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The Ethics of [Cultural Appropriation]
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Over the past several months I have begun to educate myself on Feminist issues and opinions thanks to the various threads related to sexism on Penny-Arcade (although I still find some claims hard to swallow). In the process I have also become aware of several other social justice issues. I'd like to focus on one of them in this thread: cultural appropriation.
I think this was my first exposure to the idea:
First, to make sure everyone understands the concept, Wikipedia's description of cultural appropriation:
Second, examples of cultural appropriation:
Third, selections related to the condemnation of cultural appropriation:
So, thoughts? When is it okay to use something from another culture? When is it problematic?
I think this was my first exposure to the idea:
Solidarity is for Miley Cyrus: The Racial Implications of her VMA Performance
Okay.... but can we talk about the problematic and racist nature of her performance? Her literal use of people as props? Her association of her newfound sexuality with the traditional codifiers of black female culture, thereby perpetuating the Jezebel stereotype that black women are lewd, lascivious and uncontrollably sexualized? Can we talk about the straight up minstrelsy of that performance? Can we talk about how not a single black person won an award last night even though the people who did win awards have been mining black music and culture for years?
No? Ok... I'll just sit at the back of the bus then.
First, to make sure everyone understands the concept, Wikipedia's description of cultural appropriation:
Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, can take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.
Appropriation practice involves the 'appropriation' of ideas, symbols, artifacts, image, sound, objects, forms or styles from other cultures, from art history, from popular culture or other aspects of man made visual or non visual culture. Anthropologists have studied the process of cultural appropriation, or cultural borrowing (which includes art and urbanism), as part of cultural change and contact between different cultures.
Second, examples of cultural appropriation:
Third, selections related to the condemnation of cultural appropriation:
With Native American culture in particular (each culture has its own rules about these things,) if you weren’t raised in the tribe then you aren’t considered one of their own. So if my father was hypothetically native but then he died before I was born and my mother raised me in a white area and I never learned about the tribe I was from, it would not be okay for me to use things from that tribe.
I don’t think it’s wrong at all to learn another culture’s dance style, but only if you’re learning from a native. Performing is a little more iffy and context definitely comes into it, but as a rule if you’re a public figure you shouldn’t do that. Baghra is a lovely dance style and as long as you recognize that you have to be responsible about your use of another culture, you’ll likely be okay.
You say appropriation of the Japanese language is offensive. You say there is no problem with appropriating English because it is a colonial language. Is Japanese, which was forced upon millions of Chinese and Korean individuals by Japanese imperialism, somehow not a colonial language?You’re right in stating that Japan was an imperialist nation, but the Japanese language is only really spoken in Japan. English, on the other hand, is often the first foreign language learned by people. If two people with different mother tongues meet and have a foreign language in common, it’s a hell of a lot more likely to be English than Japanese.
Can we just make a disclaimer, once and for all that Western Civilization/Culture/Eurocentric Ideals and Christianity (for the most part) CANNOT be appropriated because so much of it is oppressive and has historically sought to replace and destroy various other cultures AND succeeded to do so. Especially with regards to Christian holidays and iconography because Christianity as an institution has for a LONG time tried to force itself on other people and cultures.
So, thoughts? When is it okay to use something from another culture? When is it problematic?
Hexmage-PA on
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Put me down for B4.
I'll remove it for now, but I thought it was relevant as an example of the general attitude towards cultural appropriation that I have seen so far.
However, since you already answered B4, here's a comment taken from a blog that approves of the idea behind the card:
Basically, wearing a war bonnet as part of a Halloween costume is considered an act of oppression. The argument is that it is offensive to wear a kimono if you are not Japanese or to flash a gang sign if you're a well-off white guy because you are not a part of the cultures that created these things and are therefore exploiting their culture as a shallow gimmick and a costume worn without lived-in experience of what it means to wear it.
It's even worse if a member of a privileged group gains recognition and success after appropriating something from an oppressed group that was never recognized for their creation. Take Elvis for example. Some praise him for using his career to get a White audience to appreciate African-American musical contributions, while others find it unjust that a white man got most of the credit and fame while the black musicians he was heavily influenced by, such as Muddy Waters, remain obscure. That's why people who are against cultural appropriation say things like this:
These are actually a couple of really vague questions. It can be problematic when it can be shown to cause a degree of demonstrable harm/distress. It isn't when it doesn't do that.
But everyone will disagree on what degree of harm might be acceptable. And everyone will disagree on what even constitutes harm. And when there are a bajillion and one instances of this happening and everyone participates in it to a degree that just makes it all the more complicated.
Yeah well, the twerk store called and they're running out of you!
Which, I suppose, is the problem.
An unfortunate quirk of every capitalist society is an unending penchant for nationalism: an eternal drive by the disaffected to seek anchors for an identity in their history. The first stage is celebrating a shared heritage. The second stage is a glorious national awakening. The third stage is World War One.
If a white girl likes twerking then by all means twerk. Miley's whole thing seems disrespectful because it's such a hollow attempt at gaining notoriety rather than anything that seems genuine.
Here's an interesting argument against this idea that I just now found:
Not certain if that applies to the diversity of people committing cultural appropriation I posted in the OP.
I daresay it is entirely normal to feel a sense of violation when any of these signs are used by foreigners, especially if the sign is used for some other meaning. I also daresay it is problematic for anyone to then keep banging a drum and screaming "don't you feel violated? Don't you feel outraged? They are TAKING what is YOURS! Your heritage, your people, your culture.
... not that I'm suggesting we do anything in slightest bit rude to all these, ah, I suppose I was calling them thieves and oppressors a moment earlier? Perish the thought. Certainly I was not suggesting anything beyond equanimous dialogue..."
Strip away whatever is being complained about, and the problem is basically the same as any other: black people suffer racism from white people. There's no crime of cultural appropriation here. There's the crime that the baby boomers aren't dying fast enough.
I think your OP is too broad - you're firing buckshot at women's issues, cultural issues, racial issues and everything in between, and that will lead to a mess of a debate. If you want a serious, focused discussion, I think you'll have to actually figure out what you want to really discuss.
Borrowing someone's cultural symbols can be a positive when done respectfully. At the very least, it shows the borrower likes that culture. It can also encourage the borrower to dig deeper and learn about that culture, and by the simple act of going about his routine he is spreading that culture. That kid who wears Native clothes for Halloween might actually get curious and start reading up on Native culture and history and learn something, and even tell others. That's a clear and net positive.
That other kid who wears Native clothes for Halloween and goes around making wo-wo-wo-wo-wo sounds and mock-trading his parents' house for glass beads and fire-water? Not so much.
How does this apply to those Native Americans who try to learn as much about their ancestors' culture as they can from the pieces remaining after the European colonization of North America? Are you suggesting we should tell them that the only remnants of their culture worth surviving are gimmicky commercial goods (Halloween costumes, dream catchers, rain sticks) and whatever depiction of their ancestors is created by the mainstream media? Do we tell them "Your culture lost; submit to ours?"
I don't think racism is going to end just because the baby boomers die off.
The argument against whites taking inspiration from black culture that I have seen (and this goes beyond twerking, obviously) is that, until such time that something made by black culture can be widely appreciated when performed by a member of that culture instead of a white person getting all the credit, white people (or at least white public figures) should not create works that draw inspiration from black culture.
I only mentioned womens' issues because reading more about them led me to this topic. I'm not certain how I'd separate race from culture.
Cultural appropriation is a complicated thing. Like Rap has gotten a huge amount of traction in countries like Cuba because a lot of the lower class people there sympathized with it's imagery and style. Is that wrong?
To me her doing a historically black dance is the least of the problems with her new image. It more that she's feeding on old racial stereotypes to bolster her own image in a very juvenile and kind of pathetic way.
I don't know about Cuba (perhaps it is permissible because of their degree of self-identification in the genre). Let me see if I can find anything...
That is certainly an argument a person could make.
I'm not seeing anyone do a very good job of making it convincing though.
And I don't see ronya suggesting this anywhere in his post.
Like one of the reason's the Us has a distinctive culture from other European founded nations is the amount of cultural bleed from African American culture and immigrant populations has created something new and unique.
You don't seem to be disputing the observation that most of pre-Columbian society in the US has been obliterated and that someone with aboriginal ancestry today cannot hope to recover any cultural fragments beyond what has been changed, interpreted, and preserved by Western eyes. You need an archaeologist to determine what Great Plains society was like before the horse, because the spread of the horse outpaced the spread of anyone to make written records, and any oral traditions were distorted by the social changes incurred by its introduction.
So whether or not you tell them "your culture lost; submit to ours" is immaterial - you cannot undo the fact that 'their' culture has already 'lost' and they have already submitted; Cherokee and Navajo have to struggle to persuade parents to not use English as their first language with their children. Today they are as American as you are! You have to go to Central and South America to find native communities that have retained a continuously distinctive character.
Of course, none of this prohibits someone from trying to construct some synthesis of their history as their own nonetheless - to reconstruct some new narrative to fill in the gaps. Why not? Many national myths are wholly false. When Western nations were busy forging their own national identities, in an absence of any appropriately inspiring material, many simply made stuff up. History does show that this is no impediment to ferocious loyalty to an identity. No amount of genetic inheritance or ethnolinguistic studies will persuade people in the former Yugoslavia that they're not really wholly distinct peoples with distinct histories and distinct cultures, even today. Everyone makes stuff up. Why not make your own? Vive la différence.
Just don't tell yourself that you are recovering some primordial, essentialist ethnic heritage, though. Down that road lies nothing good. The Brothers Grimm assembling a collection of fairy tales is harmless; the Brothers Grimm assembling sufficiently German folklore as proof of a united German heritage is where it all starts to go terribly wrong.
it's the miscegenation of cultures that really annoys romantic-ethnic-nationalists
Seems like an argument for cultural segregation by Catch 22 to me.
- John Stuart Mill
Were the minstrel shows of 19th and 20th Century America an "objective good", then?
Or is it possible that when a dominant culture commercializes and trivializes elements of cultural identities, especially ethnic identities, they can distort those cultural elements in ways that present and reinforce messages that the dominant culture and ethnicity is superior?
This is based on the rather odd assumption that the only two possible dynamics for cultural cross-pollination are "a dominant culture gets to strip-mine minority cultures and in the process present distorted cultural representations of those minority cultures that reinforce larger narratives of how those minorities are inferior" and "total ethnic ownership".
Not to mention that the first type of cultural appropriation functioned quite vigorously in a violently segregated society for centuries, so claiming that it's a blow against segregation rings a bit hollow.
To use another example, look at the ways Jews were presented in non-Jewish European culture for centuries. Did that lead to Jews being less marginalized in those cultures?
But just like free speech if you wargggbbbll over every instance that's even slightly out of line you're just discrediting yourself and distracting from the real issues.
I'd agree with that, with some possible caveats, but that's much different than claiming cultural appropriation is an "objective good".
You're going to have to be about 100000000 times more compelling to Godwin all ideas of cultural identity.
Take what you want, show some respect, don't be a goose.
Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go eat a plate of chalupas, with chopsticks, on my Ikea table, while listening to Macklemore and twerking.
I'm curious, could you provide me with an example of a "specific harm that can be demonstrated" from cultural appropriation?
It also seems that "show some respect" is a much different standard than "specific, demonstrable harm", not to mention then you deal with the questions of who gets to decide if the folks having their culture appropriated are being given proper respect.
To use one example, what about the Washington Redskins? Does that appropriation of Native American imagery and the use of the word "redskins" do specific, demonstrable harm to Native Americans? Or does it qualify as disrespectful?
Different standards for different levels of problem.
It's never bad absent that specific harm, and to rise to that level we are talking 'steal aboriginal children and educate them as Westerners agains their parents' will'.
But as between people of different cultures, "show some respect" should probably preclude ethnic slurs in general usage. St. Paddy's day green beer and drunkenness? OK. Sports team called "the Boston Micks"? Probably you ought not do that.
Who decides? Ehhhh. Nobody has a trump card. This is one of the few places where "raising awareness" actually has some useful impact! I mean... It's not like your culture has been stolen when I pick up a set of chopsticks. I haven't taken anything from you! But if I'm twerking on your Buddha statue's face, maybe someone should tell me to show a little respect. I don't think you should wait around for a Buddhist to do that though. Go ahead and point that out on your own. You have permission.
I wonder what Aretha Franklin would think of outrage over white audiences appropriating "black music and dance". In the Motown era, getting the music to cross those racial barriers was desirable! Nowadays people argue that we should erect them again, and IMHO that is counterproductive.
tl;dr if you're appropriating kids to destroy their culture on purpose, that's bad. If you're borrowing their culture for some reason, show some respect.
As far as this topic goes, no, I don't really have a problem with cultural appropriation as long as it isn't done in an obviously mean-spirited way. Miley Cyrus looked like a doofus but I have no idea how she "insulted black women" by dancing like a skank on live TV.
Part of her show was dancing around smacking black women on the ass
the dance itself is the least insulting part. The insulting part is shes using the hyper sexualized black woman stereotype to try to make herself look sexualzied.
Why would it matter if they're lower class or not?
What the hell. Jeez, everything about that was fucked up.