For some reason I have been running into this concept a shitload over the last few days. I have a hard time getting outraged over white dudes teaching Tae Kwon Do or making Kimchi as long as they don’t pretend kimchi comes from Germany because they pickled stuff in Germany and Kimchi is pickled cabbage.
What am I missing?
(I would put this in general questions but I figured it would end up here if not the pit so…)
AIUI it seems to be, “A dominant group using an oppressed group’s stuff or culture/ways/customs.”
White people cannot open a burrito restaurant.
Jewish white people with naturally curly hair whose hair would naturally become dreadlocks have to condition and comb out their hair because the naturally occurring dread locks would be cultural appropriation. Jamaican Rastafarians using Jewish symbology is not. There is no sense to it.
It is one of those terms thay may have been useful in a reasoned discourse but is being quickly debased and discredited by having it swung around by factions on both sides of the debate as some sort of blunt instrument, and having it caricatured by the most absurd instances of its usage as if they were the norm, so it ends up that everything is or nothing is.
Here’s what Wikipedia says, FWIW.
I think it was a food truck.
I don’t get it. Why the fuck would anyone give a shit about two white women making burritos? Its no worse than white men teaching Tae Kwon Do, and I see plenty of Korean kids at white run Tae Kwon Do dojangs.
It’s calling dibs on something once you find out someone else wants it.
I think that the kind of cultural appropriation that is mostly likely for people to agree is worth worrying about is when one cultural has elements that they consider ‘sacred’ and another culture starts mimicking these elements in a way that the original culture considers disrespectful or sacrilegious. The recent example that leaps to my mind is related to the Moana movie and tattoos - polynesians consider their tattoos something culturally significant and highly personal. They were very happy that the filmmakers were careful to portray the tattoos with that significance in the movie, however when somebody else at Disney decided to sell a bodysuit with Maui’s tattoos printed on it, for anyone to wear, they were like “um, no”.
This is the kind of cultural appropriation which I think matters - where the people in the original culture object to the misuse of their cultural elements and symbols. However, it’s important that THEY object. There are many elements of various cultures that people are happy to share, or are happy to share if they’re treated with sufficient respect - there was no problem with the Moana movie for example. So when white people jump the gun and get offended on the behalf of some minority or foreign culture who, themselves, don’t care - the white people are being idiots and should be shut down. And I say this as a bleeding heart liberal.
It’s bullshit, that’s all you need to know. An invented term to allow easy labelling of outrage.
Well, in their case, they basically bragged about stealing their recipe and methods from people who didn’t want to give it to them.
I don’t know if a bright line separates appreciation for another group’s culture from appropriation of that culture. So I can somewhat relate to those who dismiss the concept as BS.
Where I can see valid criticisms is when a cultural expression or practice is ignored or devalued when it’s associated with a member of the culture, but the minute that an outsider (e.g. a white person) picks it up, then the mainstream reacts as though they’ve invented water.
But I don’t blame the “cultural appropriators” for this, but rather biased and/or insular consumers who can’t appreciate other cultures unless one of their own has given it their blessing.
They wouldn’t, and don’t.
“Cultural appropriation” has become an extremely loose term that is generally only targeted at whatever the grievance of the day is. Nobody cares about burritos, so nobody is going to be accused of cultural appropriation for making burritos.
Everything has a grey area in between the obvious things. To use a really good example, I think it’s extremely obvious what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace and what does not, and the only people that bitch about it being unclear are harassers.
In the case of cultural appropriation, the grey area has expanded to include way too much for a anyone to make sense of it. It’ll pass, though.
This is terrible news to me as I know one of the women involved and just can’t make any sense of the terrible things this very woman who I really like has supposedly done.
They should have just called them wraps instead of burritos in retrospect.
I keep seeing conservatives say that liberals are crying about it, but I never see any liberals mention it at all. I’m sure there are a few nuts out there getting offended, but I don’t think this silliness is as widespread as those on the right would have us believe.
If it’s a big deal at all, I suspect you’ll find it “hotly” debated on college campuses. College kids gotta find something nutty to be outraged about.
Exactly. The concern from Polynesians over a tattoo bodysuit was understandable. People being upset because someone of the wrong ethnicity tried to make foreign food is… well, it’s extremely concerning, IMO.
Nm
Holy crap, that article is packed with Stoopid.
Slee