Cultural appropriation

[Borachio]

It's true that surveys do indicate a majority of the UK population would be in favour of capital punishment.

However, whenever the matter has been debated in the Commons, it has always been rejected. Since capital punishment was first abolished in 1965.

How can we, then, square the rejection by the people's representatives and the approval of the people?

 

[BvBPL]

Easily by saying people are stupid and don't know what's good for them or society.

 

[Flying Pig]

It's true that surveys do indicate a majority of the UK population would be in favour of capital punishment.

However, whenever the matter has been debated in the Commons, it has always been rejected. Since capital punishment was first abolished in 1965.

How can we, then, square the rejection by the people's representatives and the approval of the people?

Easily enough - that subset of the British population that sits in the House of Commons - overwhelmingly white, well-educated and well-off - culturally opposes capital punishment and does not feel enough voter pressure to vote against its conscience. There's also legal difficulties which most people may not realise - for example, we couldn't remain in the EU and bring back the death penalty. Bear in mind that most polls on the subject are conducted after particularly shocking crimes hit the news, when support for the death penalty tends to run high.

EDIT: Novakart, not sure I was clear - in saying that something is part of American culture, I'm not saying that it's uniquely or originally American. American culture also includes a support for democracy, for example, a general preference for beer over vodka, and so on.

 

[Borachio]

They're also more likely to be in possession of all the facts about the matter:

How likely capital punishment might reduce the number of murders. How likely a jury is to convict someone if they know the punishment is going to be death. How much assurance one can have of rightful conviction. Etc.

 

[luiz]

It's true that surveys do indicate a majority of the UK population would be in favour of capital punishment.

However, whenever the matter has been debated in the Commons, it has always been rejected. Since capital punishment was first abolished in 1965.

How can we, then, square the rejection by the people's representatives and the approval of the people?

That's actually very common. In Brazil the overwhelming majority of the population favors the death penalty, the reduction of criminal responsibility age (in Brazil if you commit a crime under 18, no matter what the crime, at most you'll spend a couple of years in a re-education facility and your record becomes clean after turning 18), and generally adopting a much tougher instance on crime. Yet the vast majority of representatives oppose any changes to our laws that by and large allow crime to go unpunished, or barely punished.

That's because of several reasons. People will vote based on other priorities first. And the main parties all have a left-of-center ideological background (very different from the largely conservative majority), and do not run any candidates that would seriously question the lenient status-quo. So the candidates who are serious about changing criminal law are to be found in minuscule parties, and are often very unpleasant characters (the more capable politicians will inevitably yield to the "system", because it's far more profitable).

 

[NovaKart]

Easily enough - that subset of the British population that sits in the House of Commons - overwhelmingly white, well-educated and well-off - culturally opposes capital punishment and does not feel enough voter pressure to vote against its conscience. There's also legal difficulties which most people may not realise - for example, we couldn't remain in the EU and bring back the death penalty. Bear in mind that most polls on the subject are conducted after particularly shocking crimes hit the news, when support for the death penalty tends to run high.

EDIT: Novakart, not sure I was clear - in saying that something is part of American culture, I'm not saying that it's uniquely or originally American. American culture also includes a support for democracy, for example, a general preference for beer over vodka, and so on.

Yeah I didn't think you meant it was uniquely American but I think including capital punishment as part of American culture is rather too broad.

 

[Tahuti]

Yeah I didn't think you meant it was uniquely American but I think including capital punishment as part of American culture is rather too broad.

It's still a mystery why America has retained the capital punishment while countries of similar culture and political system like Britain, Canada and Australia have abolished it.

 

[Domen]

Maybe because they are countries of similar language, but not so similar culture?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

A reluctance to kill criminals is a British thing?

 

[metatron]

I'm happy for the Germans to mock our tea drinking, monarchy and parliament.

Huh? What?

Oh, sorry, i was distracted by... my tea.

And our 300 years of tea culture and our purpose built tea rooms.

Heck, i can even make these and i can do it well. Which makes me roughly the perfect daughter-in-law.
Oh. Wait. I have to get my fedora...

[stuff]

You have kinda missed the essential point: The imitation.

This may be tricky and individual cases may be debated at some length, because essentially it's all about the perspective of the appropriator.

If you immitate without proper understanding and without integrating the thing (whatever) into your own cultural context with the purpose of artificially draping you into your idea of the culture you are borrowing from, that can and often will be a mockery that is at times indeed comparable to blackfacing.

This does not apply to most of the things that have been cited as examples here.
You can eat all the pizza and all the (radically modified) sushi, peking duck (whatever) that you want. And Japanese musicians can wear a coat and tie and perform classical European music on originally European instruments.
They're not white-facing, because, that's the kicker, they're not doing it to be or feel European.
Similarly a zillion blonde Japanese teanagers and Korea-plastic-surgery-#1 are not white-facing either.

That's the point with the belly-dancing.
Western yoga is essentially gymnastics with a funny label. It has changed. And it is virtually completely devoid of rāja yoga. That's fine.
The Western belly dancers however (most of them) are not integrating the belly dance into their own culture. And they are not persueing a faithful rendition of the custom in its original cultural context.
It's pretty hard to fail at both, to not do either. You kinda have to do it on purpose. And they do. And typically, to fail at both, you have to use the custom to immitate, to fake immerse you into your fantasy of the original culture.

Now that may still be "not ok" but "mostly harmless" in some cases.
But then comes the context of American and British interaction with the middle east...

 

[Flying Pig]

Yeah I didn't think you meant it was uniquely American but I think including capital punishment as part of American culture is rather too broad.

This is culture in the loose (or perhaps technical) sense of the values, traditions, habits, stories, shared experiences and so on that people in a community share and are exposed to.

 

[Kyriakos]

You have kinda missed the essential point: The imitation.

This may be tricky and individual cases may be debated at some length, because essentially it's all about the perspective of the appropriator.

If you immitate without proper understanding and without integrating the thing (whatever) into your own cultural context with the purpose of artificially draping you into your idea of the culture you are borrowing from, that can and often will be a mockery that is at times indeed comparable to blackfacing.

This does not apply to most of the things that have been cited as examples here.
You can eat all the pizza and all the (radically modified) sushi, peking duck (whatever) that you want. And Japanese musicians can wear a coat and tie and perform classical European music on originally European instruments.
They're not white-facing, because, that's the kicker, they're not doing it to be or feel European.
Similarly a zillion blonde Japanese teanagers and Korea-plastic-surgery-#1 are not white-facing either.

That's the point with the belly-dancing.
Western yoga is essentially gymnastics with a funny label. It has changed. And it is virtually completely devoid of rāja yoga. That's fine.
The Western belly dancers however (most of them) are not integrating the belly dance into their own culture. And they are not persueing a faithful rendition of the custom in its original cultural context.
It's pretty hard to fail at both, to not do either. You kinda have to do it on purpose. And they do. And typically, to fail at both, you have to use the custom to immitate, to fake immerse you into your fantasy of the original culture.

Now that may still be "not ok" but "mostly harmless" in some cases.
But then comes the context of American and British interaction with the middle east...

Nothing in your post there seems to be correct (in my view).

-If someone writes about native americans, they don't at all have to try to feel like native americans. What does the latter even mean? I write in Greek, and English. I don't sometimes (rarely) include english characters in my stories (when set in London) cause i want to be english, nor due to thinking that this is how english people supposedly are- cause there is no set paradigm of any racial group. Native americans are a smaller group, sure, but obviously they are as different to each other individually as any other person next to others in his own such group.

-Making fun of another culture can be nasty, and most of the time (when not in some anodyne joke) is dumb. But this does not mean it is a good idea to turn it into a taboo. Not much has ever become better by using taboos. People do have natural aversions to some very unsavory behaviors, but a taboo is a societal issue and not one rising from personal psychology due to some shared human values.

-Other cultures are not the poor kid who has to be protected cause his legs are broken or has a low iq and so on. They are cultures, just like the euro ones, and so on. If one tries to actively grant special protection to something, the end result seems to always be entirely opposite of what supposedly was meant to be protected. Equality is the only thing which can (as an idea, it is obviously never there in fact) work, and not trying to give more rights to some.

 

[NovaKart]

This is culture in the loose (or perhaps technical) sense of the values, traditions, habits, stories, shared experiences and so on that people in a community share and are exposed to.

The thread has been about dancing, traditional clothing and especially food in a discussion about cultural appropriation and this came up in a response to immigrants influencing American culture. Bringing up Guantanamo and capital punishment doesn't really fit. They might be influenced by American culture but I would not label them as cultural practices. This is really a semantics argument. I do get what you're saying and I don't think they are entirely divorced from culture but I think it's too broad to include it in this way.

 

[Tahuti]

A reluctance to kill criminals is a British thing?

Yes. 'Murica hasn't bowed to communist, secular pussydom.

 

[metatron]

Nothing in your post there seems to be correct (in my view).

-If someone writes about native americans, they don't at all have to try to feel like native americans. What does the latter even mean? I write in Greek, and English. I don't sometimes (rarely) include english characters in my stories (when set in London) cause i want to be english, nor due to thinking that this is how english people supposedly are- cause there is no set paradigm of any racial group. Native americans are a smaller group, sure, but obviously they are as different to each other individually as any other person next to others in his own such group.

-Making fun of another culture can be nasty, and most of the time (when not in some anodyne joke) is dumb. But this does not mean it is a good idea to turn it into a taboo. Not much has ever become better by using taboos. People do have natural aversions to some very unsavory behaviors, but a taboo is a societal issue and not one rising from personal psychology due to some shared human values.

-Other cultures are not the poor kid who has to be protected cause his legs are broken or has a low iq and so on. They are cultures, just like the euro ones, and so on. If one tries to actively grant special protection to something, the end result seems to always be entirely opposite of what supposedly was meant to be protected. Equality is the only thing which can (as an idea, it is obviously never there in fact) work, and not trying to give more rights to some.

Yeah, this has virtually nothing to with my post.
Not sure what you expect me to do in response here.

 

[Kyriakos]

Keep being in denial?

 

[NovaKart]

It's still a mystery why America has retained the capital punishment while countries of similar culture and political system like Britain, Canada and Australia have abolished it.

I think it has to do with leaving it up to the states to decide and it has been eliminated in several states.

 

[Borachio]

Heck, i can even make

Spoiler :

these and i can do it well. Which makes me roughly the perfect daughter-in-law.
Oh. Wait. I have to get my fedora...

So, you can make icecream cones. I, on the other hand, can make the icecream to go in them.

What do I know? Maybe they're not icecream cones. They do look like them though.

 

[Tahuti]

I think it has to do with leaving it up to the states to decide and it has been eliminated in several states.

Well, the US could have abolished it federally by force of amendment.

 

[metatron]

So, you can make icecream cones.

Yeah, no.
They are different. Trust me. Way easier to mess up than ice cream cones.