But I should clarify, I meant “members of a group deemed to be oppressive by another group” – including folks who may not actually be oppressors in terms of their day-to-day lives. Are whites not allowed to be involved in dialogues about what constitutes racism? Are men not allowed to be involved in dialogues about what constitutes misogyny?
I think it’s healthy and productive for such conversations to involve members of many groups, including those seen as historically “oppressive” and “oppressed.” I can’t imagine that much progress tends to happen, otherwise.
1965 isn’t “early”, although yes, it sounds like Tharpe needed her recognition. When people talk about early rock and roll they are talking about people like Buddy Holly in the 1950s (who of course had his own Black antecedents)
Complaints, yes. Actually preventing said appropriation from happening? No. If people really want to steal other cultures’ ideas they’re largely free to do so. Shoot, that Gods of Egypt movie came out in 2016 and it cast a Scot, a Dane and a couple of White Australians as the principal characters.
That’s not what that whole thing was about - it was about taking a particular recipe for a particular food from particular people and profiting off that.
Wasn’t it about a scholarship? But are you saying that Native Americans are inherently less qualified, and that’s why they don’t get hired? Cause there are plenty of unqualified white dudes getting jobs. Affirmative action was never about “taking” jobs from more competent white men and giving them to unqualified people of color or women of any color - it’s about acknowledging that fully qualified individuals who are people of color or women of any color have routinely been passed over for jobs, scholarships, raises, or promotions BECAUSE OF WHO THEY WERE.
What makes you think you’re qualified to answer that question? There are often simple definitions, at least for Native People - are they on the roles of the tribe. Why do you get to decide who claims that heritage? Is it any of your business?
For what it’s worth Elizabeth Warren never used her mistaken claim of Native American ancestry either to attain a minority scholarship or otherwise advance her career in any tangible way.
There’s an important disntinction between “being involved in dialogues”, as you say, and “deciding” as the graphic in @Melz2’s post. The two sentiments are not opposites.
Because privileged people don’t have first- hand experience or knowledge of the historically oppressed’s grievences and desires and they are fallible humans who are ultimately self- interested, there isn’t a whole lot that they can genuinely offer other than support and suggestions in a dialogue. It is really common for people of privilege to hijack conversations about oppression and recenter the dialogue on their needs and experiences, even in people with good intentions.
That doesn’t mean that they aren’t allowed to explore and learn about oppression, I think we agree that that is a good thing as long as they are in earnest and interested in what the oppressed have to say.
The graphic specifically says that traditional “oppressors” should not be allowed to dictate what constitutes oppression.That shouldn’t be a controversial statement. Because a major function of privilege is not seeing or feeling the oppression, allowing their input is upholding the status quo.
Fair enough, but that’s what lots of people believe happened including people here. And they are using that to argue against affirmative actions. That’s not my argument and never has been.
To my knowledge, they don’t do it at all, at least not currently. (I have no idea if they had any such restrictions when they were originally established, but I tend to doubt it.)
When I attended my alma mater, there was a sprinkling of White students; and I don’t know about other states, but in Ohio, non-minorities who attend HBCU’s get minority status and qualify for financial aid as such.
That’s the real rub whenever someone brings the fallacious “but Black folks discriminate too!” argument:
Each institution I mentioned above only exists because because of the historical disenfranchisement of Black people.
Black folks weren’t allowed to attend White colleges in the past, so they built their own - but they don’t deny admittance to White students.
Black people had hardly any tv shows of their own or any representation in the media - so BET, Jet, and EBONY were born.
The presence of Blacks in American history has largely been minimalized or glossed over, so Black History Month was established.
And Black folks and other ‘minorities’ have been financially disenfranchised since the beginning, so Affirmative Action was briefly a thing. (Again, I don’t know about other states, but Cali no longer has it.)
These kinds of discussions become frustrating to the point of aggravation, because the perpetual redundancy and the fallacious logic that seems to always end up being employed - it’s beyond tedious.
That was my point with the infamous ‘eat the rich’ quote;
Oppress others at your own peril - they may not always be ‘on the bottom’ of the pile, and you may not always be ‘at the top’… and those who have been wronged tend to have long memories.
I generally agree, although I think it’s entirely possible for people of priveleged classes to understand quite well that other classes are oppressed by their lack of such privilege. It is possible to be white, and not an idiot. Although maybe that’s my 8% Middle Eastern (according to 23andMe, it was a surprise) making me less stupid?
Exactly! That’s the whole point! HBCUs were developed because the vast majority of African Americans were entirely EXCLUDED from higher education at all. Someone like DuBois was very unusual, in that he managed to get a PhD from Harvard (the first black man to do so, of course), after attending Fisk (and not having his credits accepted at Harvard). He was easily the most brilliant sociologist and historian of his day, but he had to struggle for every single scrap of what he earned. No one handed him shit and that’s why he died not in the country of his birth, but in Ghana, much more radical then when he was a young man.
I think you’re still misunderstanding me here. A person of privilege can have a textbook understanding but not intimate experience.
If your SO is upset with you because of something that you did that you see as harmless, it takes listening to them and taking their life experience into account to understand why they are upset.
When you learn that they saw their cousin badly burned by a campfire as children, your SO’s unexpected reaction to your romantic campfire makes a whole lot more sense.
Not knowing other people’s experiences doesn’t make anyone an idiot, unless they refuse to hear the experiences.
I saw this and it includes a very good summary of the topic and its evolution as related to Disney films.
If you want just how cultural appropriation is complicated, then start here (about halfway):
I don’t necessarily agree with everything, but the politicizing of cultural appropriation is glanced on here and talking about how to roughly gauge were cultural appropriation gets a pass versus where it doesn’t.
But even just saying that rock was invented by Black people and stolen by Whites is inaccurate and simplistic.
Rock would not have happened without African American spiritual music. Nor would it have happened without Appalachian bluegrass. Or without Instruments from southern Europe that themselves largely have Chinese origins. Rock is a thing that happened because of a mix of global influences present at just the right place and time. None of the influencing groups would have been likely to develop it without first being influenced by all of the others.
