as well, he took a respectful and appreciative approach to learning the instruments, modes, and history of the source material he brought to the uk and the world. his apprenticeship on sitar with ravi shankar coupled with bringing shankar to the west to perform make his use of south asian music less of an appropriation and more of an appreciation.
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Why indeed. Is it not unreasonable to think that a personās hairstyle, whether they live in New Spain in 1786 or modern-day San Francisco, should be a triviality? I did not say that things like that are necessarily trivial. But I personally believe that they should be. In other words, I donāt want anyone to be an arbiter of who is allowed to dress or wear their hair in whatever way they want, within normal rules of safety.( I am strongly opposed to people with long hair that is not put up or contained, if that person is working with machine tools.)
But, if we go on
How is that judged? Should anyone even try? Many of the judgements of appropriation are made about strangers, and based on stereotyping. At least in the sense that judgements about a personās heritage, background and intent are being made on the basis of appearance. Many people here have multicultural backgrounds, myself included.
I used to be a giant fan of reggae and dancehall music. I saw Bob Marley, Eek-A-Mouse, and many other great artists live in Jamaica and elsewhere. I once met and spoke with Peter Tosh. I could easily have adapted some elements of Rasta culture, to honor people who were heroes to me. It would have been done with respect, awareness, and empathy. But outwardly, I would probably have looked like any other White guy with dreadlocks, and been judged as such.
So my basic position is that I donāt want anyone to be an arbiter of such things.
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Ooh, I speak a āprestigeā dialect!
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In cases of appropriation or racism, usually by their absence. Itās really not so difficult to spot.
Perhaps so. I suspect part of the reason you didnāt adopt dreads was because you had enough respect, awareness and empathy to know it wasnāt cool unless you were making a serious commitment to Rastafarian culture and spirituality along with your love of the music.
You donāt want people to acknowledge the presence or absence of empathy, awareness, or respectfulness in others? Itās a way of life, I guess, but it makes it much more difficult to distinguish between a blonde dreadlocked sophomore from Shaker Heights and David Byrne when weāre discussing cultural approporiation.
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Whether or not it actually is trivial, why do you get to decide that for others. As others upthread pointed out, there have been times in the past when such ātrivialā thinks as hair have been employed to reinforce hierarchies. Hardly trivial stuff. Taking back oneās body from oppression, including manner of dress or hairstyles are hardly trivial in that case.
Itās easier to say that when the weight of that history isnāt weighing you down in the present. The reason why black hair is political is because white supremacy made it so. Embracing natural hairstyles which had at times banned and most certainly mocked and ridiculed, was part and parcel of black empowerment in the US. All of a sudden now, after centuries of mocking and banning hairstyles like afros or locks, white people embrace those hairstyles as empowering and then refuse to understand the political background of the embrace of natural hairstyles within the black community. Cornrows are cool and edgy when rich white girls do it, but itās touted as evidence of low morals when itās working class people of color.
But the major disconnect that you and @Urbanacus are having is that literally no one is using legal means or systemic violence to stop white girls from wearing cornrows or white dudes from playing the blues. No one. There is a long history of legal means and systemic violence to keep black people āin their placeā which continues today. The ability to ignore and dismiss that is an incredibly white privilege that you seem unable to acknowledge.
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And this is why Iād love to see American examples excluded, and see where this goes. When I said āit triggers the loaded and emotional topic of African American history unrelated to appropriation.ā I meant that there was a enormous amount of history that didnāt include appropriation, rather than your interpretation of my statement that none did.
Itās has been telling that thereās been little response to non North American examples like my speculation that according to these rules a Korean has more right to record Andean panpipes than a Japanese because of the latterās history of Oppression. Once you go down that rabbit thereās no place to stop. Is a Chinese restaurant making Caribbean/Latin food in addition (common here) guilty of appropriation because China is quite the Oppressor historically? What if they were Thai or Filipino? What about a Mandarin restaurant making Cantonese dishes?
Given that Iām an American (are you, I donāt know?) and a historian of the US in the world, thatās a tough sell, especially considering the globalization of American popular culture in general. And itās not like that is the only place where this is an ongoing discussion on culture. I do appreciate you wanting to take this to a larger discussion about global culture, however, but itās hard to ignore the US as part of the discussion. Add to that, the fact that other types of oppression were at play, and the story of this as global history gets more complicated.
I think for those more specific examples, itās the same thing - you have to look at the history of colonialism and imperialism to better understand it specifically. Iām speaking from the history I personally understand best. Perhaps if you want to understand the interplay of more specific cultural contexts, you need to look up specific activists from those places and see what they are saying about it.
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I was mostly referring to the boot.
The problem is with the US being the āelephant in the roomā, one cannot see or discuss the other relationships, and see if the notions of appropriation relative to oppression being discussed are consistent enough to bear scrutiny in other contexts. I am not a historian, but, as Dan Carlin describes himself, a āhistory fanā, and am familiar with enough world history to know that trying to codify appropriation to oppression is way too simple to deal with cultures with thousands of years of back and forth.
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The boot is on a foot. Whose foot is inside that boot matters.
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I canāt with this conversation, anymore; it will only piss me off and make me think even less of certain people than I already do.
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You also canāt ignore the elephant in the room, though, especially when how the mass media looks around the world is influenced by how American mass media developed, which is both a result of pressure from the US industry in exporting their films around the world, but also from local pressure for more local representation from film and the exploitation of local cultures for profit. The outsized role in hollywood in the development of a global film industry canāt just be ignored in seeking out other views on those relationships. The development of mass media globally isnāt tangental to cultural appropriation, itās a major part of it, because itās a capitalist story - the transformation of folk or popular culture into mass culture.
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As does whose face the boot is crushing, and the historic relationship between those two parties.
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That seems awful patronizing to local cultures around the globe, saying their histories and narratives are unimportant and not worthy of discussion compared to the US, and that all cultural relations need to be seen through the lens of US race relations.
Is it? To acknowledge that the US media industries and their modes of production are dominant globally? Is that something that isnāt the case? Are there Japanese or Thai or Korean films that outsell franchises like the MCU regularly? Has someone from, say, the Philippines surpassed Michael Jackson in global record sales? Do these industries not function in similar ways to Hollywood and the Western music industry, selling sound recordings for a profit? To acknowledge a fact isnāt patronizing, itās understanding history.
And I never said that race relations need to be understood only through the American lens. But you are wielding other cases as a means of deflecting from those very hard questions about the context we are actually in. Imperialism happened. Europeans sought to dominant the world for over a century and a half and ignoring that reality, even when it comes to asking questions about East Asian relations and cultural connections, doesnāt help in understanding how culture functions today. It just ignores the elephant in the room.
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I really donāt want to tell other people what they should take seriously or not, except in the case where their attitude might lead them to police the actions of others.
When there is a case of some school or institution trying to keep some Black girl from wearing her hair in a style that is natural to her, she has my complete support. I will march, or vote, or write letter to support her.
I get that @Urbanacus and I seem not to be connecting. Maybe because what those hairstyles mean to them is not necessarily what they mean to me. I agree that I am not weighed down by generations of past oppression, so these are just hairstyles to me. But one of my points is that although some people have decided that those hairstyles are artifacts of their particular culture, This view is not historically valid. Cornrows and other braiding styles are essentially universal. Central Asia is filled with people wearing cornrows.
Mummies in the Andes and in Egypt have cornrows. My ancestors fought the Romans wearing cornrows and dreadlocks, among other styles.
Most of us have one or two things which we take very seriously, and which we are passionate about. But my passion about a subject, and the deeper meaning I see in it does not necessarily mean that I get to police otherās participation in that activity. And this is about policing behavior. Not necessarily systemic oppression, but it can impact peopleās lives. When any of us decide to do that, we should be very sure that we are justified and right, and that our actions are reasonable considering the circumstances.
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Your academic focus on your field of media seems rather tunnel visioned, thereās many other forms of trade in this globalized world. It also studiously ignores previous and concurrent imperialist and other complex relationships in favor of an overly simple narrative that the European is the bad guy, cause of all modern misery, and everyone else is a victim. China was a victim of European imperialism in the 19th century and Japanese in the early 20th, but before and since has been imperialist in its own right. Things just arenāt that simple.
so, my question is when those sumptuary laws were abolished. And I canāt get a straight answer. I did find this interesting tidbit, which suggest they were on the books for some time.
New Orleansā LGBT community has a long and interesting relationship with Carnival. Throughout history, the holiday has been a time for upending traditions. In fact, until sumptuary laws were repealed, Fat Tuesday was the only day of the year in Louisiana when men were allowed to dress as women, and vice-versa. (Imagine LGBT culture without cross-dressing, even on Halloween. Drab, isnāt it?) It was also the only day of the year when gays and lesbians were allowed to socialize in groups, publicly or privately.
Or perhaps my choice of search terms was too broad, and many laws get grouped under the sumptuary heading.
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I donāt think it stands to reason that because braiding is not unique to Black American culture means that they arenāt historically valid.
Which is what youāre also doing by deciding that itās not a valid historical argument, though. Youāre looking to police peopleās ability to speak out about the historic connections between particular culture forms and systemic oppression, by noting how itās immediately invalid because there was an Egyptian mummy with cornrows (which, BTW, at least some Egyptians would have been subsaharan African people) as well as in the Andes. The meaning of those hairstyles from those cultures are largely lost to us, as they are far enough away that they donāt have a direct impact on our race relations today. Slavery and Jim Crow, as well as European and American imperialism, which includes cultural imperialism and appropriation DO have direct material impact on this discussion. Rome fell centuries ago, and though it certainly contributed to the remaking of Europe, the systemic stealing of black bodies into the new world for hard labor is more central to this discussion. Cultural patterns set down during slavery (across the continent) were critical to surviving that era for those who were enslaved and later relegated to second class citizenship. You couldnāt vote or be safe from violence, but you could wear your hair in a way that expressed your cultural connections to Africa and make music that sustained you and your community in your struggle for basic dignity and rights. So in that way, itās NOT just a cultural choiceā¦ itās a life-sustaining culture built to oppose structures trying to dehumanize you at every turn. Culture isnāt a nice to have aspect of life that has no meaning, itās how we understand ourselves and the world. It helps forge social connections that are critical for making life bearable.
Umā¦ okay. Gonna ignore that thinly veiled insult there.
I never said that. Iād appreciate it if youād stop simplifying what Iām saying. Iām saying that we canāt IGNORE it because thatās how the current world was made. We are still living with the consequences of European imperialism and of American and Soviet struggles during the Cold War. It has much more impact on our current state of globalization than does the rise and fall of the Egyptians or the Romans.
Iām well aware of that. Iām not stupid and I am perfectly aware that these are complex. But that doesnāt mean that we can ignore the impact of European and American attempts to create a culture hegemony under capitalism. Iām not so ignorant that Iām ignoring the fact that China itself has acted as a regional hegemon or the Japan also spent a good few decades brutally building an empire across that very same territory. But then again, Buddhism, a dominant religion in Asia, wasnāt Chinese in origin, but was likely regionalized as a result of Chinese hegemony over East Asia. But the spread of Buddhism and Chinaās adoption of it happened well before serious relationships to the west formed.
Another, more directly connected exampleā¦ European and the American intervention helped to create the means by which the Japanese were able to disrupt Chinese regional hegemony in East Asia. Prior to Perryās arrival, the Togugawa shogunate would have been happy to continue as it had been. Of course, there was already unrest, but American intervention drove it in a particular direction because of the conversation it set off between elites which led to the Boshin war and the modernization of Japan. In other words, you canāt talk about HOW Japan modernized (including the modernization of cultural traditions into elements of nationalism) UNLESS you talk about what Europeans were doing in Asia. That doesnāt mean that they were the only political actors or that Asians had no agency. It means that they didnāt make choices in a vacuum.
Again, Iāll say, the ability to ignore that history is a privilege that not everyone can access. Being able to ignore and cherry pick history when it suits isnāt available to all people at all times.
[ETA] But both of you keep studiously ignoring my questions/points about black culture in a specific context and instead asking me to focus on mummified corn rows, Irish pagan dreads, and the relationship between China and the rest of East Asia over thousands of yearsā¦ So thereās that. This entire thread began because @kimmo was curious about whether or not Black americans dressing up as Native Americans during mardi gras was a form of cultural appropriationā¦ Which is of course, an entirely American question. In that case, Iām not really sure that Iām the one ignoring the original topic.
For my part, Iād say that the relationship between oppressed people isnāt the same as the relationship between oppressed and oppressor. To answer his original question, whether or not āitās coolā as you so derisively put it, I donāt think it should be up to me to say. Iām not black, Native American or even from NOLA. But a quick google search brings up this:
And this:
Which actually has the voices of both Native Americans and members of these NOLA tribes.
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