If the cultural appropriation is patronisingly humorous, racist, disrespectful, making light of things that genuinely matter to another culture, then it’s not acceptable. Causing genuine hurt or offense is not acceptable.
But borrowing something cool from another culture because we enjoy it, or admire it, or value it, is fine.
Humour like the Japanese guy dressing like an English football hooligan, and English people ‘trying on’ Japanese culture at a Japanese company function, is fine because nobody is offended by it.
There’s no rule, it’s simply a common-sense judgment in each case. But it’s a judgment that needs to be consciously made in each case.
Don’t hurt the feelings of other people – especially if they are weaker, poorer, less privileged, more subject to discrimination than we are.
Disrespectful? I think there are plenty of cultural practices and beliefs that are not worthy of respect no matter how important they are to the culture in question and no matter how much hurt or offense such disrespect might cause.
That seems like a wholly unreasonable and impossible standard and such a view sets the scene for cartoonists to be murdered for drawing stuff, because…hey “it’s not acceptable”, so how can groups be expected to accept it?
As the term “cultural appropriation” is so ill-defined I don’t think we can say that representations of cultural icons is a completely different subject.
Is there a right way to do cultural appropriation?
Cultural appropriation is a term so watered down by misuse it has become all but meaningless.
The only useful concepts I can see is that it not ok to use stuff “belonging” to a different culture as a costume. i.e. don’t use a caricature of a culture at Halloween or other fancy dress party: “Mexican” is not equivalent to “Wookie”. If you like to wear a sombrero because it keeps the sun out of your eyes – that should be perfectly fine.
As I said, it depends on the particular circumstances, there’s no general rule.
The Muhammad cartoons were about asserting the limits of one culture or religion trying to impose its own norms on another. That’s a different thing. You could almost say ‘cultural imposition’, the opposite of cultural appropriation.
Then we get stuck in the current circular argument because enough people assert, loudly and unthinkingly, that mocking, disparaging or satirising aspects of another a culture is, de-facto, an expression of racism of bigotry.
All different flavours of the same outrage pie as I see it. It is others seeking to restrict what can be done with aspects of their culture.
So, it’s perfectly fine to shit all over Native American traditions. I mean, they’ve had so much else taken from them, they won’t mind that one last inch, right? Who cares, they’re used to sucking it up from the larger culture, right?
I don’t agree.
It’s not that I respect Native American traditions for their own sake. They’re quasi-religious and I don’t really give a damn about that. But I do respect the feelings of the Native Americans who say they don’t like it.
I for one am sick and tired of seeing American culture appropriated all over the world. You can’t find a scene from any other country where the people are dressed just like Americans and often enough they’ll be eating food from McDonalds. They copy our TV shows and popular music and grab words and phrases from our language. We don’t get compensated for this usage, or even thanked or acknowledged. They have no respect at all for us and disparage us and our culture constantly.
This is probably a terrible example. Most of the times I’ve seen feather headdresses for sale it was at roadside stands/shops in the Southwest owned and operated by Native Americans.
This is not a Walmart item. Maybe at Halloween but not year round.
How do you feel about Dashikis? They got fairly popular in the US among younger people as comfortable hot weather clothing in the 60s & 70s and hung around at least through the 90s. Unisex but West African in origin I believe.
In a documentary about the Ali-Foreman fight, “The Rumble in the Jungle”, one of the members of the fighter’s entourages talked about getting off the plane in Uganda wearing their best dashikis and other ‘genuine African style clothing’ to see a crowd of locals all wearing typical western style clothes.
Listen if you think the concept of cultural appropriation is stupid then simply do whatever you want. This is yet again another in the seemingly weekly SMBD posts where a “confused” poster asks who they need permission from to do something.
You don’t need permission.
Do what you want.
There is nothing you can do to control how people react to your decisions. If you are so mystified by modern mores then just ignore them, and find like-minded people to support you if you feel unfairly attacked.
I’m not a fan of the concept of cultural appropriation. If a bunch of Japanese girls dressed up as sexy cowboys or pilgrims (heh) would that be a problem? I’d say no so I’m not sure why kimonos would be different.
There is definitely a problem when people denigrate others (like some of GreenWyvern’s examples) but we already have a term for that: racist assholes.