I don’t know Portland, but it seems like that article hinges on a very expansive and very racialized idea of intellectual property. In which case, I reject its major premise. I don’t blame anyone for investigating how something is made so they can make it themselves, and I don’t think that there’s any “natural patent” on tortilla wraps in the name of “persons with Spanish names.”
(ETA: I’m trying to be thoughtful and precise here, but I don’t entirely disagree with sleestak’s characterization.)
IMHO, one grievance of some minorities isn’t so much, “White people are using/doing our stuff” as it is, "White people are using/doing our stuff, and doing a crappy job of it."
There’s nothing wrong with white people running a dojo for martial arts, in terms of cultural appropriation, but please do it *well *- please don’t run the “McDojos” where a student gets a black belt after just spending a few weeks learning a few kicks or Hollywood-like moves. (I exaggerate, but stand by the general gist.)
To anyone wondering why this might be a big idea, have you ever gotten mad at someone for wearing a shirt of a band you liked without having a clue about their music? Think the nirvana-shirt-wearing tween who couldn’t recognize the first few bars to “smells like teen spirit”. In fact, a Tumblr user I saw ran an experiment where she posted that she found a shirt from “Bring me the Horizon” that was super cool and publicly wondered what it was - many of the responses she got were along the lines of “if you don’t know the band you shouldn’t be wearing their shirt”.
And that’s just a band. How about when people treat actual important aspects of one’s culture as a joke? The people who wear native headdresses used in important religious ceremonies for a lark or a fashion statement, for example. Meanwhile, the people to whom that culture actually matters, who have a real, tangible connection to it, have seen their culture gradually extinguished and marginalized. A Comanche native wearing a Comanche headdress will probably be treated quite differently, and often more negatively, than a college-aged white hipster wearing it at a party. And meanwhile, the market is full of “new-age” philosophies that reframe and change how our society sees native American culture, in ways that actual adherents of said philosophies have problems with:
On the surface, it may appear that this new craze is based on a respect for Indian spirituality. In fact, the New Age movement is part of a very old story of white racism and genocide against the Indian people. The “Indian” ways that these white, New Age feminists are practicing have little grounding in Native American reality.
True spiritual leaders do not make a profit from their teachings, whether it’s through selling books, workshops, sweat lodges, or otherwise. Spiritual leaders teach the people because it is their responsibility to pass what they have learned from their elders to the younger generation. They do not charge for their services.
Indian religions are community-based, not proselytizing, religions. There is not one Indian religion, as many New Ager’s would have you believe. Indian spiritual practices reflect the needs of a particular community. Indians do not generally believe that their way is “the” way, and consequently, they have no desire to tell outsiders about their practices. A medicine woman would be more likely to advise a white woman to look into her own culture and find what is liberating in it.
And keep in mind - this appropriated, modified version? Because of how common it is, and how much more visible it tends to be, it starts to supplant the real thing in our cultural psyche. And of course, Natives can’t turn around and do the same thing, due to the power dynamic.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to see cultural appropriation as a problem in some cases.
That’s an interesting and, I think, apt, analogy.
No. Because I have far more important things to do in life than worry about what t-shirts someone might be wearing.
I also don’t care what superstitions people believe if those superstitions don’t lead to beheadings or suicide bombing. So if people want to adapt certain aspects of a religion and modify it I don’t see the problem.
All human inventions and practices are subject to diffusion and change. I don’t see how that’s different than adopting language or societal manners and molding them to one’s own needs. Human culture shouldn’t be a static or sacred thing.
Now mocking and ridicule are rude and perhaps people should refrain from being rude for the most part. But wearing a costume and cooking a burrito is no big deal. I don’t care at all if other people assimilate to American culture. I think it’s useful actually.
No.
The Japanese seem to be semi-obsessed with popular American clothing styles/logos, except with the words replaced with English nonsense. I think they’re hilarious.
I’m not sure why one culture has an obligation to respect the “important” stuff in other cultures. In fact I think mockery is an important tradition in and of itself. I don’t see any way to allow mocking of Christian iconography (for example) while somehow disallowing similar treatment of Native Americans.
All culture was appropriated at some point. That’s how it evolves. It would be cool to record more things so that smaller cultures aren’t lost forever, but I don’t think anyone has an obligation to go out of their way to keep weak cultures alive. At least some elements will survive if they’re appropriated.
Yeah, it’s cool when people are respectful, but there’s big gap between obligation and “would be nice”.
I’m sure you do. But it’s not for nothing that this is a common cultural meme. See also: the anger over “fake geek girls”, which, while incredibly stupid for unrelated or tangential reasons, points to a similar problem.
Yes, you don’t care about the erasure of native American culture. But then again, I doubt you’re native American, and what matters here is not your feelings. You’re not the person whose culture is being dissolved and reformed by the same dominant majority that previously destroyed your culture’s way of life.
There is a power dynamic at play here. That’s the problem. Native Americans can’t just turn around and do exactly the same thing. They don’t have the power. They also can’t just keep their own culture and not assimilate to the dominant culture - it’s telling that when you google “native American suspended for speaking native language” you come up with several cases. So on one hand they are forced to assimilate, and on the other hand, their culture is taken from them.
Note the shift in power dynamic here. People don’t just choose to assimilate, they have to assimilate. African-Americans have to abandon their dialects and styles to assimilate into (white) professional culture. Native Americans are forced to abandon their old ways of living. Assimilation is not the same thing as appropriation.
OMG , that is THE WORST!!!
If the purpose of this comparison was to demonstrate that people who complain about cultural appropriation are not immature douchebags, I think you’re going to have to try again.
nope, and I think anyone who does is a being ridiculous. I had a Pink Floyd poster on my wall long before I ever knew anything about them simply because it looked cool.
I don’t think that anyone “owns” a culture or has any rights to tell other people how to behave.
As long as items are not being stolen or malice intended then I don’t see the problem.
More of the same old “everybody that has been more successful than anyone else is bad and should feel bad” stuff. As a wise man once said:
[QUOTE=Spike]
You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did, and he’s not goin’ around saying, “I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.” The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story.
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately, that’s the way a lot of people want the world to be - you’re not allowed to be successful if it hurts anyone’s feelings in the process.
The few times I’ve heard the term come up is when African Americans have complained about white people commercializing and main streaming art or culture that, up until that time, had existed within the black community. As I understand it, the real rub has been that Whites have been able to take black art and culture, put it into the mainstream, turn even bigger profits on it than Blacks have, and then subject it to capitalist economic pressures that inevitably alter whatever was appropriated from its original form.
Take the case of rap or soul music. Originally, before 1990 or so, you’d hear rap and r&b on mostly ‘black’ radio stations. These were black-owned businesses, with black-owned marketing and advertising interests advertising to black consumers. All of this happening within the backdrop of a white-dominated society that has for centuries either enslaved blacks or made it very difficult for them to advance into the socioeconomic middle class (or the mainstream of society). So through all of this discrimination and exclusion, they’ve managed to create something of their own. They’ve created their own art and even their own art-based economy. Not that anybody ever set out to get rich on rap or r&b – after all, every artist in these genres understood that they weren’t ever going to have mainstream success. Even so, success in the black community was good enough for them. They were creating an art form and communicating to black people about the experiences of being black.
So then comes someone like the Beastie Boys, and along comes Backstreet and N’Sync and Justin Timberlake, who probably happen upon the art with admiration and a desire to show it to a broader audience. Nothing patently wrong here. But as more and more people find that they, too, like ‘rap’ and r&b, it begins to mean different things to a wider audience of people. Rap no longer talks about the struggles of young black men growing up in a harsh environment. The art form becomes trivialized, talking about sex and drugs or about nothing at all. It simply becomes a form of entertainment. Moreover, those groups like Public Enemy, who used to be identified as the real messengers in the rap field and the real reports of what was happening in black America find that they’re no longer important. Sony doesn’t want to sign them to contracts. They’d rather sign a group of suburban white teenagers who urge people to ‘rock yo body’. Thus, in the end, not only does black America feel like they’ve lost their voice, but they’ve also lost their economic opportunity. Sure, they can ‘sell out’ - indeed some have. But to sell out means that you have to give up your black identity and act as an accomplice in the destruction of an art or a creation that is identifiably and uniquely ‘black.’ It reinforces the notion that what’s black isn’t as important as what’s white, and it again reminds black people that they are second class citizens.
I think that’s an example of what cultural appropriation means. I don’t think cultural appropriation is ever intended by whites as an affront - as I said, it probably starts out with a sense of appreciation and a desire to raise everyone else’s awareness of whatever’s being appropriated. But I do understand the sense of loss by those who feel that something’s being taken away from them.
Why are we outraged on behalf of Polynesians, Native Americans, et. al. when things that have religious symbolism to them are used frivolously in pop culture? Why is it okay to use Xian iconography frivolously, even mockingly, but these other religions are entitled to dignity and respect?
Because the dominant culture is always bad and wrong and the smaller culture is always good and right.
It’s not bad vs good. It’s about powerful vs powerless
Not really the point being made, I believe.
Talking about facts isn’t assigning blame or guilt. IMO, no one should feel any guilt for anything they weren’t personally involved in. But that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge facts, talk about bad things in the past, and try to improve things in the present.
No it’s not. There is no issue of power here at all. The people you call powerless can and do ‘appropriate culture’ and no one stops them. There is no disparity.
I disagree. The question that was asked is why is it not ok for the dominant culture to appropriate others, but it’s not big deal if the dominant culture itself is appropriated (such as using Xian imagery in pop culture).
It’s about the power the default culture has in setting cultural norms and standards. The dominant culture is not at risk to be obliterated, marginalized, or to disappear, simply because it’s dominant. By taking the culture of others and having the systemic power to distribute and use it, society doesn’t recognize the original ownership and meaning.