So...We Gonna Talk About This Speech?

[J842P]

Well that's shit nonsense. The spreading and use of ideas is part and parcel of human culture. Indians created written numbers, which were taken up by the Arabs, then adopted by and made the global standard by Europeans. If an idea is good, then it's good. Whodafuk cares where it comes from?

It is not nonsense that for centuries, plagiarism has not been accepted as appropriate behavior: it is a fact. It is not nonsense that violations of copyrights or patents have not been considered acceptable behavior: it is a fact.

The idea of cultural appropriation has nothing to do with copyrights or patents.

 

[Trausti]

Plagiarism can only exist between individuals. There has never been a prohibition of group plagiarism. Don't even know how that'd work.

For some reason you think is rebuts the idea that it is nonsense that plagiarism has been considered inappropriate. For some reason you seem unaware that individuals are accused of cultural appropriation by other individuals.

Plagiarism is representation of another's idea as one's own. It has nothing to do with what racial, ethic, religious, etc., group you identify with. But I guess it's cultural appropriation for a non-white person to use computers because, hey, Bill Gates is a white guy like me.

 

[Metaphor]

It is nonsense.

Twerking exists. Somebody (or somebodies) invented it. Who has the moral right to twerk, and why them and not others?

I have no idea what you are talking about, why you are droning about "moral rights" or why you think this is relevant.

It's relevant because black women are never criticised for twerking, even though nobody owns a culture so they must have appropriated it.

 

[Metaphor]

It is a myster: how does one appropriate what one already has? Hmmm.

That is indeed a mystery to me. So, black people 'have' black culture,so they didn't appropriate it? What is it about their genetics that caused them to have it?

 

[Metaphor]

Well that's shit nonsense. The spreading and use of ideas is part and parcel of human culture. Indians created written numbers, which were taken up by the Arabs, then adopted by and made the global standard by Europeans. If an idea is good, then it's good. Whodafuk cares where it comes from?

It is not nonsense that for centuries, plagiarism has not been accepted as appropriate behavior: it is a fact. It is not nonsense that violations of copyrights or patents have not been considered acceptable behavior: it is a fact.

No, it is utter fucking nonsense to imagine that when white women 'twerk', they are doing something analogous to 'plagiarising', but when black women twerk, they are not plagiarising.

Either twerking is an idea that needs credit (and therefore copying it without credit is plagiarism) or it does not need credit (and therefore you can copy and paste to your heart's content).

Which is it?

 

[Metaphor]

Believe what? That is not necessarily the case that appropriating ideas is considered appropriate? That is reality. Apparently you have a hard time accepting reality. That is not my problem.

Why is it considered inappropriate for Taylor Swift to 'appropriate' twerking, but it is not considered inappropriate for black women to appropriate twerking?

I simply said that it is not neccessarily the case that appropriating is considered appropriate. For some obscure reason, you seem to think that means is "not necessarily" means "always".

Cultural appropriation is always inappropriate; if you don't believe that dogma you don't understand the mythicists' religion.

I don't know.

They're copying ideas they didn't come up with. Either copying a particular idea you didn't come up with is inappropriate or it isn't, and the fact that your parents also copied that particular idea is irrelevant to that determination.

Like what?

Like that the ideas in a culture are remotely analogous to the ideas in intellectual property.

Intellectual property law hinges on an identifiable inventor who retains time-limited rights to exclusive use of an idea, bestowed on her by the State.

Cultural ideas have no identifiable inventor. The analogy is bankrupt.

 

[laughing dog]

Why is it considered inappropriate for Taylor Swift to 'appropriate' twerking, but it is not considered inappropriate for black women to appropriate twerking?

Don't know and don't care.

Cultural appropriation is always inappropriate; if you don't believe that dogma you don't understand the mythicists' religion.

My guess is you are mischaracterizing their view.

They're copying ideas they didn't come up with. Either copying a particular idea you didn't come up with is inappropriate or it isn't, and the fact that your parents also copied that particular idea is irrelevant to that determination.

Well, when something is handed down to you, that is not really appropriation in the normal sense of the world, so I think your example is unconvincing. Moreover, sometimes using an idea that you didn't come up with is okay and sometimes it isn't. I realize that is a complicated notion, but life is complicated.

Like that the ideas in a culture are remotely analogous to the ideas in intellectual property.

I find it odd you think ideas are ideas whether they are cultural or not. The notion that ideas are ideas is a very simple one that everyone should be able to comprehend.

Intellectual property law hinges on an identifiable inventor who retains time-limited rights to exclusive use of an idea, bestowed on her by the State.

Cultural ideas have no identifiable inventor. The analogy is bankrupt.

No, your logic is impaired. You claimed that it is always appropriate to use the ideas of others for embellishment, etc.... That is clearly false. No amount of squirming or equivocation on your part can alter that fact.

 

[laughing dog]

It is not nonsense that for centuries, plagiarism has not been accepted as appropriate behavior: it is a fact. It is not nonsense that violations of copyrights or patents have not been considered acceptable behavior: it is a fact.

No, it is utter fucking nonsense to imagine that when white women 'twerk', they are doing something analogous to 'plagiarising', but when black women twerk, they are not plagiarising.

To be fair, your example of twerking is utter fucking nonsense.

Either twerking is an idea that needs credit (and therefore copying it without credit is plagiarism) or it does not need credit (and therefore you can copy and paste to your heart's content).

Whichever one floats your boat. Personally, I don't think it has much, if anything, to be part of a culture for the simple fact it has not been around long enough. However, the fact someone misuses a term or idea does not invalid the concept.

 

[Derec]

To be fair, your example of twerking is utter fucking nonsense.

Why? It is not that different to this actual bit of whining about 'cultural appropriation' by a SJW.
Why I can’t stand white belly dancers

Whichever one floats your boat. Personally, I don't think it has much, if anything, to be part of a culture for the simple fact it has not been around long enough. However, the fact someone misuses a term or idea does not invalid the concept.

It's all misuse. Like chakras, astrology or thetans. There is no true core.

 

[Metaphor]

My guess is you are mischaracterizing their view.

I am not; they (the mythicists) have alternative terms for copying ideas when they approve or don't care about the copying ('cultural exchange').

Well, when something is handed down to you, that is not really appropriation in the normal sense of the world, so I think your example is unconvincing.

How can a culture be 'handed' to someone? How can something that is not owned also simultaneously be 'handed over'?

Moreover, sometimes using an idea that you didn't come up with is okay and sometimes it isn't. I realize that is a complicated notion, but life is complicated.

Except I understand that.

But, why can the okayness of copying an idea be based on your skin colour?

I find it odd you think ideas are ideas whether they are cultural or not. The notion that ideas are ideas is a very simple one that everyone should be able to comprehend.

Of course, all cultural ideas are ideas. That isn't the point.

There is a subset of ideas that the cultural appropriation mythicists claim moral ownership over.

No, your logic is impaired. You claimed that it is always appropriate to use the ideas of others for embellishment, etc....

No, I did not. It is always appropriate to use any and all cultural ideas for embellishment, copying, reinvention, or whatever else you want to do.

Cultural ideas have no identifiable inventor and they are therefore freely exploitable by all people.

That is clearly false. No amount of squirming or equivocation on your part can alter that fact.

You're doing the equivocation; pretending that cultural ideas, which have no discernible inventor and over which no living person has moral or legal claim, are analogous to intellectual property.

They are not analogous. Using them is not plagiarism. The okayness of copying an idea has nothing to do with the colour of the copier's skin or membership in some imagined group.

 

[Metaphor]

To be fair, your example of twerking is utter fucking nonsense.

Evidently you have never read anything a mythicist has to say. Black women who are cultural appropriation mythicists do indeed believe that twerking belongs to 'them', despite the fact that nobody owns a culture and copying ideas with no discernible inventor is not morally problematic but usually morally desirable (if the ideas are good ones or bring happiness).

Whichever one floats your boat. Personally, I don't think it has much, if anything, to be part of a culture for the simple fact it has not been around long enough. However, the fact someone misuses a term or idea does not invalid the concept.

The cultural appropriation mythicists disagree with you on whether twerking is 'cultural appropriation'.

Of course, you have singularly failed to provide a single example of 'cultural appropriation' that you do think is a problem.

 

[Ford]

Of course, you have singularly failed to provide a single example of 'cultural appropriation' that you do think is a problem.

You've managed to miss the point with your twerking obsession.

It isn't just the one thing.

The culture we're talking about is one that springs from a shared experience going back to the days when people like the guy in the OP speech would have been the property of someone else. It isn't just the one thing. Music. Food. A dialect. Social norms. Clothing. Hair styles. Literature. All kinds of things existed in a culture that was (at least after the end of slavery) considered by some to be separate but equal. It was certainly separate.


What Mr. Williams was talking about was more than just Miley Cyrus twerking. It was about the white society that had owned black people for a few centuries and then oppressed them for another 100 years swooping in and "borrowing" parts of that culture when it was convenient or fashionable or profitable for them, and then selling it as if it were their idea in the first place or at the very least claiming to have "discovered" something that had existed all along in the black community.


An example I mentioned (and again, it isn't just the one thing) was Pat Boone. Little Richard - a flamboyant black man - made the song "Tutti Frutti." He wrote it, performed it, and released it. But flamboyant black men making records was a bit too threatening for 1950s white audiences, so Pat Boone (who had also covered Fats Domino's Ain't That a Shame) was brought in to sell the record to them. Suddenly the nascent rock and roll music - which had sprung almost entirely from the black community - was a white thing. Bill Haley and then Elvis were the face of rock and roll.

A decade later a bunch of white people from Britain stumbled upon the blues, and to their credit a lot of them tried to say "this is just our version of it but you've really got to listen to Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson" but it was to no avail.


And again, it isn't just the one thing. Williams' broader point was to say in effect "you love us when we dance and sing and act and play sports really well but you don't actually care about us. We're still minstrels to you in many ways, and when we stand up and demand you treat us as equals suddenly we're all threatening and scary and you need to 'do something' about 'black lives matter."


He's saying we're not quite done with the whole civil rights thing. That there's still work to do. And here we are on this thread arguing about twerking.

 

[Metaphor]

You've managed to miss the point with your twerking obsession.

I'm not obsessed with twerking; that's the obsession of the cultural appropriation mythicists.

It isn't just the one thing.

I never claimed it was. Indeed, if only it were one thing.

The culture we're talking about is one that springs from a shared experience going back to the days when people like the guy in the OP speech would have been the property of someone else. It isn't just the one thing. Music. Food. A dialect. Social norms. Clothing. Hair styles. Literature. All kinds of things existed in a culture that was (at least after the end of slavery) considered by some to be separate but equal. It was certainly separate.

The guy in the OP was never owned by anybody.

What Mr. Williams was talking about was more than just Miley Cyrus twerking. It was about the white society that had owned black people for a few centuries and then oppressed them for another 100 years swooping in and "borrowing" parts of that culture when it was convenient or fashionable or profitable for them, and then selling it as if it were their idea in the first place or at the very least claiming to have "discovered" something that had existed all along in the black community.

As we have established, nobody owns a culture, so nobody is deprived or wronged when a culture is copied.

The whole point is that it was nobody's idea in the first place.

An example I mentioned (and again, it isn't just the one thing) was Pat Boone. Little Richard - a flamboyant black man - made the song "Tutti Frutti." He wrote it, performed it, and released it. But flamboyant black men making records was a bit too threatening for 1950s white audiences, so Pat Boone (who had also covered Fats Domino's Ain't That a Shame) was brought in to sell the record to them. Suddenly the nascent rock and roll music - which had sprung almost entirely from the black community - was a white thing. Bill Haley and then Elvis were the face of rock and roll.

Oy vey. Pat Boone covering a song does not prevent Little Richard singing the song. I assure you that Pat Boone cannot turn back the hands of time and invent something someone else invented. Did the government confiscate the Little Richard version? Was he scrubbed from the record as songwriter?

A decade later a bunch of white people from Britain stumbled upon the blues, and to their credit a lot of them tried to say "this is just our version of it but you've really got to listen to Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson" but it was to no avail.

Of course it's their version; any creator takes something abstract and makes it their version. That's why there are songwriting credits: because individuals write songs.

Nobody writes, or owns, or has moral claim over a genre.

And again, it isn't just the one thing. Williams' broader point was to say in effect "you love us when we dance and sing and act and play sports really well but you don't actually care about us. We're still minstrels to you in many ways, and when we stand up and demand you treat us as equals suddenly we're all threatening and scary and you need to 'do something' about 'black lives matter."


He's saying we're not quite done with the whole civil rights thing. That there's still work to do. And here we are on this thread arguing about twerking.

If the cultural appropriation mythicists didn't believe that the okayness of twerking depended on the colour of your skin, you're damn right we wouldn't be arguing about it.

And yet the cultural appropriation mythicists believe exactly that. And they believe a raft of other things too. And what they believe is so nonsensical that phrases like 'gentrify our genius' are given a pass as coherent.

 

[Derec]

Seems to me you misunderstand Metaphor because he says cultural appropriation is impossible.

He thinks it is not a meaningful concept. And he is right. He does not believe people can't gainfully use things from other cultures.

So what? It is not about ownership.

Could have fooled me. The whole idea of cultural appropriation is that non-white people own their cultures and that those evil whites are stealing it. You can't steal what isn't owned.

No, your responses show you miss the point. I did not say plagiarism or copyright are cultural appropriation. Metaphor claims that it is okay to embellish and build upon other's ideas. Plagiarism and copyright are indications that it is not okay. Moreover, your claim that if something is the public domain means its use is not plagiarism is false. Try attributing quotes from Shakespeare or the Bible to yourself in an academic paper.

Those are actual specific works. Note that while you can't claim you wrote Genesis or Hamlet you can use them as you see fit. You can adapt them as you see fit. And Shakey himself was not above adapting existing stories. Romeo and Juliet is based on an Italian story. Nobody is complaining that Shakespeare "culturally appropriated" Italian culture. There is a medieval German legend of Dr. Faustus. Was Goethe ok to adapt it since he was German but Marlowe a "cultural appropriator" because he was English? And note. I can adapt elements from Shakespeare or Goethe freely today. Why should it be any different for elements that come from non-European cultures?

The point is that for centuries the notion that using other's ideas for gain is not necessarily accepted as appropriate behavior.

No. You can use ideas. It is specific implementation that is protected.

No one to my knowledge is claiming this is a legal concept.

But they use legal language like "stealing". In the end it is just a way to shame whites for what humanity has done since time immemorial and which is essential for cultural dissemination and development.

Of course you do. Because you think any topic is really about oppressing whites or males. But you are wrong.

Cultural appropriation is overtly racially one-sided.

Of course you think one of your boring and irrelevant hobby horses is relevant. Just like the bark of the tree is relevant when one is discussing the forest. But you are wrong.

This thread is about this Jesse guy's speech which talked about cultural appropriation among other things. You do not have to talk about it if you don't want to.

Since it is generally accepted that "whites" came from Africa originally,

Of course. Which means whites (and everything else) should be free to use cultural achievements that originated in Africa. As should everybody else.

it would seem your observation is rather racist or ignorant.

Since this was a parody of cultural appropriation mythicism that is exactly what I was going for. I.e. it is not what I actually believe.

 

[Arctish]

Seems to me you misunderstand Metaphor because he says cultural appropriation is impossible.

He thinks it is not a meaningful concept. And he is right. He does not believe people can't gainfully use things from other cultures.

I don't think that's quite how Metaphor sees it. He says it's not a meaningful concept but then goes on to defend it and say the results are usually beneficial. I think Metaphor strongly believes that people can and should gainfully use things from other cultures, and that anything that impedes that activity is inherently immoral.

I think when Metaphor speaks of 'cultural appropriation mythicists' what he is expressing is contempt for critics of cultural appropriation, not that cultural appropriation is a myth. Interestingly, he knows that cultural exchange is less controversial and achieves much the same result, but for some reason doesn't favor it.

 

[Ford]

the cultural appropriation mythicists

Your effort to make this a thing is going nowhere. It isn't a myth. White people ripped off black culture and claimed it as their own.

 

[Derec]

I don't think that's quite how Metaphor sees it. He says it's not a meaningful concept but then goes on to defend it and say the results are usually beneficial. I think Metaphor strongly believes that people can and should gainfully use things from other cultures, and that anything that impedes that activity is inherently immoral.

I think when Metaphor speaks of 'cultural appropriation mythicists' what he is expressing is contempt for critics of cultural appropriation, not that cultural appropriation is a myth. Interestingly, he knows that cultural exchange is less controversial and achieves much the same result, but for some reason doesn't favor it.

Potato potahto. It depends on whether you define the term "cultural appropriation" as negative (the way it is actually used by SJWs). I will let Metaphor himself clarify how he uses the terms though.

 

[Ford]

I think when Metaphor speaks of 'cultural appropriation mythicists' what he is expressing is contempt for critics of cultural appropriation, not that cultural appropriation is a myth.

That was not what I took away from his posts.

 

[Metaphor]

I don't think that's quite how Metaphor sees it. He says it's not a meaningful concept

It isn't a meaningful concept for all the reasons I've already stated; in particular the word 'appropriation' is deliberately misleading, as copying a general cultural idea with no discernible inventor is not appropriating it.

Or, if it is 'appropriating' it, then the people raised in that culture are appropriating that culture from the people they copied it from.

but then goes on to defend it

I defend actions that the cultural appropriation mythicists call 'cultural appropriation', however I do not believe that culture can be 'appropriated'.

and say the results are usually beneficial. I think Metaphor strongly believes that people can and should gainfully use things from other cultures, and that anything that impedes that activity is inherently immoral.

That's certainly accurate, although I would not use the term 'other cultures'. People should use anything they find helpful from any culture, whether they were raised in the culture or not.

I think when Metaphor speaks of 'cultural appropriation mythicists' what he is expressing is contempt for critics of cultural appropriation, not that cultural appropriation is a myth.

I recognise what the mythicists are talking about when they accuse others of 'cultural appropriation'. The behaviour isn't a 'myth'. What is a myth is that culture can be appropriated and that the actions described as appropriation are morally wrong.

Interestingly, he knows that cultural exchange is less controversial and achieves much the same result, but for some reason doesn't favor it.

Cultural exchange is any 'appropriation' of culture the cultural appropriation mythicists approve of. I don't favour the term 'cultural exchange' because I do not own or have moral claim to any culture to 'exchange'.

 

[Derec]

the cultural appropriation mythicists

Your effort to make this a thing is going nowhere. It isn't a myth. White people ripped off black culture and claimed it as their own.

First sentence of Wikipedia article on  Blues.

Blues is a genre[2] and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African-American work songs and European-American folk music.[1]

It also notes

Typical instruments
Guitar bass guitar piano harmonica upright bass drums saxophone vocals trumpet cornet trombone

These have been mostly developed in Europe.

So why is one "ripping off" and the other isn't? Face it, cultures influence each other.