This really made me laugh, thanks. I simply wanted to know if you were a veteran to know how much credence I should put into your statement about what veteran’s should be offended about.
Yes, I’m AM a vet, so I’m well within my rights to tell other vets to shut up if they feel offended by someone wearing a purple heart nose ring.
No, it’s not “mocking valor” either.
I doubt that Christians went to the Jewish house and forced them to give gifts at gunpoint.
I agree with the posters who think cultural appropriation is mostly BS. There are things that have been appropriated from western cultures and done better by others, and when that happens I think it’s a good thing, not s bad thing. I’ve posted this example before but I’ll bring it up again. I’m a huge fan of Japanese RPGs. This style of game originally began when Japanese video game makers “appropriated” aspects of American and European culture and began the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy franchises. Over the years they continued to make improvements, and to this day, if you want to play a quality turn based RPG you have to play a Japanese made game. What I don’t get is how anyone could argue that their taking something, improving it, and then exporting it back to the culture of origin, is in any way wrong.
Because they are a weaker culture and apparently, that makes it okay.
I didn’t actually say anything about what a person, military or otherwise, ought to be offended by, but personally I think you would have to be literally insane to think that veterans in general don’t care about military awards. I mean, yes, I’m sure some do, just like I’m sure some of them eat their own shit. But I’m pretty sure most of them actually consider a medal to be worth something.
But putting insanity and deliberate disingenuity aside, you get that this was a hypothetical, right? There are people on this board who are literally refusing to believe (or, perhaps, admit they believe) that it’s possible for people to be legitimately offended. They’re literally rejecting the concept of offendability because, allegedly, they are such heartless hardasses that they are literally immune to that piffling liberal thing called “caring about something”. And because they (allegedly) are so unoffendable, then obviously everyone else should be held to the same (imaginary) standard.
The absurd purple heart nose ring thing was a rather hyperbolic attempt to pick a blatantly obvious thing that no sane person could honestly deny would be offensive. Of course the aforementioned heartless hardasses prefer the insane person route. It’s hard to fault them - their position was pretty insane to start with.
But that’s just it. Just because something is offensive, doesn’t make it cultural appropriation.
No, cultural imperialism is when a culture forces another to conform, not when they choose to conform on their own. It’s right there in the name: imperialism. It’s the majority culture acting like they are emperors and the minority culture is one of their subjects.
The implication in what you say is that you are looking for a way for the majority to be the victim. And that’s really difficult at a cultural level in a democracy. The thing that has more people has more power, so, if you were to feel victimized, you can fight back better due to having more people.
It’s just how it works. And as white protestant straight cisgender male, I can say it’s really not that big a deal. In no way are my cultural trappings in danger of disappearing. But that is true of minority cultures.
That’s because it was being contrived by people who have no clue what they are talking about regarding “stolen valor” or “mocking valor” or whatever. The physical medal itself is meaningless. You can buy it at a store, or online. Hell, I’ll ship you one and you can put it on your gym bag or whatever. If you don’t claim you earned it, then why would I have a problem with it?
And nobody (well, nobody I’m inclined to listen to) is saying that all forms of offense are cultural appropriation. But one of the major rebuttals to the idea of cultural appropriation in this thread is “they shouldn’t be offended by anything, including when people adopt their sacred cultural traditions in disrespectful or mocking ways. They shouldn’t be care because I don’t care!”. Of course this is coming from people who aren’t personally feeling that anything from their culture is being misused, and who are not particularly awash with empathy.
I, personally, have empathy, and also I’m awake, so my position is of course people sometimes get offended when the aspects of their culture are disrespected. Hell, you have no idea how many Christians I myself have pissed off by mocking their beliefs. It certainly happens. And when the offense is derived from the other culture adopting and using the cultural elements in an offensive way, then that is what we call cultural appropriation.
I’m sure you can be 100% confident that all other current and former members of the military agree with you. I mean, you are a hive mind, right?
But in any case, it was just an arbitrary hypothetical. If it doesn’t work for you, let it go.
And I sure you can be 100% confident that all Native Americans agree that a frat guy wearing a headdress is offensive. They ARE a hive mind, right? Just like 100% of Native Americans agree that the Washington Redskins name is offensive. Hive mind!
But only when a stronger culture does it, right? If it’s the other way around, it’s not?
Would you consider wearing an upside down cross necklace cultural appropriation? Isn’t that using elements of Christianity in an offensive way?
An upside-down cross is the Cross of St. Peter…
Thegasp SATANISM! response is probably more offensive.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that any culture can do it, but a critical element is that the source culture has to be offended.
Not if it’s somebody within the same culture doing it. And, for whatever reason, we tend not to consider “non-christians” a separate culture from “christians”.
(I’m valiantly trying to resist getting into the religious question of whether an upside-down cross should be considered offensive at all, since it would be off-topic. It’s hard, though. I mean, you did ask that exact question.)
That’s one reasonable basis for such a concept, ‘cultural appropriation’. The other that was mentioned is the specific well known case in American culture where white musicians adapt (or copy if you like) styles of black music and make more money doing so. That latter has been a around for a long time. One poster referred to 1990, maybe because their earliest memory 
, but it goes back to at least to the 50’s in American pop, and existed though perhaps more quietly commented on by black musicians, ever since the invention of jazz.
But OTOH IMO it’s not a bug but more of a feature of new concepts from the PC world (for lack of a better term, a certain segment of society generates these for the most part, left leaning academia etc) that they get abused and become meaningless and absurd. I am considered ‘white’ and our family a mix of races not (much AFAIK) including ‘black’, we own a ‘pitbull’ type dog, and were once told this was ‘cultural appropriation’ from blacks. Somebody said that seriously, a totally ludicrous idea on a whole bunch of levels. Some argue that’s just the fringe but to me there’s serious doubt what’s really the ‘fringe’ once these concepts get going. There’s this engine now of media/internet which creates such an apparently powerful incentive to go to the extreme, and look for the extreme and react to it. I’m not sure the concepts produced by the PC world are a big body of valid thought and a small absurd fringe rather than the other way around.
IOW I acknowledge it’s undesirable to use others’ religious symbols in a disrespectful way (even perhaps Christian ones ). And the musical history situation I mentioned is worthy of study and consideration too (though where does that put various non-US genres of pop music which obviously owe something to the US pop music tradition as a whole, not especially just American black music?). And surely there are some other valid examples of things generally like this. But do we actually need to keep coming up with new concepts like ‘cultural appropriation’? I think maybe the people inventing these concepts could add more to society applying their talents to more practical issues, IOW get reals jobs.
Actually I’ll pretty much stop right there as I know so little about what is or is not sacred in Navajo culture and nothing about the book, and I have little interest in debating the merits of specific examples.
What I will do instead is state the general and maybe together we can figure out how it applies in you specific.
The greater the power differential the more careful someone of the more powerful dominant group (who desires to not be a jerk) should be in the use of the symbols and ideas originating in the less powerful minority group. The more important (if not sacred) the symbol is to members of the less powerful minority group, the more careful as well.
In your example - Big power differential built into the society at large? Check. Sacred symbol? Possibly, one person saying so anyway, assume so, tentative check.
So proceed with caution. Think about what you are going to say an extra second before you click send. If you are discussing in an academic manner regarding cross cultural anthropology, discussing the subject respectfully, you are certainly fine.
Let’s take it a step farther and say that someone of Navajo heritage joins the conversation and states that the way you are discussing it is in fact offensive. Having hit those two check marks the first step is to take a step back and reread what you had written trying to see it through their eyes. If you do that and still cannot see how it was anything other than a respectful discussion of traditions in various cultures, then step two is to ask, with an open mind, for an explanation about why the specific posts were offensive, and how the broader subject could be discussed without causing offense. You may end up still proceeding anyway; you may realize that you were saying things offensively out of ignorance (no malice in not knowing) and become educated on how to proceed without offense being caused.
Shortest version is that no, the less powerful minority group member does not have to be 100% deferred to at all times lest you be a jerk. But the bigger the power differential and the more important (even sacred) the symbol is to its originating culture, the more the default should lean towards the proceeding with caution side.
It’s really not so hard.
I’ve no problem with that. About how much of the source culture has to be offended? 100%? 50%? Just one person from that culture?
And how much stock should I put into someone NOT of that culture telling me that it is offensive and cultural appropriation?
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
I was being sarcastic, mocking the people that do believe that (who aren’t hard to find.)
And I say seriously fuck that shit. A good idea is worth adopting if it comes from 200 people or 200 million, and a bad idea is worth deriding if it comes from 200 million people or 200. All this “punching up”, “punching down”, “power differential” coddling kid glove treatment of minority groups just because they are minority groups is, IMHO, a steaming pile of bullshit.
That’s an excellent and reasonable question! I would say that 100% is obviously not necessary, and just one person being offended is probably not a significant issue (unless their culture only has like ten people left in it, in which case they have other problems). If you managed to offend 50% of the people enough for them to speak up about it, you definitely have stepped one some toes. Personally my advice would be to listen to the complaint, maybe do a google or two to see if the cultural element in question seems to have importance within that culture, and also see if you find other examples of members of the culture compaining, and judge based on that. (This works better if you have functioning empathy.)
Or, hell, if even a single person complains it might not be worth the effort to carry on with it. Just take the burning effigy of their founder down and go do other things with your time.
If they’re speaking ex nihilo, zero. Seriously - it’s not their business. However you should make sure they’re not just bringing an actual offense to your attention - it’s possible that there’s a legit group of members of the culture in question who are offended and this unrelated upstart you’re talking to simply wants to let you know about it.
I mean that generally speaking we don’t consider christianity a separate culture from everybody else, at least not here in america. This may be a side effect of the fact we’ve had such a ridiculously huge number of different variants and sects of christianity here that it’s a tossup whether any two christians have any similarities to their ‘christian culture’ anyway, but the upshot of it is that christians and atheists like me are generally considered to members of a single culture who merely disagree about the number of eldritch entities who are watching us shower. So if I was so gauche and confused as to start wearing the christian symbol of an inverted cross, or to say invent a basically atheistic religion and call it the Church of Satan just to piss people off, that would all still be actions of people within the same culture and thus not cultural appropriation.