See, it was acculturation, perfectly natural, they gradually blended into our culture because we said assimilate or die 
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Well of course White Culture still exists… 
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Cultural Appropriation is always going to be a devil in the details, but like others have said, it does come down to the idea of respect and harm more than some flat ‘this is always how things are’ territory. White folks wearing native american headdresses is pretty inherently fucked up because of what that represents and feels like, and the fact that it’s actually a sacred tradition to some people. That’s disrespectful to a marginalized people who had their land taken and traditions destroyed by white folks.
I think you can compare this to like, stories about people going to India and wearing a sari at a wedding or something where it’s pretty classic tumblr clickbait about outraged white people, and generally Indian folks don’t have an issue on it.
I definitely don’t think it’s a myth, but I’d also agree that there’s certainly a lot of very irritating people declaring that any cross-cultural exchange such as white folks making teriyaki at home is cultural appropriation, which is appropriately ridiculous.
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Appropriation ≠ appreciation.
White folks making teriyaki at home because it tastes good isn’t the same thing as claiming to have invented teriyaki, and then making a hefty profit from that claim.
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Yep - I absolutely agree - it’s based in respect and harm. But I think the reason why some people say ‘oh cultural appropriation is a myth’ is because their exposure to that word comes from overreactive teens on tumblr declaring all sorts of bizarre things to be appropriation.
Edit: I also think that a white dude saying ‘oh I invented teriyaki’ and suing a bunch of japanese restaurants out of business somehow would also be appropriation, so so I agree with both halves of your statement.
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Think about it this way.
Cultural exchange typically features the direct involvement of the source cultures when in close contact. Things moving back and forth, change and influence things in both directions. And as such tend to involve close and direct knowledge and experience of the articles of culture in question. As well as the people they come from, with those people maintaining influence and benefits from the exchange.
Cultural appropriation typically involves the erasure of the source. Either denial of their involvement, or lack of understanding or contact with the material in question. It is often reliant on stereotype, or drawn from stereotype. And the people being borrowed from are denied economic benefits, control and social standing derived from their culture. Or credit for their involvement.
Syncretism is something different. And in so far as it can be an active, constructed (and artificial) process. It is often fundamentally appropriative. The New Age movement is a great example of that.
Insisting all of these things are the same is missing the forest for the trees. Much like all that “political correctness” butt hurt. Where the assumption and accusation is that people are angry just about the language used, rather than the ideas being expressed regardless of language.
It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of why people are hurt (and how). And one often used to dismiss their concerns and undermine efforts to address them.
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I would say that if that’s the case, what you should be concerned about is why 96% of the people you’re listening to are white first-worlders.
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Wait, what’s going on here?
I was the one who brought up cultural appropriation in the Taiwan nightclub thread.
But when that discussion was split off here, what the hell happened to my original post?
It’s in neither this thread, nor the parent thread. What’s going on @orenwolf ?
I mean, christianity, buddhism, islam, mormonism are “all made up” as well. There’s no evidence to say any of their deities exist at all. There’s lots of evidence that people got scared, wanted something to comfort themselves and made up authoritarian father figures to make themselves feel better.
If you’re deriding native religions for “being all made up” you ought to start pointing out to all the wypipo that their god is so much more made up than anything the native american peoples are doing.
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I am reminded of sgt hartman’s monologue in full metal jacket
But the more you hate me, the more you will learn: I am hard, but I am fair! There is no racial bigotry here! I do not look down on [ethnic slur], [another ethnic slur], [yet another ethnic slur], or [and a fourth]; here you are all equally worthless! And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps! Do you maggots understand that?
Equal contempt isn’t something to be proud of.
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As a Jew let me extend a hearty FUCK THIS SHIT . The last 2000 years of my ethnicity’s history has been Gentiles appropriating our identity and religion. When we didn’t go along we were raped, tortured, exiled, murdered and turned into the Boogeyman from Tiera del Fuego to Samarkand.
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One of the real eye openers I as studying food history is that the evidence tends towards teriyaki being a Japanese-American innovation from around Puget Sound. I was shocked. Doesn’t detract from your point at all, but it was a thing to learn.
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Which may be slightly interesting, because all the Teriyaki shops I’ve been to around the sound (I live in Snohomish county and have been to dozens and dozens) are all run by Korean families. I genuinely wonder what the story is there.
Just a tangent.
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That’s the problem. It’s a phrase that abstracts away all the specific details that would qualify it as a kind of theft. And that makes it easier to equate with acts that are benign.
For example, copying Native American dress generally involves adding feathered head dresses. For a lot of Native nations, the right to wear a feather is earned by acts of service to the tribe, and so wearing an unearned feather is just as bad as wearing an unearned military medal.
Jewish dress does not include any particular badges of honor. So copying it would not incur that particular problem. In fact, growing up in Israel meant (for me) things like discovering that a lot of Polynesians carry Hebrew-derived names, and considering that to be mind blowingly awesome. And if Pacific Islanders copied more aspects of Jewish heritage into their own culture, that would only be deemed more awesome. Yes, the reason that came to be comes with a whole lot of other historical baggage, but us Jews are not the wronged party in it. In other contexts, however, like retro-chic “Jewish” cafes in Eastern Europe, that kind of thing is a way to gas light the events of the 20th Century, and so that does rankle.
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So is almost all sushi. Im both cases and for interesting reasons Korean entrepreneurs created opportunities to take a strong position in the markets. Important parts were:
- Koreans did this as first or second gen immigrants
- Many were crypto Koreans taking Japanese names because of Japanese racism
- At the time Japanese were “honorarily whiter” than Koreans
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Makes sense. That’d explain why I knew a Korean guy in high school with the last name Ishiguro. He didn’t know why it was Japanese either. His folks never talked about it.
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Japanese racism towards Koreans has traditionally been horrible.
Relating it to teriyaki, a popular brand of teriyaki sauce in the PNW is [redacted]. The owner claims to be from an old Edo family. His original family name was Chun, and he is Japanese-Korean. He probably took a world of shit growing up. I hope living well is the best revenge for him. I really do. And his sauces are very good.
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Tools can be relatively safe, or they can be relatively powerful. But the dangers of misusing any tool increase with the power of that tool. People who don’t understand how a tool can be misused, have no business using it until they’ve been checked out on it.
Cultural Appropriation is a conceptual tool that can absolutely be misused, no doubt about it. That doesn’t make it without value or use.
If you can’t tell the difference between Yoga as an expression of East Indian culture (not cultural appropriation) versus the names of certain sports teams (totally cultural appropriation) then you probably shouldn’t appoint yourself an arbiter of cultural appropriation.
There are plenty of people who see yoga, especially yoga as done in America as theft of a religious observance.
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