Hunger Games star Amandla Stenberg explains the nuances of cultural appropriation

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Whether or not wearing nun/priest costumes or a father headdress is ok, I think it’s quite different from using elements of music from other cultures. The Chiefs fan is wearing a headdress that is clearly intended to portray an Indian chief. That’s taking a cultural symbol and erasing it of meaning just so you can have a costume stereotyping another group. He’s certainly not engaging with the culture. On the other hand, using and remixing cultural elements that you interact with is part of how cultural contact works. In some parts of Africa, corn rows and dances similar to twerking are common. They seem to have quite a different meaning in the US. Similarly, Africans often take elements of American (particularly black American) culture and make them their own. Some Americans take elements from other Americans who don’t look the same as them, then remix those elements, thereby making those elements broader and healthier.

White people’s rock and roll may have been inspired by black music, but they took it in directions it wouldn’t otherwise have gone. Where recording companies decide to promote a white group singing black people’s music over a black group that’s at least as good, because they want the music without the black people, this is a problem. It’s not necessarily the fault of the white group though, particularly if they’re honest about their inspirations. If handled properly, it just means that the music has a more mainstream audience, not that black artists are denied their own audience or artistic integrity.

I think this is a good point, but in some ways these are two separate issues. Do people who are not black appreciate and remix black culture? Yes, and that’s a healthy thing. Do some people not care about black lives? Yes, and that’s unacceptable. Are some people in both groups? Quite possibly, which shows their cognitive dissonance. This has nothing to do with the legitimacy of saying that a modern music style belongs to a specific group though.

To an extent, but not all artists are historians. They encounter sources of inspiration and make them their own. This is universal and has nothing to do with privilege, although some people are forced to know more about dominant cultures and some groups are looked down on, despite their work being appreciated in isolation.

Elements like rhyming structures or melody are particularly not the domain of one group; they seem to be much more a non-infinite series of possibilities. Here’s an old white guy using black rhyming structure before it was marked out as such.

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What if he’s making money from it?

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Does he prevent anybody else from using it or even making money from it? Does the making-money-from-it extends to hairdressers too?

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Cultural appropriation is in interesting topic, and once one becomes aware of its prevalence it’s hard not to see it everywhere - and possibly overreact to it, which many younger people do these days.

The thing is, of course, it’s not hard to not inappropriately appropriate. When people do so, it’s most often through simple ignorance - very rarely malice (though malice-via-racism, I suppose, but that’s from ignorance as well). Because of various factors in the US (in particular, how cultural groups remain largely segregated even in progressive areas) it’s very easy, and thus incredibly common, for your average person to just be totally ignorant on these issues - including people within the appropriated/exploited groups, who tell their white friends “oh yeah it’s fine I don’t care” without realizing the harm they’re perpetuating.

Then of course there are the Social Justice Warriors. I support their intent whole-heartedly, but because it’s most often angry, radicalized young people, they don’t always fully grasp the situation and/or they take things beyond what’s reasonable. You see this a lot on tumblr, where in some corners there is a strong anti-white-people sentiment and a desire to never have to associate with white people - fine, but this extends to a desire to deny white people from enjoying things from other cultural backgrounds - when these same people constantly argue that white culture sucks.

You can’t blame them, considering how awful and exploitative white people historically have been, and continue to be (including plenty of young white people). But that sort of thinking does make things worse, and is ironic.

This video has the right idea, and she makes great, very reasonable arguments that would be hard to oppose.

To my point that it’s not hard to not culturally appropriate - sometimes it feels uncertain. In those cases, you simply have to abstain until you’re really sure. Sometimes, people remain willfully ignorant because they desperately want to exploit something - IMHO this comes from good intentions (they really love whatever it is) but isn’t excusable. Madonna might fall into that category. I think Elvis and The Beatles et al. are a different category and I don’t put blame on them.

Here’s a slightly different example, something that got me really thinking a lot about this a while ago. I heard from a SJW friend that Aloha shirts (Hawaiian shirts) are cultural appropriation. I don’t wear them because it’s generally tacky to do so but that didn’t sound right so I did some digging, and found op-ed pieces from Pacific Islander college students arguing that position, and more broadly against Tiki culture (one of them was prompted by the student’s college hosting a luau party, which, yes, is bad).

Now… Tiki culture is unambiguously and disgustingly religious and cultural appropriation of the worst sort, which I didn’t fully appreciate before looking into it. It is possible to appreciate and enjoy aspects of Tiki culture respectfully, but, unfortunately because it’s so appealing (white people problems), it’s really best to stay away. On the other hand - Aloha shirts have literally nothing to do with native Pacific culture. You can, of course, find Aloha shirts that appropriate native designs and Tiki stuff, or Asian designs that would be inappropriate to wear today (though it’d be fine to collect them as art). But the general concept is a very American one, like hip-hop - they originate from Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, who took some basic aspects of their own culture (basically just the idea of elaborate floral designs) and Americanized and localized it.

But with the SJW mindset, anything like that is immediately and obviously racist cultural appropriation (even when it isn’t) and if you don’t agree, you’re a racist. Doesn’t matter if you have facts to show they’re wrong. This also applies to every other social ill besides racism but that’s the topic at hand.

I don’t really have a strong thesis or particular point to my comment. I collected a lot of references and wrote a bunch of notes on this topic about a year ago but stopped well before the point where I was ready to write something totally coherent on it, so these are just some random thoughts I suppose. I did recently read a piece examining social justice warrior bullying (which I discuss a bit here) which made me think about it some more, and I am on tumblr a lot and see both sides first-hand daily. As a white person, and one who really enjoys aspects of many other cultures, I feel it’s important to be vigilant and keep up with the current discourse. Because 99%+ of people (all people) don’t. Fighting that ignorance is important, but radicalization is counter-productive. Again, then, it’s things like this video that are important.

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You have a very narrow minded view. If a hip-hop artist has Caribbean heritage, this somehow makes them less authentic? Someone doesn’t pass your “thug test” because his parents are Canadian, possibly because their ancestors fled to a country where they wouldn’t be held hostage by American industry?

I would go on, but you obviously just joined to post this vapid comment and you don’t really care for other people’s viewpoints because you just came here to mindlessly push yours. Have a good day and stop being so afraid of the world.

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See also: Indiana’s oppression is freedom bill

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Imitation is the greatest type of flattery. That is all.

Cultural Appropriate is literally one of the most retarded concepts I’ve ever heard. Black people do not own any aspects of a culture. In fact, I find the idea of a black culture rather dubious considering how many vastly different cultures there are in the world with black people in them.

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It seems pretty clear from the comment that you are responding to that the answers would be “No” and “I don’t” and I’m not sure why you would think differently. The point seems to be “Everyone is culturally appropriating across all lines in every direction” and not that any of it should be prevented.

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OK, let’s go with the thought that the Osmonds were specifically created to by a “white” Jackson 5. Can you explain why every song but One Bad Apple was written by white songwriters and sounded more like country western, funk, and psychedelic rock on their debut album? Can you explain why the Osmonds were singing as a group longer than the Jacksons and had been on the Andy Williams show several times before the Jackson 5 debut? Have you listened to the debut album you think was created to be the white Jackson 5? Because to my ear, except for One Bad Apple, there’s no similarity. And later, have you listened to songs like Crazy Horses? Down by the Lazy River? The two groups sound nothing alike except for the song that was originally written for the Jackson 5 that they didn’t record.

“Some considered the Osmonds, who were white, an imitation of the Jacksons. However, the Osmonds actually started a few years before the Jacksons, and were considered an inspiration to them. Joseph Jackson was impressed by the Osmond Brothers’ early TV appearances and instructed his own sons to study them closely. Eventually, the members of the two families became friends. “Michael had a unique sense of humor about him, and told us he was so tired of watching The Osmonds on The Andy Williams Show. He explained this was something their father had them do, and Michael joked he became really tired of it!”[13]”

Re Dvorak. Indeed, there is no dispute that Dvorak used “negro spirituals” as part inspiration of the New World Symphony. But in his own words:

"In 1893, a newspaper interview quoted Dvořák as saying “I found that the music of the negroes and of the Indians was practically identical”, and that “the music of the two races bore a remarkable similarity to the music of Scotland”.[8][9] Most historians agree that Dvořák is referring to the pentatonic scale, which is typical of each of these musical traditions.[10]

So while “negro spiritual” were AN inspiration, they were not the only inspiration. And as an INSPIRATION, he was not “appropriating” negro spirituals, but rather synthesizing an entirely new work from those inspirations. Appropriating is taking something directly without others permission. He was neither taking, nor claiming his work was anything but an inspiration from these sources. His pupil then used the horn melody to create a popular song that people assumed was a traditional negro spiritual but wasn’t. In that case, wasn’t the black community appropriating Dvorak’s work as a negro spiritual?

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No. But you’re assuming, like Ms. Stendberg, that African culture has had exclusive use and claim to tight hair braids. Period. In the 1960s, black women tended to styles their hair much more like white women, straightened in bouffants and beehives, in the 1970s they tended to be much more natural, like afros, but also occasionally straightened with wings like Farrah Fawcett. It wasn’t until the early 1980s when Island styles became popular, with tight head braids and beads, not just cornrows. If Bo Derek was “appropriating” cornrows (when actually they were an island style with beads), then Diana Ross was “appropriating” all sorts of white styles in the previous generation.

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Does anybody else here remember Miss Stenberg being in the front-lines of the racial debate back in 2012?

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This is a great post…

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Citation? There are probably a whole host of artists you can say that about - George clinton, DJ Kool Herc, James Brown, etc.

I know. It was multi-cultural in part because it gestated largely in NY. but again, those forms gained “legitimacy” when embraced by the white dominated arts and cultural scenes.

Except that barriers were eradicated by the work of African Americans themselves. it’s not like they all sat around waiting for a white savior…

It was also due to this particular scene being gay.

I didn’t. I claimed they profited off a genre of music which came from the African American community.

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Did you watch the video? She makes specific claims about specific people. she was talking about very recent artists.

But please, continue to tell black women about their hair. I’m sure they appreciate that.

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It’s not about cultural sharing, but about some people profiting off black culture.

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I think I"m unclear on your point here… but I’m saying that cultural appropriation is not sharing, and that historically, the white controlled music industry has benefited off black work, while the artists often have not.

Once again, the video gives very specific cases of what she deems appropriation in the current media-scape.

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Yeah, read the bell hooks review, then go watch Paris is Burning… Also, Michael Jackson stole the moonwalk from these guys:

This should make @caze happy, since it’s an example of a black artists exploiting black artists! But I say, look to the structure and who runs the industry… Still largely white.

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Corporation profits from just about EVERYTHING.

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Of course, it’s what they do, their core reason for existence, profit. But we’re talking about a specific sort of economic exploitation here, that is tied up with America’s racist past. Who benefits and profits off art and culture matters. In the video, she’s employing the term appropriation in a very specific way and (as it was a history project), she connects it to a longer history of the white power structure profiting off black work.

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Well, I’m responding to a post where you reply to Countervail and you say:

Countervail was not saying that anyone should only dress, act, or star in films Countervail deems culturally appropriate for them. Countervail was not saying that they should get to decide how anyone should wear their hair. I guess my point was “why attempt to scold this person for something they did not say”? That’s all that was.