No Gary Oldman?
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Bad wigs/hair pieces don’t count; otherwise we’d be here all day, and the derail has already been thorough enough…
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I’ve long been suspicious of the ‘but muh Celts had dreadlocks’ argument because Celts are kind of a whatever-you-want-them-to-be since at least Victorian times. I don’t agree that white people can’t have dreads, and I also think that - tracing their arrival in modern white counter-culture - a Hindu mystic origin is far more likely. Still arguably cultural appropriation. But I get why black people might feel aggrieved about it.
There was an article in The Intercept that expressed the underlying problem very clearly - and why people from a dominant culture can get entangled with oppressive appropriation even without meaning to. Essentially the problem is that while white or whiter cultural expression largely retains their function as signifiers of specific identity, black cultural signifiers are subsumed into the general national identity, or determined to be insignificant choices that are generally permitted. This - particularly in the context of historical slavery and subsequent acute oppression, is denying people the tools with which to form and shape their identity. It’s like being antifeminist and turning up to feminist meetings in order to be as disruptive as possible, then claiming it isn’t a feminist meeting, ‘everybody has a right to be there’ - except that some people participating in this behaviour haven’t realised that they’re doing it.
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Gilliam
Interesting article; thanks for sharing it.
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As of Victorian times we’re largely talking the insular Celts. Which means something rather specific (the British isles and one chunk of France at a very particular period in time). But that more casual meaning of Celt is wrapped up in a lot of confusing things. Romantic revival ideas about pre Christian Europe. The notion of a noble savage (the original noble savage was the Scottish Highlander). Racialist ideas. Nationalist hagiography. All of which was further packed with Misinformation by the pan-gaelic movement and earlier nationalist movements in Ireland and Scotland.
But new sources have arrived and much better scholarship has arrived. And we have pretty good ideas about the Celts these days. Your talking about a massive cultural linguistic complex. Unified by language and material culture above and beyond common decent. Arising from prehistoric Northern European cultures (mostly in Germany). Under influence of Greece, the Etruscans (early Rome), the Assyrians, And later Eurasian stepp cultures. They spread from eastern Europe and even Northern greece. Straight through mainland Europe, Scandinavia, And south through Anatolia. Even into the Middle East and North Africa. There were even Celts in Ptolemaic Egypt (as mercenaries IIRC).
So to say “Celts wore dreadlocks” is almost meaningless. Of course they did. At that scale your basically saying “humans wore dreadlocks”. If your saying Insular Celts wore dreadlocks you are likely wrong. And even if/when they did other styles were far more endemicly “celtic”.
And that doesn’t bear much on why we still wear them today. Why they are popular. Why they are stylish. Because that’s not really a part of the direct cultural chain. Even in the face of other influences (like my pan-celtic and your Hindu mystic). That is largely down to their currency and popularity in various black cultures in the Americas and UK. Not some continuing or reclaimed tradition of Celticness.
Otherwise your article seems like its trying to get at what I’ve been trying to get at. I’ll read it later, thanks.
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Fallacious 
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Oh jebus Christ.
Beauty is beauty is beauty.
(My abs kinda look like that, but for the wrong reason)
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Hey, I have good tastes.
Have you not been eating enough lately?
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It seems to me that people are confusing entelechy with culture here.
The entelechy, the realisation of the ideas inherent in the cultures artefacts (both physical and non-physical), is created by that culture and if that culture says that no one outside of the closed practice can use that same entelechy, well then tough shit. You literally can’t. Perhaps repeated schisms can propagate alternative schools or whatever, but I feel like they should all grow from the root or they are just an imitation. And a despoiled shadow at that.
The actual ideas themselves though. Phew, good fucking luck proving that they belong to anyone at all ever.
Culture is out there already. Waiting in potentia. We are the alien. Animals infected by the convergence and crystallisation of culture memetics into specific forms.
They are not your ideas, even when they are your ideas.
No one was ever an island.
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I think this is where I often get confused in these discussions. Is there any way someone could get permission? Get it from whom? Who is authorized to give it?
I’m reminded of arguments about the Washington NFL team.
Person 1: The name is racist!
Person 2: No, it’s not! Those Native Americans say the name is fine.
Person 1: Well, those guys over there in that protest say it’s not.
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I’ve started eating again, but cooking is the fun part 
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Now now, let’s not be… well…
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Hey, my family is from Annan, or so they say… (
)
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Londindependence now! Because if the rest of the country gets to vote to get rid of foreigners and fuck over poor people, Londoners should be able to vote to keep our foreigners and withdraw our funding from the rest of the country.
I’m only being a little bit sarcastic about this.
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You know who had a really epic Jew Fro?
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Oh shit it’s NPR, so its probably a bit more clickworthy than.
Children’s television personality Fred Rogers was a Navy Seal and a sniper in Vietnam with 25 confirmed kills to his credit. He wore sweaters to conceal his awesome tats.
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