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Cultural Appropriation

I think cultural appropriation falls into roughly two categories:

1) Outright insults and propagating racial stereotypes. Like wearing indian head gear and getting drunk. Or doing blackface for a minstrel show. But these aren't so much "appropriation" as they're just plain racism.

2) When someone who's not part of a minority group, makes money off things that the minority group thinks belongs to them. Say, a non-native setting up shops or restaurants for tourists themed after the native culture, when there are natives in the area doing the same thing. In this case cultural appropriation is just a pretext for killing the competition, or tied somehow with reparations for past wrongs.

Gwen Stefani taking after japanese culture is absolutely ok in my book. Or any other such cross-pollination. To try to artificially limit creativity by saying "you can't do X, because you are member of group Y" is idiotic.
 
Number two is only ok when the original people are gone (or nearly gone). It becomes more of a museum in that case where it's ok to make money if the culture is respected and the goal is cultural transmission.
 
I am in no way an expert or very educated in the concept of cultural appropriation. All I've done is read the Wikipedia page and some links years ago. At that time, I noticed a critical difference between what is academically understood as cultural appropriation and how the concept is made fun of in popular culture. I think that what is always missing in discussion of cultural appropriation is that part of the pre-requisites for whether the thing in question is cultural appropriation is that the target group is oppressed. Cultural appropriation is then at least in some part a logical consequence of oppression, looking at a slice of oppression from a particular angle.

I am also not advocating for anything except for trying to add that prerequisite in, and then following some critical thinking. Not trying to pick on or argue with Jayjay, and am only using his post because there are few in the thread:
Say, a non-native setting up shops or restaurants for tourists themed after the native culture, when there are natives in the area doing the same thing.
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Suppose that we add that the native population is being oppressed. There will be a power imbalance (and maybe even legal imbalances) between group A (the non-natives) and group B (the natives). This will make it easier to set up shops. It will also make it so that the dominant group A can redefine native culture as something not quite native culture--but most often the consumers will believe the redefinition (remember, this can be done because of the power imbalance). Then, the redefined theme is seen as "good" and the other as "lesser" and the quality of the two may also be observed to be different merely because of the economic conditions are different because group B is oppressed---bad part of town, infestations of vermin, higher crime in the areas, run-down buildings, but also that redefinition--"wait, what the hell is this product???? it's not the Disney version of what it's supposed to be?!!?!" And so the dominant more powerful non-native group continues to thrive while redefining the the native culture within consumer culture and the native group is left with society thinking their products and goods are inferior (on average).

Besides the absence of including oppression as a prerequisite in discussion, I think another complication that things in life often reside on continua. Oppression is an example. The level of oppression along some kind of scoring mechanism, say, existing today again say, in the US of groups is different than it was half a century ago and then it was different than a century before. Oppression, if we can call it that, is at least in the U.S., not legal most of the time, but instead cultural and statistical. It's far more fuzzy.

What we can say for sure because we know it is that real group differences exist and those group differences are often unfair and the result of social and cultural phenomena.
 
Three things: I do not believe there is any philosophical weight behind the idea of cultural appropriation. I do, however, believe in the danger of enraging shrieking idiots, and those who have been infected by this belief in "appropriation". Finally, I think accreditation and social strength should flow from those who provide cultural ideas to those who created the ideas.

My logic here is simple and is exemplified by the idea of the dream catcher:

The dream catcher is an object of north American native cultures. People had the belief that the world had dreams pass physically over them, and to make a device "for catching and filtering dreams". It started with the Ojibwe but was adopted by other tribes owing to the proliferation of the Ojibwe nation.

By the logic of "appropriation", this means that the dream catcher is already appropriated, even by first peoples. So is pretty much 100% of the Bible. Christianity "appropriated" the entire old testament from Jewish culture by that logic yet the shrieking hoards aren't downdressing themselves for that! They also appropriated the new testament from Greek and roman Socratic culture.

Moreover, if the dream catcher actually has some form of mystic function, then it stands to reason that the belief that a white person owning or making one for their own use is asinine: in what world is it OK to say "this is a tool, it works, but you aren't allowed to use it because if you did that's appropriation"?

Either it is an effective tool, in which case it is the birthright of all people who dare to dream, or it is not! Are only native Americans allowed to have peaceful or powerful dreams? That would be supremacist thinking, to say "this is a thing and it works but the white man has no right to it!"

But on that same note having a dreamcatcher just to have and display it vs having a dreamcatcher for catching and filtering dreams is a different proposition. One is merely disrespect shrouded in consumerism!

Rather, to shriek about copying such things is not attacking "appropriators", but is enabling hoarding and secrecy of truth, if it exists in such a way.

That said, shrieking hoards are still a thing.
While this is not the only thing idiots shriek about, it is one of those things.

Draw a comic book depicting a woman being raped, and you will awaken yet a different shrieking hoard.

Don't try publishing it on DeviantArt! Not that you should publish such on a site where kids could access it without understanding why such exists. Never mind that none of the people in the story are real, never mind it's published with both formatter and back matter that discuss where to go for resources on safe words, rape counseling, contact networks for shelters for the raped and abused, and a content warning explaining the idea of sexual fantasy.

No matter what you do, you will still awaken a shrieking hoard for being "a rape apologist!"

As you can see from the OP, shrieking hoards still believe in such shit. My own husband has a bit of this bug infecting him. The fact is, even if there's no real reason for a bear to be angry, even if you mean them no harm and wish to live in peace and harmony with the bear, it's still a fucking bear and if you greet their kids with friendly distance and respect, they will still maul you.

The is no placating a hoard of idiots infected with such bullshit ideas. When a huge section of society is participatory in creating such dangers, one cannot move quickly against it.

Disarming such shit requires effective primary education about the problem of the angry mob, and the kinds of things people try to mob others over. They need to be shown the signs of someone trying to create a frenzied group attack for the sake of watching the world burn. It is not the work of days or hours but years of hard work as parents or relatives of children.

Instead, one must accept the existence of such even while they fight it, and if one wishes to live a long life, to let sleeping bears lie dormant even while everyone maps out the location of bear dens, and do work to keep bears away from places people need to access, pushing them back into the wilds outside our fires of personhood with group effort.

Also, it's simply not right to walk into a bear den, rope the bear down, shave it's fur, pull it's claws and teeth, and then laugh at it.

But, for every idiot idea like this there is a grain of truth, returning to the dream catcher: there is a reminder we must heed in that destroying a culture is still fucking bad, and white people did destroy a culture and laid down cultural tools and concepts that accelerate such destruction within society, and those cultural concepts which cause such destruction are still alive and well. Rebirth of cultural ideas is good! Profiting on those ideas while leaving their originators to obscurity is not.

Consider that Christianity adopted perverted versions of earlier festivals for the purpose of causing people to forget ancient pagan rites through incomplete adoption. People cannot celebrate samhain because, through the adoption of Halloween, all the ancient culture got replaced and perverted into something else. This was by design.

Further there is a problem in failure to respect the deep history and origins of an idea. Doing so allows the truth and/or power of the idea to be lost, and allow the cultural origins of ideas to erode.

When one depicts the "flesh pedestrian" as a slavering monster born of a dark act in a cave, for example, one loses the real purpose of the idea in the first place.

The "flesh pedestrian" when viewed in context is actually a complicated discussion about magic and power and the potential for it to move towards something dark.

It is essentially a horror story of when someone with great power to act as they see fit decides to give power to their shadow. To that end, I will reference yet again Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, a western book about flesh pedestrians without ever naming them as such.

The story of the wizard who loses themselves to their shadow is as old as humanity, or perhaps older. That is what a flesh pedestrian truly is: something dark that has inhabited powerful flesh. We tell stories without naming it so that the people who may become it do not.

Strangely enough, perverting the story of the flesh pedestrian in such ways as what got Rowling in trouble is fucking DANGEROUS! It's how you get a problem with flesh pedestrians.

When people think the monster is "cool" or celebrate it, they are saying they want to learn all the secrets of power in this world and then give into their darkest urges, leveraging the power they gain to that end, even if they don't understand that's what they are asking for.

It increases the chances they will still cleave to it if and when they learn the truth, because they let the idea gain importance and significance for their identity. To that end, Rowling earned every bit of ire over her use of flesh pedestrians in her book.

If a culture originates some powerful or useful idea, or has it emerge, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate the people who know the full history of it. It is important to preserve that history, and to treat the people who wrote or spoke of things we celebrate or fear with the respect that originated from by giving them a meaningful voice in society.

The fact is that nobody should be seen as having a monopoly on some "right way to live", but neither should mockery or perversion of an idea take place in such a way that causes the replacement of a historical idea with a lie.

It is important to let people tell their own stories. It is just as important to let people celebrate the stories of others, so that our pool of stories grows and that we become more for carrying them. It is also important to remember the reason certain stories are told.

So while appropriation is a nonsense thing, it's still possible to be a disrespectful racist asshole, to get mauled by shrieking idiots, or even to become something dark because you do not understand what you are celebrating, and can never undo such past celebration even when you discover the truth.
 
Jayjay said:
I think cultural appropriation falls into roughly two categories:

1) Outright insults and propagating racial stereotypes. Like wearing indian head gear and getting drunk. Or doing blackface for a minstrel show. But these aren't so much "appropriation" as they're just plain racism.

2) When someone who's not part of a minority group, makes money off things that the minority group thinks belongs to them. Say, a non-native setting up shops or restaurants for tourists themed after the native culture, when there are natives in the area doing the same thing. In this case cultural appropriation is just a pretext for killing the competition, or tied somehow with reparations for past wrongs.

Gwen Stefani taking after japanese culture is absolutely ok in my book. Or any other such cross-pollination. To try to artificially limit creativity by saying "you can't do X, because you are member of group Y" is idiotic.
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A lot of the phenomenon likely grew out of Indigenous issues in North America. Natives were/are treated so badly, that the far left here tends to come down hard on anything that feels even slightly offensive. And then this grows into everything is offensive to people who aren't good at nuance.

At least in Canada, nature plays a big part in our cultural identity which invariably gets mixed up with the Indigenous at times. So the line of what is and isn't acceptable to the far left is blurry. Who is complimenting the Indigenous vs profiting from their culture?

Japan, OTOH, isn't really a traditionally oppressed culture so the calculus is a bit different.
 
I ponder whether the term "cultural appropriation" has grown well outside the scope of what it was originally intended. Don's post seems to imply that it has. I'm sure there are more technical appropriations that are indeed an issue, but I'm not aware of them. Though stuff like the movie The Help comes to mind, where black plight is appropriated to make a white person the hero.

Outside of those areas, I don't care too much for labels. I care whether something is Genuine. If someone is genuine and faithful in their use of something, I have a hard time seeing a problem. If they aren't then the question shifts to whether the depiction is derogatory or too hollow. But even then, what does that mean? Is it just a face palm?
 
rousseau said:
Jayjay said:
I think cultural appropriation falls into roughly two categories:

1) Outright insults and propagating racial stereotypes. Like wearing indian head gear and getting drunk. Or doing blackface for a minstrel show. But these aren't so much "appropriation" as they're just plain racism.

2) When someone who's not part of a minority group, makes money off things that the minority group thinks belongs to them. Say, a non-native setting up shops or restaurants for tourists themed after the native culture, when there are natives in the area doing the same thing. In this case cultural appropriation is just a pretext for killing the competition, or tied somehow with reparations for past wrongs.

Gwen Stefani taking after japanese culture is absolutely ok in my book. Or any other such cross-pollination. To try to artificially limit creativity by saying "you can't do X, because you are member of group Y" is idiotic.
Click to expand...

A lot of the phenomenon likely grew out of Indigenous issues in North America. Natives were/are treated so badly, that the far left here tends to come down hard on anything that feels even slightly offensive. And then this grows into everything is offensive to people who aren't good at nuance.

At least in Canada, nature plays a big part in our cultural identity which invariably gets mixed up with the Indigenous at times. So the line of what is and isn't acceptable to the far left is blurry. Who is complimenting the Indigenous vs profiting from their culture?

Japan, OTOH, isn't really a traditionally oppressed culture so the calculus is a bit different.
Click to expand...
I have no problem with profiting from another culture. I do think that cultural appropriation (demeaning or dishonoring a culture) is wrong. However, cultural appreciation (honoring a culture) is great. I'm Native American; my wife is Polish; two daughters are Chinese; one is Thai. We honor and celebrate all four cultures. While my daughters are not genetically Native American, they are perfectly in their right to celebrate and profit from the culture of their father. And vice-versa. My point here is that DNA shouldn't be the arbitrator to decide whose culture can be honored and/or followed.
 
Harry Bosch said:
rousseau said:
Jayjay said:
I think cultural appropriation falls into roughly two categories:

1) Outright insults and propagating racial stereotypes. Like wearing indian head gear and getting drunk. Or doing blackface for a minstrel show. But these aren't so much "appropriation" as they're just plain racism.

2) When someone who's not part of a minority group, makes money off things that the minority group thinks belongs to them. Say, a non-native setting up shops or restaurants for tourists themed after the native culture, when there are natives in the area doing the same thing. In this case cultural appropriation is just a pretext for killing the competition, or tied somehow with reparations for past wrongs.

Gwen Stefani taking after japanese culture is absolutely ok in my book. Or any other such cross-pollination. To try to artificially limit creativity by saying "you can't do X, because you are member of group Y" is idiotic.
Click to expand...

A lot of the phenomenon likely grew out of Indigenous issues in North America. Natives were/are treated so badly, that the far left here tends to come down hard on anything that feels even slightly offensive. And then this grows into everything is offensive to people who aren't good at nuance.

At least in Canada, nature plays a big part in our cultural identity which invariably gets mixed up with the Indigenous at times. So the line of what is and isn't acceptable to the far left is blurry. Who is complimenting the Indigenous vs profiting from their culture?

Japan, OTOH, isn't really a traditionally oppressed culture so the calculus is a bit different.
Click to expand...
I have no problem with profiting from another culture. I do think that cultural appropriation (demeaning or dishonoring a culture) is wrong. However, cultural appreciation (honoring a culture) is great. I'm Native American; my wife is Polish; two daughters are Chinese; one is Thai. We honor and celebrate all four cultures. While my daughters are not genetically Native American, they are perfectly in their right to celebrate and profit from the culture of their father. And vice-versa. My point here is that DNA shouldn't be the arbitrator to decide whose culture can be honored and/or followed.
Click to expand...

I'm not particularly opinionated on the subject. From what I've seen from NDP supporters in Canada, pretty much everything gets swept into the broad brush of capitalism/colonialism/racism. At times I think wanting to feel morally superior / righteous can play into it.

More broadly, people who argue about cultural appropriation are likely just trying to support oppressed cultures in their (sometimes misguided) own way.
 
Don2 (Don1 Revised) said:
At that time, I noticed a critical difference between what is academically understood as cultural appropriation and how the concept is made fun of in popular culture. I think that what is always missing in discussion of cultural appropriation is that part of the pre-requisites for whether the thing in question is cultural appropriation is that the target group is oppressed.
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Very much so. I wouldn't say this is never brought up, but it certainly gets overlooked often.

And it is not, importantly, defined by whether or not someone "feels offended" or not. You can always find someone who is either very upset about or not at all upset about some particular instance of appropriation, so that would not be a very rigorous measure. Articles like that in the OP can have very little meaning in the wider scope of the question.
 
Wow, This discussion is more complicated than I thought. I thought cultural appropriation was simply laying claim to a culture that isn't yours. Ya know, like being on YouTube making boo koo bucks as a content creator claiming to be Irish even though they've never been to Ireland & haven't been around any Irish people.
 
Gospel said:
Wow, This discussion is more complicated than I thought. I thought cultural appropriation was simply laying claim to a culture that isn't yours. Ya know, like being on YouTube making boo koo bucks as a content creator claiming to be Irish even though they've never been to Ireland & haven't been around any Irish people.
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Cultural appropriation is (and always has been) an offshoot of the broader conversation on colonialism, an examination of how dominant cultures find ways to profit not just from the mineral resources of subjugated nations, but from the intangible value of their human and cultural expressions as well. It's not a clear cut thing of "borrowing" = good and "appropriation" = bad. We should expect people to have different views on appropriation questions, and those perspectives may change over time, too. These days, most Irish people are not going to be offended by American expressions of "Irish" identity like cartoon leprechauns or serving up Irish Car Bombs on the 17th of March, but that is in large part because Irish culture as practiced by Irish people is not under immediate threat of disappearing beneath the weight of colonial domination. The Irish are not forced to choose between a desperate life on a reservation or relinquishment of treaty rights; it's legal in Ireland for the Irish language to be taught in schools; many Irish authors and musicians have published widely available and popular books, poems, albums, and so forth. If the Irish were in a situation as tenuous and dangerous as that of, say, the Choctaw nation, cultural caricatures like that would likely not go over quite as well. It's one thing for foreigners to have some fun making fun of people from another country. It's another for caricatures like that to be the ONLY representation of your people with any pull in the public sphere, and for critical decisions to be made based on what "everyone knows" about your culture based on representations of exactly that kind.

Both progressive white slackitivists on the internet and outraged FOX News viewers have a tendency to misunderstand the entire point of the conversation. For the stereotypical outraged-teenager-on-Tiktok upset that Gwen Stefani wears fake kimonos, it's likely they are not so much engaging with the conversation about colonial domination so much as engaging in performative purity, taking an extreme anti-appropriation stance in order to deflect the feelings of guilt and discomfort they feel about their own racial identity in complicated times. I think their expressions are valid too (I'm not usually in the business of telling people how they ought to feel or not feel) but these kinds of postings are their own kind of phenomenon, and shouldn't be confused for the original concept of cultural appropriation. I think their situation is a bit like a Protestant refusing to let their kid listen to the Beatles; it's not so much that the Beatles are specifically a problem, it's just easier to boil things down to "A is good and B is bad, so let's avoid every instance of B" than it is to have an honest, possibly painful conversation between groups A and B.
 
Experience is that people generally like it when someone else partakes in their culture. “Cultural appropriation” is just one of those luxury beliefs that make Westerners insufferable. Is this cultural appropriation or celebration?

 
3426FF1C-0DD3-4980-B020-C7F0FD0D0145.jpeg

Worst cultural appropriation ever.

I mean, an Australian breakfast cereal has absolutely nothing to do with Native American culture in the first place, and to use a corruption of an offensive slur against Native American women as the name of their product is as pointless and irrelevant as it is demeaning and derogatory. Frankly, I expected better.

Oh, wait.

They're square.

Forget I said anything.
 
Wth? What culture does this bespeak?
Maybe one of those fabled Southern “Squarz” like in Gone with the Wind?
Who’s the chick?
B99AFF21-AD7C-4BF8-8464-4552862632A9.jpeg
 
This Harajuku style is very niche and new in Japan to begin with.

If she were to dress up in something more to the heart of Japanese traditions in a tacky manner it might elicit some negative response from them. Like the Junihitoe that the Empress wore during the enthronement ceremony.

This video is rather interesting about the Ganguro/Manba style, which some could see as a type of black face:

 
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