Recently my wife’s employer sent out an office-wide email reminding everyone to avoid Halloween costumes that stoop to “unacceptable” cultural appropriation.
What does “unacceptable” mean to you in the context of cultural appropriation? What do you think of the following:
Making or listening to music of a style from another culture. White folks listening to rap. Japanese folks listening to traditional Slavic folk music. Mongolians forming a barbershop quartet.
Eating foods of another culture. Maybe you’re Scottish born/raised, and you enjoy sushi and udon noodles on a regular basis. Or you’re from North Dakota, and you happen to really like Indian food.
Opening a restaurant that serves food of another culture. There are actually a number of restaurants in town that serve Japanese food, but they’re owned/operated by Koreans. I have no particular objection to this practice, but I will note the food tends not to be as good as it is in Japanese restaurants owned by Japanese folks.
Wearing the clothing/adornments of another culture. Is it OK to walk down Main Street USA dressed as a geisha? How about wearing a sarong, if you’re not from southeast Asia? What if you’re not an Amish woman, but you derive satisfaction from wearing a plain dress and bonnet?
Decorating your home (interior or exterior) in styles prominent in another culture.
Adopting the holidays of another culture. This time last year I was in Japan; I witnessed two Halloween parades (one was an impressively large one on Omotesando), and on Halloween night in Kyoto, I saw many people wandering around in Halloween costumes (best one: a pair of women sharply dressed as flight attendants, except they were splattered with copious amounts of blood).
As long as it’s not done disrespecfully I don’t see anything wrong with it at all. There are going to be arguments about what constitutes disrespect, but wearing something because it looks good doesn’t bother me.
I can’t think of a lot of ways it could be unacceptable. Some people like to feel special by pointing fingers and saying “that’s our thing!” and others like to feel special by saying “that’s their thing!” They know it’s an emotional subject and are counting on people being afraid to tell them to fuck off.
Passively observing some other group’s culture can’t conceivably be considered appropriation.
“Listening to their music”??? No way, no how.
Performing their music – not so clear.
I’m thinking of Pat Boone – the poster boy of stealing everyone else’s music and turning it to pap. Would he be stealing more or less had he tried to imitate the more soulful delivery of black artists? Michael Bolton comes to mind as this kind of copycat.
The internet began as a scientific experiment between research organizations in the US, UK, and France. When everyone who is not an American, UKian, or French researcher abandons it, I will consider such “appropriations” unacceptable. Not one second before. Four generations ago, my great-great grandfather lived and died in a tiny little corner of western Ireland, knowing little of the world outside his island- and probably never seeing more than a glance. Today, I can hop a train into Chicago and forty minutes later, be at restaurant featuring the ethnic cuisine of any culture you care to name- and I’m supposed to think this is a bad thing? Should I refuse to expose my hypothetical children to any ideas beyond their own ancestors’, lest they take up Tuvan throat-singing, or eating foods that aren’t potatoes?
It seems to me that the idea of ‘cultural appropriation’ being a problem basically boils down to a form of protectionism, and there was a time when that was entirely valid- Little Richard (I’ve heard) only sang ‘Long Tall Sally’ so fast so Pat Boone couldn’t cover it; at that time and place, music being considered ‘black’ was a big strike against it. I’m not going to pretend that everything interracial and -cultural is all lovey-dovey now, but in this day and age, I think the mindset is holding us back. As the world becomes ever more interconnected, the lines between cultures themselves are blurring, which makes determining who gets credit for what even harder to tell. I say, give credit where credit is due, and, if in the course of tasting what the world has to offer, you find a flavor you like, use it.
A big rationale for opposing cultural appropriation seems to be that it is humiliating to a minority or oppressed group - they’ve been treated poorly already, now you want to steal the last bit of their dignity? Maybe appropriating the culture of a group that has not been so oppressed, or at least has not been oppressed recently by members of your own ethnicity or culture is more acceptable. So things like white Americans appropriating Native American culture or Anglos in general trying to adopt elements of the culture of India and Pakistan (due to the oppression associated with the British Raj) is often seen as offensive, but white Americans appropriating, say, the folk music of rural Polish wheat farmers or the dress of nomadic sheep-herding Berbers of the Sahara may be more acceptable.
Assuming that “appropriating” their culture takes away their dignity somehow. I don’t see how it does. I also don’t subscribe to the view that the ancestors of poorly-treated people generally need special consideration. We should learn from the past, but not dwell on it.
I basically see this (not your post, but the view you’re describing) as an instinctive, emotional reaction that is justified post hoc with talk of things like “dignity” and “stealing”. There are enough things worth being offended by that we don’t need to manufacture them.
In my opinion, sharing and combining ideas is what culture is for. If you’re not perpetuating harmful stereotypes or some such, you should do what you want. If it’s what they want to do, white people should rap and play blues, black people should write minuets and do ballet, and asians should make animated TV shows. I want to see Japanese Klezmer music and Germans breakdancing and Thai/Mexican fusion restaurants in Russia.
Be respectful to the people who came up with stuff, and give them credit where appropriate, but as long as you’re making cool stuff, do what you want.
I think one of the best “acceptable” instances of cultural appropriation is when the Japanese appropriated European and American music and created Baby Metal
There’s a long-running debate of this nature regarding the Kokopelli symbol, a native American icon regarding a deity/spirit. Anglos have taken to it, because it’s pretty and evocative. You see it on bumper stickers, mailboxes, garage doors, etc. Some people have said that it’s wrong to do this, as it is demeaning to a holy/spiritual symbol. But no one (or nearly no one) displaying it is doing to in an intent to demean it. They just think it’s cool. It’s faddish, like colored-yarn dream-catchers.
There is one Indian band in California that has refused to permit publication of a lexicon of their language. They’re trying to maintain the entire language under permanent secure and private ownership. (They can’t trade-mark it, because this would require filing a lexicon with the trade-mark application!)
Their intent is to prevent people from naming shopping malls, barber shops, fast food restaurants, etc. with words from their language.
But…at the same time, they grieve that the language is dying, as fewer and fewer kids are growing up speaking it. Yikes! Can you really have it both ways?
Anyway, in the U.S., we’ve got freedom of speech, even including fair use of trade-marked images. We not only can wear a Sioux feathered bonnet, we can wear Giants or Royals baseball uniforms.
Some people will be jerks about it and display such symbols disrespectfully. The rest of us sneer at them and say, “What a bunch of jerks.” That’s how freedom of speech works.
Pat Boone made a lot of lame records, but he didn’t “steal” anything. He gave credit to Fats Domino for “Ain’t That a Shame,” and Fats earned a fortune in royalties as a result. When Boone first MET him, the Fat Man was driving a fancy new Cadillac- and he thanked Pat for buying it for him!
Boone also gave credit to Little Richard and Robert Blackwell for “Long Tall Sally,” and they subsequently raked in a lot of money.
No, Pat’s versions were nowhere as good as the original recordings, but Pat didn’t rip anyone off, and the artists whose songs he covered have nothing to complain about.
Let’s look at a different situation: a while back, Katy Perry gave a performance on TV in which she and her backup singers wore kimonos and Japanese-style makeup. More than a few Asians and Asian-Americans were angry about that and considered it racist.
Were they right? I won’t offer an opinion. But…
SUPPOSE she had dressed up in a silly old-fashioned “Dutch” outfit, with wooden shoes, a tulip-print dress, long blonde pigtails and a paper hat. Would anyone in the Netherlands call that racist? No! Oh, they’d surely find it SILLY, and would laugh hysterically, but they wouldn’t be offended.
Would Germans or German-Americans have been offended by Katy Perry in lederhosen? Again, no- they’d probably LAUGH, but no one would scream “Racism” or “Cultural Appropriation.”
Which makes me wonder… is it okay to steal from other cultures so long as you’re the same color? Katy Perry is “white,” so it’s okay for her to “steal” Dutch, German, Irish, Spanish, Italian, Russian or Greek culture. She just can’t appropriate non-white cultures, is that it? Katy isn’t Scottish, but she can still wear a tam o’shanter and tartans on stage. Just no dashikis or saris or hijabs… hmm?
I think there are two general principles that need to be followed:
You have to show respect. You don’t appropriate something that holds a serious meaning to some other culture and use it as just a fashion statement.
You don’t sell something you got from somebody else for free. If you make money off of something you appropriated, you share it with the people you appropriated it from.
Why does your wife’s employer give a shit how you dress your kids for Halloween? Mrs. Elf, it has come to our attention that your daughter Tiny Elf dressed as Princess Jasmine from Aladdin on Halloween. That is clearly unacceptable as you are not of Middle Eastern descent. Please see HR at the end of the day.
I don’t give a damn personally, if Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, or anyone else chooses to wear a sari. Why would I? I wish they wouldn’t though, saris are aesthetically unappealing. (The salwar-kameez, on the other hand, looks beautiful).
