Either historically oppressed groups are still experiencing oppression or they are not.
They are, so the answer is yes, unless you’re choosing pedantry over topical discussion.
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So, being unhappy and complaining about clueless, privileged white stoners who think they understand what it’s like to be a person of color under various forms of apartheid and wearing dreads is exactly the same as apartheid.
Are you even thinking about what you’re saying? No one is shooting their children for looking threatening. No one is starving them to death in prison. No one is giving them harsher prison sentences. No one is treating their precious white 10 year olds like 20 year olds. No one is experimenting on them for god…
No one has taken away their privilege. Clueless rich girls can wear Indian headdresses, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get to be shielded from criticism when they make a mockery of the cultural heritage of a people their ancestors ACTIVELY TRIED TO EXTERMINATE. Calling someone out for being a clueless fuckwit isn’t the same thing as oppressing them.
Black Americans STILL SUFFER FROM OPPRESSION. RIGHT NOW. TODAY.
You think I’m not fucking aware that there are god damn mass grave of rohinga? You think that means we should stand for black kids getting shot?
Kind of. The first civil rights laws were passed during reconstruction. After the end of reconstruction, they were meaningless, because the federal government didn’t enforce them. The supreme court eventually backed Jim crow as legal as long as it was equitable (Plessy). It was a rehash of slavery under another name. Much as the current drug laws are a tool of white supremacy (because it’s not like black folks are doing more drugs than white people, but they are MAGICALLY SOMEHOW more often in jail and used as slave labor essentially).
But if you really think that being upset about things like that are just as bad as actual racism, than I don’t know what else to say.
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Within 10 years of arriving in New York from a really horrific situation (a famine, an attempted genocide many would say), they ran Tammany hall. But sure, running one of the most powerful political forces of the north east is certainly oppressed.
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That’s an odd comparison. Choosing to drink from the cleaner, better maintained water fountain isn’t necessarily making a statement about oneself – most times it’s just about getting a refreshing drink. Choosing to wear dreadlocks is almost always making a statement about oneself, one that’s fraught with cultural significance.
Only ignorant and insecure fools criticise another human being who wants a drink of clean water from a fountain that won’t leak on his shoes. But there are plenty of non-fools who are justified in calling a blonde white dude who wears dreads a (for example) callow cosplayer who’s found a sophomoric way to give his pot use a sheen of respectability.*
[* a happy externality of weed legalisation might be fewer white guys in dreads]
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And also, there aren’t laws being passed regulating hairstyles, backed up by threats of terrorist violence. No white wanna be rasta has been lynched for terrible hair choices.
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It’s a disingenuous, bullshit comparison.
Human beings need access to clean, uncontaminated water in order to live.
No one ‘needs’ an fucking hairstyle in order to survive.
The repeated attempts to keep marginalizing this entire discussion down to mere aesthetic choices in hair or clothing is mendacious as hell.
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The discussion topic is cultural appropriation. Many of the visible signs of it seem to be fashion or diet choices. Nobody is going to argue that sanitary water and waste handling practices should only be allowed for people of the cultures that developed those things. Or written language, or metallurgy. Or any of the other things we now consider basic necessities.
A big part of why the issue is controversial is that much of the rage about this is over things that should be considered trivial. Like hair styles. Or recipes. And many of those most enraged seem to lack an understanding of the history of the disputed practice. But we live in a global society. Everyone is influenced by everyone else. Trying to enforce hierarchies of who is allowed to do what based on some sort of oppression index is bound to fail.
I think we should take a look at what motivates those who are most vocal and emotional about what they feel is cultural appropriation. When an American born person of Taiwanese heritage angrily lectures Japanese natives on who should be allowed to wear or touch a kimono, it becomes hard to believe that they are doing it out of deep concern for Japanese culture. A more likely explanation is that they are people who have unrelated personal issues, but express them by finding reasons to criticize others. And those sorts of people distract from those who might be expressing legitimate concerns.
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What forms of enforcement have been levied against people who choose to appropriate other cultures’ hairstyles or fashion statements?
A black person drinking out of a “whites only” drinking fountain during the 1950s could be charged with criminal misconduct and would be putting themselves and their families at very real risk of violent vigilante justice. A white person wearing dreadlocks in 2018 might evoke an eyeroll or a sneer, but it’s unlikely they’d face anything harsher than that.
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" If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."
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I don’t think the water fountain thing is an example of appropriation. So the two things cannot be readily compared.
Also, it is hard to write laws to punish appropriation, because it is very hard to define with specificity. Or to prove ill intention. Or harm.
I agree, it was @Urbanacus’ comparison.
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Some light relief:
http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/entertaining/mexican-restaurant-panda-mural
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It was an example of applied racism, not appropriation. I regret it, because it triggers the loaded and emotional topic of African American history unrelated to appropriation. Actually, I’d like to see this discussion tried excluding the North American context. Too much of this has used too narrow an example set. The kimono comment is a good example of how complex this is once you get away from the easy moral simplicity of American race relations.
I was just reading a interview with David Byrne in Rolling Stone in which he expresses ambivalence about his use of “found” recordings of Middle Eastern voices in one of my all-time favorite albums “my life in the bush of ghosts”. File under “great artists steal”?
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I understand, and thank you for the explanation.
I know this is a North American example, but tobacco always comes to mind for me. I may be wrong, but I always thought it was used for a spiritual or political purpose in pre-contact America. But people all over the world use it casually now.
I used to be a super fan of James Burke. His series “Connections” showed how ideas and concepts could be bounced all over the world, and even through history, to end up inspiring some great revelation somewhere.
Has anyone heard Byrne’s new material? I have a chance to score some seats.
I had not heard of those laws. But they were passed in what was then Spain, in 1786. Part of a tradition of laws designed to mark low status people when in the general population, This man is wearing a pilleus cornutus-
Jewish men in parts of Europe were required to wear them when outside of Jewish areas to conform with the 1215 Lateran council laws.
In the Ottoman period, Christians had to wear Black hats, and Jews had to wear red ones.
There is a long history of laws designed to either identify the different classes, or to suppress national identity. Kilts were prohibited in Scotland in 1746. And all manner of indigenous people have been required to conform to modern dress and hairstyles in order to “civilize” them. As far as I can tell, the majority of these laws were either openly defied, or backfired spectacularly.
But your argument here seems to be that “First you want to suppress and ban my hairstyle, then you want to copy it, and that offends me”, But the White college kid wearing dreadlocks cannot be reasonably blamed for the actions of an 18th century Spanish governor. Besides which, the Tignan Laws failed in their intent, and did not even manage to successfully oppress the women who were their contemporary targets.
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I read it more as “first white people spend centuries using laws and media narratives to turn black hairstyles into a powerful symbol of my “otherness” and then some ignorant white people use one of those hairstyles as a frivolous and empty fashion statment, and that offends me.” Which seems to me to be a good example of the sort of thoughtless and verging-on-minstrelry appropriation that minorities rightfully complain about.
In contrast to the white bro with dreads (the first of whom earned himself a spot in the Museum of Human Misery on “The Good Place”) we have this:
David Byrne is borrowing/stealing/remixing these voices to add to and enhance his own original art, and is doing so thoughtfully and openly and with some trepidation, likely taking the time to understand what those voices are saying. This would not be appropriation in the negative sense even if Middle Eastern voices were used to “other” American minorities to the degree that black hairstyles were.
George Harrison’s more direct use of Indian motifs is slightly more cringeworthy, but his art still incorporates original elements (e.g. English lyrics) and is clearly supported by thoughtful statements about bringing elements of Indian culture into Western culture and vice-versa.
It all comes down to respect and awareness and empathy, as it often does in these discussions. Racists, whether they’re virulent or casual or just clueless or privilege-blind, all tend to lack those qualities when dealing with people who are superficially different.
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Why do you get to be the arbiter of trivialities?
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Oh… I see. Oppressed people are the real oppressors… /s
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I disagree that they are unrelated, actually. Because part of the structure of Jim Crow allowed for white business owners in the entertainment industry to profit off the work of black writers and performers. Law forbidding intermixing were also laws that allowed for the confiscation of black wealth for decades. These are not disconnected phenomenon, they are entirely intermeshed.
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