Remember the Frito Bandito? (Voiced by Mel Blanc)
No, I remember Speedy Gonzalez though.
I’ve never heard about “cultural appropriation” outside of jokes making fun of it. And it’s one of the right’s favourite strawmen. Maybe it’s time to let it go?
It’s not a strawmen in that it doesn’t ever happen but it’s just that those who get upset about it aren’t very numerous so it gets drowned out by those making fun of them. And then others see all those jokes and get the sense it happens a lot more than it does.
The counterexample to Mexicans and their Sombreros is Plains Indians and their War bonnet (those feather crowns they used to sell as “Indian kids costumes”), whenever cultural appropriation is mentioned this comes up, so I’d be rather surprised if you hadn’t heard of it before.
Any spicy takes on that one, or have you really just never heard of it?
Idk if I’m just old now and it’s not the parties I go to but I’m sure glad that “sexy native american” isn’t really a Halloween costume anymore.
This video always made me giggle a bit: Students vs. Mexicans: Cultural Appropriation | Man on the Street
PragerU is a right wing propaganda machine (I’m not exaggerating that is literally their business model). That itself doesn’t invalidate this video in particular but should explain the motives behind it.
It invalidates it quite a bit. Anything advertising Tim Pool to kids should never be validated.
It’s called White Savior Complex.
When I was growing up in the 80s and some frat-bro types ran around town dressed like the Three Amigos while swilling beers and fumbling their Spanish, parents and teachers would call it “tacky” and “annoying” and “juvenile”.
Now, in the 20s, the children of those frat-bros puts on the same outfit and does the same stupid shit. But their peers are the ones rolling their eyes and telling them that they don’t look cool, while the parents clap and take pictures and get off on a romanticized youth lived vicariously through their frat-bro kids.
So the frat-bros become resentful. They go home, pull out their crayons, and make up a naked brown man to give them permission to behave miserably. And then they go on podcasts and make Instagram reels explaining how - um, aktuly - if you don’t think the tourist-trap Spirit Halloween tier get-up I’m wearing on Cinco-De-Drinko to celebrate getting wasted is cool, you’re the real racists.
Then Budwiser releases an “Authentic Mexican Logger” and the same frat-bros lose their fucking minds because their favorite beer company just Went Woke.
I don’t necessarily know if that’s the artist’s intention here, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t cross my mind.
I was hoping to see this higher up. It’s not everyday that truth hits you like a ton of bricks, and this needed to be said.
When I was 16 I lived in a small village. It had the charm of country life, but it also had some off-putting characters. Harry, the town butcher, was an extremely right-wind, religious conservative, and a racist. Sarah, the priest’s mistress, never had kids and couldn’t stand them. And then there was Leah. She was Sarah’s sister’s daughter and I had a huge crush on her, except I didn’t even know it at the time because I wasn’t aware a girl could feel that way about another girl.
Anyway, I could write for hours about small town life, about how my friends were the only thing that got me through the day, about how I fell in love and out of love within the same date because the other person was telling me how they rescued a cat just to drop the other shoe - they rescued it from a black couple. I could tell you about racism and classism, about religion and how it turned the entire village against my parents, I could tell you about the time a young Asian child was forced to boil rice for the whole village because “it’s in his blood”, how his mother wanted to fight it but ended up cheering for the crowd that locked him in old mister Miller’s house for the night with just 20 bags of rice and a pair of drum sticks to serve as chopsticks. I could tell you about the Mexican family who once removed all their clothes and set them on a rope to dry in the town square and proceeded to sunbathe because they didn’t understand why people were saying their backs were wet. I could tell you about the Eastern European mobster who cut off two of my grandma’s fingers when she couldn’t pay for some cocaine, or the British “explorer” who came in and wanted to buy the town and put his name everywhere but he could only pay with some pictures of an old lady. Or I could tell you about when the Arab family moved next door so we all slept in shifts in my house because my parents were afraid of terrorists, until Harry the butcher carved “Mohammed” into a pig and left it on their lawn.
I know racism, I lived it all my life. So I could sit here and say a lot of things, but I think the previous poster has demonstrated well enough how you can just sit there and imagine shit and post it on the internet and all of a sudden it becomes true.
I can’t believe you were so upset by his fairly accurate portrayal of the “reverse racism anti woke” crowd that you wrote 4 paragraphs of nonsense. Did it hit too close to home for you?
How do you not have the money for cocaine man, it literally grows on trees
Lots of fabrication in this story.
I’m interested in hearing about the Asian kid locked in a house to cook 20 bags of rice with drumsticks for utensils.
Lots of fabrication in this story
I mean, that was the point. Previous poster imagined a world. I imagined another one.
As for the Asian kid - one grain of rice at a time. Boiling water in a lot of tiny containers. It ended up being surprisingly efficient, save for a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome.
boiling water in a lot of tiny containers. It ended up being surprisingly efficient, save for a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Just as we all suspected, it was in his blood.
Cinco-De-Drinko - yeah that’s a quick yoink, just so we’re clear I will not be citing my sources
Now, in the 20s
Fuck, my back
No, that’s an entirely different thing
Only superficially. Dune deconstructs the entire heroic archetype. Paul Atreides’ emergence as the hero and leader of the Fremen is completely artificial and engineered for colonialist purposes (so that House Atreides can control the supply of spice with minimal resistance from the population of Arrakis).
The plan backfires, of course, as the Fremen jihad ends up being more successful than they’d anticipated and spreads off-world and out of Paul’s ability to control it.
They meant the literal meaning of literal, as in “you took her too literally” not the common meaning of “real” or “actual”
If you go around being publicly offended for another group because you saw someone wear or eat something YOU think they shouldn’t becuase “That’s not YOUR culture”. Then YOU might be a “White Savior”.
That’s a different thing
White saviorism is the belief that you understand and know how to address a community and its problems in spite of not having any involvement with or ties to that community because you are white abd educated. Me thinking I can fix Puerto Rico’s issues because Im an educated white guy who has a poli sci degree would be an example of this as my Spanish is trash, I have never been to Puerto Rico, and Im unfamiliar with their history.
Cultural appropriation is utilizing imagery or concepts from a foreign culture. It can be good, bad, weird, or neutral depending on multiple factors.
Behold, i have drawn you as the soyjack savior complex.
This is an exact copy of a YouTube video from years ago
Are you saying this is content appropriation?
Great, let’s retread the right-wing’s favorite progressive strawmen for teh lulz. Any other culture war bullshit I should feel unjustly attacked over?
“Wie de schoen past trekt 'em aan.”
If you feel spoken to by this comic then maybe you got a problem…
Do you know what a strawman is?
Literally no Latin American is going to be bothered Or annoyed in any way whatsoever if you don typical dresses of their culture.
We love our culture and love it even more when we influence gringos to dress as our ancestors did.
The joy is palpable. It makes you part of the family. And that’s plenty
Besides, no one here knows what the deal is with getting offended on behalf of someone else. If anyone has a problem, they speak up their minds.
Slurs? Motherfückêr, that’s half our language.
Besides, no one here knows what the deal is with getting offended on behalf of someone else. If anyone has a problem, they speak up their minds.
I can explain. In theory the person who SHOULD be offended is a member of a minority and speaking their mind would open them to backlash from the majority so they say nothing. Its mental gymnastics that let’s a member of the majority “be a hero” for a minority even if that person doesn’t exist. But who cares about that as long as the white lady can think she is a good guy.
Its stupid and is not really about the appropriated culture.
So, virtue signaling?
Ah, as expected
Also, plenty of Latin American culture was basically forced on the indigenous by the Spanish. There’s a reason why poor people in countries like Bolivia dress more like 16th century Spanish peasants than their indigenous ancestors. Those bowler hats people wear in Bolivia aren’t part of Incan culture.
If you dress like what people consider to be traditional Bolivian dress these days and you’re American, I guess you’re appropriating Spanish culture from centuries ago? I don’t think anyone would give a shit.
It’s damn true. I ran a crew of workers that were Spanish speaking. After two years all I gotta say is, is there a word that isn’t used as a dick?
Everything means dick in Spanish if you try hard enough
It applies to everything btw.
To date, “the thing from the thingy” is the most sought spare part in all of Latin America.
You don’t know what it is, no one knows, but it means nothing and everything at the same time.
Our hardware store dependents are fluent in trillion of languages at this point
This is one thing ive never understood about “cultural appropriation.” If someone is partaking in your nations/cultures traditions, apperal, food, etc. Why is that a bad thing? Wouldnt people want their traditions known and shared and experienced by many?
Idk im just a white guy who loves dia de los muertos
I have no problem with that at all. Please dress up for the 16th of September, the Mexican Independence Day, or as a catrín on Día de los Muertos. My Korean friend looked so good as an Adelita and I was so proud of her.
I guess I’d only have a problem with a Halloween costume that exaggerates a negative and unrealistic stereotype but I don’t think people make those anymore, or at least I haven’t seen one.
negative and unrealistic stereotype
which would just be racism really
Yeah, I wanted to set some parameters for it. I thought it’d be unhelpful without specifying where I draw the line.
I mean I’m Bavarian and if people wear Lederhosen and set up their own Oktoberfest it’s kinda lame. Not that I think it’s bad, it’s just that I’m not a fan of that stuff here either. You can totally have all of that. I keep the many many small breweries making fantastic beer.
Yeah, but lederhosen are just kind of neat. Who doesn’t like their men in short leather shorts, right? (Seriously though, the construction for very traditional lederhosen is kind of neat. I’ve tried it, and it’s a challenge without being able to skive all your seams.)
Clothing and food are surface, but important, cultural signs. It can be easy to observe and emulate these for one’s own gain either socially or econically. All the while the culture from which these signs are derive are ignored.
Dressing up like a war chief for Halloween is partaking in the costume, but not the culture.
But who cares, right?
It’s important to root these in a history of colonial exploitation, marginalization, and erasure. A group of people whose way of life has been noted as barbaric, backwards, or savage were often the same reasons colonial powers saw it fit to steal from them, enslave, and murder them. Donning a cultures dress or making their food tastes “better” has done nothing to restore connection with that culture. It is just a more polite form of their erasure. They have been robbed of their soveignty.Another phenomena, as noted in the comic, is the chill acceptance of this by the appropriated culture. Here, they face no real erasure. Heck, you don’t really see this in newly immigrated peoples who want to make a better life for themselves. Being seen is success. But you speak to their first generation children and having their culture flattened to the surface signs can be infuriating if you are the type who views assimilation as a type of loss.
I personally think there is space for a member of the dominant culture to appreciate the culture if they’ve been invited. But it is important to be careful here as well. Because you may have earned that right with one group from within the culture, but that is not transferable and that exception must be earned again.
Heck, it gets even more complicated when people looking to just keep their schools open and working sge adults employed couldn’t care less when asked, but will ask if there’s anything that can be done to stabilize their community.
So I’ve written a lot and feel like I missed so much and glossed over much of what is important. What have you read about the subject that really attempted to wrestle with the concept?
Obviously intent comes into it, where wearing a reductive costume without any awareness (your Halloween costume example) is callous and ignorant of that person. I think some ignorance can be excused if this person couldn’t reasonably be expected to understand all the implications of a costume, even if it’s someone who should be expected to (thinking Trudeau Jr or Prince Harry when younger).
Regardless of the hypothesised (or real) impact to the community of someone wearing clothing arguably offensive to minorities with ancestry in the culture being mocked, those aspects aren’t what this cartoon is about. It’s about idiots who don’t understand nuance and repeat shit they see on social media unthinkingly until you get this absurd situation where someone wearing a hat and wearing it well is screamed at in public for no discernible reason.
Lots of people seeing it will do the same kind of wrong-generalisation in the opposite direction though, and take the valid point the cartoon makes to write off all concerns with cultural appropriation, including the valid ones you just made in your first paragraph.
The world is nuanced, and that’s nearly never conveyed well in our current public communications systems…
I am Latin American. We couldn’t even give an atomic sliver of a speck of fuck about gringos using part of our culture or the intention behind it.
If anything it’s enjoyable, one more for the family.
And if we get offended? Don’t worry. We don’t need anyone from a “dominant culture” to look down on us, thinking about saving us because we are oh so weak, or speak for us.
We can speak and do speak for ourselves.
Good thing I’m not part of the “dominant culture”. Would hate to speak for you. Just speaking for myself. But there are Latin Americans who disagree with you.
Lol no jaja
IMO it’s appropriation if it’s done disrespectfully or in an exploitative or profiteering way. Otherwise, it would just be cultural segregation. Imagine liberalism turned full apartheid.
So if I want to open a Pinata factory, I can only sell them to Mexicans? Or can I sell them to anyone, but only to non-Mexicans at a profit? Or must every Pinata be made at home by a loving Mexican Grandmother for her Grandchildren only?
It’s awesome, racists and progs have the same end goal
Segregation.
It’s called White Savior Complex.
“Only I, a white person can save you from-- pick a thing. Because I believe you are incapable of fending for yourself, I shall be offended for you!”
Yeah. I see and experience this a lot from collectivists. It’s like they try to cover it under a thinly veiled hypocritical facade of “niceness” but still stinks like shit under it
I don’t have to go too far, just me mentioning that I am from Venezuela and that I know for a fact that the leftists destroyed my country, is enough for them to let go of that facade and go into a tirade of vindicative slurs.
Of course, I understand them. From thousand of kilometers away and armed with all of 15 minutes of a collectivist ideology pamphlet, they clearly know more about the struggles and history of the country I’ve lived all my life.
Enjoying other cultures isn’t appropriation. I think the line where it becomes appropriation is profiteering. If you are commodifying and profiting off someone else’s culture that’s pretty shitty. Obviously that’s not a perfectly clear cut line (who ‘owns’ culture?), but it’s a good place to start.
I think that’s still tricky. For instance, most parts of the world have few Japanese migrants, yet Japanese restaurants are almost everywhere. Usually these are owned by other Asian migrants. This is clearly profiteering, but I don’t see it as particularly problematic.
I think you can apply the socioeconomic and derogation lenses here. Socioeconomically, Japan has been ahead of nearly every other Asian country for a long while, with only places like China and Singapore recently catching up to them. So, I think that makes it feel okay. And derogatively, I don’t think these restaurants are successful because they specifically aren’t being run by Japanese people. So that’s good on the front as well. So I’d say, yeah, overall it feels fine. However, I’m not Japanese and don’t have a wealth of additional context that might provide counter arguments.
So is every company making and marketing tortilla chips and salsa appropriating culture if they are from New York City? Is every pizzeria that isn’t in Italy profiteering off of Italian culture? Is a French Bistro in Kansas City wrong? Is it wrong to wear a Scottish Kilt made in Viet Nam?
I think each of the described situations has a different specific answer because the topic is nuanced. As stated above, it can sometimes to be messy to say who owns some piece of culture. But beyond that, the most useful tool is an examination of socioeconomic power dynamics.
If there is a cultural group that is poor, and an outsider from a rich/wealthy group commodifies and sells their culture, while giving nothing to those people, you’d probably agree that that’s a shitty thing to do. Their culture obviously had some kind of material wealth value that they received none of.
However, if you take a situation where both parties are well off it seems a lot less shitty. Especially if the cultural group in question is already commodifying and profiting off the same piece of culture.
If you can’t unravel the knot of cultural ownership, then does anyone really own it? It would appear to me that “everyone” owns it at that point and can partake in it freely and adapt it to their wants an needs. And no matter the culture, there is always socioeconomic disparities within that group. No matter how small or downtrodden they may appear to you. Someone is always going to be a little bit better off than you and someone else is always going to have a little more power than you.
So is Tostitos racist for not mailing checks to every Mexican person everywhere? Because they sure as hell are making bank selling those chips and Salsa to you. OMG! are YOU part of the problem?
The know of cultural ownership is absolutely unravel-able in many situations, just not all. In some situations it’s exceedingly clear and in others, not. I think you’re trying very hard to find hard-and-fast, absolute rules for these situations, but they don’t exist. The keyword is nuance, nuance, nuance. Each situation is different and each situation deserves scrutiny as to whether or not it crosses the line. This is a judgement call made by each and every person.
If you really want me to engage on the specific situation of Tostitos/chips and salsa I will, so you can see the process of my scrutiny.
First, I think that as any item of culture becomes more and more diffused (ethically or not), it’s original ownership becomes diluted. Things that were once appropriation in the distant past, if done today, would not be considered as such as the context around them changes (in a myriad of ways).
So, if Tostitos started as a company today, I’d say making chips and salsa is not appropriation. But, if Tostitos was founded a long time ago, before chips and salsa were a foodstuff ubiquitous across the US and Tostitos was created by one outside of that cultural ownership, then I’d say it likely was appropriation. It also might be fair to argue that in the modern day for Tostitos specifically, “the damage has been done” and there really isn’t much fixing it, so consuming their products isn’t necessarily problematic. But this would be a point as to why identifying appropriation early on and stopping it is especially important.
As to whether I’m part the problem - for Tostitos no, but for other things almost certainly yes. I’m human and I don’t know everything, and I’ve certainly made mistakes in this area, but that’s okay. What’s important is that once I’ve learned something is in fact a mistake, I own up to it and stop making that mistake.
Sorry for the double reply, but another useful perspective in this is derogation. I often forget this idea because I’m very class minded, but it’s also very important. This is the idea that a culture can be profited off of while simultaneously despising the people that practice it. In practice, this exists as a business around a specific cultural item succeeding specifically because the business is NOT owned/operated by the original cultural group. Some of the best examples of this are around Black American culture in the US. Some cultural products were only valuable AFTER they were owned, operated, and proliferated by White Americans. Which is kinda just Racism Classic™ but allowing certain useful things to cross the cultural line for profits sake.
It’s a tough line to draw, because even if they aren’t the main profitees, the culture where the thing originated often still profited. e.g. AFAIK rock’n’roll getting popular with white americans was pretty good for black americans, even though many of the best selling artists (e.g. Elvis Presley) were white.
The popularization of Black American music is indeed a complex topic in this arena. Like, obviously a lot of cultural outsiders made a lot of money off of the situation, but there were at least some benefits to the arrangement, although whether or not they outweighed the cons is perhaps difficult to say. For example, if outsiders had abstained entirely from profiting, what would have changed? Obviously more of the money made percentage-wise would’ve gone to the owning culture, but would there have been less money overall? Would it have reached the same levels of popularity? If so, it almost certainly wouldn’t’ve happened as quickly, right? These are difficult questions to answer and I’m not educated enough in this area to really offer any. So, while not worth a damn, my gut feelings is that there are at least some strong arguments as to why overall the absence of outsider profiting would’ve been better for the owning culture.
also when it becomes an issue is influenced by how accurate it is, how overused it feels, and (obviously) if it was made with the intent to insult
There’s a big difference between participation and appropriation, and the “anti-woke” hive mind goes out of it’s way to conflate the two.
“Cultural Appropiation” is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.
All cultures grow by learning about and adopting customs of other cultures, or in other words by appropiating things from other cultures.
And if they did that didn’t we wouldn’t have things like anime (Japan took the art of animation from America, not only did The US invent cartoons, but anime evolve from styles used on early Disney cartoons), rock music (Rock musicians are predominantly white, but rock itself evolved from distinctly black forms of music), or really most food in general (Pizza’s from Italy, French Fries are from Belgium, Hot dogs are from Germany… Need I go on?)
At best, demonizing cultural appropiation is just encouraging segregation.
Now if you’re wearing the colors or clothing of another culture specifically with intent to insult or in a less-than-glamorous way… That’s a different story.
This is the kind of Neo Liberal nonsense that makes me wish I had a party to root for that wasn’t the Democrats
“Cultural Appropiation” is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.
Really? Because I’d say it’s the perfect term to describe shit like this.
Because that is not respecting an indigenous culture. That is taking something extremely important to them and perversely twisting it into some corporate sports team bullshit.
What else is that asshole doing if not appropriating someone’s culture?
But can’t we just call that racism? “Haha, I’m an Indian” is just racist. Making a new term of cultural appropriation then leads to all sorts of things getting that label that aren’t problematic. A lot of it I think actually veers back into racism. Like as a white guy, can I eat, for example, Cherokee dishes? Can I open a Cherokee restaurant? I’m not pretending to be from their culture, I just like the food and think other people would too. If I can’t do these things, you are reinforcing that Cherokees are a different group than all other Americans, which is where racism comes from. Being exposed to other cultures is how you combat racism, that’s why cities tend to be less racist.
I guess, but there are many different types of racism and this is not the same as, for example, burning a cross on a black family’s lawn.
This is not active hate. This person very likely has no animosity toward indigenous Americans. He probably has no idea about the significance of the war bonnet or why it’s offensive.
So I think this is a subcategory which needs to be highlighted specifically because of people like that.
Some people just love to find reasons to get offended.
Hell, a way to carry a baby was called cultural appropriation by some black people where I live when first Nations have been carrying their baby the same way on our territory since way before any black people set foot in northern America but we don’t hear them complain.
As a Quebecois, I like that Canadians like poutine. I don’t like that they pretend they have invented it. I also like that they like maple syrup and the traditions surrounding it (cabane à sucre). I don’t like that they appropriate it as a thing of their own (we produce 90% of global maple syrup).
As a Quebecois
You may not like it, but as a Quebecois you unfortunately remain part of Canada and thus are part of the set of Canadians and the creations and practices of Quebec are Canadian as a consequence.
To change that, you’ll need to double down on that Free Quebec stuff and cut yourselves away from your English neighbors. Though I don’t think that’s even won an opinion poll in the last twenty years, and I don’t think it’s ever been closer than the failed resolution in 1995.
It’s a thin line between celebrating indigenous cultures and heritage and exploiting it. The Washington Redskins being something I feel everyone can clearly see was over that line, but wearing a sombrero is clearly nowhere near it.
Idk im just a white guy who loves dia de los muertos
How dare you
I was with you until the last sentence. Can’t say I agree with the n word being a beautiful expression of English.
We in LATAM breath slurs and eat bullying for breakfast
Ew.
Yeah, it’s awesome 😎
So what does bullying taste like?
Cultural appropriation is a broad enough term to functionally be meaningless, but I’ve found it helpful to think through 4 distinct interests at play, that I think are legitimate:
Proper attribution/credit. We don’t like plagiarism or unattributed copying in most art. Remixes, homages, reinterpretations, and even satire/parody are acceptable but we expect proper treatment of the original author and the original work. Some accusations of cultural appropriation take on this flavor, where there’s a perceived unfairness in how the originator of an idea is ignored and some copier is given credit. For a real world example of this, think of the times the fans of a particular musical artist get annoyed when a cover of one of that artist’s song becomes bigger than the original.
Proper labeling/consumer disclosure/trademark. Some people don’t like taking an established name and applying it outside of that original context. European nations can be pretty aggressive at preserving the names of certain wines (champagne versus sparkling wine) or cheeses (parmigiano reggiano versus parmesan) or other products. American producers are less aggressive about those types of geographic protected labels but have a much more aggressive system of trademarks generally: Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks. In a sense, there’s literal ownership of a name and the owner should be entitled to decide what does or doesn’t get the label.
Cheapening of something special or disrespect for something sacred. For certain types of ceremonial clothing, wearing that clothing outside of the context of that ceremony seems disrespectful. Military types sometimes get offended by stolen valor when people wear ranks/ribbons/uniforms they haven’t personally earned, and want to gatekeep who gets to wear those things. In Wedding Crashers there’s a scene where Will Ferrell puts on a fake purple heart to try to get laid, and it’s widely understood by the audience to be a scummy move. Or, one could imagine the backlash if someone were to host some kind of drinking contest styled after some Christian communion rituals, complete with a host wearing stuff that looks like clergy attire.
Mockery of a group. Blackface, fake accents, and things of that nature are often in bad taste when used to mock people. It’s hard to pull this off without a lot of people catching strays, so it’s best to just avoid these practices. With costumes in general, there are things to look out for, especially if you’re going out and getting smashed.
The chapters and labeling makes me think of AI. It always does that in replies
Maybe you should try actually reading the content of the paragraphs next time. ChatGPT and the like do not write like that. It’s too judgmental (rightfully so to be clear) and idiomatic (“catching strays.”)
Putting a header on your points is just a way to make things clear. Not everything is AI just because it’s organized.
I just said that the formatting reminded me of AI. I didn’t talk about the content
There was definitely an implied accusation
Not my intention
I might suggest a fifth item for your list, which has to do with whether you, as a non-minority, are appropriating something that a minority has been given a hard time for. For instance, a number of Black hairstyles have been denigrated for generations, leading to people having to deal with damaging, toxic, expensive, time consuming chemical treatments to achieve more culturally acceptable hair. So when non-minority people wear cornrows or dreadlocks to be trendy, especially while Black people are still being made to feel uncomfortable (or being discriminated against) for wearing the same styles, that can sting in a different way. This isn’t limited to cultural characteristics, but it’s a sensitive aspect of appropriation that includes cultural stuff.
I take issue with this.
Main point being that, no matter how respectful the appropriating individual is, they are now being judged for actions that they themselves may have never taken.
Secondary point, and I know this is a nitpick, you say “minority” and “non-minority”, but those terms can always flip when you change view points. I doubt you would give white people from African Countries a pass on their cornrows for being minorities in their country, and if you did, what if they move to the US?
I think people should be free to enjoy whatever hairstyle no matter the actions of unrelated other people. But what do I know, I’m just a person from a culture nobody wants to appropriate anyway.
I respect your opinion. I do want to clarify that if, let’s say, a white German living in Ghana were broadly discriminated against or mocked for wearing lederhosen (I won’t pretend to be able to think of an up-to-date cultural tradition specifically associated with white people, please bear with), then it would be hurtful for their Ghanaian neighbors to start “discovering” lederhosen-inspired fashions while denying the impacts of the ill treatment endured by these oppressed German transplants. It’s not about race or hairstyles, but mistreatment at the hands of people who (usually) don’t recognize the power or perceived power inherent to their social position.
I will give some more thought to your comment about white people from African countries. My initial reaction is that cornrows may or may not be part of their own culture, and they may not be living in a context where white people have the social power to harm or harass other Africans on a racial basis. If we’re talking about South Africa, of course, that’s not the case, so it still seems like it comes down to who’s in control. But I will reflect on it. Thanks.
This is probably the best most level-headed and respectful take I’ve seen regarding cultural appropriation. Thank you!
Yeah this is “bestof” on the shit hole site material. But it’s legitimately excellent
LandedGentry
As, you must have been a mod from that “shit hole site”, I heard they were landed gentry!
;)
A new Stonetoss huh
Lol, reminds me of one of the Mario games a while back - no idea what the context was, but Mario took on different personas, which I’m assuming gave him abilities specific to whatever ‘form’ he took kinda like Kirby.
Anywho, one of them was a Mexican theme, which made Mario don a sombrero and poncho. Lots of touchy white people on the internet were PISSED cuz how could Nintendo be so insensitive to the Mexican culture?!
…meanwhile, Mexican gamers were fucking ecstatic cuz HOLY SHIT MARIO’S WEARING A SOMBRERO! LET’S GOOOOOO!!!
Good times.
That was either Super Mario Odyssey or Paper Mario: Sticker Star (Mario can wear a sombrero in both). In Odyssey it’s just a themed cosmetic that can be bought with coins. In Sticker Star, it’s an attack.
Yeah and one of the reasons why we will never get again paper Mario references in other Mario games
God-damnit
Removed by mod
On one hand certain things have certain meaning in the culture and maybe some people will look sidewise but on the other hand people that practice that culture probably don’t expect some random dude to know everything it their culture. But “cultural appropriation” has mostly been used to virtue signal
This. The social Justice warriors that are peddling the cultural appropriation line are not representative of the culture or the people of that culture, their opinions, or feelings on the matter.
What we, as a society, need to do, is let cultures be offended when they feel offended, and not assume that they will be offended by something that we think they should be offended by.
Short version is: don’t be offended on behalf of someone else.
You don’t know them. You don’t know their culture. You don’t know what they see as offensive.
Stop assuming you do.
Exactly, just like when you have bullies in high school. Don’t assume that just because someone is wandering around mocking and relentlessly making fun of another student that the other student isn’t ok with it. We need to leave space for the victims to come forward if and when they feel uncomfortable, and not use our positions of authority to try to provide social support to people who we view as victims. After all, it worked for Anita hill and everyone who came after and we gave those dumb whores zero support.
See I can make a stupid, asinine argument too
That is exactly white savior complex. Other cultures aren’t troubled children that need us white folk to come save them from other people sharing their culture.
🔥
There’s a difference between engrossing yourself in another culture and being actively hostile to another person or culture.
The kind of people I’m talking about are those that get offended on behalf of a culture they’re not a part of, for someone simply participating in that cultures traditions.
They’re not out there actively mocking, attacking, or otherwise demeaning that culture, it’s traditions, or it’s people.
The difference is malicious intent.
Bullies have malicious intent in spades.
People wearing the garb of a culture they were not born into, do not.
That’s not really the same thing. People that appreciate another culture and enjoy and use aspects of a culture in their life and might be offending someone accidentally and a bully who is trying to harm someone deliberately are different. Intentions do actually mean something.
I won’t disagree there’s much more nuance than I even attempted to capture.
I’ll disagree if you think the person I responded to cares about that one bit vs just complaining about the woke mob of social justice warriors.
Complaining about sharing cultures IS racism. These idiots complaining about cultural appropriation have gone too far up their own ass.
Melding, sharing food clothing and customs makes everyone better! These bullshit micro divisions need to stop.
What “idiots complaining about cultural appropriation”? It’s not exactly a common thing, despite what caricatures of them might make you think. No one is getting upset that anyone eats food from another culture.
The only actual examples I can think of that I’ve actually heard discussed are “please don’t dress as my race as a costume, it’s basically blackface” and “my religion was systematically driven to the brink of extinction, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use it as a fun activity to express your creativity”.
These things always seem chock full of getting defensive about something that doesn’t really happen, or acting like the smallest pushback to the dominant culture doing whatever they want is incredibly terrible.
Appropriation isn’t an issue when it’s just cultures sharing. It’s an issue when people reduce the culture to the things in question, forget that there’s actually people involved who deserve respect, or outright claim ownership of the thing in question.Don’t go to a Halloween party dressed as a Puerto Rican. Don’t grab a random assortment of native American religious practices, mix them with crystals and use it to showcase your creativity.
How do Puerto Ricans dress up?
In reality? Like anyone else.
As a costume?
The not-puerto-rican editor of the magazine bon appetit went to a Halloween costume dressed as a caricature of a Puerto Rican with his also not Puerto Rican wife.
It came into my head as an example of something less obviously problematic than blackface, but more obviously problematic than dressing as a Disney character that’s a depiction of a different race.Feel free to substitute any other ethnicity or race into my example as it makes sense to you.
How is that being dressed as a Puerto Rican?
You’d go to Venezuela or Colombia and see people dressed the same as well
Hell even Ecuador or Peru I think
Baseball is very popular in Latin and central America, is not unheard of that someone is fan of a baseball team from another country
I don’t see how being dressed with something resembling merchandise of a baseball team means you are Puerto Rican or dressed like one
And to go further, I believe it is EXTREMELY racist to think so.
Well, it’s what he said he was doing, so that’s why I went with that. Also note the specific terminology associated with Puerto Ricans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/dining/bon-appetit-adam-rapoport.html
In isolation it would be racist to assume a man wearing a baseball jersey was Puerto Rican or dressed as a one as a caricature. It’s not when it’s labeled as such by the people in the photo, and when asked about it they admit that’s what they were doing, and then apologize and then ultimately resign.
To be honest, all that just seems like an incident blown out of proportion
As I see it, someone else is referring to this dude as papi, which is basically daddy but in Spanish, and then added a hashtag on Instagram that says “boricua”, which might as well be related to food as the guy is apparently a chef?
It never says he is cosplaying as a Puerto Rican. At least in the picture they post, nor it looks like it’s the intention.
Then there is a lot of people saying something about brown face or black face? What, can’t people be tanned? Or somehow do they think everyone from LATAM is brown or black?
As with most things, it’s a continuum. Some assimilation is good, a hairstyle, a clothing style, food, even customs. Sometimes certain people can go too far, and it gets more problematic. Think the jeweler in Snatch that isn’t Jewish but pretends to be. The episode of The Neighborhood with Nicole Sullivan. Rachael Dolezal.
Rachael Dolezal.
Isn’t race at least as much a social construct detached from any physical or biological reality as gender is? If so, why wouldn’t transrace people be valid for essentially the same reason that transgender people are?
You can go down the rest of the radqueer rabbit hole from there, since most of their positions are just taking positions related to mainstream LGBTQ identities and extending them to ones less accepted by the mainstream LGBQ community, like xenogenders and being trans-things-other-than-gender.
Incredibly generally: gender is the expression of gender identity and is a social construct while gender identity seems to be largely influenced by biological factors. Sex is the biological differentiation, and while the delineation between the sexes is culturally defined (if someone has xxy sex chromosomes, high testosterone, a penis, and a vagina it’s a cultural decision if we say they’re male, female or intersex), it’s a classification based much more on observable factors.
Race and ethnicity are more akin to sex than to gender identity, which would be better compared to cultural identity.
What distinguishes races is a social construct, but within a context racial classifications are relatively consistent. Racial markers that mean nothing in the US might be quite significant in Rawanda.
Similarly ethnicity, being a blend of race, language, culture and heritage is socially constructed but relatively objective within a context.
Culture on the other hand is, like gender identity, more to do with subjective feelings, opinions, and choices on the part of the individual, with the distinctions between them being cultural.The woman in question mislead people about her race and ethnicity by misidentifying her relatives and heritage. Her cultural affiliation is harder to dispute, although being a chapter president for the NAACP shows at least a degree of acceptance by the African American culture in the area.
This gets to the question of what racial identity is and I would argue that someone who isn’t of recent African ancestry, who was not raised by people who have recent African ancestry, who then pretends to not just have recent African ancestry but then claims that their family aren’t the people who raised them (because they are white) is very clearly not stable.
Exactly, no Scottish person is getting bent out of shape if Im wearing tartan plaid shirts but dressing up and pretending to be Rastafarian would be inappropriate as Im white.
The reason feelings of cultural appropriation exist is because the children of immigrants feel like society treats them as foreigners because they’re not white, despite growing up all their lives in the US/UK etc. This leads to feeling like some dipshit is enjoying the food and fashion of your home culture while rejecting it’s people. Think about a Maga moron voting to kick out all the Mexicans while wearing a sombrero and eating tacos; it’s a hypocrisy of culture vs race.
I’ve never seen anyone that wasn’t lily white complain about cultural appropriation.
I know a bunch but they are in (sub)cultures that either get popularized and have very specific dictates for membership. The clearest example of this are how Rastas feel about non-black people appropriating the imagery of their faith whoch is dedicated to bringing the African diaspora back to Africa.
Selection bias
Maybe you need to interact with more minorities, bro?
So if I find you a couple of YouTube videos of people of other cultures complaining about cultural appropriation, you’ll stop saying this dumb shit?
That’s just racism and you’re not going to fix it by isolating the immigrants more by chastising people that enjoy their culture.
It makes zero sense if the goal is to fight racism. If anything you’d want there to be MORE immersion and exchange of cultures so the immigrants are seen as part of the new fabric instead of separate from it.
I’m telling you how people feel, I’m not writing a manual towards a post race society. When people feel ostracised because they look Mexican, they get salty about the same society who routinely rejected them and made them feel like outsiders gleefully housing down Mexican food and cosplaying at being Mexican.
that’s just racism
Yes. That’s the central point of any discussion of cultural appropriation. It’s rooted in racism.
Participating in something or wearing the clothing of another culture is not automatically racist/cultural appropriation. But it often can be. It’s like people here don’t understand nuance or are so eager to be offended by other people being offended.
If I “dress up like an Indian” and run around hooting and hollering and waving around a toy hatchet, I am being a racist and sloppily culturally appropriating. If I’m invited to a Native American ceremony and dress up how they tell me too, then I am participating in a culture with respect. Surely we are all adults here and know the difference?
“We got to keep them seperate but treat them equal!”
Hmm wonder where I heard that before.
In the end, progressives and racists shared the same end goal: Segregation
It’s kinda funny when some crazies are asking to see your family tree and genealogy sample to know if it’s alright for you to wear a certain piece of clothing.
Let’s observe the chart
Oh good grief. Of course the Nazis had a chart. I hardly know any German, but there sure is a lot of “verboten” on that.
Makes me wonder if there was a similar thing for Jim Crow laws in the deep south.
They had an official “one-drop rule”, so no need for a chart I guess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
Sharing culture isn’t cultural appropriation.
Yes, that was the point.
The first paragraph implies they’re the same thing.
Using “cultural appropriation” to drag down regular people is kind of pointless, like freaking out at someone for putting the wrong recyclable type of plastic trash in the garbage.
Cultural appropriation matters at the corporate level, where media shapes what regular people do. Do you want to talk about cultural appropriation? Talk about Disney, talk about Hollywood, talk about Jeep Cherokee, and Decathlon Quechua. To keep with the recycling analogy: your problem shouldn’t be ordinary people messing up their trash sorting, it should be vendors mass producing plastic trash for everything.
nah, it just depends on what you’re appropriating from what culture… doing the stereotypical mexican garb is ok with mexico… so that’s cool, dressing in some religious outfit is incredibly offensive… like a native american headdress with a bunch of feathers… it’s also especially offensive in america because of the native american genocide americans great great grandparents probably participated in….
it’s all context… also in how you wear it… (are you making fun of mexicans or having fun with mexicans?) but mexicans are generally cool with americans wearing sombreros… and have a long tradition of american tourists doing so…. plus a sobrero and a mexican blanket is functional gear, not some sacred thing.
cowboys and their whole style is also entirely mexican originally, our cultures are quite intertwined.
that doesn’t change anything else and it’s just cherry picking examples.Bingo, Im white and Mexican born. I can dress up in traditional Mexican stuff and no one gives a crap. If I tried to be a rastafarian, whose faith is focused on the return of African descended people back to Africa, itvwould be wrong.
Thankfully we have religious freedom so it doesn’t matter if doing something offends another person’s religion
it still matters
Tell that to the American right
Your freedom to worship (or not) doesn’t mean you’re free from the social consequences, though
Indeed. The author of the comic misrepresents it as appreciating another culture. But really it is intentionally misrepresenting or stealing a culture. Like black Cleopatra. Or Israeli Hummus.
