Frowned upon by whom?
Some faceless randos twisted up by their own preconceived notions of what is and is not “acceptable?”
I seriously doubt that it was written into any official policy, what with Title IX provisions and all; that’s opening up another can of worms needlessly.
What privilege? The privilege to be shot and not have the perpetrator serve jail time? The privilege of having a higher unemployment rate? Or a higher rate of incarceration? Or a higher rate of poverty and lower rates of homeownership and wealth? Worse health outcomes? Lower mortality rates? Lower numbers of people who are minorities being in places of political power or economic power?
Really? This is a straight up case of white appropriation there. She, like many other white families, have stories in their families of having a Native American ancestor, which turns out that she doesn’t have membership in any tribe… In fact, that vast majority of white people who claim to have an “Indian Princess” in their family background actually probably have an African American ancestor that is being covered up… very common in the south… “oh, great granny was kind of dark skinned cause of that Indian princess.”
But once again, what privilege are you talking about? Same list applies, but let’s include even higher mortality rates and lower rates of HS and college graduations, higher rates of drug use? You really think that scholarships and affirmative action hires even remotely make up for centuries of being rounded up, murdered, ethnically cleansed, having your children taken away from you, and being put on shitty parcels of unproductive land? Does the small amount of wealth coming in from a few casinos make up for a massive genocide of your people? Really?
Likely the same type of people who always pass judgement on what other people do, like whether they’re qualified to make tortillas. What I recall is activist in minority communities made enough of a stink about placing kids in white homes that the social service agencies were under pressure from their funders.
So had Warren been a legitimate documented 1/32 Native American, it would be OK for her to be considered a “diversity hire”? Someone else did not get that job. Who’s more a legit Native American, someone 1/2 who is raised in Chicago or someone 1/8 who is raised on the reservation? These are the questions that trouble me about “racial testing”.
Yep, ever since the 1972 condemnation of transracial adoption by the National Association of Black Social Workers. Tens of thousands of children were left in states’ care - to suffer rape and neglect in many cases, because that happens - because of that paper. Transracial adoption dropped precipitously, even in places where the NABSW’s report was not officially recognized as a guide to policy.
EDIT: Ugh. I just checked to see if the NABSW has ever recanted their counterfactual bigotry, that has caused so much unnecessary suffering for so many children of color… nope. Their final position is this: “We stand firmly, though, on conviction that a white home is not a suitable placement for Black children and contend it is totally unnecessary.”(sic) This despite every single empirical study of choices and outcomes showing repeatedly that transracial adoption is a social good.
Excellent question.
I already have ‘Affirmnative Action’, ‘Black History Month’, ‘BET’ and ‘Historically Black Colleges/Universities’ marked off on my bingo card; maybe we’ll get a new one this time around.
Well, that’s merely a function of the amount of bad faith brought to the table, and the degree to which folks will be sucked in. As usual, don’t feed the trollies.
But surely it’s apparent that this subject is far from cut and dried. That cultural appropriation is a thing that is bad seems like a reasonable proposition when you look at the edge of the spectrum, but it starts to look rather problematic when you consider the rather large grey area in the middle.
It seems difficult to come up with a straightforward algorithm that would legitimise any degree of righteous huff or expectation that this stuff should be obvious.
If you post it, they will come.
From the Wikipedia link you yourself posted, it states the Black Indians who march in Mardi Gras parades have a history dating back to the late 1700’s, when Indigenous people were freely intermingled with slaves and the descendants of slaves. Being a person of color, it’s not my place to deign to tell any Native or Indigenous person how they should feel about the incorporation of their heritage into such displays, but I do think that’s not at all the same as a major league baseball team making money off a historically stereotypical and culturally offensive image.
Like my Gram always said, two wrongs don’t make anything ‘right’. You can’t solve a problem just by pointing out other problems.
It’s “deep-seated”, at least in the prestige dialects of English.
Needless nit-picking which has nothing to do with the actual topic aside… I’ve seen it written both ways, and I always get confused which one is actually correct.
I’m human and imperfect; who knew?
I kind of like “deep seeded.” It implies something difficult to uproot.
And systemic racism and personal bias are certainly that…
[quote=“Melz2, post:47, topic:114838”]
From the Wikipedia link you yourself posted, it states the Black Indians who march in Mardi Gras parades have a history dating back to the late 1700’s, when Indigenous people were freely intermingled with slaves and the descendants of slaves.[/quote]
Yeah, and as I said, the origin of that tradition seems questionable regarding its degree of respect…
During the late 1740s and 1750s, many African slaves fled to the bayous of Louisiana where they encountered Native Americans. Years later, after the Civil War, hundreds of freed slaves joined the U.S. Ninth Cavalry Regiment, also known as Buffalo Soldiers.[2] The Buffalo Soldiers fought, killed, forced and aided the mass removal and relocation of the Plains Indians on the Western Frontier. After returning to New Orleans, many ex-soldiers joined popular Wild West Shows, most notably Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.[2] The show wintered in New Orleans from 1884 to 1885 and was hailed by the Daily Picayune as “the people’s choice”. There was at least one black cowboy on the show, and numerous black cowhands.[4]
On Mardi Gras in 1885, fifty to sixty Plains Indians marched in native dress on the streets of New Orleans. Later that year, the first Mardi Gras Indian gang was formed; the tribe was named “The Creole Wild West” and was most likely composed of members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show,[2] though the “Indian gangs” might predate their appearance in the parades.
Like my Gram always said, two wrongs don’t make anything ‘right’. You can’t solve a problem just by pointing out other problems.
It feels tiresome to have to point this out, but there’s nothing in the OP saying I’m equating the Cleveland Indians with Mardi Gras Indians - the intent is to illustrate a problematic grey area.
Either this stuff is simple, and it’s cool to crack the shits with transgressors, or it’s difficult and folks who are sure they know the score are going to have to explain it for the rest of us.
Hokkaido:
Again, your ‘grey area’ isn’t comparable.
And it’s not a simple ‘either/or’ equation; race as a social construct is far more complex than that. There’s nothing simple about any of this.
No one ‘knows the score,’ because just like the so-called “race card,” this isn’t a fucking game.
No kind of appropriation is ‘okay’ in my mind, but it isn’t up to me to determine what qualifies as appropriation when it comes to someone else’s culture.
In regards to my own;
I think people who attempt to wear dreads but have no natural coil to their hair usually only end up looking foolish and unkempt.
I think most spray tans look god awful and collagen injections make the women who get them look grotesque, not sexy.
I think Quentin Tarantino is an overrated hack who revels in using the word nïgger to try and ‘shock’ his audiences, but he’d best never say that ish in my neighborhood within earshot of the locals.
As a Black woman, I often get tired of hearing people who have never known real oppression complaining about superficial bullshit, because now their egos are wounded.
Eminem gets a pass, but Justin Timberlake doesn’t.
And that’s all just according to me, personally; that stance has no bearing on how other Black people may feel.
But I tell ya what; once one oppressed group has made it clear that they feel something is indeed appropriation, if the people doing it refuse to stop because of ‘free speech’ or tradition or whatever, as in the case of the Cleveland Indians until recently… then the latter are just assholes.
Anything that produces smiles like that is OK with me!
An excerpt from an excellent conversation on Cultural appropriation from the Atlantic. I’ve included the passages that apply most to this topic because of the length of the piece.
"Conor Friedersdorf: What I am averse to are claims that merely having one’s culture adopted is inherently objectionable, especially when there is no underlying animus, or diss, or dehumanization. It isn’t that I dismiss any umbrage taken by those who say they are angry about cultural appropriation. It’s just that nearly every time I concur that something wrongheaded happened, I perceive that the culprit is a distinct transgression.
If I’m right––I trust you’ll push back if you think I’ve got anything wrong––using “cultural appropriation” as shorthand for all these controversies produces two pernicious trends.
Some people correctly perceive something like a frat party full of blackface as wrongheaded, file it under “cultural appropriation,” and adopt the erroneous heuristic that any appropriation of a culture is wrongheaded. When the chef who staffs the dining hall at their college serves sushi, they see injustice where there is none.
Conversely, other folks see a protest over sushi, perceive that it is absurd, see it filed under cultural appropriation, and adopt the bad heuristic that any grievance lodged under that heading is bullshit. Later, when their Facebook stream unearths a story about blackface headlined, “These Frat Boys Are Guilty of Cultural Appropriation,” they erroneously conclude that nothing wrongheaded occurred. Perhaps they even ignorantly add a dismissive comment, exacerbating the canard that racial animus or dehumanization is a nonissue.
I think both errors impose costs worth avoiding.
And while I am not ready to say that nothing objectionable is ever accurately described as “cultural appropriation,” I suspect that, on the whole, abandoning that shorthand would enhance clarity, lead to better critiques, and minimize category errors.
Now, there are writers and digital journalism outlets that seek out the least persuasive complaints about cultural appropriation, mock them with animus, proceed as if they’ve proved that no complaint so characterized is ever legitimate, and thereby portray minority communities with legitimate grievances as malign cry-bullies or race-baiters. It’s a cynical, ugly, and profitable model. Despite the distinctions I’ve drawn––and again, I trust you’ll parse them and push back or add nuance or take exception wherever you think I’ve gone wrong––I too grow frustrated by the iterations of that model that I see on various right-leaning social media feeds.
Jonathan Blanks: In your last email, you said that my blackface example wasn’t appropriation, but I think there are larger issues involved and, from that broader vantage point, I think both your sushi counter protests and my offensive costumes intersect.
I understand a frustration with the language in these debates and conversations. I’m not a linguist, but it seems to me that terms like “cultural appropriation,” “white privilege,” “microaggressions,” and many others have been attempts to improve upon the language that we use to discuss the manifestations of cultural conflict on both collective and individual levels. For years, the mainstream recognized “racism,” a concept seemingly basic and straightforward. But racism is, in fact, an over-broad term that can describe a clutched purse on an elevator, a lynching, segregation, obstacles to employment, and countless other examples in between.
The more nuanced terms, associated with “Social Justice Warriors”—“SJW” having become a pejorative among many on the right—are tools to specify wrongs or perceived wrongs, but those terms also frequently turn-off “anti-SJW” types that you and I find often in our social media and professional circles. The result is both SJWs and anti-SJWs talking past one another before they retreat to their respective echo chambers to kvetch about their opposites until the next controversy gets picked up in the media. The words they use may change, but the underlying conflicts endure.
The terms are less important to me than what they attempt to describe. At bottom, stripped of particular circumstances, what these arguments tend to come down to is a given grievance on a semi-collective level (cultural, ethnic, racial, or other minority) and whether that grievance is justified, right? The key to the argument, then, is determining how legitimate the complaints are and how might they be reflective of broader problems in the dominant society––and what, if anything, to do with or about that reflection. A lot of that has to do with the competence and the authenticity of the person who is alleged to be intruding upon another’s traditional cultural space.
A sushi bar by itself isn’t worth protesting, but serving fried chicken and watermelon to celebrate MLK Day is probably worth raising a voice of dissent. Many people look at the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo mascot and see a racist caricature, which I assume you would not consider appropriative, but is that so different from the obnoxious “Tomahawk Chop” at Atlanta Braves games that is an imitation of a Native American war chant? And it seems like once every few months a white person is put “in yellow face” in a photo shoot or a major motion picture, effectively erasing Asians from popular expressions of their art and cultures. Most of the people who perpetrate or participate in these spectacles presumably hold no animus toward the cultures and traditions they use in their business, art, or sport, yet I think the people who feel affronted by these decisions have good reason to speak out against them. Whether or not these are considered appropriations, they are demeaning expressions of other cultures or ethnicities that are fair targets of criticism.
In the broadest sense, these conflicts represent the “marketplace of ideas” that free speech advocates, especially those friendly to free markets, use to support their cause. The Internet is the most democratizing force introduced in my lifetime, giving a voice to hundreds of millions of Americans, and billions of others around the globe, making that marketplace almost unfathomably vast. No one said that marketplace was going to be pretty, organized, or done in accordance to Robert’s Rules of Order. Yet, when these conflicts come up, members of the dominant culture tend to blame the language and divisiveness on the critics, rather than engage with the criticisms as they come. (e.g., “Black Lives Matter” vs. “All Lives Matter.”)
Conor Friedersdorf: The counsel to value rather than lament these conflicts is wise. What’s more, you’re absolutely right that “demeaning expressions of other cultures or ethnicities” are fair targets of criticism; and that terms like “white privilege,” “microaggressions,” and “cultural appropriation” began as attempts to better describe real inequities. Indeed, the earliest incarnations and smartest invocations of them often strike me as straightforwardly valuable. For example, if designing a college curriculum, I would enthusiastically include Peggy McIntosh’s insightful 1989 essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” as well as Jamelle Bouie’s widely and justly praised blog post “What Does It Mean to Be Privileged.”
Alas, the smartest, most precise invocations of a term don’t determine its overall effect. And I worry that, on balance, importing obscure academic concepts into mass conversations about identity make them much less accessible and more alienating to the vast majority of America. Even at selective colleges, where social justice jargon is taught in the curriculum and used in residential life, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to students who use the same term… but assume very different meanings. If the choice were really between, e.g., “that costume is racist” and “that costume is cultural appropriation,” I would agree with you that the latter conveys some additional information. But isn’t “that costume draws on pernicious stereotypes” better still?
I agree that getting to the bottom of things is what’s most important. And you’re right to see a risk of pedantry that puts unreasonable burdens on those protesting the status quo.
Even your example is apt.
Anyone who doesn’t see that the Black Lives Matter movement is saying, “black lives matter, too,” is either playing dumb or so uncharitable it verges on animus. At the same time, to treat anti-racism and other efforts to oppose bigotry or injustice as truly important is to strive for precision in thought and language. To tweak your words, the terms are important to me insofar as they obscure or clarify the matter at hand.
Jonathan Blanks: While I think that we do agree at the end of the day on the responsibility to address grievances as they come, there is probably a significant amount of distance between where each of us would draw the line between reasonable and unreasonable complaints. Going further, though, I think we have a fundamental disagreement about the responsibility of commentators and activists to cater to the feelings of the people who offend them. You wrote, “I worry that, on balance, importing obscure academic concepts into mass media conversations about identity make them much less accessible and more alienating to the vast majority of America.” This statement assumes a lot that I don’t think is necessarily true. In addition, and somewhat related, the statement has distinct echoes of anti-backlash messages that have little resonance with activists and more militant commentators.
First, your statement assumes at least two questionable premises:
That the purpose of a complaint is persuasion and
That the target of that persuasion is the (presumably somewhat hostile or otherwise unconvinced) white majority. Particularly when dealing with issues of personal, ethnic, or cultural offense that do not rise to the level of legal or other governmental intervention, the complaint may just be a sincere acknowledgment of a cultural trespass.
Like, if you step on my foot on the subway, I don’t need to bring the police into the situation or convince everyone in the subway car that you wronged me. A simple “my bad” will probably suffice. If you accidentally swing your backpack and hit my elderly grandmother in the face, an apology somewhat more than a perfunctory mea culpa is probably in order. If you get robbed by a black guy and yell “fucking nigger!” as he jumps off the car with your wallet, then you probably need to make a more public apology, even in spite of your own legitimate grievance. Acknowledgment is the key, and the appropriate response depends on the underlying offense.
To the backlash point, it is a perspective that is hard to take seriously from a minority point of view, particularly for black Americans, because it’s been around as long as black people have complained about maltreatment on this continent. Tempering complaints, pacifying language, or modifying attitudes in order to better sate the worries, fears, or general feelings of the white majority is a cousin of “be patient and it will get better.”
If activists just waited it out, nothing would change. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Thus, the anti-backlash argument is unlikely to go very far with anyone not already in the business of soft persuasion.
Like any group working toward a goal, different people play different roles. While I can’t say “never,” I’m not usually out in the streets, chanting and holding signs in protest. My work and commentary tend to be more along what you’re asking for: less aggressive, bordering on the dispassionate, policy-focused arguments. That’s my role.
But there’s also a role for the activists, who galvanize people to build support and coalitions within their communities, and many of them don’t care what the “vast majority of America” thinks. It’s neither their job nor their desire. They understand that politics is not about unanimity and that disruption without consensus can still bring social change. Cultural change is messy, and there is not much we can do about that. But the next time someone complains about appropriation or some other perceived slight, perhaps the best response is just, “Oh, I didn’t mean to offend. I’m sorry.”
This is actually untrue – I think this may have come up on this very BBS a while back. Lots of evidence of Europeans having dreadlocks throughout history. Nice ones, at that.
I guess I’d counter that with, if that’s true, why should any oppressors ever give a fuck about the oppressed? Note, I believe in the power of empathy, and as such, do believe that individual members of traditionally oppressive groups can be part of a dialogue with members of the oppressed group, to help determine a less/non-oppressive path forward. But I guess I’m a utopian, heh.
