And there’s another good point here. People don’t typically descend from a single, ancient ethnicity. There are no “pure” Scots or “pure” Germans anywhere. Your average Scot probably has a mix of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Roman blood, perhaps also with some Greek, Jewish, Slavic, or other ancestry mixed in there due to ancient migrations. So if you have some Viking blood, does that mean that you are “allowed” (in a social sense, not a legal one) to appropriate whatever you want from modern Swedish culture? Are you allowed to appropriate only cultural elements that were present during the classical Norse period and modern Scandinavian stuff is off-limits, you have to stop covering Bjork songs in your band because that’s zomg not yours?
One interesting cultural theory that I’ve heard is that because British and American culture had not yet become distinct in the early 1600’s, the works of Shakespeare can be considered as much American as they are British. The people who were destined to become the first English-speaking Americans were, in those days, more or less just British people.
Another concept to consider if you want to judge by ancestry is blood quanta, which are vitally important today in adjudicating eligibility for membership in many Native American tribes but which have been swept away in many other places because of an annoying tendency to support oppression (Nuremberg laws, Apartheid, etc.). A few of my ancestors were ethnic Germans who settled in the Delaware River watershed area in the early 1800’s as part of a large-scale migration that would become known as the “Pennsylvania Dutch”. So does that make me Pennsylvania Dutch? Does the fact that I am only partially PA Dutch mean that I am limited to only two hex signs per car and no more than one barnstar per house? Do I need to buy Certified Dutchman Paint ™ the next time my barnstar needs repainted or else the Anti-Stupidhead Patrol of Southern Pennsylvania will sentence me to re-education in the dungeons under Hersheypark?
For that matter, did Whitney Houston “appropriate” Dolly Parton when she sang I Will Always Love You?
It means: We don’t want to get sued because a potential offender is not sensitive enough or an offendee is overly sensitive so we’re sending an email and that way if someone sues we’ll be able to say that we took reasonable means to prevent a hostile work environment.
I say that your wife should do the very opposite of dressing up in the likeness of a non-European culture. She should dress up like the person who stands the furthest possible distance from wanting to appropriate other cultures.
That’s right. Him.
Or, for a perhaps more salient analogy, if Mississippi somehow gained independence from the US, would Mark Twain suddenly become foreign literature to people from Florida? Would the new Independent Republic of Mississippi Department of Education classify Mark Twain as foreign literature not suitable for Mississippi citizen children until grade 10 because Twain had died before Magic Independence Date? Who gets to decide? You? Me? Your mom? A bunch of drunken frat boys?
Asian Americans have had to deal with a long history of racist (both overt and suble) depictions in Hollywood and Western media. This is an important difference that you your analysis failed to consider.
At that, Kurosawa appropriated Shakespeare for Throne of Blood. And should we shun every Japanese Elvis impersonator? I mean, more than we shun non-Japanese ones.
Did Kurosawa depict Westerners in a racist light? Hollywood’s depiction of Asians has been (to put it charitably) less than enlightened. Take a look at Long Duk Long, or worse, Mickey Rooney’s depiction of Mr. Yunioshi, to get a flavor of why Asian Americans tend to be somewhat uncomfortable with whites taking on “Asian” attributes.
I had to Google the Katy Perry thing, but by the looks of it, she was criticized for dressing up as a geisha, not for just dressing up like a Japanese woman. There’s a difference.
The problem I see with cultural costumes is that they tend to be caricatures of the culture. People who dress like a Japanese tend to dress like a samurai, a ninja, or a geisha. People who dress like a Scotsman tend to look like a leprechaun. People who dress like Native Americans tend to look like Pocahontas. They are dressing as their mental image of that culture, however, they don’t realize that that image is stereotyped, exaggerated, and a bit out of touch with reality. Additionally, they tend to play up the part by behaving how they think that culture acts. Unfortunately, if you’re not experienced with that culture, you have no clue how they really look or behave. This is why it tends to be offensive, and why it really offends people from that culture. You are insulting a big part of their identity and history.
To answer the OP:
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.
Not offensive at all. If you listen to or participate in any kind of music, you’re appreciating it and contributing toward it, not disrespecting it.
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.
Again, not at all offensive. Unless you are being an asshole about the food somehow, like questioning its authenticity or loudly altering it to suit your tastes or whatever, it’s really nice to see people from another culture enjoying a culture’s 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.
Not disrespectful. I agree that the food tends to not be as good when run by people from a different background, however, that’s not necessarily a racist thing; they could just be poor cooks. You can get shitty food from Japanese people at a Japanese restaurant too.
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?
IMHO, it varies by the type of item you’re wearing, but generally, you kind of come across as an attention whore, like you want to be easily identifiable as a person who appreciates that culture. It’s great if you sincerely do, but it’s obnoxious to want attention for it. It’s doubly offensive if you’re dressing up as a stereotyped image of that culture, as I explained above.
Decorating your home (interior or exterior) in styles prominent in another culture.
Exterior: Same as the clothes/adornment question above.
Interior: Whatever floats your boat. I find it a bit silly, but if you like it, go nuts.
**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). **
Again, fine as long as they are participating with a desire to participate and not mock.
I get twitchy every time I see Asian- or African-descended people dressed in suits and ties. Have they no respect?
But seriously, I think that it relates to the comedy rule of “don’t punch down.” If you are caricaturing a culture/ethnicity that has a history of being oppressed by yours, you are probably wrong. Doing so to your own culture is less wrong, depending on the caricaturization. A caucasian man dressed as a “Viking,” complete with inaccurate horns, is just another Halloween costume, but I doubt that an African-American man dressing up as Stepin Fetchit would win many costume contests in the 21st century.
I think LAV25 made a good point. I guess it’s usually okay to cross cultural/national/ethnic lines but you have to be really careful if you’re crossing racial lines. And stereotypes can be offensive.
Yes. In my view “cultural appropriation” is alright as long as the person doing it isn’t hogging all the credit and all the money while the original creators of the musics style (or whatever) can’t get anything. Which most of the time isn’t even mostly the fault of the person doing the “appropriating”; it takes a whole system to do something like that very effectively.
Barring something outright colonial-imperialist like looting some tribe and then shooting them, that is. But mass murdering people and selling off their artwork & jewelry is well into Obviously Evil territory these days, fortunately.
They weren’t specific, but we figured they were only concerned about their employees wearing halloween costumes to the office, and not anything they do on their own time.
Back in 2008, Heidi Klum dressed as the Hindu goddess Kali, evidently annoying more than a few Indians. Did she cross the line into (unacceptable) cultural appropriation?
What can be wrong with listening to ethnic music? That’s like saying it’s wrong for an Australian to look at a Monet painting of trees and water.
I’m 53, and would never wear ANY Halloween costume to work. Not even a completely harmless, politically correct costume. I regard Halloween as a kids’ holiday, and in my opinion, if you’re over 12, you’re too old for Halloween costumes.
That said, I know many people who disagree, and there ARE a few people wearing costumes in my office today.
IF one of them were wearing a huge sombrero and a pancho, I’d probably warn them, “Come on- you KNOW that’s liable to offend some people here.” It wouldn’t matter if I knew the person wearing it wasn’t a racist, or whether I regarded the costume as inherently racist. I’d just have the intelligence to KNOW that some Hispanic employees WOULD find the costume offensive, and that it just wasn’t worth provoking those people.
If I were an office manager, I’d probably warn employees up front: “Guys, use a little common sense, and don’t wear costumes you KNOW may offend your colleagues.”
Is the meaning of an artwork set by the artist, or constructed by the audience, or a combination of these?
If you lean toward artist authority, you could have a problem with audiences getting the wrong things out.
I think the issue is more that portraying a Goddess in such a way is religiously disrespectful, rather than a matter of inappropriate cultural appropriation.
Had she worn a sari and bindi for Halloween, I doubt there’d have been any outcry whatsoever.
Personally, I think that the line for that sort of thing is drawn where it becomes disrespectful, mocking or exploitative. I mean, if someone in say… China decided to have a Thanksgiving feast, I’d be all for it, even though I’m an American, and that’s one of the few truly American cultural holidays. On the other hand, those supposed “American Parties” by young people in Europe, complete with Solo cups and other tacky stuff are examples of what I’m not so wild about.
Recently on our local left-end-of-the-dial radio station I heard a klezmer version of Sympathy For the Devil . . . in Bulgarian. Took awhile to figure out.
Riffing on another another culture’s art has been done forever. Laudable.
Collecting the sacred artifacts stolen from an oppressed people and displaying them on your wall? Distasteful.
Caricaturing the central symbols of another culture? Aggressively dickish and rightfully deplored.
Romanticizing another culture and adopting whatever pieces of it appeal to you? (refusing to eat with anything but chopsticks, affecting lederhosen and a tyrolean hat, imagining you are a central Asian shaman). This can range from the slightly idiosyncratic to the pathetic, depending.
It is religiously disrespectful, but is that not a form of cultural appropriation? Religion is unquestionably a component of culture. That the name and image of a figure of religious veneration have right and wrong depictions can only be a culturally-dependent judgment. (It’s not even necessarily a question of belief versus unbelief. Some self-described Christians hate the way other self-described Christians depict or talk about Jesus.)
People who whine about cultural appropriation are racists. That’s what it comes down to - the belief that something is yours just because you have the same skin tone as the person who invented it. Unless they want to step forwards and complain about people plagiarising their work (and nine times out of ten they’re not going to, because they’re dead), it’s none of your business.