Cultural (mis)appropriation

[wait_really]

@generic_name

You and I have a lot more in common than you realize.

I’ve felt that since the beginning of this back n’ forth, and to IMO this has been a productive/instructive conversation, so thanks!

[quote=“generic_name, post:161, topic:101818”]
If we could completely remove racism from America what would that mean? [/quote]

Well, IMO it’s the process of removing racism from our social institutions that takes us there- that is a long hard road. It starts with education, and individuals taking steps to acknowledge how privilege and bias affect us and the people around us. Elevate the voices of people of color, of the marginalized, and listen, even when it makes you uncomfortable. Keep listening. Support POC-run racial justice groups within your community. Support POC business in your community!

Those are the easy things we can do. It gets harder beyond that, because analysis of large-scale institutions might indeed conclude that many of those structures either need to be replaced or removed entirely- the justice system/legal framework is at the top of the list- as long as POC do not have equal access to justice in this country, the rest is pretty moot.

@generic_name

Would “white culture” still dominate simply by the numbers involved? Is there, or will there ever be one “American culture” or will it always be many cultures, always at odds, always fearful of being co-opted by another?

Maybe it’s a cop-out, but I don’t have any easy answers for these questions. I do think that if we honestly take on the work, as a whole, we can arrive to a place where the numbers don’t matter. That’s a big if though- but conversely, if we don’t do the work, we very well run the risk of being, as JFK said, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”

@generic_name

I think the original questions here were: how do we define cultural appropriation, and what should be done about it? I don’t really see any clear cut answers. What one person might think is offensive, another person (of any race) might find perfectly OK, and there is ample evidence of that throughout the comments here.

I think I’ve made it clear, in the U.S. as it stands now (and generally speaking the white western world) I don’t see how cultural appropriation can be made separate from white supremacy. The point being that power dynamics shape who the winners and losers are in the appropriation game- finding a path to equal empowerment is how I think we eliminate the feelings of distrust and animosity which arise when one group feels that their cultural production has been stolen. I would also caution against using individual examples as evidence of much, no group is monolithic in how they respond to these sorts of things.

@generic_name

Ahh, but it is. The long history of black oppression in the US isn’t going to be improved by treating Elvis as a symbol of evil; you aren’t going to make life for African-Americans more fair by being unfair to an innocent man (who in fact always gave credit to the roots of the music he sang.)

I think what we need to understand is that it’s not that the symbolism of Elvis is evil per se, but that it’s a symbol of what was and still is. As others have noted, we can’t change the past, of course, but we can learn from it with the goal of avoiding that sort of misappropriation in the future. Seeing what symbols like Elvis are in their totality is the only way we can learn. Avoiding painful aspects because they might be unfair to individuals of the past helps no one. To use a different symbol, recognizing that Thomas Jefferson was a slave-owning, slave-raping white supremacist does not deny the good that he actually put into this world. We can still believe in the idea that all humans are born equal! It is more like taking a full account of history, instead of the account that makes us feel better in the moment about our past as a nation.

@generic_name

Why does this hypothetical white kid get a pass, but not Elvis? (For the record I don’t even like Elvis’s music.)

Because the answers are not about prohibition! I don’t think that solving these issues comes down to what certain people can’t do- that is already how black americans are treated in popular culture. What I would hope is that any individual seeking out different forms of cultural expression would put themselves in a position to do right by that culture (and by do right, I do not mean any sort of purity test.)

FTR, I would’ve told Elvis the same thing. I love Elvis! (at least the pre-Vegas Elvis…) One of the things one has to accept as an artist is that, once you put your work out there, you no longer control how other people will interpret it. But if you enter into that space with a full knowledge of how appropriation works in our society, you are certainly better prepared to be an agent in bringing about a new understanding. To use another example, there is a massive controversy at the Whitney Biennale over an artist, Dana Schutz, and her usage of Emmet Till as subject matter. Honestly, I think that controversy is maybe a better starting point for a discussion about appropriation because it concerns an artifact with considerably more emotional heft than burritos.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/arts/design/emmett-till-whitney-biennial-schutz.html?mcubz=1&_r=0

@generic_name

I too find myself thinking about race all the time, I wish I didn’t have to, I wish more people did, unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to any deep social or philosophical debates. The nature of life means things are never going to be perfect, but that also means we can always improve.

I think it’s safe to say that we all wish we didn’t have to. But we do, if we ever want to move towards a future where we don’t. No more sweeping under the rug. Confront the people who don’t want to talk about it. Recognize that they don’t want to talk about it because it’s uncomfortable and disturbing. Don’t play it safe, and don’t give up. I truly believe that most people are inherently decent, and that decency will shine through when given encouragement and opportunity. The inability to achieve perfection has never meant that we shouldn’t work for it! I try to get a little better each day. I question my assumptions, I ask myself how and why I might be wrong. This thread has been great for me, personally, both because of valuable interactions with you all but also because just over the past few days I’ve read more, learned more, dug deeper. (as an aside, I’m all the more prepared to go and join with my fellow Portlanders this Sunday to let the Neo-Nazis know they will find no quarter here!)

[Max_Blancke]

Technological exchange and development was my academic specialty. So, whenever I hear about one of these conflicts, my natural inclination is to look for the actual origins of the technology or practice. But the problem with that is that I am trying to use reason and history to examine what is an emotional argument. But you cannot use logic to argue against a position that was arrived at purely through emotion.
It can bear repeating that this is not really about flour tortillas, which are made from an ingredient that no precolonial Mexican had ever seen. You have to start the discussion of the duality of Mexican culture, and just how Spanish a culture it is. And whether that even matters. When you start trying to put people into boxes marked “oppressor” or “oppressed”, you will always run into difficulties. And it is compounded when those classifications are made based on something that was done by or to someone that the person being judged never met, and was done without their knowledge or consent.
But as soon as you start trying to define objective rules for exactly what constitutes appropriation, the absurdity of the task quickly becomes apparent.

[gellfex]

@Max_Blancke

But as soon as you start trying to define objective rules for exactly what constitutes appropriation, the absurdity of the task quickly becomes apparent.

I approach these things from the position that institutionally prolonging race identification and inequalities in their treatment, in either direction, is the best way to prolong racism. If a racism free society is our goal, then creating new institutions that dole out privileges according to race like this “appropriation” business is not the way. The reason that, as you say " the absurdity of the task quickly becomes apparent." is that the nitty gritty is a racist rabbit hole. If Elvis had a black ancestor would the whole discussion about him have been moot? Are we really going to apply the “1 drop rule” to decide if someone is nonwhite enough to play someone else’s music?

[jannamark]

Ah, okay, so it’s the part where he makes sweeping generalizations regarding SJW. Not the part where he acknowledges that some part of practically everyone’s cuisine comes from someone else, because that’s what people do.

[generic_name]

@gellfex

You’re not going to get anywhere on this because the goalposts won’t stay still. Every example you raise will get a special case exception or objection.

In some cases that’s true, but these are complicated and emotional issues. I think a lot of the argument here is more about misunderstanding. If someone says “things are better now than in 1950” you’d be hard pressed to say it’s not true, but people will still get upset because there’s so much more to be done; they confuse “things are better now” as meaning “things are perfect” when that’s not the intent.

The history of American popular music is also just a mirror for the history of America. Times change. As Eugene Holley says in the article I linked above " it is firmly and correctly established in music education, and in society in general, that jazz is an African-American art form: blacks have gotten their due as the art form’s primary creators. No credible critic, musician, or music curriculum would state otherwise. At the same time, it is equally true that white musicians have made and continue to make great contributions to jazz. . . . If anything, jazz at the beginning of the 21st century is appropriately black, brown, and beige; with every global musical/cultural ingredient embellishing, extending, and enriching it. This is a good thing." Dwelling too much on what happened in 1950 is counterproductive when those aren’t the issues anymore, but ignoring it doesn’t help either, so where’s the balancing point?

Cultural appropriation is only a source of contention when there is an imbalance of power within the culture, but I’m not sure there will ever be a perfect balance unless there is a perfect homogeneous mix of people-- no minority and no majority, and how likely is that ever to happen?