It was bad enough when my Gentile stepdaughter started to copy me and say "Oy!". But what really inflamed my Semitic fury was when she started to claim that it was her "catch-phrase" and that I was copying her when I said it.
I'm not sure if white people with locs is cultural appropriation, but if it effectively makes them stop doing it, I'm willing to say it is. Those always look awful.
Locks were invented in China, but then so was gunpowder.
But I'm cautiously on the trolling side of this one. That is, it seems like the problem isn't that Elvis got rich off rock and roll, but that, e.g., Sister Rosetta Tharpe didn't - in the absence of a culture that undervalued black artists, what white artists did emulating them wouldn't have been a problem.
Cultural appropriation isn't actually bad, it's just how culture works. But you shouldn't be a dick about it. If you gain fame or fortune use that to give something back to the communities your work grew out of.
(Googling the old Bruno Mars kerfuffle, it looks like some people define "cultural appropriation" to precisely mean being a dick about it, which is fine.)
If this is about that girl in Utah with the dress, I didn't get what people were complaining about either.
Rachel Dolezal: hilarious unintentional performance art or outrage-maker?
&: I had assumed that that's what inspired the post. I stumbled on to the story this morning.
As far as the question is concerned, I'll concede that in principle there exist somewhere examples of complaints about cultural appropriation that aren't just recreational outrage trolling, but I don't think I've seen one in the last 5 years.
9: If you are callous, "hilarious unintentional performance art" and "sad crazy woman" come to the same thing.
If somebody could find a white shithead to claim that Kayne was appropriating his culture, that would really make my day.
Chinese culture is an especially weird case, because on the one hand Chinese-Americans are a minority who want more cultural respect, but on the other hand China itself is the historical cultural center of the world and is reasserting itself as the new superpower and the dominant culture moving forward. What's global culture if not bourgeois Shanghai?
Personally I just love cheongsam dresses so much and want everyone to wear them, so in this case I'm 100% pro-appropriation.
Stop staring at the high school kids.
Here's a good post about Bruno Mars that seems to me to do a good job explaining the line between being a dick about it and not.
This makes me feel reassured about my kid's ongoing hip-hop classes and recital coming up. Honestly it's so much fun to watch them dance.
& = 7.
Dolezal might fit the bill, but I'm not sure that cultural appropriation is the best description of what she was up to. Borrowing the trappings of another culture and trying to pass yourself off as a full fledged member of that culture seem like different things.
Wait. Bruno Mars is being accused of cultural reappropriation for his abso-fucking-genius New Jack Swing revival where he overtly pays tribute to the original and it's a currently out-of-favor style that he single-handedly reminded everyone why it's great and Finesse is just fucking awesome? Please. PLEASE.
2: "Semitic Fury" would be a great luchador name.
Clearly this is about the discovery that "Swedish" meatballs are really Turkish.
Ogged got it in one that this is about economic concerns and respect. Clothes are weird; within a culture they're often prescribed for certain people performing certain roles at certain times. So many it can be respectful, maybe it can't be, and that depends upon listening to the people of the culture involved. There's no way I could ever wear the feathers of a Lakota chief respectfully. At a few months ago I was at a fancy party where I saw a white guy wearing (what I think was) hanbok, with an Asian woman similarly dressed. Maybe that's cool, maybe not. I could probably wear a Mao suit no problem, but could I wear a daishiki without being a twit about it?
With the qipao, it didn't sound like many Chinese from China were bothered by it, but many Asian-Americans were. It makes sense to be more hurt when you're in a perilous position. (Even though the qipao is hardly any more authentic than a flapper dress.)
But if qipaos become the next big thing, there's a good chance that the profit from their manufacture is going to go to mostly white-owned multinationals. I could see concern at this foreshadowing economic appropriation, much like hipster economic appropriation of ethnic foods.
Oh, right. That's another category that should be explicitly named -- repurposing things that are sacred somehow within their culture of origin disrespectfully. That's a non-economic big deal.
Here's a good post about Bruno Mars that seems to me to do a good job explaining the line between being a dick about it and not.
I was about to mention that the wikipedia entry on cultural appropriation is helpful (even if it doesn't give a precise standard for judging what is or isn't cultural appropriation.
Cultural appropriation is a concept in sociology dealing with the adoption of the elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture. It is distinguished from equal cultural exchange due to the presence of a colonial element and imbalance of power. Cultural appropriation is often portrayed as harmful in contemporary cultures, and is claimed to be a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating, minority cultures, notably indigenous cultures and those living under colonial rule. Often unavoidable when multiple cultures come together, cultural appropriation can include using other cultures' cultural and religious traditions, fashion, symbols, language, and songs.
According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism: cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context--sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture.
Often, the original meaning of these cultural elements is lost or distorted, and such displays are often viewed as disrespectful, or even as a form of desecration, by members of the originating culture. Cultural elements which may have deep meaning to the original culture may be reduced to "exotic" fashion or toys by those from the dominant culture. Kjerstin Johnson has written that, when this is done, the imitator, "who does not experience that oppression is able to 'play', temporarily, an 'exotic' other, without experiencing any of the daily discriminations faced by other cultures." The African-American academic, musician and journalist Greg Tate argues that appropriation and the "fetishizing" of cultures, in fact, alienates those whose culture is being appropriated.
Some writers on the topic note that the concept is often misunderstood by the general public, and that charges of "cultural appropriation" are at times misapplied to situations that don't accurately fit, such as eating at restaurants of a variety of cultures, or learning about different cultures. Others see appropriation as "inevitable" and a contribution to "cultural diversity and free expression." Writing for The Daily Beast, John McWhorter specifically defended white appropriation of African-American music as "cross-fertilization", and something which is usually done out of admiration of the cultures being imitated, with no intent to harm them.
I see that the linked article makes many of the same points:
There is no universally accepted definition of the term, but it generally relates to the use of the art, artifacts, symbology or anything of cultural significance to a minority or nondominant group of people by a person who is not in that group.
What separates cultural appropriation from a cultural exchange or paying homage is when someone "borrows" an item or symbol of cultural significance without acknowledgment, attribution or permission. One of the other hallmarks of appropriation is using someone's culture to demean, make fun of or diminish it.
That's another category that should be explicitly named -- repurposing things that are sacred somehow within their culture of origin disrespectfully.
For example, the wikipedia entry cites, "The Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality" which includes the passage:
We assert a posture of zero-tolerance for any "white man's shaman" who rises from within our own communities to "authorize" the expropriation of our ceremonial ways by non-Indians; all such "plastic medicine men" are enemies of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people.
I really hate the concept of intellectual property outside of the limited rights explicitly created by statutes. People who are talking about it are sometimes saying things that are kind of reasonable in general, but it's not because it makes sense to think of information or imagery or concepts as something that people naturally have exclusive rights to.
Building fake or replica churches and hiring random white men as "priests" to perform wedding services is a great example of cultural appropriation, but to the person I am now it just feels, IDK, a bit icky? Weird, but not at all offensive. But back when I was still a believing Christian it used to really bother me.
This is going to be like the education of Kanye, isn't it.
I really hate the concept of intellectual property outside of the limited rights explicitly created by statutes.
I agree. I quoted that from the wikipedia entry, and I think it makes sense as a way to include economic damages, but I agree that it's a problematic term to include.
If, for example, I see nothing wrong with re-mix culture using images of Superman in various ways, what's wrong with using images that draw upon ethnic stereotypes? The distinction can't be based upon intellectual property, it has to be based on some sense of both what it means to respect the original, and what the impact of taking it out of context will be.
20: Which football team is it where the fans do a "tomahawk" chant sort of thing as part of cheering on the team? The Chiefs? That would be a genuine example of something obnoxious, since I think the chant was (very) loosely based on some sort of actual religious ceremony. I'd be sort of surprised if they still do it. Actually, I suppose I wouldn't be.
24: I know a guy who did that to make ends meet while he was getting his small business started (it's apparently a huge pain for a foreigner to start a business in Japan). I also don't find it offensive, just a little tacky, but I'm glad it's been able to pay some bills. (Alas, the reinterpretation of western sexism and racism means no women and probably no non-white foreigners.)
I am not sure what the exact question is here? We are looking for real world examples of cultural appropriation that do *not* result in economic harm and don't consist of a costume? Just locally I can think of:
White artist builds a gallows in the same style as the one used to execute the 38 Santee Sioux
White artist appropriates style and content of "ledger art"
Latinx artist appears in blackface in a group show that includes African American artists
White owned restaurant group puts up billboards mocking various ethnicities and international food ways
Are we making a firm distinction between economic harm and economic exclusion?
I think food and music are both interesting examples and tricky. It makes sense to exclude them, if you're looking for a clean example, but they're also revealing.
In both cases, it is normal that cultural boundaries are porous, and that any time cultures co-exist food and music will be shared in both directions. On the other hand, in both cases, it's recognizable when something gets taken out of it's ecosystem and is being performed by somebody who understands some of what makes the original succeed but who, for various reasons is clearly doing a variation.
Is it practical or desirable to make those boundaries impermeable, and police anybody trying to borrow music or food from another culture? Obviously not. But is it understandable when people say, "how can that person call what they're doing [X] when it do clearly isn't?" Yeah, that's understandable.
So we're saying there's a difference between an offensive caricature and a legit embrace of an offensive caricature?
If somebody could find a white shithead to claim that Kayne was appropriating his culture, that would really make my day.
Shkreli?
Leave trolling to the culture of trolling.
24: "You made a big mistake," she said. "Instead of saying, 'You may exchange rings,' you said, 'Put the ring in her crotch.'"
9 is the only way I can see the Dolezal case. I mean, I understand why her behaviour provokes outrage, but for me the leading reaction is always pity. No way am I watching that new doco about her.
repurposing things that are sacred somehow within their culture of origin disrespectfully
Even here, the case-by-case details of "repurposing," "sacred," and "disrespectfully" matter a lot.
Sutra-ignorant westerners doing some secular mindfulness practice with their lotus-icon'd phone app gonging out the time: disrespectful, but on balance probably everybody still benefits and you know Buddha wouldn't mind.
What the Nazis did to the swastika: now THAT's some disrespectful repurposing.
What the Nazis did to the swastika: now THAT's some disrespectful repurposing.
Yes, I'll never forgive the Nazis for that.
PM of Canada wearing Indian dress while on a state visit, complete with bindi, while surrounded by Indian men in Western-style business suits.
The Nazis took all the tag closings.
38: The bar for "North American leader" is so very low these days that barely registered.
The kerfluffle at that Canadian university over yoga being cultural appropriation struck me as especially silly considering that numerous Indian yoga schools actively evangelized for it in the West.
Although I agree with 36 that Nazis doing yoga would be offensive.
38: That was hysterical looking, but he can't possibly have done that without prior arrangement with his hosts, can he? That is, there must have been a behind the scenes diplomatic arrangement for him to show up in Indian formal wear?
If he did do it out of the blue, that is both tacky and hysterical.
24: The tourists, always Asian as far as I can remember, who take pictures of the cathedral during mass piss me off. It's usually parents with a college kid and dad taking pictures. If you glare at them, the kid will usually make his parents leave.
That's probably not cultural appropriation, unless being stupid with an iPhone is characteristically America.
To the mirror image of Nazism comment, it's not actually wrong, in that American multiculturalism and Nazism (to the extent it has any) both share intellectual roots in German romanticism.
IME, most people who are really upset about cultural appropriation are college students, who tend to be just discovering new ways of thinking AND who are really really angry that the world is total shit and they're screwed but don't know how to direct that anger productively. So, you get them taking a cultural studies 101 class and then directing their anger at the cafeteria for serving bad peanut noodles.
36
Thinking about the interesting and complicated relationship between Germany and India, one thing I find very funny about people complaining that yoga is cultural appropriation is that yoga as we practice it is a 19th/early 20th century cultural hybrid of Indian meditation practices and German calisthenics. The Swamis who popularized the forms we practice in the West purposely made a yoga they saw as suitable for western bodies to be exported to the West.*
That's why the pose was originally called "Downward Imperialist Dog."
I am not yet convinced that there's no such thing as problematic appropriation outside of (1) and (2) in the OP. It drives me crazy when white people imitate a black accent in absolutely any context.
Pwnd by 41.1
41.2 I dunno. I mean, we would be offended by Nazis doing yoga, but it's pretty clear hard right Hindu nationalists wouldn't. Mein Kampf is a best seller in India, IIRC.
47: I agree, except for Tropic Thunder.
9 is the only way I can see the Dolezal case. I mean, I understand why her behaviour provokes outrage, but for me the leading reaction is always pity. No way am I watching that new doco about her.
It seems like forever ago that we heard about her. I thought the same people who now argue you can identify as whatever you want would be charitable to her now, but it seems like she's even more hated.
48: Pwnage belongs to all cultures.
48: A lot of that comes down to mockery, which is directly hostile and racist, but seems like the sort of thing that can be explained as objectionable without needing the concept of appropriation to get there.
If it's not mockery... uh. My kids speak insanely formal 'my-mother-is-a-lawyer' English, combined with a certain amount of upper Manhattan vernacular - that's not mockery or doing an imitation, it's how their friends talk. I think that's fine?
I think "mockery" covers it better than "appropriation", which is why Tropic Thunder works. It's clear who is being mocked.
52.2: Probably should tape them and let us hear it, so we can make a definitive judgment.
42: I don't know, but there's many pictures and multiple outfits, and maybe it was staged, but man, he looked ridiculous.
And +1 to Buttercup: contemporary yoga isn't appropriated from India, and quite a lot of it is designed to be sold to Westerners.
I haven't heard your kids talk, and absolutely everyone is entitled to speak as their native ear has picked up, even if it's jarring to someone who encoded strict rules differently. So they could be fine.
However, there's a strong "black people speak is COOL PEOPLE SPEAK!" that white teenagers and young adults can fall into, which is partly because they lack any context. It's the same urge as documented in that website somewhere of endless white girls striking gangster poses in photos. It's so cute to juxtapose our sweet suburban whiteness with ultimate thuggishness! Adorable!
There's a way that isn't exactly mockery but is still questionable--when a (usually younger) white person wants to speak in a lower, more informal, zanier register, they might pepper their speech with elements of African-American English because it's wack, yo. This may be entirely subconscious, and I know I've done it in the past without even understanding that's what I was doing.
With the qipao, it didn't sound like many Chinese from China were bothered by it, but many Asian-Americans were.
That was also the case with the kimono kerfuffle at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts a couple of years ago.
Japanese social media briefly lit up in exasperation and bewilderment. People were mystified that anyone could accuse a kimono try-on event of being racist or imperialist. Few comprehended the identity politics assumptions driving the protesters. Some right-wing nationalists assumed they were anti-Japanese Chinese and Korean agitators.
Perhaps for the mainstream Japanese media and for many fashion commentators such a controversy is of little concern, being just another inexplicable skirmish in America's culture wars. But it is more than that; if casual yukata styles are to attract foreign consumers who are also sensitive to social justice issues, a clear message needs to be communicated to them by Japanese supporters of the industry.
That message, recently iterated to me by an employee at the Nishijin Textiles Center in Kyoto, is this: Anyone can appropriate and creatively modify kimono styles whenever and however they like.
I just wanted to confess that I made corn tortillas this weekend.
It is, yes, 99% offense-seeking.
When there really aren't Jews here anymore because they were murdered several decades ago, but the locals have a pretend-Jewish business as a joke, that seems like a pretty central case.
Costumes would be fine for serious historical reenactments, though, or as part of a serious attempt at a participatory museum or something.
That seems pretty offensive and also the site is practically impossible to read.
"Have I made a mockery of a culture, like chaco-taco?"
And the restaurant would not be fine even without costumes.
Yeah, that looks like horrifying mockery. The required haggling?
Dammit. Pwned by 52 while writing.
Going back to a lot of the teenage/young adult anger, I think that for lots of POC, especially first or second generation immigrants, there's a sense of growing up different and desperately wanting to fit in that permeates most of childhood.* It's exacerbated by being made fun of for being different and being taught to hate what makes you different. I think for someone who grows up Chinese/Indian/etc. in a mostly white community, it feels like a profound betrayal to be mocked for wearing weird clothes or smelling funny or for eating gross lunches and then, 10-15 years later, those same* white kids are suddenly deciding that your culture is "cool." The outrage isn't really that white people are eating curry, but that white people have the cultural/social capital to suddenly decide that curry is cool. And then on top of it, white people decide they're the experts, and they set up a system where white people teach other white people how to "do your culture." Suddenly, the highest and best paid experts on your cuisine/fashion are white men.
This legitimate frustration, which is about much more than economics, gets usually expressed in terms that don't actually articulate the reasons for the full scale of anger, so you end up with "white people shouldn't wear/eat/do X," which isn't really adequate to the problem.
*I grew up feeling this, and I'm a second gen
**same not in the literal sense
There's a cherry-flavored soda (possibly regional) called "Cherikee Red," with a stereotypical Native America face, very similar to the "Indian head" nickels, as its logo. I like weirdo regional sodas but I've never bought it.
I thought I remembered reading some standard on cultural appropriation that was roughly, "If it's done in concert with the culture of origin, and loosely with their blessing, then it's fine, and if it's done in some way that chafes the members of the culture of origin or undermines their ownership of the thing, you should take a closer look at what's going on."
I am fine with the "Is it chafing the members of the culture of origin?" standard. I'm sure they all think in unison so it will be easy to apply.
I always end up quoting RuPaul: "Regular, straight pop culture has liberally lifted things from gay culture as long as I can remember. And that's fine, because guess what? We have so much more where that comes from. Take it!"
Also, what are these examples where the members of the culture of origin are being hypersensitive snowflakes? Are the snowflakes in question all white SJWs from the Pacific Northwest?
It seems to me that the problem with things like the Cherokee red soda is that they're part of a general trend of talking about displaced or murdered indigenous peoples as though they are just sort of part of the local scenery there anyone living there can have some local pride in. A related thing, that shows up a little bit in Buttercup's example, is where the dominant culture somehow manages to take credit for something from a culture it's oppressing. This kind of fraud can be harmful even if the currency is not money.
I think I reached peak crabbyness about appropriation during l'affaire Portland Burrito Truck.
71
The problem with this (in theory possibly more so than practice) is that it's treating culture as agentive (the culture says yes!) or culture as some blob that produces hive mind thinking. As a concept, once you extract away from the highly stereotyped "ein reich, ein volk, ein sprach" notions of culture that pervade how we talk about culture casually, it gets a lot harder to pin down what "culture" is or means.
At a different level, also end up with people being arbitrary gatekeepers of culture. What happens if person X says yes and person Y says no? Flip a coin?
73: My impression is that the most exquisitely snowflakiest of the snowflakes tend to be white people getting offended on behalf of the cultures of origin.
75: Were Mexicans complaining about the appropriation of burritos by Portland or the Portandians about the appropriation of their city by Mexicans?
I believe the incident in 75 was a perfect example of what I meant in 77.
Canadian lurker here. If you look up 'cultural appropriation' in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of Joseph Boyden.
TL;DR: white guy claims to be First Nations, writes award-winning novels telling First Nations stories, is exposed as a white guy.
73: Boundary policing is a thing, and it can be done by well-meaning white people. Who boycotted the Burrito Truck?
76: Or giving the loudest extreme voice the veto. Utah girl wears a dress, and one guy on Twitter takes offense. Is he the whole culture? Obviously not.
He really looks like an obvious white guy.
We had kind of an interesting appropriation within an appropriation twist last fall with our day of the dead knock-off. Most of the protesters were Natives from the northern plains, and much of their objection applied their own standards and experiences with sharing ceremonies. AIUI, 'we would never have a parade open to members not of our culture' isn't as accurate a description of Mexican traditions as of Plains traditions. Sorry, you can't think about death in the fall, we do that. Have your thoughts about death in another season.
I'm happy to have surrendered my place on the committee that puts the thing on to someone with Mexican heritage. We'll see what happens next year.
(The fact that over most of lifetime I've committed pretty much each of the sins of appropriation makes it all the easier to step out of this one.)
81.1 Well meaning white people are the worst.
83: Thinking about death in the fall is pretty traditionally an oppressor thing, too. Unless late October is already deep winter up your way.
80: He was just following in the tradition of Grey Owl.
The only things worse than cultural appropriation are multi-posting and failing to test links.
I have wondered if all of my Peace Corps friends who got Samoan tattoos get a hard time for appropriation. I don't think anyone in Samoa would have thought it was a problem, but I have no idea how Samoans in America would react (I think I literally haven't met anyone Samoan since I got on the plane home in 1994).
I think I literally haven't met anyone Samoan since I got on the plane home in 1994)
What?!? You need to do a trip to the Hustler Casino in Gardena.
I have changed my name from Smearcase, which was appropriated from the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Going back to a lot of the teenage/young adult anger, I think that for lots of POC, especially first or second generation immigrants, there's a sense of growing up different and desperately wanting to fit in that permeates most of childhood.* It's exacerbated by being made fun of for being different and being taught to hate what makes you different. I think for someone who grows up Chinese/Indian/etc. in a mostly white community, it feels like a profound betrayal to be mocked for wearing weird clothes or smelling funny or for eating gross lunches and then, 10-15 years later, those same* white kids are suddenly deciding that your culture is "cool." The outrage isn't really that white people are eating curry, but that white people have the cultural/social capital to suddenly decide that curry is cool. And then on top of it, white people decide they're the experts, and they set up a system where white people teach other white people how to "do your culture." Suddenly, the highest and best paid experts on your cuisine/fashion are white men.
This is good, and smart, and seems right. A way better way of thinking about it than "appropriation."
There's a similar, not identical thing with (I imagine, what do I know) Native Americans, where the problem isn't the Tomahawk Chop per se but the long, long history of being ignored as a person and having your culture literally destroyed by white people and then getting some cheap-ass weird version of it shoved back in your face. That is very annoying and bad! The property-like concept of "appropriation" doesn't quite seem to get at it, though.
89: Sure, on the west coast there's a community, but less so around here. Entertainingly, the first link that pops up when you google "Samoan community New York" is a Yelp thread with some idiot asking how to find Samoan or Tongan guys to date in the Bronx, and people calling her a racist dope for it: https://www.yelp.com/topic/bronx-samoans-tongans-in-nyc
Obviously, the appropriation of cross-quarter days by Catholicism was straight up oppression. Boycott Bill Murray and Andie McDowell..
I forgot to appropriate Bealtaine last night.
I shouldn't joke about it. The cultural and material loss of Native peoples in North America is incalculable and irredeemable. A bottomless pit into which we should be pouring resources, both material and not.
There's a good documentary about the Samoan Crips in Long Beach. Let me see if I can find it.
Looks like thanks to the destruction of American values, the whole thing is on YouTube. Here, enjoy the Samoan gang scene from Long Beach in the early 1990s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Q5YnhY-I4
This is pretty good on the local-ish Samoan community:
https://ericbrightwell.com/2016/05/21/no-enclave-exploring-samoan-los-angeles/
86: Too right, so that's two non-bullshit examples of appropriation.
92: I think 'appropriation' has connotations that can work for recognition & representation as much as it can in terms of property & redistribution.
Yeah. We've done to Native Americans what that offensive bar in Ukraine is doing to Jews.
101: I see the comparison (analogy?), but it's a bit of an understatement. I don't know when the last pogrom was in Ukraine. But here in Canada the official federal policy until 1994 was a genocidal plan to assimilate First Nations into 'Canadian' culture. So. Genocide was the policy until 1994. Up until 1996 it was an accepted practice to steal children from families and essentially feed them to Anglican and Catholic clergy to be abused in various ways. And a very large proportion of First Nations people are still effectively ghettoised and are living in federally-enforced poverty.
So with Joseph Boyden, for example, there's more at stake than just cultural parody or a politics-of-recognition insult. This white guy gained cultural cache and won awards by posing as First Nations while just for example thousands live without clean water on government reserves.
I don't know when the last pogrom was in Ukraine.
Think hard and you can probably figure out the approximate date of the biggest one.
103: The Kiev Pogroms of 1919?
Polynesian tattoos remind me of two things.
RWM has been thinking of getting a sea turtle tattoo, because they're cutely grumpy, they like swimming slowly, and we love swimming with them in Maui. Of course many sea turtle tattoo designs are to various extents Polynesian inspired, and figuring out where the line of what's ok is is a little tricky. (Additional complicating layer, her name is Hawaiian but she's not Hawaiian or Kama'aina. Her parents lived in Hawaii but moved a few years before she was born. Though the name alone is sometimes enough to get the Kama'aina discount.)
I was once on a plane in New Zealand with a Maori businessman in a suit who had a Maori face tattoo design shaved into his beard. (No actual tattoo.) It was the goddamned coolest thing I've ever seen. It's hard to imagine he does that every day, maybe it's just for special occasions?
106: HHmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyessss?
105: I certainly can't give her permission to do anything, but are you someplace where you might hire a tattoo artist with a Polynesian background who could give you advice? I think that the likeliest outcome you'd get it is "Don't worry about it, traditional tattoo designs are acceptable on anyone."
That's funny thinking of her name as Hawai'ian. I mean, kind of, but it's a European/American name with Hawai'ian orthography, like Kirisi for Chris. Not not Hawai'ian, but already culturally blended.
106, 107: Are you guys having an elliptical dispute as to whether the Holocaust, strictly construed, was a 'pogrom'? I mean, it'll move faster if someone says it out loud.
109: Yes I believe that is exactly what's happening.
I mean, I'm not trying to be cute, or maybe just a little, but to clear this up we all know that basically all of Ukraine's literal millions of Jews were killed between 1941 and 1944, with extensive Ukrainian complicity, right? That's not a secret or some obscure historic fact? And not something in the far-untouchable distant past? It just seems weird that this wouldn't be the first thing that one thinks of these days when one thinks of "problematic Jewish-culture-appropriating-restaurant in the Ukraine."
Is the drink "Hawaiian Punch" offensive? Because as a native Nebraskan, I get offended by "Kool-Aid" when used to indicate a suicidal level of devotion to something obviously insane.
Whether or not the Holocaust was technically a pogrom in Ukraine, 102 is pretty obtuse.
111: I get your point entirely. And we could argue about the meaning of 'pogrom' and whether or not what happened in German-occupied Ukraine during WWII is a pogrom or not.
But over here in Canada we're dealing with institutions, structures, and practices that were explicitly designed to accomplish genocide--a goal which was enshrined in law and policy until the early '90s. So it's a problem of a different order.
Which all goes to the larger point of Joseph Boyden not being a bullshit example of cultural appropriation. Because it's a live and very painful issue of who gets to say what about First Nations lives and experiences.
Halford is just another Nazi practising cultural appropriation of the NATIVE UKRAINIAN tradition of Pogroms.
I .. what? The comparative victimhood thing you're playing with seems deeply weird. I am willing to stipulate that white Canadian guy whom I've never heard of probably shouldn't have pretended falsely to be a member of a native tribe, and that the government of Canada had bad policies towards native Canadians in place through the 1990s. And now, I will try to stick to my oft-broken resolution to avoid pointless discussion with morons.
COSSACK TRADITION
117: I'm not doing any kind of comparative victimhood thing in the least. I said in the case of Joseph Boyden, a comparison to that bar in Kiev is an understatement of the problem. I think that's an entirely fair point.
99: Does it show large grown men riding around on the smallest, decorated children's bikes they can find? Because that really caught my eye when I saw it in Oakland.
105. Kokopelli has been copied by tons of people, including tattoo artists. He's even more identifiable as to origin than sea turtles, and there are certainly Hopi people who get mad about it.
(Did "Moana" commit cultural appropriation? Since it's Disney, I suppose the answer is overdetermined.)
Just to be clear, I didn't mean the example I brought up to imply that the indigenous tribes of the Americas don't have legitimate grievances; bad things are bad even if there are different bad things elsewhere.
Nazis who practice pogroms and yoga are definitely the worst cultural appropriators of all.
108.last: It's somewhat unclear to me what the history of the name is. There is a Hawaiian word meaning calm waters and when her name has come up with Hawaiians they've always mentioned that meaning, but it's not clear whether it was already used as a name or whether the name's origin is solely borrowing from the similar western name.
There is a moderately serious complication to all this: what happens when the cultural appropriation is of some facet of culture that the originators regard as reprehensible? Indian Nazis are the most obvious example. There must be others.
Swedish biker gangs calling themselves Bandidos or Hells Angels?
The guy who designed the tattoos for Moana is either the guy who did tattoos for Peace Corps volunteers (and who was known as the best artist in Apia, at least by reputation among people I talked to), or someone with the same name who would almost certainly be a family member. I was reading an article about it, and came screeching to a halt when I recognized the name Suluape.
So, they at least went to a respectable Samoan source for them.
I think winding up Halford is great fun to watch and thus always correct. Also, I agree that IANC isn't make a comparative victimhood point. It's a comparative perpetratorhood point.
124: Oh, huh. And there I am overgeneralizing from Samoa, where I only saw it as a Samoanization of the western name. Don't know if there's a Samoan cognate of the 'calm waters' word -- if there is I either never knew it or have forgotten it.
I agree that the Boyden story is a particularly clear case of taking credit for the existence of oppressed, disrupted, displaced, or outright genocided native cultures, in a way that's more central to the "appropriation" narrative than that restaurant; if I'd been aware of the case I'd have mentioned it, as it's a really clear example.
I kinda suspect from more poking around that the calm waters meaning is a bit of a backronym, but it does seem to be commonly held.
But I think "I Almost Never Comment" should apologize for their Holocaust denial.
131 Say what now? How do you get that?
The other one that comes to mind (I owe this to Scott Atran) is that Roadrunner the cartoon figure is modelled on a PNW deity who was seriously worshipped and sacrificed to.
I suspect that many of the comments about holocaust appropriation/denial etc are not intended entirely seriously
102, by leapfrogging the Holocaust and going to the 'last pogrom' as the relevant event from which to think of how current offenses against Jews in the Ukraine were, could be read as denying that the Holocaust happened or was important in context. I don't know that I'd read it as requiring an apology, but it was certainly infelicitous.
Alright well since I'm being taken for a moron... I might as well just step back from my obviously petty refusal to say the Holocaust is a pogrom just to be a shit--even if there's a case to be made.
I think my motivation is this: the default example for genocide is obviously the holocaust. That's what 'genocide' means. It's right there at the top of the mind. It's why we talk about genocide the first place. But often it begins and ends there.
So what got up my nose about the bar in Ukraine comparison is... there are other ways to understand genocide. In the case of Canada... quite literally, the camps didn't get torn down. They got renamed. Everyone still lives there.
And I'm sitting here (not) screaming and begging for money to be sent into that bottomless pit as Charley in 96 put it. That's my job. So like... I don't mean to compare victimhoods. It's just that one is a persistent threat that needs to be checked always and forever as a legacy of the holocaust... and one's still kinda happening right now.
So I have to take exception to Halford in 117: "that the government of Canada had bad policies towards native Canadians in place through the 1990s."
No. It had explicitly genocidal policies toward native Canadians. They wanted them all gone.
Scots are a long way from being an oppressed minority, but I've sometimes been mildly pissed off at instances of 'cultural appropriation', myself. But it's hard to pin down why some are mildly offensive and some are not, and it often comes down to little more than attitude and competence.
People speaking or especially writing 'Scots' is a particular button pusher, because quite often it's obvious to me that the person writing it isn't a Scots speaker, or even someone who has made any kind of effort at all to get it right.
A PNW deity? But the roadrunner only lives in arid regions in the southwest.
Which is a legit point. It's really easy to forget how current all this is.
I'm wandering on my own tangent, as is my wont. I think that even though the Holocaust happened with participation from many Ukrainians, it is very debatable whether the Holocaust was in any sense caused by Ukrainians in the same way that the actions of an elected Canadian government can be said to be the responsibility of Canadians. And attempts to put it that way remind me of Russian propaganda in their very recent invasion of Ukrainian territory.
I find that restaurant horrifying regardless of the answer to the above.
No. It had explicitly genocidal policies toward native Canadians. They wanted them all gone.
In 102 you said they wanted the native Canadians to be assimilated. Even if this is a genocidal policy "assimilated" is not the same as "gone".
It is if you become Canadian by assimilation. There was a whole game show about it.
142: That's a whole 'nother argument. The UN Convention on Genocide did not include provisions for cultural genocide because, guess what, Canada, the US, Australia and NZ didn't want it in there, because then they'd be... genocidal states.
144 con't:
But I acknowledge the definition of genocide is a live issue. I'll just say I'm very comfortable saying cultural assimilation is genocide. But we could argue about it.
99: Oh wow, I just clicked on the documentary. I can't actually watch it at work, but the first minute are so is kids in Samoa just a few years before I was there, and I'm having a hard time swallowing past the lump in my throat. The floor mats draped over the grave in the front yard, and the kids playing.
144: It does include the abduction of children, which sure seems like they were thinking about organized violence against cultural and not just genetic continuity.
147: It does do that, but generally definitions of genocide privilege directly coercive and violent means of acting against a group over indirect violence. Destroying a peoples' language, for example.
The Boyden case is definitely a great example of something akin to cultural appropriation. But central to Boyden's success is that he tricked white Canadians into thinking that he was Indigenous. (He might have tricked himself too-- the self-deception seems pretty deep with him.)
Maybe it's still appropriation, but what made him so successful is that white Canadians could tell themselves that they were reading novels written by a real live Indigenous person-- once he turned out to be a fraud, they couldn't tell themselves that. So his case is a bit different from the standard cultural appropriation example, where, say, Bruno Mars gets successful performing black music because the fact he's not black makes the music safe for white folks.
ttaM's Scots example reminds me of a possible case: the Victorian-era English fascination with Scottish highland dress and customs, just after the Highlands had been forcibly cleared of the people who wore the clothes and practiced the customs.
So his case is a bit different from the standard cultural appropriation example, where, say, Bruno Mars gets successful performing black music because the fact he's not black makes the music safe for white folks.
This isn't the era of Elvis Presley. I would guess that 90% of white folks who listen to Bruno Mars have no idea what his ethnicity is, and if anything would find him less appealing if they DID think he was white, which they don't, and which he isn't anyway.
Bruno Mars gets successful performing black music because the fact he's not black makes the music safe for white folks
This assumes that people understand he isn't black. I'm not convinced white America as a whole knows that. (And for extra on-topic fun, the first song I heard of his is the one where he's duplicating The Police's style, who had the guts to call one of their albums Reggatta de Blanc of all things...)
Getting pwned left and right today.
I'm very comfortable saying cultural assimilation is genocide.
I'm not. Cultural genocide is bad, but its nowhere near as bad as genocide genocide. While destruction of culture is a horrible thing, its the mass murder element of genocide that is vastly more evil.
To the extent that Canada is responsible for mass murder of native peoples, that's genocide. But that's not the same as repressive family and educational policies as practiced in 1994.
150-1: Fair enough. I'm not committed to any particular view of Bruno Mars or cultural appropriation: I'm just looking to contrast Boyden with the standard, deception-free case.
(Mars' music really does attract exactly the criticism I just set out, though, even if we can agree it's a bit silly.)
Boyden really put a lot of stock into being Indigenous (all while being very evasive about it). It's not jut that he was racially ambiguous: it's that he repeatedly made claims about his heritage that turned out to be false.
The background assumption in some of these debates--that there are clear, stable principles of what is and is not ok cultural interchange/borrowing/influence/appropriation--just seems wrong. The standards are going to continuously evolve, be context-dependent, and good faith people in borderline cases will often not know that what they're doing is going to reasonably be taken to be offensive. That just feels like the reality of how we're going to live going forward.
"Nazis doing yoga" sounds like a bad SNL sketch until one recalls the allegations regarding old Yoga: Immortality and Freedom Mircea Eliade's association with the Iron Guard in Romania.
(Mars' music really does attract exactly the criticism I just set out, though, even if we can agree it's a bit silly.)
Not just Mars. I remember criticisms of Beyonce when Lemonade came out (though that was related to privilege rather than "cultural appropriation). But we did have a thread on the topic.
155 is a good point and exactly right.
If white people complain about the appropriation of the culture of blacks/Asians/Hispanics/etc, that's an act of cultural appropriation, right?
I had no idea Bruno Mars wasn't black.
The blurring of the distinction between cultural and actual genocide is absurd. I allow that there is such a thing as the death or destruction of culture; also that this can lead to acts of cultural appropriation and mockery. I myself bridle at the Swedish Chef in the muppets. But the death of a culture or even its destruction is very importantly not the same kind of thing as the destruction of the people who carry it.
The obvious illustration, although tasteless, comes from Jewish history. The efforts of reform jews to assimilate after about 1800 were -- and still are, if you dig a little -- regarded by the orthodox as cultural genocide. All that stuff about marrying out is an illustration. But couples who marry out have children. They are not killed -- or at least, they weren't until after 1933. In the USA they are just fine. Yet they do (next to) none of the things which for an Orthodox define a real Jew. So the distinction between the death of the culture, the language, and so forth, and that of the actual people, is astonishingly clear.
Similarly with the Sami/Lapps. Until fairly recently they were to be compulsorily assimilated into Swedish and, for all I know, Norwegian society. Their languages were suppressed in school; they were expected to settle down. This was all wrong and has provoked a great backlash.
None the less, it was importantly different from, and better than, the policy prevailing in the Middle Ages and later, where they were driven by force from their (winter) forests and allowed to live only on the payment of tribute.
You don't have to dig or go back into history to find Orthodox Jews who think like that.
ELIZABETH WARREN IS GUILTY OF APPROPRIATION! BUT DISNEY'S POCAHONTAS IS JUST GOOD, CLEAN AMERICAN FUN!
161. There are still people alive who were punished for speaking Welsh at school.
I guess that means the punishments aren't strict enough.
HEY, THAT'S HOW I WRITE COMMENTS, DONALD. YOU CAN'T DO THAT WITHOUT BEING OFFENSIVE.
161.2 I'm not buying that. That's a kind of cultural adaptation or evolution coming from within the culture itself. It's a very long way from the cultural genocide that IANC is commenting on.
I feel like if I ever learned the language, I would have a very nice speaking voice in Welsh.
167 maybe to 161.1, I've drunk too much Irish whiskey to tell.*
*The best kind of cultural appropriation.
155, 158: I think there's a slightly stronger argument to be made -- that is, what I thought Ogged was going for in the original post, and what I'd agree with but am not super committed to myself, is that 'cultural appropriation' is usually going to be a bad framework for distinguishing between things that are wrong and things that aren't. Racist radio stations that wouldn't play black musicians were wrong because they were directly hostile to black musicians, not because Elvis was stealing something. Cher wearing a feather headdress is being disrespectful to sacred objects/imagery. A frat boy wearing a sombrero and a serape to a Cinco de Mayo party is mocking Mexicans. But when you can't come up with a reason to think something is wrong beyond calling it appropriation, I think there's a good chance it's not wrong.
That's still not going to make everything clear, of course, but I think appropriation is not a clarifying framework.
So which of those is the white suburban teens affecting what they imagine to be thug accents?
I would put that down as mockery, and when not mocking, I think maybe not wrong.
There's the "mom's spaghetti" exception.
Regardless of where exactly people draw the line between what's acceptable and what's not, surely we can all agree that the most constructive way to move forward is to be as outraged as possible on social media at all times.
Mocking doesn't seem to get at what I'm describing. The teen (in my imagination, or maybe it's me circa 1995 how embarrassing) genuinely thinks that taking on the dialect makes them cooler, but it's insulting or problematic because they think that black accent = thug life = awesome transgressive juxtaposition with suburban white kid that makes them cool and edgy.
Mockery seems crueler in intent - "wouldn't it be hysterical if I, Muffy McRichie, wore this sombrero because Mexican people are custodians and I'd NEVER?!"
170
I think there's a slightly stronger argument to be made -- that is, what I thought Ogged was going for in the original post, and what I'd agree with but am not super committed to myself, is that 'cultural appropriation' is usually going to be a bad framework for distinguishing between things that are wrong and things that aren't... when you can't come up with a reason to think something is wrong beyond calling it appropriation, I think there's a good chance it's not wrong.
That sounds very reasonable, and therefore looks like it has nothing at all to do with, "But the other outrages: don't wear this dress, don't sell a tamale, etc etc seems like a mirror image of Nazi siloed ethnicities."
167: it's not as if the process of assimilation was entirely inner-directed.
The thing in 176.1 makes me roll my eyes but I think "makes you look like an asshole" is not productively lumped into the category of "cultural appropriation" which at this point is meant to say or imply that harm was done to the people whose culture was appropriated. I guess ostensibly the harm in white kids appropriating "ghetto" language is that it perpetuates spurious, damaging associations but I don't see how it spreads them at all. Possibly what I'm saying is it's the symptom. I dunno. The cheongsam thing has me newly dismissively shruggy about this subject.
I had no idea Bruno Mars wasn't black
I have another surprise for you.
'cultural appropriation' is usually going to be a bad framework for distinguishing between things that are wrong and things that aren't.
Eh, that seems reasonable, but I'd push back for two reasons. In both cases I'm not sure that the framework of "cultural appropriation" is perfect, but I think it fills a necessary role, and that we shouldn't dismiss it without having a more useful context to replace it.
1) There's a flattening aspect to saying that you need to have a reason in isolation to call something bad behavior. Sometimes the reason is, "you're playing into icky power dynamics and that's why this isn't okay." Obviously there are similar examples which don't involve cultural appropriation at all. For example, stereotypically bad tourist behavior, for example, which plays on a power dynamic and the assumption that the locals are going to be indulgent of tourists. So, perhaps "you're playing into icky power dynamics" can be an independent reason. However.
2) The idea of "cultural appropriation" can be a useful way of explaining why something is icky. "I know that you _intended to be respectful_ but (to use the analogy from the link in 15) you're doing the equivalent of walking into somebody else's house and taking food from their fridge without asking permission." Without having some vocabulary for that it's easy to dismiss people's annoyance with (essentially) "why u so mad?"
I almost agree with that, but I think the framing of "cultural appropriation" serves a needed purpose, in that it provides a language to describe why people are annoyed. Consider Heebie's phrasing of "Is it chafing the members of the culture of origin?"
AIHMHBMMTO, the Orthodox rabbi at my cousin's wedding gave a sermon in which he said that mixed marriages were another Holocaust. My cousin had specifically asked him not to say anything to offend her family members in mixed marriages.
If there weren't family members with mixed marriages, the Holocaust is a perfectly normal wedding sermon?
I'm very uncomfortable with us as mainstream mostly-whities making a blanket proclamation about how minorities should categorize the various indignities inflicted upon them. Or more inclusively of Ogged, people outside of the culture in question getting to declare whether or not something has been mis-appropriated.
But when opinion within the culture in question is hardly monolithic, whose opinion in particular are we meant to accept?
(Emphasis mine)
... it feels like a profound betrayal to be mocked for wearing weird clothes or smelling funny or for eating gross lunches and then, 10-15 years later, those same* white kids are suddenly deciding that your culture is "cool." The outrage isn't really that white people are eating curry, but that white people have the cultural/social capital to suddenly decide that curry is cool. And then on top of it, white people decide they're the experts, and they set up a system where white people teach other white people how to "do your culture." Suddenly, the highest and best paid experts on your cuisine/fashion are white men.
I want to toss out an idea which has been rattling around my head. Buttercup did a good job of highlighting a psychological dynamic, and why people connect cultural appropriation to other experiences of having their culture demeaned -- even if the "appropriation" isn't itself demeaning. But I also want to pull out the economic issue a little more.
The OP proposes that we can separate out cases in which economic harm is being done and, obviously in the case of the prom dress there's no immediate economic impact for anybody. But I'd argue that there's a more slippery slope there than it might appear at first.
I remember reading something, years ago (written in the late 70s), speaking to debates about "cultural appropriation" within the folk music community. There was an active argument back and forth about the degree to which festivals should have spots reserved for people who grew up in the communities that the music came from vs people who learned it because they liked the music. It's easy to make arguments on both sides, but this article pointed out that there was often a dynamic in which the people who grew up in the traditions had fewer contacts and less ability or interest in promoting themselves to festival organizers and so, without some explicit policy it was easy for the musicians who had come to the music later in life to take all of the best spots and get most of the attention.
It's really easy, in many settings, for "the best paid experts" on something to be the people who have genuine expertise and knowledge and also have the highest possible cultural signifiers of authority (e.g., often white men).
I don't know that "cultural appropriation" is the best way to push back on that but, again, I think it's important to have some language with which to push back.
mixed marriages were another Holocaust.
agh yeah no, let's not call things holocausts maybe. I don't mean to be all exceptionalistic. Ditto genocide. Let's maybe only call it genocide when the definition of genocide that most readily springs to mind is occurring. Yeesh.
182 answers my question as to what Frank Costanza as a rabbi would be like.
149: Joseph Boyden very explicitly told stories about First Nations people while posing as a member of various First Nations. That's what did him in--he couldn't decide on which one. The point is he didn't just appropriate the identity, he literally appropriated the stories--that is, the culture--of First Nations. It's the dictionary definition.
153 & 161: Yes, this is the argument. You're putting coercive, violent mass-killings in the category of 'genocide' and excluding indirectly violent means of eliminating a culture from that definition. I think indirectly violent means of cultural destruction achieve substantially the same ends as mass-killing genocide: "those people who talk and live and think this particular way are no longer here." Not to mention that the 'indirect' violence of outlawing Indigenous languages and cultural practices in Canada also resulted in a whole lot of 'indirect' death, suicide, letting-die-through-crime, and so on.
There's actually a lot to be said about how 'genocide' gets carved out as a specific practice. The problem on the other side of the definition--the one that privileges coercion and direct violence--is how to separate it out from other forms of mass killing. Purges aren't genocide, sure, but they happen the same way. There's a good reason to put a line between the 6 million Jews who (absolutely, positively, without question) were killed in the Holocaust and the 4-5 million 'others,' but that line is still a matter of convention, especially seeing as the means of and in many ways the motive for killing was the same in both cases.
161.1: I'm talking about the practice of actively outlawing a language. Which has been done. Multiple times. Again, European anti-semitism is not serving as a particularly good point of comparison. (NOTE: In case it is not clear, I acknowledge the pain and horror and world-historical scale of the crime of the holocaust, and of European anti-semitism on the whole! Hopefully by now I have demonstrated that I'm a commentor who takes genocide seriously as a concept, not a conspiracy-theory crackpot!)
185: isn't that just a general problem with consensus? No group is ever monolithic, but if something is offensive, there's probably going to be a lot more smartie voices arguing that it sucks than there are arguing that it's actually flattering.
I think the problem with the idea of cultural appropriation is that it's always combined with another thing, and it's the other thing that's actually bad. 186 is a good example -- there are people who are better connected who can swoop in and take over, but the problem is just as bad when they stick to their "proper" sphere. A world in which white men stick to I-banking and leave folk music to hippies is not much better than one where some white men leave I-banking for folk music. It's inequality that's the problem.
I find the discourse oddly colonialist, for want of a better world. It's like we can only imagine a world in which we're on top forever, and then we develop the proper etiquette of the rulers towards the ruled so that the ruled don't mind being ruled so much. Given that we live in a world full of inequality, it's only fair that the winners be polite towards the losers, but it's not the sine qua non of politics.
I'm rereading Maccabees. There was a shrine to Zeus in the temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC or so apparently.
176.1 sounds to me like absolutely normal expression of discontent with ambient culture. Too often or too indiscriminately is kind of bad taste. If the culture being borrowed from is fragile or if there's a dynamic like the one Buttercup described, it can be problematic; maybe civil communication in that case? But blurring the line between that and malice or sham doesn't seem to me useful.
To the OP, sham conversions or maybe the Venice or Morocco choices for this year's Top Wedding Theme might qualify. I don't think "just a costume" is an especially simple idea-- pretending to be something is widespread and culturally complex, not just a quirk of behavior easily cordoned off at parties.
I'm not convinced there are a lot more smartie voices arguing that most acts of cultural borrowing are appropriative in a harmful way. I think the internet has made it pretty hard to disentangle "a lot" from "loud" and I'm not at all certain I've seen a conversation about this that wasn't internet-based.
Ok, let me try to phrase what I'm saying better: having a consensus voice is always a problem, whether it's feminists, or Democrats, or farmers, or whatever. That doesn't mean external groups ought to speak on their behalf.
And then there's the Hereford Whitefaces, the high school south of Amarillo.
In Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire, happropriaton hardly happens.
I don't know that "cultural appropriation" is the best way to push back on that but, again, I think it's important to have some language with which to push back.
Authenticity might be a useful concept there.
Authenticity is often the opposite of a useful concept.
I don't know why I'm so argumentative today. But I do think this.
having a consensus voice is always a problem, whether it's feminists, or Democrats, or farmers, or whatever. That doesn't mean external groups ought to speak on their behalf.
Does this mean any member of an external group is required to agree with a somehow-perceived-and-agreed-upon consensus within some-definition-of-an internal group?
I mean I get what you're saying. When people tell you how they are experiencing your actions, listen. But I also remember being wrong about stuff from inside a group, and also being out of consensus. I do not think this is clear cut.
I am repeating Walt's comment in full, because I think it fully resolves the issue and Heebie's (legitimate) concern. Sure, be polite, but also recognize that it's the other bad thing that's actually the problem and not the "cultural appropriation" itself and thus recognize that cultures are fluid. Also by just stealing something Walt wrote and taking credit for it, this comment demonstrates literal appropriation, so I'm helping you understand the distinction by example.
I think the problem with the idea of cultural appropriation is that it's always combined with another thing, and it's the other thing that's actually bad. 186 is a good example -- there are people who are better connected who can swoop in and take over, but the problem is just as bad when they stick to their "proper" sphere. A world in which white men stick to I-banking and leave folk music to hippies is not much better than one where some white men leave I-banking for folk music. It's inequality that's the problem.
I find the discourse oddly colonialist, for want of a better world. It's like we can only imagine a world in which we're on top forever, and then we develop the proper etiquette of the rulers towards the ruled so that the ruled don't mind being ruled so much. Given that we live in a world full of inequality, it's only fair that the winners be polite towards the losers, but it's not the sine qua non of politics.
I find the discourse oddly colonialist, for want of a better world.
I don't think that's entirely incidental. For example, the definition quoted in 21 argues, "[Cultural appropriation] is distinguished from equal cultural exchange due to the presence of a colonial element and imbalance of power."
Also I'm insulted that no one wants to appropriate my style. I wouldn't neg on them for trying.
171: Presidential impersonators.
I guess that's not fair to the Herefords.
205: Which is something that gets confusing. Like the dress-in-a-kimono-at-the-Boston-MFA thing that was linked above, that was upsetting to some US activists and seemed to be unobjectionable to Japanese-from-Japan participants in a culture where kimonos have meaning. The Japanese-from-Japan people reacting to it don't seem to have thought of themselves as in a colonized/power imbalance relationship to the Boston MFA, which may be why they didn't object. Asian American activists did, apparently, believe there was such a power imbalance, but at that point the rights and wrongs all seem muddled.
My reaction in that case specifically is that Japanese experts in kimono culture get to say that it is all right for anyone who wants to wear them, and the Asian-American activists who differ are mistaken in their objections. But that's a hard thing to be sure of.
Not that "kimono culture" is a thing, exactly. But you know what I mean.
210: Before washing machines, maybe it was.
When I hear the word "culture", I reach for my obi.
209 - but then you have a weird thing where Japanese in Japan get to define and limit the proper scope of outrage of Japanese Americans, which also seems odd. Japanese Americans have many more specific and different reasons to be resentful of white people doing weird stuff w vaguely Japanese culture!
I just say that to point out how complex this stuff is, not to argue that outrage over kimono whatever was justified (or not justified). Seems to me the only way out is to focus on (a) being generally polite and empathetic while (b) focusing on harms more concrete than the act of appropriation.
Hey, how 'bout those Washington [footballers]?
215: I've called them the "Racial Slurs" for years, only slightly humorlessly.
[T]he Orthodox rabbi at my cousin's wedding gave a sermon in which he said that mixed marriages were another Holocaust.
And I thought my father and grandfather were old sticks in the mud for their "No, I won't officiate at your summer house/circus tent/restaurant veranda. If you want to get married, come to church" policy.
The thing about the Washington Racial Slurs is that it isn't even appropriation, it's just a vicious insult, as is Chief Wahoo. That seems like one issue, and then you get to the level of whether the Cleveland Indians or Atlanta Braves are appropriate (maybe or maybe not, but it feels, to me, like a different issue, and one more in the zone of "appropriation").
s/b "calling the Cleveland and Atlanta baseball teams the Indians and Braves is OK."
For me, I'm on Washington Racial Slurs/Chief Wahoo=totally unacceptable, but tentatively think calling the teams the Indians and the Braves is fine if they just use them as names. But I could be very easily persuaded otherwise on the second issue.
And essentially zero of my discomfort has to do with appropriation qua appropriation, it has to do with how fucked over Indians have been in this country. Calling the Celtics the Celtics is fine, I am 100% fine with directly appropriating the lakes of Minnesota and the trolley-dodgers of Brooklyn for my own teams.
It seems less than useful to have a bunch of mostly white commenters weigh in on whether or not people of color "get to say" who does what with their culture. I don't have time to read all the comments but this is directed at the thread in general and 209 in particular.
There's a lot of space between self-righteous outrage and an annoyed eye roll, and fortunately or not, in the range of behaviors from "cultural appropriation" and embarrassing tone deafness, one can eventually find an appropriate occasion for all of them.
"local white man has views re: appropriation"
218 perfectly captures my nuanced view on this subject (as an Indians fan and a Washington football hater). Dan Snyder and his ilk like to commission polls saying that Native Americans aren't offended by this stuff. Doesn't matter to me. I am offended.
[215 meant to refer to the cheerleader thing in the papers today. ]
But they changed the name to R when the switched stadiums in Boston to try to appeal to Red Sox fans, while keeping their Braves iconology, and then pretended it was in honor of a pretend Native.
It's bullshit all the way down.
"The outrage isn't really that white people are eating curry, but that white people have the cultural/social capital to suddenly decide that curry is cool"
Obligatory reminder that there has never been a time when white people did not think curry was cool. Characters in "Emma" by Jane Austen complain about how you can't get a decent curry in Bath because they don't make it hot enough, you have to go all the way to Bristol.
But Jane Austen was more than 50 years after Plassey and 100 years after serious British colonialism in India began!
220 I get that, really I do. As a human person, though, I'm interested in what people say I can and cannot do. And I don't think it's at all unfair for me to judge which of the many instructions coming my way I'm going to heed, care about, or blow off. I'll do this (eat curry), I'll not do that (use various accents not my own in attempts at humor).
I also did not know that Bruno Mars wasn't black. However, I also frequently get him confused with the guy warning Veronica about getting mixed up with the 09ers, so I may be confused in general.
Samoan Crips in Long Beach
We had a few Sons of Samoa migrate up here but they've all aged out of the scene or are still in prison. The Tongan Crips were much bigger up here but they've also been pretty quiet since a bunch of them got RICO'd a while back.
226.2: Where? I can't find that in the text. I can find people comparing Bath and Bristol.
220: It seems less than useful to have a bunch of mostly white commenters weigh in on whether or not people of color "get to say" who does what with their culture. I don't have time to read all the comments but this is directed at the thread in general and 209 in particular.
Yeah, 209 is badly put -- I drifted off what I meant to say, and said something different which on rereading I don't mean, that the American activists who disapproved of the Boston MFA were wrong. But I do think the kimono thing says something meaningful about 'appropriation' being a less than useful framework. That is, if we're trying to look to the 'owners' of the culture represented by the kimonos in the Boston MFA for guidance on how to interact with that culture respectfully, people from Japan who make kimonos and maintain and interact with kimonos of that vintage seem to me to be authoritative, even when they disagree with American activists about what's respectful and appropriate. If the question is who do these kimonos belong to, they are part of Japanese culture to a greater extent than Japanese-American culture.
On the other hand, it's perfectly possible that even though thinking about the exhibition as appropriation leads to the conclusion that it's considered respectful and appropriate by people of the relevant culture, so it should be fine, that it's still an injury to Asian-Americans and specifically Japanese-Americans somehow. Like, it could create false beliefs about them, or negative or degrading images of them. I don't think activists should need to claim that they have a property right over some cultural thing to object to its use, if there's an argument that they're injured by it.
Tl:dr -- The protests of the Boston MFA might have been justified, but if they were I think describing the problem as appropriation would be misleading.
227: there was never serious British colonialism in India. At its peak the white British population was tiny both compared to the overall population and compared to the white British population in actual colonies like Australia, South Africa etc. You can't have a colony without colonists. What there was was imperialism, which is different.
232: I think it was Emma? Might have been one of the others.
I googled "Jane Austen Curry" and found a quote in Vanity Fair, which is written by different person but was written when Jane Austen could have been alive if she had not decided to die young.
I remember being a bit surprised to see a curry served at breakfast in Clouds of Witness.
234 -- true enough, though the distinction seems kinda immaterial in this context -- white people in Britain 1818 thinking curry was cool was a result of about 50 years of hardcore imperialism and maybe about 125 years of somewhat less hardcore imperialism (i.e., armed trading posts). So "white people have always thought curry was cool" in 226 just means "white people have thought curry was cool since they became big-time imperialists," which if anything, supports the case* for "white people shouldn't eat curry."
*I don't agree with this case, because curry is very tasty. Also, don't think I'm aware of anyone ever actually making it.
I was even more surprised to learn just now, while checking that I had that title right, that searching Wikipedia for "Clouds of Witnesses" redirects to the entry on "Saint".
Also, isn't the curry scene in Vanity Fair? Maybe there's a different one in Austen.
I feel that's an impressive thing to pwn somebody on.
You can't be pwnd if you don't pay attention to what other people are saying.
I used curry powder in tonight's dinner mash.
232. That's because curries are obliquely referenced in "Sense and Sensibility," not "Emma."
Colonel Brandon's Curries, Part One
Colonel Brandon's Curries, Part Two
217
Right, calling things racial slurs after groups of people you've killed is just straight up "furthering acts of genocide" in my book. Similarly, blackface and minstrelsy aren't cultural appropriation as they are straight up racism. I believe for there to be actual appropriation, there has to be a modicum of good faith belief the thing being appropriated is cool or interesting.
220.2
I was talking about cultural appropriation with my Sudanese friend awhile ago, and he says he feels mild annoyance on the eyeroll level by African-Americans appropriation of "African" culture. He understands the historical reasons why such appropriation feels psychologically necessary and doesn't find it nearly as offensive as white people appropriating "Africa," but he can't help having a knee-jerk feeling of irritation. I think that's the sort of nuance that's hard to talk about on the internet.*
*Really weirdly, on a level of "I know this isn't actually valid but I still feel feelings," I sometimes get that feeling too about things like German board games. Obviously there are zero moral issues with Americans playing German board games and indeed it's great that more people are playing interesting games, but my very first gut instinct is "THOSE AREN'T FOR YOU."
EIN VOLK EIN REICH EIN BRETTSPIEL
Jane Austen was the original cultural appropriator.
My mother makes curry on the regular. She and my father lived with an Indian couple at one point and she learned how to make curry then. Her curries would be good except she never salts her food while cooking, so they end up being spicy but weirdly bland.
I heard a rumor that the Olive Garden doesn't salt the water for their pasta. That makes them less of a cultural appropriator, but shittier.
I googled and the rumors are terrible but most of them are true.
There's one bit of cultural appropriation I can legitimately complain about. I found the German skating pair who performed to Klezmer music, and incorporated a few traditional Jewish items quite offensive. the guy wore a yarmulke, which isn't a sacred object. The woman wore a Jewish-looking head covering, and the usual skater miniskirt. "Sorry we killed almost all of you, this athletic event acknowledges that we now understand we lost something when we did that." An almost exact equivalent of the Washington football team.
A few years ago there was a trendlet reported (maybe invented) by MTV of privileged non-Jews having tacky bar mitzvah parties when they turn 13, no prayers, just a party on a Saturday with that name. Apparently that's been replaced by non-Hispanic quinceaneros, since 15 is a less awkward age than 13.
Also, I don't feel this personally, but I'm surprised that no one seems to find Black Panther offensive.
252
My Sudanese friend has decidedly mixed feelings about it.
I was just so annoyed with the first Iron Man movie that I haven't seen a comic-book movie since.
I'm surprised that no one seems to find Black Panther offensive.'
Further proof that it's all about power and history, not appropriation per se. Black Panther but made by white people with white people governing Wakanda would be so offensive that I've kind of offended myself just by typing this out.
The question is what inference can be drawn about the intent of the actor, acting within the scope of their own culture. This rule maps cleanly to the examples given. The costumes are bad because they indicate a disrespectful intent. People who revere the religious artifacts of their own culture indicate a disrespectful intent when they are careless with the religous artifacts of another culture. More generally, people who expect their institutions and beliefs be treated with respect err when they do not extend that courtesy to others.
It's the intent of the actor that matters. Mocking others makes you an asshole, even if the others never learn of your mockery, and thus can never be harmed by it.
We can infer this intent from actions.
256: Wittgenstein said something, and Philip Kerr quotes it in one of his novels, to the effect that the best evidence of state of mind is inadequate evidence of state of mind, but, sure, we can always use another strut in the scaffold.
"Black Panther but made by white people with white people governing Wakanda would be so offensive"
If you mean all-white, that would actually be hilarious. A tiny secret European nation in which the prime minister eats a magic plant and gets super powers?
No stranger than a tiny secret European nation whose co-monarchs are an elected head of state and a bishop, both foreigners. Only one of which has super powers.
I would totally watch a Bishop of Urgell superhero movie.
Actually I think this is "The Mouse that Roared".
The French one can be wearing a magical/technological Phrygian cap and the bishop, of course, would have an ensorcelled miter.
Huh. I had not realized that Malta's population was greater than Iceland's.
Speaking of, anyone have recommendations on the Knights of Malta? I'm interested in their Maltese period specifically.
Also if anyone has a lead on some Knights of Malta themed pornography, set in their Malta period specifically, drop me a line.
If anyone has some Naughty Marta themed pornography, hit me up. I'm interested in her "maltesers" period specifically.
245: This is one of those "how do you keep a moron in suspense" things, huh.
Everyone is inquisitive in their own special way.
258: Dr. Doom and Latveria is not appreciably less ridiculous.
269: had to look that up but yes, it's in the right area. Though Whitekanda would also have to have a culture made up of random fragments taken from everywhere else in Europe. The inhabitants bicycle around in kilts eating lutefisk baguettes.
I don't agree with this case, because curry is very tasty. Also, don't think I'm aware of anyone ever actually making it.
I too make curry all the time. I note that there is a substantial industry publishing cookery books of south Asian recipes for the anglophone market, and that said books are mostly written by Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi people, some of whom are superstar chefs in anglophone countries. Are other people of south Asian origin who work as academics or politicians or taxi drivers supposed to call these people out for Tomming (sp?), or to congratulate them on spotting a market and making a shitload of money in it?
265: "The Religion" (novel set during the Siege) isn't exactly porn but it has some racy bits.
269: had to look that up but yes, it's in the right area. Though Whitekanda would also have to have a culture made up of random fragments taken from everywhere else in Europe. The inhabitants bicycle around in kilts eating lutefisk baguettes.
Tintin did that, didn't it?
This started as a joke but I feel like the Knoghts of Malta would be a FANTASTIC setting for gay porn. All male, supposedly celibate and conflicted, virile knights in a beautiful Mediterannean island setting. My gift to whomever has the will to make it happen.
Is this the moment to recycle the best sentences ever written about the Knights of Malta?
Ready or not, here goes
"The Order of Malta have elected Fra' Giacomo Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto as their new Grand Master.
Having held academic posts at the Pontifical Urbaniana Institute, Fra' Giacomo is well-liked inside the Vatican and it is understood he looked after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's cat when the former Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prefect - and later Pope - was away travelling."
276. That's what the Knights Templar were accused by King Philip IV of being, with added devil worship. They were massacred and the leaders burned at the stake. Moral: be careful who you cosplay.
"The Naughts of Malta" would be a good name for a rock band.
He faked the charges because he owed them money and didn't want to pay.
Serdar Çam is upset at Sweden's cultural appropriation of Turkish meatballs. He wants IKEA to quit calling them Swedish.
246 last: You don't get to be Export Weltmeister without wanting a lot of cultural appropriation.
Is turkey to blame for the stupid noodles or was that all Sweden's fault?
280. That's what they'd like to you believe...
He also kicked out the Jews to not have to pay them back and be able to collect their outstanding loans to others.
Somewhere in North Africa a tribe of Berbers has a veritable army of violin-playing 5-year-olds poised to take Western classical music by storm.
I figure Asians have already taken that over anyway. Good luck to them. It just seems tedious beyond words.
Really weirdly, on a level of "I know this isn't actually valid but I still feel feelings," I sometimes get that feeling too about things like German board games. Obviously there are zero moral issues with Americans playing German board games and indeed it's great that more people are playing interesting games, but my very first gut instinct is "THOSE AREN'T FOR YOU."
How do you feel about Germans playing (or designing) Ameritrash games?
I have mixed feelings about German games. I like Ticket to Ride, but Settlers annoys me.
267-277: You know what I learned recently? The French insult in Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- which sounds something like "Connigut" -- is a phonetic pronunciation of the word "Knight." Am I the last person to learn this?
I also didn't know Bruno Mars wasn't black.
291.1: Yes.
Also gratifying to see the post about how Bruno Mars sanitizes black music by being a non-black guy followed by nothing but people who are surprised that Bruno Mars isn't black.
289. How about Carcassonne, a German game which appropriates a French town's name? (Carcassonne is one of my favorites.) Not to mention Castles of Burgundy, another appropriation by a German. (Okay game but not a fav.)
289.last. Supposedly the designer of Carcassonne played Monopoly as a child (among other games, of course).
is a phonetic pronunciation of the word "Knight."
Had you gotten to the point where you found out that it was an approximation of how the word would have been been pronounced in, say, the fourteenth century?
289. How about Carcassonne, a German game which appropriates a French town's name? (Carcassonne is one of my favorites.) Not to mention Castles of Burgundy, another appropriation by a German. (Okay game but not a fav.)
Le Havre too. And let's not get into Knizia's cultural appropriation of the Japanese, Celts, Egyptians and more.
Ok, I have an actual question for this thread: Heebieville uses Cinco de Mayo as an opportunity for a significant Mexican Heritage celebration. It's generally fairly traditional - children train and prepare for ballet folklorico performances and the middle school and high school have a mariachi band - think wistful and haunting, not goofy restaurant serenades. There's also a carnival and questionably authentic food and regular authentic food.
I just went to watch Pokey's ballet folklorico performance at his school. The boys were supposed to come dressed in a white button down shirt, jeans, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. They added a kerchief tied around their necks...and mustaches.
So we arrive at THE QUESTION: are the mustaches offensive? Why were there goofy mustaches on 6 and 7 year old boys in an otherwise respectful dance? (Almost certainly the entire event was planned by Mexican-American teachers, so there's not the additional element of white people doing this.)
I got the cutest pictures, though, of Pokey posed with one heel clicking out, with his arm out, while his partner twirls around and her elaborate skirt twirls in a giant frilly circle.
Don't even speak of Puerto Rico/San Juan, where you basically run a slave plantation. To a lesser degree, you know the characters of the American side of Ticket to Ride would be pushing for the federal government to do something about those pesky Indians.
are the mustaches offensive?
My people regard them as sacred.
Has a Mexican-American complained in anybway about the mustaches? That seems like the key question.
But I'm not even clear on what the problem would be. So you look like a Norteno band.
271: I'm always a little skeptical of claims of cultural appropriation in a South Asian context. As a professor I know once said: "Indian culture has been doing just fine for thousands of years -- when you* go to Kolkata or Mumbai *you're* the barbarian."
*USian students
But yeah, I doubt it's really a problem but I could totally see how it could be. It's costuming children to match the physical presentation of adults of a particular ethnic group to which not all the children belong. Not necessarily blackface, but at the border where you're reasonably giving it side-eye. In your case, though, I'd trust the teachers.
So, the moustaches are supposed to evoke el Grand General Revolucionario Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata, right? (I'm just assuming, perhaps unwarrantedly, that even the wokest Mexican-American teachers are not big partisans of the Flores Magon brothers.)
It definitely does not rise to the level of saying anything, but it was surprising.
Mustaches that rose to the level of talking would be more surprising yet.
40 years ago, friends of mine working at a resort hotel near Glacier National Park were instructed to say 'don't toucha my mustache' to customers from Japan.
I'd guess said customers were more baffled than offended.
Had there been fondling issues?
don't toucha my mustache'
Were your friends pretending to be stereotype Italian chefs? If so, shouldn't they have said "don'ta toucha my moustacha [finger kiss]"?
Little kids wearing moustaches are far too cute to be offensive. Okay, maybe Hitler moustaches.
Too late. Why didn't you mention that sooner?
Can you play it off as a Little Tramp tribute?
We could have, if we didn't also decide to appropriate certain Hindu symbols.
Okay, you're gonna need a large, inflatable globe...
Or the kid from Dr. McNinja.
This seems like a win/win solution: have the kids re-enact Dr McNinja stories.
a mariachi band - think wistful and haunting, not goofy restaurant serenades
Mariachi music is wonderful. It gets a weirdly bad rap. People would always complain about mariachis on the subway in a "we all hate it, right?' way and it made me sad.
People play mariachi while riding the subway?
People in the heartland don't know about these things.
It seems less than useful to have a bunch of mostly white commenters weigh in on whether or not people of color "get to say" who does what with their culture.
I don't really think that's what the conversation was, though? Nobody really gets to say who does what with their culture. I'd have said a bunch of mostly white commenters were talking about whether they should or should not feel ok about how they use things from other cultures, and it seems to me those are conversations worth having. Moreso if there are people of the culture in question present for the discussion, but not exclusively then.
And I begrudge no-one an annoyed eye-roll. It is most commonly the right response to 90% of things that happen.
Did I already link the Croatian mariachis?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJhuDnl24Y
Yeah there's a range of enforced entertainment on the subway. They especially like to come on at 59th st on an uptown A train because then they have 66 blocks of captive audience. (I know this because it was my commute.) Anyway the most common, in my now out of date reckoning, are three guys with conga drums, mariachis, and the dreaded "WHAT TIME IS IT IT'S SHOWTIME" kids who put on music on a boom box at inescapable volume and careen around the subway almost kicking you in the head.
If you give them money, they leave?
325 -- distinctly short on mustaches.
I mean it was sometimes a fantasy of mine to magically have a few twenties I wasn't attached to and say "here's your take for this car, now maybe go kick people in the head one car up?" but no. You give them money, they stay 'til 125th Street.
I think they are just saying they hate the enforced entertainment on the subway, which on their route is usually a mariachi band.
I heard that Cynthia Nixon is promising to improve the quality of the music on the subway.
Mariachi music is wonderful. It gets a weirdly bad rap. People would always complain about mariachis on the subway in a "we all hate it, right?' way and it made me sad.
I totally agree with this. It's beautiful.
Huh. Another pro-Mariachi vote here. I once went to a backyard wedding with a Mariachi band. It was really nice.
I like mariachi music generally, but dislike it on the subway -- somehow I find it harder to tune out when I don't want to listen to it than even the "Showtime" kids with the gymnastics.
I so don't associate NYC with Mexicans that mariachis on the subways seem weird. (I realize this comment is basically "local man has mis-impression about New York" but not every comment is valuable). Much more with whatever that super-fast-paced Dominican music is (I don't think exactly Cumbia or Reggaeton, but maybe that's it).
There are plenty of Mexicans here, just not quite enough that they're the dominant ethnicity many places -- there are Mexicans, but I don't know that there are Mexican neighborhoods much. (Oh, there probably are and I just don't know. There's everything in Queens.)
336.last, yes there were plenty of Mexicans in Astoria when I lived there and other surrounding neighborhoods, but they were not the predominant Central/South American population. Maybe the Salvadoran or Guatemalans or Colombians or Ecuadorians, were I'm not sure.
A parliament of owls. A plenty of Mexicans.
At some point while living in NYC I was lamenting the difficulty of finding good Mexican food, and spent a while trying to google stuff about the Mexican population of NYC. What I remember (and I could be misremembering key details) is that there are lots and lots of Mexicans in NYC now, but that's a relatively recent phenomenon and so there's not the same kind of "historical neighborhoods" and restaurants the way you get with Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorians, etc.
Nebraska has much better Mexican food that Pittsburgh (or North Carolina). I miss $10 for chips, salsa, and a big plate of whatever.
It's good to see ogged is back in top trolling form.
When the kid was about 8 he spent part of the summer at circus camp. The hipper-than-hipster counselors made him the ringmaster, he wore a spangled bow tie, harlequin sweater vest, top hat, had a bull horn as tall as himself, and they drew the most Snidely Whiplash of Snidely Whiplash moustaches on him. His sidekick was a spangley leotard & tights clad cat with a looooong tail, furry ears and they did hilarious French side bar quarrels. It was fabulous. I was too frightened to watch the three girls on the trapeze.
Is it ok to like Linda Rondstat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNtgMeaYaU8
Her grandmother was from Mexico.
When I was in law school, I did some work for her cousin, Phoenix lawyer Carlos Ronstadt. Nice fellow.
She appears to be a descendant of this fellow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agust%C3%ADn_V._Zamorano
1. I refuse to believe the original Turkish recipe contained that much butter and sour cream.
2. When my brother was 3, my parents would take him to costume parties in lederhosen and large black yarn mustache and tell him that he could only speak German for the rest of the night. How offended should Germans be by this?
large black yarn mustache
Like, a Hitler mustache? I think a 3-year-old-lederhosen-wearing Hitler might be a little offensive to Germans, as well as making for some awkward pictures to be shown at your brother'[s wedding.
344 is just great and I wouldn't believe it if anybody else wrote it.
342: Last time I drove through Nebraska, I stopped for Mexican. TBH, it was just OK.
Then I drove away from the gas pump with the hose still attached to my car. Whoops! Turns out they design it for that, and there's a $35 break-free part.
Mexican food is the only category in which bay area > nyc. It's really just not good in New York.
I'm sure it's not great compared to any standard but "what you can get for $10 in Pittsburgh."
I really don't get the whole burrito stuffed with rice thing. It's like trying to see how fat you can make somebody with the least flavor. Just put the stuff in a bowl over rice or make the burrito without rice.
342: Brother, you're tellin' me! What I would not give for one of the chalupas from California Taco right now.
I just noticed that I put the "or North Carolina" in the wrong place. I meant to say that "Nebraska (or North Carolina)" has better Mexican food than Pittsburgh. I miss El Rodeo.
French side bar quarrels
I'm going to display my ignorance and ask: What is a French side bar quarrel?
There's probably a missing hyphen.
349
No, a bushy Bavarian-style one.
As will be obvious if you look in the right place
même dans le sidebar
Has anyone ever had a French Side-bar? Is it like a Side-car but with Champagne?
girl x polled the chinese kids from taiwan, china, narnia and malaysia, as well as her chinese (from china) teacher, about what they thought of americans wearing qipao. they were all mystified to the point of not understanding what she was asking, and when they got it all thought white girls look cute in qipao, if they even had an opinion. so, that. but as was mentioned, china's not scared of US cultural domination.
Ask them if 'General Tso" is Chinese for "Colonel Sanders".
KFC is probably the most popular American fast food place in China--playing off their experience in Japan, they got into the market really early after Deng opened it.
Anyway, (echoing 13) qipaos look great and it'd be nice if we could come to some sort of understanding where it wouldn't be offensive to wear them.
I think qipaos are fine, but no dressing like a water bender.
Dairy Queen:
344 is awesome. Sounds like an amazing experience.
Has anyone ever had a French Side-bar?
Well, I've read Le Figaro.
I didn't know that dress was called a qipao before, but there's a pretty long history of white women wearing them. There's a picture of my grandmother in one in the 30s and I think of it as a kind of art deco thing. I guess like wearing a Nehru Jacket is a 60s thing, and now I am out of examples.
I wore a dashiki briefly in high school but that wa to get around a dress code - we had a coat and tie rule but my Nigerian friend wore dashikis and really what was anyone going to say, so then we started borrowing his dashikis, and the teachers were more visibly pissed off but still didn't say anything.
364: The NYT had an article on the whole qipao silliness yesterday. The Chinese people they interviewed initially had the same puzzled reactions you describe, and when they eventually got what the drama was about the reaction was generally "Cool that people are recognizing how awesome Chinese culture is".
345. TLL!
Also, it better be alright to like Ronstadt, or I've been wrong for 50 years. I actually cried when I read that she couldn't sing any more.
Possibly in reaction to the NYT in 371, there was a Twitter thread yesterday suggesting that the reason Asians in Asia are commonly fine with what might be labeled appropriation is that they're used to adopting more and more Western culture on a rolling basis, see it as reflecting power of / respect for the West, and assume that the reverse is true when we adopt their stuff.
Can't link it since I'm now having my phone block Twitter during work hours.
Chinese Chinese wouldn't give two shits about qipaos. It wouldn't occur to them to be offended,and there are huge Twitter-equivalent brigades out patrolling for slights to the national honor.
And today the Guardian has an opinion piece that's basically "lighten up Francis. Wearing a dress is fine."
I'm honestly pretty surprised by the pushback this is getting. Maybe 75 is right and we really did reach the nadir of cultural appropriation drama with the tortilla truck thing.
On Chinese Appropriation
There's a walled town in Yunnan, in the mountainous southwest of China, called Dali. It's set by a lake, and is famous for its three pagodas and traditional architecture. It's kind of Tahoe-esque.
Tourism in Dali used to be dominated by Western backpackers, the kind that flew into Bangkok and made their way there through Laos and Vietnam over a couple months. Yunnan is the least Chinese of the provinces of China proper, and Beijing is very far from Dali, so the laws that governed the rest of China held less sway there than the customs of the the local Bai people and the backpackers who were bringing in money. Specifically, you could buy hash or the hallucinogen of your choice at street stalls in the old town. If you walked out of town a little bit, you could just pick buds, depending on the time of year, but most people bought from the Bai ladies. There was a whole scene.
You may remember that back in the early 2000s the Earth Liberation Front firebombed a research lab in Seattle. Most of the perpetrators were arrested, but Justin Sol/ondz got himself a Canadian identity, moved to China, and set up shop in Dali. As a fugitive, he figured it would be prudent to manufacture and distribute LSD. In 2009, the Chinese authorities seized his home laboratory and the 35 pounds of marijuana he had buried in his backyard.
So, the Chinese Feds were sick of Dali's bullshit. No more sheets of acid in the old town, no more smoking on the bar patio. You could still buy weed, kind of, which is tricky to impossible elsewhere in China, but the party was over.
Gradually, the place gets taken over by the Chinese tourist boom. The backpackers don't leave, exactly, they're just outnumbered. They're part of the charm of Dali for the Chinese middle class. You've got your backpacker bars, your expat bars, and your Chinese tourist restaurant/bars(the distinction is unchinese). They do mix, and usually pretty well, considering the alcohol. There's also a weird kind of cafe, where young Chinese go to perform hippiedom. They dress up like hippies, play acoustic guitars poorly and have their pictures taken. If they get a picture alongside a white person, that's even better, but there aren't enough white people to go around so there are lines. Every town in China has its specialty, and Dali's specialty is fake hippies.
I haven't been for a while, so it's possible that all the backpackers have left, or the Chinese have moved on to a new kick. I kind of doubt it though.
I think we might need an additional asterisk for someone like Vanilla Ice who just did a really bad job of it. Or I suppose you might say of someone who poorly appropriates that they are essentially just wearing a costume. I might be wrong but I don't think you would make a very strong case that black rappers were excluded from the market at the time; however, it is true that few got as much mainstream attention as Mr. Van Winkle did. Maybe it's actually a case of both costuming and economic harm, in which case no new asterisk. But I can imagine a case of someone like Vanilla who does a really bad job appropriating, but does it 24-7, and without a concomitant exclusion of anybody from the market, to whom I would object.
376: I think they're still there. A few months ago I met a guy at a bar who has been a long-time expat there, supposedly doing journalism but mainly a lot of drugs.
there is no way i am going to clean up my crappy phone typing syntax after all those lovely follow ups!!! last night kid got all accordian-y at the school play set in ww1 and post-ww1 france so our investment in our own entertainment is paying off just fine. also it is very fun to get the after-the-show plot summary from the non-french speaking parent, particularly when he spent the play confounding sarah bernhardt with isadora duncan and was very puzzled why a professional dancer had a cane. the peg leg thing completely escaped him, so when the male lead was instructed to grab her wooden leg he just thought she wanted him to feel her up which really didn't coincide with the tenor of the rest of the scene.
To push back on the trolling a little, I think that when a member of a dominant culture appropriates from a minority culture, the rules are different than in other situations. True, there is a risk of economic exclusion in such cases, but that isn't the only risk of harm. In such cases, the appropriation needs to be respectful in order for me not to object to it. One could categorize all of the non-respectful instances of appropriation as costuming, but I think that stretches the category a bit thin.
373: People in a country basically never worry about foreigners imitating them. Why would they? The French don't worry about Americans acting French, they worry about French acting American.
Jammies reports back that there were no mustaches in today's performance.
If you mustache, you'll never know.
Mooseking, is there a good way to reach you?