As best as I can tell, cultural appropriation is fine until someone not of that culture profits from it.
Izzy Azalea (I think…) seems to be one I read about most often. It’s fine for her to have purchased all those rap and hip hip albums but when she became successful in performing it, she is wrong.
I get some aspects are racist or sensitive to cultures, but a good portion of it seems petty.
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How about portraying him as a straight Asian Indian boy? Spiderman has been portrayed many ways.
“Cultural appropriation” can mean a range of different things, though I have to agree that in most cases – and certainly in this one – the outrage is stupid, all the more so because we’re talking about little children wearing costumes based on a children’s movie. How this is presumed to lead to racial discord is a mystery. Indeed it’s reasonable to believe that cultural cross-fertilization leads to a better integrated and more harmonious society.
I can see that, at least in theory, there might be another side of the argument in perhaps some limited cases. If you have a disadvantaged minority that is associated with some unique elements of cultural style, and a bunch of yuppies decide that it’s fund and cool to frivolously exploit that style as a brief fad, I can see how it could potentially be regarded as disrespectful, all the more so when the yuppies get bored with it and move on to something else. What the minority might have regarded as part of their heritage has now been degraded to being just yesterday’s fad, a bit of outdated superficiality. While the logic makes sense in theory, I have a hard time thinking of any genuinely impactful real-life examples of it.
It depends on context. If some black parent dressed their kid up as the Pope so they could pretend to be white, how would that be? Most would rightly say it’s seriously flawed. Christians would claim grave religious persecution. Honestly, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to see this one from the other side.
If someone said that black people shouldn’t play curling, bridge, rowing, ice hockey or golf because those are “white people’s games,” there’d be an immediate racism backlash.
So we’re bringing back the Dawes Act?
You always risk creating offense when the subject is a religious figure. I don’t see that race has much to do with it. Why would the Pope be presumed to always have to be white when Jesus himself has often been depicted as black?
I don’t claim that there is no situation where cultural appropriation is genuinely wrong. I just don’t think that’s a good example, and neither is the example in the OP. In most real-life cases the outrage seems rather contrived.
Children don’t see race, they see the character. They need to be taught to treat others differently based on skin color by adults.
Cinderella is popular, I am to understand, based on my 6 year old daughter’s opinion and that of her friends. Would Mrs. fairchild’s response extend to them if they are of African descent?
Well, yes. Religious figures aren’t the only subjects that are meaningful enough to cause offense.
<sarcasm>Hey man, it’s just a costume, you’re overthinking it.</sarcasm>
OK, I’ll bite. What is a “Maori costume”? Do you just slap together some stuff you saw in National Geographic? You seem to know it’s not offensive… how do you know?
Of these real-life cases you have in mind, in how many were they both (A) contrived, and (B) involving your own culture?
Did anyone actually read the article?
The costume depicts a bare-chested Maui clad only in a small skirt. It’s essentially a flesh-colored fat suit with printed tattoos. Since the costume is mostly simulated bare skin, it actually does have a bit of an uncomfortable “blackface” effect.
If it’s not your culture being appropriated, you don’t have the right to say it’s okay. It’s their culture, and they decide what to share and what not to share. You deciding for them is you saying that your culture is superior and gets to control the other culture.
I am at a loss for why this is so hard to get. Sure, I get people who had never heard of the concept. I hadn’t either a few years ago. But I read up on it, and now I get it. As a liberal, I have to constantly be updating my ideas.
The Polynesian tattoos are not some Disney-owned designs. They belong to the Polynesian people. They and only they can say whether they have the right to use those designs in their commercial products.
And, no, it didn’t help that they put it on one skin color, having kids pretend to change their race. You don’t get to wear something as important as race as a costume. Race is not trivial. It is the source of all sorts of discrimination. (Hence why it’s marginally better if you go to a less discriminated race.)
We’re at a point where we’re rejecting the idea of racial color blindness as a useful concept. Ignoring race actually causes racism, since you will fall back on your own subconscious prejudices. We’re no longer trying to say that it doesn’t matter. It matters a lot.
Remember, many were already upset that the character is depicted that they in a way they think is obese. (Obesity is a Polynesian stereotype.) So there was already controversy about the character being misappropriated. Throwing that on top of racial issues made it boil over the top.
If this were the only board where I see this odd walls where you stop being liberal, I’d get it. This board skews older, and older people are more likely to be fixed in their ways. But I see it in a lot of younger audiences, too. Liberalism is okay, but it can only go so far. God forbid we apply the same principles to new concepts. You have to wait 30+ years before that’s okay.
Any liberal idea that came about after the 1970s meets tons of opposition, even among those who identify as liberals.
You would think that, it just never seems to occur to any proponents of putting the Nativity Scene or the Ten Commandments on court steps. Sure, praise the lord Jesus in a group prayer before the city council meeting.
No way at all these same people would raise a ruckus if a different religion was prominently displayed in a civic capacity. Hilarious hypocritical outrage somehow inevitably ensues.
That’s stupid. That’s like saying art form X can only be performed by members that are superficially similar to those who created it. Sounds racist to me to restrict freedom of expression based on ethnicity.
So, again - what if a white person opines that black people shouldn’t play curling, bridge, lacrosse, chess or golf because those are “white people’s games?”
Some years – or decades – ago, an American couple adopted a Chinese girl, and raised her as an American. The girl decided, for whatever reason, she liked Irish dancing, and took it up. Got a tutor, and practiced hard. She got good at it. She got competition-level good at it.
A very few people were opposed to allowing her to compete. Many people raised an eyebrow, or had minor reservations, but wouldn’t stand in her way. Most thought it was just fine.
The idea of anyone “owning” or “possessing” a culture is contrary to the spirit of freedom. It can only be enforced by censorship, and it deprives people of their choice.
It also plays into the hands of those people – nasty people who wore black shirts and appropriated the Fylfot – who believe that culture is genetic. Culture is not genetic; it is learned, like a language.
There is at least one Native American band/tribe who refuse to allow a dictionary to be compiled of their language. At the same time, they complain that their language is dying out. You can’t have it both ways!
You’re asking the wrong question, so nobody is going to answer it. In your hypothetical, the analogous question would be whether black people have a final say in what constitutes “white people’s games” and how and when they are played.
But I think we both know you’ve contrived the comparison by limiting it to trivial items that don’t describe “white identity”, and that the very concept is so diffuse that it’s hard to imagine anyone finding a cultural identifier to get offended over. Even the white nationalists struggle to invent examples and mythologies and make them white.
So, can that be the end of that flawed analogy? It’s not going anywhere.
And who are this ‘they’ BigT is referring? Large groups of humans are not monolithic blocks. No one owns culture. Inappropriate use of cultural symbols are punished in the marketplace of ideas.
Navajo textiles is one thing that comes to mind. A few years ago, they were all the rage. Everything was Navajo print. But you better believe when K-Mart started selling Navajo bathroom rugs, the cool kids had moved on to something else.
What’s the real world impact? Well, I know that now when I think of Navajo prints, I immediately think “lame!” Not because I have an aversion to Navajo culture, but because K-Mart turned it into a cheap commodity. If I made my living producing authentic Navajo wares, I’d be totally pissed off. I’d likely have to do something else to pay the bills, which means there would be less incentive for me to keep perpetuating my culture.
I think we potentially lose valuable information whenever a culture–especially a long-standing one–disappears. If American slaves had been totally disrobed of their culture (instead of damn-near disrobed), then Americans wouldn’t have the wonderful music it has. If Americans immigrants weren’t allowed to bring anything with them from the old country, we’d be a very bland, sterile country. Maybe a style of textile disappearing isn’t the worst thing in the world. But the culture producing that textile probably has other things of great value, and those things shouldn’t be equated with chinzy K-Mart wares.
Um, has there never been a black Pope? Surely we could have a black Pope. There are lots of black saints. I figure a kid in a Pope costume is pretending to be Catholic, not pretending to be white.
Yikes! I see why people were upset.
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