Quite the hippie-puncher, this guy.
I wonder how this anti-SJW warrior feels about white campus Greeks throwing parties that call for stereotypical Mexican garb or blackface?
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Disclaimer: power exists; injustice exists; racism exists.
The framework of “cultural appropriation” seems to me to demand a belief in the Pure Authentic Self and the Pure Authentic Other. If this commitment is true, it must also be that (a) there can be no Authentic We that is any kind of impure amalgam of Self and Other, and (b) the Authentic Self can only encounter the Authentic Other through narrow gate-keeping.
Without intending any glossing over of actual injustices, power imballances, or racisms, “cultural appropriation” seems to me to be a conceptual framework for perpetuating stereotypes and the impermeability of cultural categories. The conceptual framework of “cultural appropriation” seems itself to embody racism.
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Henceforth, white people shall only eat tuna casserole and PopTarts as penance for centuries of oppression.
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Were these women pretending to be Mexican? And adopting the worst stereotypical, offensive tropes of that ethnicity? Or were they just selling food that they made?
Have you ever made a taco?
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Would you please explain how learning to make proper tortillas is equivalent to using someone’s skin/culture as a costume? Asking for a friend who may have made delicious huevos rancheros for breakfast
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o_0
I think disagreeing that copying recipes is cultural appropriation doesn’t make him an “anti-SJW warrior”. Nor do I think white people making FOOD is anywhere near the same thing as black face or dressing up in stereotypical Mexican garb.
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I don’t think it’s copying with the Japanese resto owners, I think it’s just being shrewd and them realizing they are “Japanesey” enough that they can make a lot of money. (And they do!) I imagine it’s similar elsewhere in the US where there’s a lot more Koreans than Japanese.
I don’t think it’s equivalent. But I do think it’s interesting that this puncher of “SJWs” didn’t even mention using someone’s skin/culture as a costume. Mentioning that, in order to distinguish apparently silly complaints about cultural appropriation from apparently valid ones, would have strengthened his argument in my eyes.
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Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?
So, you are surprised and judge him for not including something absolutely not relevant to the case in question. Great.
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Did you read the whole article?
To suggest – as SJWs always do – that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can’t possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they’re people of color, and that we’re always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency.
I agree with that sentence, except for the part in dashes.
Questions I’d like to ask this Mexican? Who exactly, are these “SJWs”? And what, again, is this thing that they “always” do? And is there anything they do that you actually approve of? I think this ad hominem begs for clarification.
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“Author” is perhaps more appropriate in the context of complaining about writing.
No, I described a lack of something, the inclusion of which would have made his argument itself more convincing to me:
Mentioning that, in order to distinguish apparently silly complaints about cultural appropriation from apparently valid ones, would have strengthened his argument in my eyes.
And that something (cultural appropriation via “brownface”) does strike me as relevant, because it’s also something that the “SJWs” he dismisses complain about.
Sure, except that this author’s syndicated column is entitled Ask a Mexican.
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“cultural appropriation”
I saw a comment the other day about “white people stealing black culture” in reference to music.
And my two thoughts were:
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Imagine a history of the 20th century where whites completely ignored black music. Not only would black musicians have made less money, whites would be accused of racism for ignoring this great music.
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The heart wants what the heart wants. You can’t ask white people to appreciate black music, but then bar them from playing it. It was unfair that Paul Whiteman was called “The King Of Jazz”, that’s obvious cultural appropriation, but I can’t see how he damaged black culture with his music. In culture and the arts there is room for everybody.
Whatever happened to the “melting pot of America” I was taught about? We either have to accept some stuff that might be called “cultural appropriation” or we start enforcing “cultural segregation.”
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No, you are taking him to task for failing to mention a completly different thing that literally has NO bearing at all to the question “Is cultural appropiation to cook dishes from some other culture” that he is answering. You may very well be not happy with him using SJW pejoratively, but thats not what you are making, you are complaining he doesnt meet your requirement to be convinced because he doesnt go in the tangent you invented on the spot to criticize him.
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Fair point on pointing out his language. I agree it is unwarranted, though I guess it is hard to put into words those who have the opposite point of view as a group. I don’t think there is a static definition for what a SJW is. There is sort of a stereotype in ones head.
At the same time, my point still stands that while he may not agree with who he calls the “SJWs”, or whomever agrees with the counter to his argument, I don’t know why one would assume he would have strange views on black face etc. That sounds rather hyperbolic to me to assume such things. Often times one may not agree with another group on some issues, but agree with them on others.
I think that was a ruse of Euro-colonial culture supposing it was robust enough to assimilate all comers, so “melting” was just assimilation while celebrating a few superficial differences. India IMO is a better model of cultural coexistence.
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Again, I’m critiquing his argument, not him. And I’m doing so because in my experience, complaints about “SJWs” have always come from aggressive rightwingers, who use examples like complaints about white people running breakfast burrito pop-ups or white people listening to hip hop (and so on) to diss"the Left" (to use another term he derisively uses) in general. It seems to me that “SJW” is a largely rightwing trope, and to use it is to bring on its attendant associations and baggage.
And so, what I’ve been trying to say is that since he used “SJWs” as a pejorative label for those complaining about the breakfast burrito pop-up, if he had mentioned forms of cultural appropriation that ARE objectionable (like brown- and blackface), I would have found his derision for this “SJW” action against a breakfast burrito pop-up more convincing.
I think that depends on whose head you’re talking about.[quote=“Mister44, post:18, topic:101818”]
I don’t know why one would assume he would have strange views on black face etc. That sounds rather hyperbolic to me to assume such things.
[/quote]
I’m not assuming that. Did you notice my use of the word “wonder”?
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Not trying to carry someone else’s water, but I call bs. SJW is a loaded term with all that stuff you claim as tangential prefigured, whether the author intended so doesn’t matter. As @milliefink pointed out, the author should’ve addressed that if he only meant SJW on narrowly defined grounds.
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