The Fashion Police Are On The Job -- Ticketing Vanessa Hudgens On Twitter For "Cultural Appropriation"
The story, from Buzzfeed, is about actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens, who apparently is not black, but who appears to be at least partly some shade of "didn't exactly came over on on the Mayflower."
Hudgens was attacked by a mob on Twitter for daring to wear braids (perhaps in a wig):
Following the "cultural appropriation" party line like is basically like screaming "I'm a moron who slept through all history instruction from the first grade on."
America is one GIANT cultural appropriation-pot. As I've described before, a friend, who represents one of the classic Motown groups, told me that American music was a unique form (in the world). In his words, it was revolutionary because it was a combination of "the Jews and the blues" -- meaning Gershwin and black blues performers in the South.
He told me that Gershwin, while writing Porgy and Bess, was an exchange student of sorts, traveling down South to get the music right.
These nitwits are part of the sadly pervasive push toward authoritarianism in this country. It's stronger because it exists on all fronts: telling college students that their free speech rights are trumped by hurt feelz; putting a chill on what professors can say in class and muzzling them from speaking up when they are said to "trigger" a student or use "prohibited" speech. (An example of this is my professor friend, who is white, who was accused of misappropriating AAVE -- "African American Vernacular English" -- when he said "'sup?" to his dad.)
It's important for any who are articulate -- including any actresses -- to speak out for the freedoms that used to be taken for granted as being ours in this country. These seemingly inconsequential cultural freedoms being yanked -- even through the Twitter mob putting a chill on people's free expression in fashion -- pave the way for bigger, scarier authoritarianism.
via @RobbySoave
I'll give up braids if they give up the integrated circuit and grid based electricity. At least then I won't have to hear about them.
Ben at October 26, 2016 6:57 AM
Doesn't Hudgens have black ancestry, and therefore the possibility that genetics gave her "black" hair
lujlp at October 26, 2016 7:11 AM
Doesn't Hudgens have black ancestry, and therefore the possibility that genetics gave her "black" hair
lujlp at October 26, 2016 7:11 AM
Shouldn't a damper on "cultural appropriation" forbid miscegenation?
Sorry, Kanye.
Radwaste at October 26, 2016 8:09 AM
She has very high, pert boobies.
Davy Croquet at October 26, 2016 8:59 AM
No, apparently Hudgens' olive complexion is due to an Asian influence. So that's like double plus ungood. Ah, Wikipedia says Her father was of Irish and Native American descent, and her mother, a native of Manila, Philippines, is of Filipino descent.
Ben is on to something, but I'm going to take it one step further: go back to your merry little hunter-gather tribes and leave us alone. And then tell us about social justice. Oh, right, too busy hunting and gathering for survival to worry about pretty much anything else.
I R A Darth Aggie at October 26, 2016 9:04 AM
Pfft. Not even Pokemon is safe from accusations of cultural appropriation:
http://kotaku.com/1788198544
A horse with dreads? That's racist!
Sixclaws at October 26, 2016 9:48 AM
(An example of this is my professor friend, who is white, who was accused of misappropriating AAVE -- "African American Vernacular English" -- when he said "'sup?" to his dad.)
It's a sidebar to the main issue, but "AAVE" (a term I've never heard) has a way of being regular English, both very quickly and over a period of decades.
"Jazz" (or "jass") was AAVE. So was juke (or "jook"), expanded to jukebox and jukejoint.
There's dozens of more contemporary examples, and sometimes they change — when a black person uses "ratchet," I intuit he or she means "trying to be fancy but missing the mark" (three-inch-long gold nails, for instance). A white person who picked up the word likely means "subpar in general" ("This iPhone 4 is so ratchet").
It's hard to say we appropriate culture when we all rub up on each other's culture all day. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got Thai food for lunch, and I don't feel like I'm culturally appropriating the people of Bangkok or Udon Thani.
Kevin at October 26, 2016 11:11 AM
I've been following this -- someone somewhere asked why it's not cool for white women to "appropriate" corn rows but it's ok for black women to color their hair blonde and straighten it, too. Good question.
Ally at October 26, 2016 1:20 PM
Cultural appropriation, when used by blacks, is an indication that black people simply have it to good if they have to invent things to bitch about.
Can you imagine Martin Luther King, Jr. saying, "I have a dream that one day black people will wear dreadlocks but whites will not"?
Patrick at October 26, 2016 2:25 PM
If cultural appropriation is a bad thing, all those Negroes need to take their clothes off right now. Clothing is a white people thing.
Alan at October 26, 2016 9:05 PM
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