You’ve got some good points and I like that you acknowledged “in American society”. But maybe the sparkling wine/champagne issue was more economic than anything else (plus a little national/regional pride going on).
I will ponder more.
Lumping masses of disparate groups together and labelling them as all belonging to the same culture is crude and lazy.
You evidently haven’t got very far along in reading recent posts to this thread yet, but we have had quite a bit of discussion about why referring to white Americans as “the dominant cultural group of the US” is not misleadingly “lumping masses of disparate groups together”, nor is it “crude and lazy”:
If MandaJo wants to make a more nuanced and detailed point then they are free to do so. They said that Italians and Jews are now culturally white and I responded to that.
The original post to which that was a response was crude and lazy. You, and not the original poster to whom I reponded, expanded and explained further.
I did not, have not and would not accuse your post as being “crude and lazy”
Which is true, in modern American society. It is also true that several decades or more ago in American society, that would not have been considered generally true. MandaJo was making a valid observation about a well-attested cultural phenomenon. Why are you incorrectly calling that “crude and lazy”?
[ETA: Link to a last year’s thread documenting the former American perception of Italians and other Europeans as “not white”.]
Something can be both “well attested” and still be both crude and lazy.
Such as cultural appropriation itself.
At this point you’re not really making sense. Do you disagree with the (well-attested, as I said) claim that several ethnic groups including Italians and Jews are now generally considered racially white in American society, although within the past hundred years they were not so considered?
Because if you don’t disagree with that, then I can’t fathom why you would consider MandaJo’s perfectly valid observation that “Italians and Jews weren’t white, in this sense, until a couple generations ago. Now they are” to be in any way “crude” or “lazy”.
I mean what I said in my first response to this.
And I still hold to that.
I do not accept that the appropriators have the final say on what is appropriation.
I guess where I draw the line is whether or not a qipao actually has any unique cultural significance, or if it’s just a dress style/cut that happens to have originated in China?
Second, was the girl trying to make some sort of social/political point?
If the answers are yes to either, then maybe she shouldn’t have worn it, but I suspect the answers were no to both, which makes it merely a stylistic choice, no different than a Chinese man deciding to wear a Western style suit and tie.
And I have to admit, I don’t give those arguments any more respect than I do for those expressing dismay or upset over a young woman wearing a Chinese dress to prom. I’m not entirely against the concept of cultural appropriation, I just find it sometimes difficult to draw the line between exchange and appropriation. But there are times when I look at something and think, “Wow, you shouldn’t do that.”
I know right. The Village People.
100% agree. Asian people in non Asian clothing shouldn’t be deciding what is appropriation. African people in non African clothing shouldn’t be deciding what is appropriation. And White people in non White clothing shouldn’t be deciding what is appropriation.
Yes this is what I meant when I used “white” in my post. It was a short hand for the dominant culture that is frequently used in this context. If you don’t like the term please copy and paste “dominant American culture”. The thing is that there are a number of white subcultures in the United States that could be rightfully concerned about cultural appropriation. For example the Amish.
Well, like I said, opinions among many different groups seem to range over a lot of different viewpoints about the cultural significance of the Chinese qipao. I don’t think you’re going to be able to extract a definitive yes-or-no answer on that one.
That one AFAICT is easier: no, the white American teen who wore a qipao to prom knew nothing about the garment or its history and simply chose it as a pretty dress.
I don’t think, as I said, that you can get a definitive yes-or-no answer for the first question, so I don’t think your suspicion is correct.
(I’m also a bit puzzled as to why it should be automatically considered problematic to try to “make some sort of social/political point” with one’s prom clothing if it doesn’t involve cultural appropriation. I mean, for example, if a genderfluid American teen who usually presents as male decides to wear a dress to prom to “make some sort of social/political point” about gender norms, I don’t see how that would be in any way cultural appropriation, and I don’t see any other reason why they shouldn’t wear it.)
Natch, but whether or not we diversity-accepting folk agree with those arguments, they are definitely real-life examples of (some) white people not being “generous and open” about non-white participation in what they perceive to be specifically “white” cultural aspects, which was my point to Isamu.
In which view you are IMHO joined by the rest of the world’s reasonable people. It’s not a simple issue.
Wai-ait, wha-a-at?? You’re suggesting that participating in any kind of culturally diverse practice automatically disqualifies someone in a particular culture from having a valid opinion on whether a different practice from their culture is being misappropriated by outsiders?
That seems nonsensical to me. That would imply that, for example, a Native American person wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt (which are now an established part of multi-ethnic shared “global culture”, as are, e.g., thong sandals and tattoos) couldn’t complain about a white person wearing a Plains tribe ceremonial feathered headdress as a decorative accessory.
Which is ridiculous. Does a Native American person have to get into a full suit of traditional buckskin clothing with porcupine quills or other tribal garb before they can object to white or other non-Native people appropriating their cultural traditions as fashion choices? Of course not.
You might as well argue that Christians who aren’t wearing, say, a First Communion dress or a minister’s cassock shouldn’t be objecting to non-Christians choosing to wear crucifix jewelry as a fashion statement. Horsepucky: of course Christians may reasonably object to that kind of cultural appropriation, even if they currently happen to be wearing entirely “non Christian clothing” themselves.
Are you trying to say that non-Asians shouldn’t be deciding what is or isn’t appropriation about Asian clothing?
Or are you trying to say that Asians who wear non-Asian clothing have abrogated their rights to determining what appropriation is, presumably by way of not wearing “their” clothing?
If you add a teaspoon of Sprite to a gallon of Coke, you still have a gallon of Coke. If you add a gallon of Coke to a teaspoon of Sprite, you don’t have a teaspoon of Sprite anymore.
I wasn’t trying to imply that; I was saying that using someone else’s culture for your own political/social point-making is uncool and probably cultural appropriation.