 13, we took a trip to Mexico and took public transportation and stayed in small non-touristy places where the people staying in the hotels were more likely to be Mexicans than Americans (not to save money, my parents just thought it would be more fun). I remember sitting in a hotel lobby with a TV on and some Mexican kids sitting around watching Speedy Gonzales cartoons dubbed into Spanish with their parents casually chatting and I was like, "WTF? Isn't Speedy Gonzales racist? They don't care? They like it?"
Like VindictiveJudge says, he's the hero who outwits his opponents and always wins. I'd add that the opponents are always American.
I don’t think it’s offensive, but if you’re wearing that just to make a point then maybe you’re just looking to offend people. This is less directed to the comic and more directed to the YouTube clips I have seen of similar scenario.
Usually it is the Yankees who take offense at the expense of us Latinos. We will always love to see others enjoy a part of our culture (as long as it is not in an exploitative and fetishistic way).
I guess it was only a matter of time before I was called out on what I do with queso.
I think this is a big part of the reason why some people get all white-knight about cultural appropriation. It can be quite difficult to know, as a cultural outsider, and from a glance, when something is being done in an exploitative and/or fetishistic way.
If it's difficult to know, people probably should be given the benefit of the doubt
Definitely. Innocent until proven guilty. But then, the conversation does still have to happen, sometimes. That's how people (on both sides of the debate) learn the difference in the first place.
You know what? you're right.
Usually, to solve that, what I do is look at who did it and ask (the person directly or myself) why they did it.
A practical example: You know that new DC animated series? I think it's called Creature Commandos. I haven't seen it, but I hear it's very good. Mind you, if you have seen it, can you tell me if anything happens, anything at all, related to Venezuela?
What happens is that they used as intro a very famous and beloved Venezuelan song: "Moliendo Café" (grinding coffee). All the other Venezuelans I've seen have loved it, but I remain skeptical, because I can't help wondering: Did they chose that song because it's somehow related to what is told in the story? Because Gunn just wanted to? Or because it sounded "very Latin" and different enough from the Mexican songs they always reuse? If it's the first, great; if it's the second, no problem; but the third...?
And the thing is, if I happen to come across the Youtube channel of some Swiss guy doing a electric guitar cover of "Moliendo Café", I wouldn't even go to his comments and yell "Cultural Appropriation!", because he's just an individual and what he does is harmless (and pretty neat). But a big company like Warner/Discovery...?
Unless the main people responsible are from or have roots in the country where the cultural expression comes from, it can't be anything but exploitation and, of course, cultural appropriation.
I'm unfamiliar with the show, but thank you so much for engaging with the nuance of the situation, here. I agree with what you have to say regarding context surrounding “Moliendo Café”. Context matters. OP's comic is a bit too "strawman" for my tastes.
There's discussion to be had, for sure, but this comic squeezes all the nuance out of a complex topic just to score an easy gotcha.
Well, is just a Small comic, it hasto be this way or else it would not be funny. But yeah, the real world is a lot more complex that any piece of entertainment could ever portrait.
Agreed. The humor of the comic is in the hyperbole.
You mean I cannot wear a sombrero while having sex? That's sad. But okay.
I mean "fetish" in the pretentious and boring way.
I was just joking. Imagine me having sex.
I know you were joking, I just wanted to avoid to imagine anybody else having sex.
I've had so many people claim I'm racist online for saying stuff about China. Even after I point out that I'm Chinese, it still doesn't help for some reason.
You're speaking english on the internet. Not only are you white, you are American and Male by default.
I'm from a time where it was accepted there were no girls on the internet. Only kids and FBI agents. So yes, I'm male :)
(Reference for those who don't get it)
Nah dude we're all 16/f/cali for reals
Whats your ICQ?
i remember it started with an 8
It seems like literally every Chinese person I’ve talked to is absolutely delighted when a westerner is interested in Chinese culture. I remember being assigned a trip to a buffet for a high school Chinese class, and my atonal 你好 got about as much praise as a baby sputtering out “da-da” for the first time. I posted some calligraphy on 小红书 a couple days ago and I am getting gassed up for it.
You can say the most basic phrase in mandarin and completely screw it up both grammatically and pronunciation-wise and they'd absolutely love it and applaud you for it
Provided you're white
Although the Chinese on XHS are actually quite annoyed at the waiguoren invasion right now
My feed is mostly english speakers, but every post I saw to the effect of "gtfo this is a chinese space" was getting mocked by chinese people pointing out IP indicated it was posted from America.
That's because they're talking about it in Chinese
This is a loud wake-up call that the internet is not reality.
I think it's NIMBYism in a way. Sure, they like to talk to Laowai and like it when they do something Chinese, but they don't really want them intruding on their social media network. The Great Firewall exists for a reason- Chinese culture and attitudes are vastly different to that of the west. There was a joke going around that watching Chinese short-form videos "is like tuning into interdimensional cable"
This reminds me of a comic, which obviously should be taken playfully with a pinch of salt:
You can say racist stuff about a group whether you belong in the group or not.
What is this absurdity of thinking that you get a free pass to say crap?
"Black people should have remained slaves. But it's ok, I can say it because I'm black"
Nonsense.
There's a far cry between me criticising the CCP for things like the Uyghur genocide and other political issues, and your made up strawman argument. Anybody should be free to criticise any country in the first place, without having to worry about skin colour.
Keep saying it, you're only offending reactionaries and tankies - and it is not even their goal to be happy, as near as anyone can tell.
Oh yeah, I've been banned multiple times for being a Chinese who's racist against China. I plan to keep being racist by that particular definition.
I know someone who said that America is racist for siding with Taiwan on things and then I pointed out to them that (except a minority) Taiwan is predominantly Han Chinese
Both of you are right.
Nah fam only one of them is really, the other one is your standard racist disguised as a progressive
Yes, but if it's trolling don't engage. If it's genuine, you have to acknowledge when they are correct. You don't get a free pass to be racist, even against your own kind, just because you're a minority. However, you are better positioned to be critical of a particular minority if you are part of it.
You implied that being Chinese is a counterpoint to people calling you racist. That's what I was commenting on.
Whether what you said to those people was racist or not is out of the point. I was criticizing the fact that you consider that being Chinese would prevent you from being racist, which is absurd.
I think pretty much everybody can agree that being of a certain race gives you a lot more leeway and defense against accusations of racism against that race. It would take an extremely radical statement to go beyond that.
... at least, that's what my black friends tell me when they call each other 'nigga'.
Most americans maybe, I've never seen this idea anywhere else.
And funnily enough people don't have the same logic with, for example, sexism.
black people are still slaves but now whites are too
This is just completely tone-deaf bullshit. Equating modern working conditions (in western countries) to slavery is like comparing a contemporary Scandinavian prison to Auschwitz. It's by very far not the same.
slavery is a constitutionally protected right in the states ; its covered under the 13th amendment.
I've never heard about "cultural appropriation" outside of jokes making fun of it. And it's one of the right's favourite strawmen. Maybe it's time to let it go?
The counterexample to Mexicans and their Sombreros is Plains Indians and their War bonnet (those feather crowns they used to sell as "Indian kids costumes"), whenever cultural appropriation is mentioned this comes up, so I'd be rather surprised if you hadn't heard of it before.
Any spicy takes on that one, or have you really just never heard of it?
Idk if I'm just old now and it's not the parties I go to but I'm sure glad that "sexy native american" isn't really a Halloween costume anymore.
It's not a strawmen in that it doesn't ever happen but it's just that those who get upset about it aren't very numerous so it gets drowned out by those making fun of them. And then others see all those jokes and get the sense it happens a lot more than it does.
I got some Malian clothes. Beautiful patterns on them. They were tailor made for me as a birthday gift from my roommate who was Malian, who's family in Mali owns a textile business.
I've received some... interesting reactions to me wearing that clothes.
Telling someone that something they are doing may be considered offensive to a different group sure seems to be offensive to some people...
I remember seeing a child have a japanese themed birthday. Some white person was giving off to her parents for cultural appropriation while Japanese people were flattered
Found it
She's wearing chopsticks in her hair which is generally frowned upon. She could've used a broach or a traditional kansashi instead which would've made her look more elegant.
What a scrub, git gud kid
I love this
Of course it was Tumblr
I'm more concerned that they're dressing their kid up to look like what is essentially a member of an escort service (albeit a traditional one) than that they're appropriating Japanese culture.
It turned out that although she looked white and her parents looked white, her extended family was actually asian. So it wasn't even appropiation to begin with.
Still everyone needs to chill, my fellow honkeys, please stop getting offended on behalf of others. Playing the role of the "White Savior" comes off as more bigoted than progressive.
I saw a The Onion video where a white woman pledged to never say a word that began with the letter N. Not only the N word, all N words.
"I was shouted down for wearing black facepaint and white lipstick, so why does Tom get to wear a kimono?"
Ahh… The Onion, my favorite, most reliable, 100% not parodic news outlet
Yes, The Onion is satire, but we're talking about the idea The Onion was satirizing.
I want a Green Hat that says "Make The Onion Satirical Again"
"whites"
Point taken, reworded it
You, and the rest of the posters on here, completely misunderstand. I, a white guy, don't get offended "on behalf of others" - the fact that white people have to constantly reference other cultures because we sterilized and sacrificed our own for the sake of white supremacism and "westernism" so long ago is offensive, period.
The way I tend to feel about this is that it's a jerk move if you're mocking some other group, or reasonably could be seen as mocking them, or try to claim that you/your group invented the thing you're using, but otherwise, borrowing stuff people like from other cultures is just one of the ways cultures evolve.
I can see some people objecting on the grounds that imitating something distinctive makes that thing less unique to the original group, or that an imitation by outsiders won't include some aspect important to the original and then that people that see the imitation won't get that aspect.
I can certainly understand why those feelings could lead to frustration, but applied strictly, the idea that certain things belong exclusively to the cultures that invented them both requires forcing people into precise boxes as to which culture they belong to, and sort of resembles a type of socially enforced intellectual property, which, being against IP as a concept, is something I feel like I'd be hypocritical agreeing with.
Well said.
The only reason im replying is
Has me hella curious. Can you elaborate? Is it the capitalist aspect of patents/trademarks and licensing or something else? I believe that people who invent a concept/character/world should have ownership to develop it into what their grander vision may be before someone else can come and write the story/use of their tool. Id love to hear your side of this though because I don't know anyone thats ever told me their against IP as a concept
This is a great read on the IP topic. I highly recommend it:
Against Intellectual Monopoly
This is the co-author's site and it does contain the full text, although physical copies are available directly from the Cambridge University Press.
Here's a summary:
ETA: It's written from the perspective of believers in the broad capitalist structure. The authors are serious economists that support the free market in no uncertain terms.
I would argue that IP doesnt need to be purly capitalistic though. Yea i agree that if we have a life saving drug, dont let 1 company monopolize the shit out of it and let people die for an extra dollar, but i dont know that ill say IP shouldnt exist.
If someone writes a story, creates a character or world, i want that content creator to be able to develop it without people infringing. If someone created a great game, i dont want a bunch of shit companies racing to put out the next title in the interest of making a buck off someone elses idea. I want who ever created that game to own the franchise long enough that they can make a second, third, or 4th game (or what ever media they adapt) to continue telling their story before other people put out low quality content that spoils the franchise
And the authors aren't really saying that, either.
To be clear, I don't agree with all of the authors' positions. I also think it's worth noting that the authors are not advocating for an elimination of the patent and copyright systems without replacing them with systems better suited to ensuring creator prosperity while also allowing for speedier human innovation.
It's worth a read, if you're interested in the subject matter. It challenged my opinions on intellectual property, but didn't change them entirely. Things they discuss, such as patent trolling and patent squatting, are worth contemplation. How can we change IP law to disincentivize such antisocial intellectual property law use by bad-faith actors?
ETA:
(From the above article.... and that was in 2014!)
It's mainly just that, since information can be copied without removing access to the original from the current possessor of that information, I don't see a good justification to restrict use of it. If you steal something, the original owner loses while you benefit. Since the unexpected loss is probably felt worse, this is a net negative and therefore a bad thing. But, if you copy information (which IP by nature is), you can give it to an arbitrarily large number of people without even taking it from the original, enough benefit to in my opinion outweigh the frustration that loss of control causes. Capitalism adds another element given it also ties monopoly over a given bit of information to artist compensation, but even without capitalism, I don't think information should be seen as property
20 years ago I had white-boy dreadlocks. African-American Christians told me it was cultural appropriation. Jamaican Rastafarians would stop me in the street to share their weed and offer me a ride.
This is an exact copy of a YouTube video from years ago
Are you saying this is content appropriation?
Wait, last time I talked to the Mexican that speaks on behalf of Mexicans, he said the opposite. I'm confused. Maybe you guys were talking to illegitimate, fake representatives? My Mexican had official documents and holograph marked Latino passes he was giving out.
A lot of these types of people are just segregationists in a different tone.
Yep. Turns out progressives and racists shared segregation in common
What's next, an individual's racial identity is the most important thing and everything should be seen through the lens of race?
Yeah generally dress up is fine, I think people shouldn't be barred from wearing a costume just because their race doesn't match. And for children especially, if they dress up to be a hero of a certain race, I think that is more representation of diversity in a good light.
However, IMO there is some due respect for that culture and it would be better to understand the significance of a dress one may wear, but if it's intended well most should be fine with it. Using casual stereotypes and jokes cheapen the outfit which I think can be in bad taste.
Like as long as they don't accompany it with racial slurs, I don't think it's a hate crime, just a bit cringey. It would be about the same level as if someone were to dress up as the Catholic Pope, a cardinal or a bishop and give people silly blessings.
I agree mostly with your general point, but I want to talk a bit about your example. I think it's okay to mock the Pope because I think religion is silly and ought to be mocked a bit. Of course, if you're Catholic, you might disagree. It's a good example for that reason. However, Catholics have a lot of power in society. They are not as marginalized as many other groups. So the example might not hit for everyone because intuitively, they don't think mocking Christianity or Catholicism is going to cause much harm in a western country where these groups are incredibly powerful.
Appropriation, and/or, as you said, stereotypes and jokes, are often mocking a culture or a people too. If they are a marginalized group, which often they are if they're being mocked, then it can add insult to injury
To clarify, here's a good example: As another commenter pointed out; appropriation is actually about making fun of things that other cultures hold sacred. An example I have heard of (but am pretty ignorant about myself) is wearing a native american feathered headdress.
I have heard it's reserved for specific people that indigenous Americans want to honor with it. It's like wearing a medal as a general. So, wearing a feathered headeess and cosplaying as native is belittling something they hold sacred.
I agree with you the main faux pas is trivializing things others hold sacred. Using costume to mock and make fun of any race or faith is different than wanting to embody it, which is where I think some cultural sensitivity policies sometimes mistakenly conflate. There is some nuance when it comes to historical and current power dynamics, certain costumes rooted in racism (e.g. blackface), which would be suitable justification to allow or bar certain specific costumes. However on the whole, I think ethnic cultures should be able to be expressed by anyone, when done in a positive, respectful manner.
Brought to you by PragerU.
literally
Are moccasins allowed?
Only if they are snakes.
So no land moccasins? What about air moccasins?
Then, everything changed when the Fire Moccasins attacked.
They aren't thongs unless they come from the Thong region of Australia, otherwise they are just sparkling flip-flops
Don't be silly, thongs have nothing to do with Australia, they were invented in the 19th Century by Frenchman Philippe Follope.
Correct. And if they don't come from the Sandalé region in France, they're not thongs. They're just sparkling toe slippers.
Remember the Frito Bandito? (Voiced by Mel Blanc)
On one hand certain things have certain meaning in the culture and maybe some people will look sidewise but on the other hand people that practice that culture probably don't expect some random dude to know everything it their culture. But "cultural appropriation" has mostly been used to virtue signal
Those people are just lunatics, ignore them and carry on your day as usual.
Great, let's mindlessly retread the right-wing's favorite progressive strawmen for the lulz. Any other culture war bullshit I can feel smugly self-righteous over?
"my culture is not your prom dress" moment.
I don't know why you are getting downvoted, it is the exact same thing as the comic. People on twitter didn't like a women wearing a Chinese dress to prom, while everyone from Asia was supporting her. https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/us-teens-qipao-prom-dress-sparks-cultural-appropriation-row-on-twitter
Funny that i'm chinese and living in asia as well and i support that. Western folks have a weird sense of justice that they want to protect everyone, to a point i feels like they're seeing us as a lesser kind that need protection.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with that observation.
Speaking in accordance with someone's wishes when they're not around to advocate for themselves in a private conversation is fine. Someone publicly speaking on behalf of an entire demographic that they know little to nothing about is bigoted as hell. It shows a complete lack of respect by assuming they know what's best for others without actually taking the time to learn about their values and culture. And it's super condescending, treating people of the demographic as if they lacked the capacity and autonomy to speak up for themselves.
One thing to note that the one who accused the girl for cultural appropriation is chinese themselves, but even then, who are they to gatekeep our culture?
I think discussions on the qipao are more concerned with it be sexualized/treated as a fetish costume. It’s formal wear.
In this specific instance it was a formal event but I think you were talking generally
I think a good rule of thumb for getting offended is to first ask yourself: does this really offend me, or am I acting offended on behalf of some other theoretical person who's not actually here? And if it's the latter, then you probably shouldn't be offended.
It's just a rule of thumb tho. Like if someone is saying "death to jews", you still have every right to oppose that even if you aren't a jew of course.
OK. But can we NOT ethnically clense Hispanic people? Please?
What everyone forgets on both sides is it is about NON-ETHNIC companies making profits on ETHNIC traditions.
Imagine if your uncle Jeffy, a staunch republican who is against native American rights to their lands, starts using his multimillion dollar garment company to make native American headdresses and sell them on Amazon. THATS the root of the cultural appropriation craze.
Naturally both sides have descended into idiocy.
A new Stonetoss huh
insert Ricky Gervais cultural appropriation joke here
This. The social Justice warriors that are peddling the cultural appropriation line are not representative of the culture or the people of that culture, their opinions, or feelings on the matter.
What we, as a society, need to do, is let cultures be offended when they feel offended, and not assume that they will be offended by something that we think they should be offended by.
Short version is: don't be offended on behalf of someone else.
You don't know them. You don't know their culture. You don't know what they see as offensive.
Stop assuming you do.
This video always made me giggle a bit: Students vs. Mexicans: Cultural Appropriation | Man on the Street