What “idiots complaining about cultural appropriation”? It’s not exactly a common thing, despite what caricatures of them might make you think. No one is getting upset that anyone eats food from another culture.
The only actual examples I can think of that I’ve actually heard discussed are “please don’t dress as my race as a costume, it’s basically blackface” and “my religion was systematically driven to the brink of extinction, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use it as a fun activity to express your creativity”.
These things always seem chock full of getting defensive about something that doesn’t really happen, or acting like the smallest pushback to the dominant culture doing whatever they want is incredibly terrible.
Appropriation isn’t an issue when it’s just cultures sharing. It’s an issue when people reduce the culture to the things in question, forget that there’s actually people involved who deserve respect, or outright claim ownership of the thing in question.
Don’t go to a Halloween party dressed as a Puerto Rican. Don’t grab a random assortment of native American religious practices, mix them with crystals and use it to showcase your creativity.
The not-puerto-rican editor of the magazine bon appetit went to a Halloween costume dressed as a caricature of a Puerto Rican with his also not Puerto Rican wife.
It came into my head as an example of something less obviously problematic than blackface, but more obviously problematic than dressing as a Disney character that’s a depiction of a different race.
Feel free to substitute any other ethnicity or race into my example as it makes sense to you.
In isolation it would be racist to assume a man wearing a baseball jersey was Puerto Rican or dressed as a one as a caricature. It’s not when it’s labeled as such by the people in the photo, and when asked about it they admit that’s what they were doing, and then apologize and then ultimately resign.
The reason feelings of cultural appropriation exist is because the children of immigrants feel like society treats them as foreigners because they’re not white, despite growing up all their lives in the US/UK etc. This leads to feeling like some dipshit is enjoying the food and fashion of your home culture while rejecting it’s people. Think about a Maga moron voting to kick out all the Mexicans while wearing a sombrero and eating tacos; it’s a hypocrisy of culture vs race.
That’s just racism and you’re not going to fix it by isolating the immigrants more by chastising people that enjoy their culture.
It makes zero sense if the goal is to fight racism. If anything you’d want there to be MORE immersion and exchange of cultures so the immigrants are seen as part of the new fabric instead of separate from it.
I’m telling you how people feel, I’m not writing a manual towards a post race society. When people feel ostracised because they look Mexican, they get salty about the same society who routinely rejected them and made them feel like outsiders gleefully housing down Mexican food and cosplaying at being Mexican.
I know a bunch but they are in (sub)cultures that either get popularized and have very specific dictates for membership. The clearest example of this are how Rastas feel about non-black people appropriating the imagery of their faith whoch is dedicated to bringing the African diaspora back to Africa.
As with most things, it’s a continuum. Some assimilation is good, a hairstyle, a clothing style, food, even customs. Sometimes certain people can go too far, and it gets more problematic. Think the jeweler in Snatch that isn’t Jewish but pretends to be. The episode of The Neighborhood with Nicole Sullivan. Rachael Dolezal.
Exactly, no Scottish person is getting bent out of shape if Im wearing tartan plaid shirts but dressing up and pretending to be Rastafarian would be inappropriate as Im white.
Isn’t race at least as much a social construct detached from any physical or biological reality as gender is? If so, why wouldn’t transrace people be valid for essentially the same reason that transgender people are?
You can go down the rest of the radqueer rabbit hole from there, since most of their positions are just taking positions related to mainstream LGBTQ identities and extending them to ones less accepted by the mainstream LGBQ community, like xenogenders and being trans-things-other-than-gender.
Incredibly generally: gender is the expression of gender identity and is a social construct while gender identity seems to be largely influenced by biological factors. Sex is the biological differentiation, and while the delineation between the sexes is culturally defined (if someone has xxy sex chromosomes, high testosterone, a penis, and a vagina it’s a cultural decision if we say they’re male, female or intersex), it’s a classification based much more on observable factors.
Race and ethnicity are more akin to sex than to gender identity, which would be better compared to cultural identity.
What distinguishes races is a social construct, but within a context racial classifications are relatively consistent. Racial markers that mean nothing in the US might be quite significant in Rawanda.
Similarly ethnicity, being a blend of race, language, culture and heritage is socially constructed but relatively objective within a context.
Culture on the other hand is, like gender identity, more to do with subjective feelings, opinions, and choices on the part of the individual, with the distinctions between them being cultural.
The woman in question mislead people about her race and ethnicity by misidentifying her relatives and heritage. Her cultural affiliation is harder to dispute, although being a chapter president for the NAACP shows at least a degree of acceptance by the African American culture in the area.
This gets to the question of what racial identity is and I would argue that someone who isn’t of recent African ancestry, who was not raised by people who have recent African ancestry, who then pretends to not just have recent African ancestry but then claims that their family aren’t the people who raised them (because they are white) is very clearly not stable.
Complaining about sharing cultures IS racism. These idiots complaining about cultural appropriation have gone too far up their own ass.
Melding, sharing food clothing and customs makes everyone better! These bullshit micro divisions need to stop.
Sharing culture isn’t cultural appropriation.
Yes, that was the point.
The first paragraph implies they’re the same thing.
What “idiots complaining about cultural appropriation”? It’s not exactly a common thing, despite what caricatures of them might make you think. No one is getting upset that anyone eats food from another culture.
The only actual examples I can think of that I’ve actually heard discussed are “please don’t dress as my race as a costume, it’s basically blackface” and “my religion was systematically driven to the brink of extinction, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use it as a fun activity to express your creativity”.
These things always seem chock full of getting defensive about something that doesn’t really happen, or acting like the smallest pushback to the dominant culture doing whatever they want is incredibly terrible.
Appropriation isn’t an issue when it’s just cultures sharing. It’s an issue when people reduce the culture to the things in question, forget that there’s actually people involved who deserve respect, or outright claim ownership of the thing in question.
Don’t go to a Halloween party dressed as a Puerto Rican. Don’t grab a random assortment of native American religious practices, mix them with crystals and use it to showcase your creativity.
How do Puerto Ricans dress up?
In reality? Like anyone else.
As a costume?
The not-puerto-rican editor of the magazine bon appetit went to a Halloween costume dressed as a caricature of a Puerto Rican with his also not Puerto Rican wife.
It came into my head as an example of something less obviously problematic than blackface, but more obviously problematic than dressing as a Disney character that’s a depiction of a different race.
Feel free to substitute any other ethnicity or race into my example as it makes sense to you.
How is that being dressed as a Puerto Rican?
You’d go to Venezuela or Colombia and see people dressed the same as well
Hell even Ecuador or Peru I think
Baseball is very popular in Latin and central America, is not unheard of that someone is fan of a baseball team from another country
I don’t see how being dressed with something resembling merchandise of a baseball team means you are Puerto Rican or dressed like one
And to go further, I believe it is EXTREMELY racist to think so.
Well, it’s what he said he was doing, so that’s why I went with that. Also note the specific terminology associated with Puerto Ricans.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/872697289/chief-editor-at-bon-app-tit-resigns-after-racially-offensive-photo-surfaces
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/dining/bon-appetit-adam-rapoport.html
In isolation it would be racist to assume a man wearing a baseball jersey was Puerto Rican or dressed as a one as a caricature. It’s not when it’s labeled as such by the people in the photo, and when asked about it they admit that’s what they were doing, and then apologize and then ultimately resign.
The reason feelings of cultural appropriation exist is because the children of immigrants feel like society treats them as foreigners because they’re not white, despite growing up all their lives in the US/UK etc. This leads to feeling like some dipshit is enjoying the food and fashion of your home culture while rejecting it’s people. Think about a Maga moron voting to kick out all the Mexicans while wearing a sombrero and eating tacos; it’s a hypocrisy of culture vs race.
That’s just racism and you’re not going to fix it by isolating the immigrants more by chastising people that enjoy their culture.
It makes zero sense if the goal is to fight racism. If anything you’d want there to be MORE immersion and exchange of cultures so the immigrants are seen as part of the new fabric instead of separate from it.
I’m telling you how people feel, I’m not writing a manual towards a post race society. When people feel ostracised because they look Mexican, they get salty about the same society who routinely rejected them and made them feel like outsiders gleefully housing down Mexican food and cosplaying at being Mexican.
I’ve never seen anyone that wasn’t lily white complain about cultural appropriation.
Maybe you need to interact with more minorities, bro?
I know a bunch but they are in (sub)cultures that either get popularized and have very specific dictates for membership. The clearest example of this are how Rastas feel about non-black people appropriating the imagery of their faith whoch is dedicated to bringing the African diaspora back to Africa.
Selection bias
As with most things, it’s a continuum. Some assimilation is good, a hairstyle, a clothing style, food, even customs. Sometimes certain people can go too far, and it gets more problematic. Think the jeweler in Snatch that isn’t Jewish but pretends to be. The episode of The Neighborhood with Nicole Sullivan. Rachael Dolezal.
Exactly, no Scottish person is getting bent out of shape if Im wearing tartan plaid shirts but dressing up and pretending to be Rastafarian would be inappropriate as Im white.
Isn’t race at least as much a social construct detached from any physical or biological reality as gender is? If so, why wouldn’t transrace people be valid for essentially the same reason that transgender people are?
You can go down the rest of the radqueer rabbit hole from there, since most of their positions are just taking positions related to mainstream LGBTQ identities and extending them to ones less accepted by the mainstream LGBQ community, like xenogenders and being trans-things-other-than-gender.
Incredibly generally: gender is the expression of gender identity and is a social construct while gender identity seems to be largely influenced by biological factors. Sex is the biological differentiation, and while the delineation between the sexes is culturally defined (if someone has xxy sex chromosomes, high testosterone, a penis, and a vagina it’s a cultural decision if we say they’re male, female or intersex), it’s a classification based much more on observable factors.
Race and ethnicity are more akin to sex than to gender identity, which would be better compared to cultural identity.
What distinguishes races is a social construct, but within a context racial classifications are relatively consistent. Racial markers that mean nothing in the US might be quite significant in Rawanda.
Similarly ethnicity, being a blend of race, language, culture and heritage is socially constructed but relatively objective within a context.
Culture on the other hand is, like gender identity, more to do with subjective feelings, opinions, and choices on the part of the individual, with the distinctions between them being cultural.
The woman in question mislead people about her race and ethnicity by misidentifying her relatives and heritage. Her cultural affiliation is harder to dispute, although being a chapter president for the NAACP shows at least a degree of acceptance by the African American culture in the area.
This gets to the question of what racial identity is and I would argue that someone who isn’t of recent African ancestry, who was not raised by people who have recent African ancestry, who then pretends to not just have recent African ancestry but then claims that their family aren’t the people who raised them (because they are white) is very clearly not stable.
“We got to keep them seperate but treat them equal!”
Hmm wonder where I heard that before.
In the end, progressives and racists shared the same end goal: Segregation