[RD] Cultural Appropriation: The Solution?

[Hehehe]

I recently participated in a thread on Facebook with a woman who was asking if head-wraps for babies was appropriating Sikh culture. Most responses ranged from "yes", to "white people can't have an opinion on this", to "only Sikh people can answer this question". Anyone who dared say "no" may as well have thrown themselves unto a pyre.

I laughed when I read this. It's absurd that "cultural appropriation" is considered a serious thing (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery)

 

[Bootstoots]

What I meant (in what you were quoting) is that instead of yelling "hey! cultural appropriation!" whenever you see somebody obviously not Polish wearing a traditional silesian outfit (for example), maybe it could be a chance to walk up to that person instead and say something like: "cool costume! Did you know that this red stripe on your pants signifies the 1257 Polish victory over the Bulgarians?". It will probably lead to nothing, but it might lead to the person googling this stuff later and actually educating him/herself. In the end, if they really want to wear clothing from other cultures, they will, so..

For optimal education, I strongly recommend not just that one fact. You should add a very long diatribe about population movements in the area at the time, 4 maps, 2 scanned historical documents, and an uncomfortable side-ramble about race and genetics, especially haplogroup frequency in Central (Eastern?) European ethnic groups.

 

[warpus]

For optimal education, I strongly recommend not just that one fact. You should add a very long diatribe about population movements in the area at the time, 4 maps, 2 scanned historical documents, and an uncomfortable side-ramble about race and genetics, especially haplogroup frequency in Central (Eastern?) European ethnic groups.

I'm not really autistic though, I'm just Polish

 

[Senethro]

This seems like one of those things where some people get real mad about disrespecting their symbols like flags or arguably genocidal leaders, but when asked for the sake of politeness to not misuse the religious and cultural symbols of others then they angrily and with no awareness of irony assert that they must have the political freedom to be crass and insulting. (which noone was trying to take away but its like they're deliberately missing the point)

Alternatively its like the kindergartner who only wants another kids toy when they see them having fun with it. All things MUST be available at all times to white americans to do with as they please. They don't take no for an answer.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

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

Okay, some googling has shown that this is a style of turban usually worn by boys (presumably they switch to the other styles that we're more familiar with, once they're adults).

Bullying, Sikh Children, and Awareness
Dastar

So... this has been a "TIL" moment. I suppose it would be considered cultural appropriation if a non-Sikh were selling them without making it clear that it is a Sikh garment, or if the kids in the picture used them as Halloween costumes. But that's something that real Sikh people would have to weigh in on, since I have no idea how they feel about other people wearing their clothing (Justin Trudeau got lambasted for overindulging in various sorts of Indian garments on his recent trip to India, including a wedding outfit that wasn't worn to a wedding).

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.

You want to see cultural appropriation? The Society for Creative Anachronism is full of people who do this regularly. If it was a thing between 600 and 1600 AD and had verified contact with Europe/Europeans, we used it.

Mind you, the SCA stresses research and documentation, so if one of the people in the local branch wanted her persona to be an Aztec warrior (in reality her ancestry is Norwegian), it was expected that she would do research on naming practices, period clothing, history, and other pertinent cultural issues. We even put on an Aztec feast one year, including turkey with chocolate sauce as one of the dishes. Our branch was fairly multicultural, with some of us creating personas close to our own RL ancestry and others trying something completely new.

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.

That is bizarre. How can people appropriate their own culture?

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.

Cultural genocide is when the original culture is erased, by assimilation or, as was done to the residential school kids in Canada, by literally beating it out of them, all the while preaching at them about how God and Jesus love them and they're supposed to love God and Jesus in return. This created generations of people who were completely messed up and felt they didn't belong anywhere - they were too "Indian" to be accepted by white society and too "white" to be accepted back on the reserve. Some of the kids tried to escape and return home and were later found dead of starvation and/or exposure.

I'm curious what legal approach might work in a case of cultural appropriation, aside from trademark/copyright related concerns

I wonder if anyone has gone the route of using the Human Rights Commission to deal with cultural appropriation issues. There are some people who think, for instance, that if you're going to own and/or run an ethnic restaurant, you should only be allowed to do that if you yourself are a member of that ethnicity.

If you consider religion to be a shared culture, there was a woman on a Doctor Who forum I belonged to who insisted that it should be illegal for non-Christians to celebrate Christmas.

I imagine this involves a lot of assumptions too. Let’s say someone accosts a woman she sees in the street wearing Native American tribal jewelry and the woman who is not Native American bought it from a Navajo vendor in Santa Fe who sells his traditional designs. I mean I suppose she could just tell people that but does she need to tell everyone where she bought the necklace and I imagine most offended people will just give her dirty looks.

There was a squabble about cultural appropriation between two female MPs here some time ago. One of them had been on a holiday to China and bought some traditional clothing from a Chinese vendor. She later wore those garments to a party in Canada, and her colleague raked her over the coals in Parliament, on social media, and it ended with the "offender" practically groveling on her knees for forgiveness, apologizing profusely, and promising never to do it again.

My take on it is that if a white woman wearing Chinese garments is so "offensive" then why did the vendor sell them to her in the first place?

So, what is they do? What if they’re an expert in fact. Do they need to carry around a disclaimer informing people of this? Are people from that culture always so knowledgeable of their own cultural traditions?

I don't think people should have to go around carrying disclaimers or permissions (unless it's something that's already a law, like wearing eagle feathers, for example). And given how blatantly over the top some complaints are, it's sometimes like I mentioned earlier - Egypt screams at Mexico for appropriating the pyramid, when the fact is that both cultures came up with the same general idea independently.

 

[warpus]

I wonder if anyone has gone the route of using the Human Rights Commission to deal with cultural appropriation issues. There are some people who think, for instance, that if you're going to own and/or run an ethnic restaurant, you should only be allowed to do that if you yourself are a member of that ethnicity.

That's hilarious, I would love to see someone like that laughed out of wherever

Plus we would lose a lot of Thai restaurants, east side mario's, a lot of pizza places, probably a lot of taco places, and maybe subway

 

[rah]

What ethnicity would qualify to own a subway? I didn't think pasty white dudes without girlfriends was protected.

 

[Samson]

What ethnicity would qualify to own a subway? I didn't think pasty white dudes without girlfriends was protected.

Surely they are basicaly sandwiches, so somewhere in the east of kent I guess.

 

[warpus]

Hmm looks like

The Italian sandwich originated in several different Italian American communities in the Northeastern United States from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.[5] Portland, Maine claims to be the birthplace of the Italian sandwich and it is considered Maine's signature sandwich.

The gooddamn Americans culturally appropriated subs from the Italians!

Definitely close down all subway restaurants then

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

How can people appropriate their own culture?

I'm curious if second- and higher-generation immigrants could be considered cultural appropriators. Do they have as much say in how to use their culture as their first-generation and non-immigrant counterparts? Or could their complaints be considered offense by proxy?

The gooddamn Americans culturally appropriated subs from the Italians!

Definitely close down all subway restaurants then

I think food is a special case. Nobody's about to complain that matcha flavoring is an affront to the Japanese Way of Tea.

 

[metalhead]

Sure, but you don't need a special term or vast legal policy to identify people who are being jerks, or even people making strange fashion choices.

What I'm asking for, and is being systematically not delivered, is what makes the concept of "cultural appropriation" special in this regard.

Nothing, actually. It's not "special" above any other way someone might be a dick by way of insensitivity or ignorance. It happens to involve things that some people feel a deep, emotional connection to and therefore can bring up seemingly disproportionate responses, but being insensitive about or disrespectful toward aspects of someone else's culture is hardly unique in that regard.

 

[luiz]

Cultural genocide is when the original culture is erased, by assimilation or, as was done to the residential school kids in Canada, by literally beating it out of them, all the while preaching at them about how God and Jesus love them and they're supposed to love God and Jesus in return. This created generations of people who were completely messed up and felt they didn't belong anywhere - they were too "Indian" to be accepted by white society and too "white" to be accepted back on the reserve. Some of the kids tried to escape and return home and were later found dead of starvation and/or exposure.

I'm not a big fan of the term cultural genocide, as I think it waters down the meaning of genocide as practiced by the Nazis, Turks, Khmer Rouge, etc.

I do agree that the suppression of Indian culture was often tragic - I can speak of the Brazilian case but am not that familiar with the Canadian one. But I also know that, unlike the Nazis who had evil goals, the assimilation and conversion of Indians arose from people who genuinely wanted to "save" them. Often this "salvation" was carried in a brutal way that today we can only call stupid, but we can't really use the same word as we use to describe Auschwitz and the Cambodian killing fields.

 

[Senethro]

Hot take of the month?

 

[warpus]

Oh, our Canadian government did a bunch of stuff (to our aboriginal population) I would call evil, as long as we're calling things evil

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Hot take of the month?

They didn't kill the people, just their identity. It's progressive.

But to be serious for now, is it not their culture that defines them as a people? In that sense, it is still the slaughter of a people.

 

[Hygro]

They didn't kill the people, just their identity. It's progressive.

But to be serious for now, is it not their culture that defines them as a people? In that sense, it is still the slaughter of a people.

No wonder conservatives feel threatened ; )

 

[Senethro]

Perhaps we need the crimes of Genocide and Light Genocide.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

It comes entirely from left-wing English speakers, but like many other bad ideas, it has spread. It's used by a very very tiny group, and for now the media ignores it, but you can see now and then on Facebook stuff like "amigXs". Basically the idea is not to replace gendered words, but to replace the neutral plural (which is masculine in portuguese).

NBC and a few others have reported that there is both anecdotal and historical precedence for it in Latin America and Indigineous Mexican communities. Its spread in the US has been pushed by Latinx student groups who are, well, Latinx.

 

[luiz]

NBC and a few others have reported that there is both anecdotal and historical precedence for it in Latin America and Indigineous Mexican communities. Its spread in the US has been pushed by Latinx student groups who are, well, Latinx.

What puzzles me is that the word "Latin" is already perfectly descriptive, non-offensive and gender neutral. Why is there a need to invent a new, bizarre and unpronounceable word? Do we need a gender neutral word for "black" too?

Also, after some time Americans of Latin origin cease being Latin Americans and are just... Americans of Latin origin.

 

[luiz]

Perhaps we need the crimes of Genocide and Light Genocide.

In your opinion, everything you dislike is genocide.