[RD] Cultural Appropriation: The Solution?

[Synobun]

Head-wraps for babies are appropriating Sikh culture? WTH???

Okay, what style was the head wrap? Did the kid look like Jagmeet Singh (the federal NDP leader) or Harjit Sajjan (Minister of National Defense, who wears a different style of turban)? Somewhere in my photo albums there's a picture of me as a baby, wearing a knitted toque. I think it's safe to say that my mother had never heard of Sikhs, let alone decided to appropriate anybody's culture.

I had to go digging to find it. It's definitely not a toque. This was being used as the reference image.

 

[Kyriakos]

In my experience the Greek thing at U.S. fraternities doesn't go beyond the letters on the house. Maybe at some colleges they take it beyond that, but at my college they did not.

They also have hoplite helmets and cheap roman togas, trying to pass for greek superior quality clothing ^_^

 

[warpus]

The beauty of human diversity is that there are so many different aspects to human culture out there - clothing, food, customs, ways of looking at the world..

If somebody is openly mocking another culture, then yeah, let's put an end to that.

Other than that I don't see the problem. Nobody owns culture, it's not a thing you can put ownership on. If somebody takes Polish pierogies, puts a Canadian twist on them, and starts selling them, all the power to them. Babies wearing turbans. Who gives a crap?

 

[metalhead]

Somebody gives a crap, apparently. And since you seem to be against them giving a crap, you seem to also give a crap?

 

[Chose]

For people who think cultural appropriation is a serious problem, is there anyone who thinks there should be some kind of laws preventing this? Or is it more of a social pressure kind of thing, like we should call people out for being offensive and tell then to stop being jerks?

 

[Oerdin]

Every culture appropriates and it is a good thing too. Show me someone who thinks there is anything wrong with it and I will show you an idiot. Hell, even the Atlantic currently had an article about why cultural appropriation is good and why the left morons who argue against it are actually racists. It was written by David Frum, I give you, but even a left wing publication like the Atlantic felt it was correct and worthy of publication.

 

[Evie]

Given the rest of your opinion, I'll take your calling me "idiot" and "moron" as badges of pride.

 

[metalhead]

Every culture appropriates and it is a good thing too. Show me someone who thinks there is anything wrong with it and I will show you an idiot. Hell, even the Atlantic currently had an article about why cultural appropriation is good and why the left morons who argue against it are actually racists. It was written by David Frum, I give you, but even a left wing publication like the Atlantic felt it was correct and worthy of publication.

Every word in this post . . . is wrong

 

[Lexicus]

>The Atlantic
>left-wing

For people who think cultural appropriation is a serious problem, is there anyone who thinks there should be some kind of laws preventing this? Or is it more of a social pressure kind of thing, like we should call people out for being offensive and tell then to stop being jerks?

The latter though you can probably find little tinpot Stalinists who think it should be a gulag-able offense.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

They probably just roll their eyes and get on with their day. Maybe @Lemon Merchant can answer this question.

I don't mind if anyone else wants to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. The more the merrier. We do, however, call it "Amateur Night."

 

[aelf]

The solution is to go back to a more academic usage of the term.

Negative cultural appropriation does exist, but it's oversold and is now a whipping boy for everyone who is not utterly sympathetic to the idea, which includes most moderates. It's not productive.

 

[metalhead]

Interestingly, I see way more thinkpieces stridently against the concept, than I do anyone actually complaining about something as cultural appropriation. The only people "selling" it appear to be anti-academics bent on inaccurately portraying college campuses as hotbeds of crazy uber-fragile liberals.

 

[NovaKart]

Most of what is billed as cultural appropriation doesn’t seem to involve actual appropriation, like taking something from another culture as your own and obscuring the origin.

Even then, it can have a positive result. Like I don’t think most people would enjoy the bitter tasting cocoa drink they had in MesoAmerica over European chocolate and I prefer European coffee to Middle Eastern coffee, which isn’t even the original.

There was someone who wrote to Dear Prudence who was hand-wringing over attending an Indian wedding because it involves henna and Indian clothes and she thought it might be cultural appropriation. This was someone actually invited to the wedding by the bride and her family and who were Indian.

I came across an article that in all seriousness said the man bun might be appropriation from East Asian cultures, more specifically Japanese. The author wasn’t firmly stating this but exploring the idea that it should be considered before adopting it or something like that.

Another person had a blog in which she talked about cultural appropriation in baby wearing spaces, apparently baby wearing is attaching your baby with a sling or something to the body. She didn’t seem to be arguing the concept in general was appropriative and I didn’t have the time to read all of it. I think she was upset some of the women looked like they were working in a vegetable market in bolivia or something like that.

 

[metalhead]

It's OK for life to be messy and uncomfortable sometimes. Even for white people.

 

[luiz]

Come on man. While "it was totally genocidal" is wrong, "never any genocidal policy" is equally wrong, and you must know that.

Well by genocidal policy I would interpret a policy to deliberately exterminate the natives. Indeed, this never existed in Portuguese America. Quite the opposite, the Portuguese wanted to convert the natives, marry them to Portuguese settlers whenever possible and basically turn them to good subjects. Indeed many Portuguese nobles, including the most important one of all, had Brazilian Indian ancestry.

Now, does that mean that the interactions were good for the natives? Of course not. Indeed some tribes, which were more hostile to the Portuguese, were completely annihilated. The spread of diseases was also catastrophic, and often the Portuguese diseases would reach Indian tribes before the Portuguese themselves, with devastating effects. It seems that there was a relatively sophisticated Amazonian civilization that was wiped out this way, without any contact with Europeans.

But this very different from a "genocidal policy". The Portuguese knew they were a small and weak country and could never control Brazil on their own. For as long as Brazil was portuguese, they did not allow other Europeans to settle there. They much preferred the Indians and mestizos, which they y considered more loyal. Mass non Portuguese immigration only begun after independence, and that's when Brazil ceased being heavily Indian and African and got its modern face.

So I'm not downplaying the cataclysmic effect of colonization on Brazilian Indians, I'm just stating that there was never a policy to wipe them out.

 

[Lexicus]

Yes, I would agree there was no systemic policy to wipe out the entire native population. There were however genocidal policies with respect to individual tribes and polities, as I think you would also agree:

Of course not. Indeed some tribes, which were more hostile to the Portuguese, were completely annihilated.

 

[Kyriakos]

It's OK for life to be messy and uncomfortable sometimes. Even for white people.

But 'white people' aren't a block. Let alone that the west isn't the same as just US. Racism exists in Europe, and usually is between different subgroups of "white" people.

 

[luiz]

Yes, I would agree there was no systemic policy to wipe out the entire native population. There were however genocidal policies with respect to individual tribes and polities, as I think you would also agree:

Yes I agree mass murder took place, and indeed the Portuguese wanted to completely assimilate the Indians and thus destroy their culture (not out of malice but out of a desire to secure their vast dominion and also a sincere desire to "save their souls").

But I would still distinguish this from what the Germans did to Jews and Russians, or what the turks did to Armenians and etc. The goal was never to wipe anyone out. It was to turn then portuguese. When there was resistance, brutal violence wse employed - but it's the same brutal violence that Portuguese rebels could expect, both in Brazil and Europe.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the Indians were not the only "primitive" people - by modern standards, 16th century portuguese were also very primitive, indeed mostly medieval. So even when they had a sincere desire to help the natives, the results were often disastrous for the latter. And then there's the fact that the early settlers were adventurers and criminals who constituted essentially the scum of Portugal. Their interactions with natives were almost always less than enlightened.

 

[NovaKart]

I wonder how far the LatinX thing will get pushed. I already see it in some media.

 

[warpus]

How do you pronounce that?