Elvis Presley merged black and white music and changed American music forever. No one is calling him a racist.

Elvis Presley merged black and white music and changed American music forever. No one is calling him a racist.

I take it you have never listened to Public Enemy before?

To be fair, they should go the other way, too, shouldn't they?

How about I show you Ozzy Osbourne beating to park to the airwaves with nearly identical lyrics? How about I show you Ozzy Osbourne beating Tupac to the airwaves with nearly identical lyrics?

If you came from a continent without running water, aren't you a little presumptuous for using indoor plumbing?

Cultural appropriation? Do the people that use that term as a pejorative actually know that such appropriation has been going on for centuries? And it's still going on all over the world.

What do they think the English language is? It's Norman French, old Anglo-Saxon, Norwegian, and German, all shoved into Latin grammar rules.

Corned beef and cabbage is not an Irish dish. Irish immigrants in New York City picked it up from their Jewish neighbors.

I was once served what I was told was a "traditional Cuban dish" that consisted mainly of Jell-O.

Baseball is very popular, practically the national sport, in parts of Latin America and in Japan.

Spam is very popular in Korea.

All cultures pick up things from other cultures with which they come into contact. Welcome to life.

Elvis Presley merged black and white music and changed American music forever. No one is calling him a racist.

Posted by: Nick at August 5, 2015 6:44 AM

Maybe not, but if there's a significant percentage of black fans of his, I have yet to hear of them. (To be fair, I seem to remember a certain amount of black resentment against the Beatles as well - thought that did not include Ray Charles, I believe, since he recorded their music more than once.)

"If your ancestors did not use writing, then please don't you use writing."

Hey, I like that comment too!

How many people today even realize that all, and I mean ALL, alphabets can trace their origins back to the ancient Phoenicians?

Linguistic history records that the Phoenicians were the first to use an alphabet, the Greeks later borrowed that idea to create their own, in turn the Romans borrowed it from the Greeks, St. Cyril (should we call him St. Thief?) borrowed it from the Greeks as well to create the alphabet used by many Slavic languages. The alphabet idea was spread further east to India and other parts of Asia along trade routes - all Asian scripts even as far east as Thailand can be traced back to the Phoenicians. Later, the Vietnamese borrowed the alphabet idea from the French; and a Cherokee named Sequoyah borrowed the idea from English in the 1800s.

And, since there aren't really any Phoenicians around anymore I guess that makes us all thieves!

But, then, maybe the Phoenicians weren't the first and they stole it from someone else as well? Maybe the Phoenicians weren't just sea-going traders; but sea-going "cultural appropriators"?

Oh, and as far as no one is calling Elvis a racist? It goes beyond Elvis and Public Enemy; others have for years accused Elvis of stealing black music; along with Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, and others of taking credit for creating music that was originally created by black Americans.

In Paul Simon's case he was accused of appropriating South African music - even though he invited South African musicians (Lady Blacksmith Mambazo) to help record his album Graceland; gave them credit, and paid triple the union rate! He was also accused of violating the Boycott South Africa movement for recording Graceland during those years.

Hell, Paul Simon gave credit to those Africans who helped with his album, paid them triple the going rate, brought their music to the international stage which gave them record contracts and sales they wouldn't have had otherwise. He brought black and white musicians together to show that Apartheid wasn't needed and that the different races could work together; and for all that he was called a thief, and a pro-Apartheid racist!

The perpetually outraged will never be satisfied; and, of course, they are doing it in a language that isn't of their ancestors which just shows that they are thieves themselves!

"Maybe not, but if there's a significant percentage of black fans of his, I have yet to hear of them."

Why do you think the number of black fans is even relevant to a discussion on cultural appropriation?

There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to how people dress, style their hair, or the foods they eat.

To pretend otherwise and to assume some racial or cultural group *owns* something so trivial as a recipe or a hairstyle, or a music style is just silly posturing.

Jews eat corned beef because ham isnt kosher, Ham, or any other preserved meat and cabbage is a German/northern Eurpoean staple.

The smoking and curing process is a method of food preservation, that has been in use in Europe for hundreds, if not thousands of years before the Irish and the Jews began living in proximity in New York.

Memorize this GIF.

Do it. Do it now!

Isab, yes, salting beef has been in use for throusands of years before the irish moved to America. Much of the corned beef produced for British domestic consumption and export was produced in Ireland (the British confiscated the best pasture land in Ireland for raising cattle). However, [per Wikipedia]:

Despite being a major producer of beef, most of the people of Ireland during this period consumed little of the meat produced, in either fresh or salted form, due to its prohibitive cost. This was because most of the farms and its produce were owned by wealthy Anglo-Irish landlords and that most of the population were from families of poor tenant farmers, and that most of the corned beef was exported.

The lack of beef or corned beef in the Irish diet is especially true in Northern Ireland and areas away from the major centers for corned beef production. However, individuals living in these production centers such as Cork did consume the product to a certain extent. The majority of Irish that resided in Ireland at the time mainly consumed dairy products and meats such as pork or salt pork.

When the Irish moved to America, they began consuming corned beef because of its associations as a luxury good back in Ireland and its availability as a low cost foodstuff in America.

The Jewish immigrants in America brought their own version of corned beef that the Irish immigrants purchased [also from Wikipedia]:

The Jewish population produced similar koshered cured beef product made from the brisket which the Irish immigrants purchased as corned beef from Jewish butchers. This may have been facilitated by the close cultural interactions and collaboration of these two diverse cultures in the USA's main 19th and 20th century immigrant port of entry, New York City.

The association of corned beef as an Irish dietary staple began in the United States.

Conan covered most of the ground, but I have this to add: freedom of expression is sacrosanct in the United States. No nation in the world protects freedom of expression like the U.S.

With this in mind, U.S. citizens are free to use whatever they like to express themselves, without regard to whatever culture they supposedly took it from. No, Amandla Stenberg, you self-righteous, arrogant juvenile twit, people who borrow from black culture are not obligated to address social injustices in the black community. They are not obligated to do anything.

Should we now tell Carl Ray to stop singing country-western? How about Trini Triggs, Charley Pride and at least half a dozen more black singers who include country-western in their repertoire?

And while we're at it, let's protest any black musicians who play classical music. So sorry, that's European. Hands off.

Doubtless the cultural appropriation fascists will produce a double standard, claiming that cultural appropriation can only occur when the "privileged class" takes from an "oppressed class." But the oppressed are free to take from the privileged, because it's just not the same thing.

The idea that individual expression should be the sole property of one particular culture is completely antithetical to life in the United States. This is the very worst country in the world to whine about this.

The association of corned beef as an Irish dietary staple began in the United States.
Posted by: Conan the Grammarian at August 5, 2015 1:42 PM

I doubt it. Corned beef originated in England. (Take a look at a map)

The Jews undoubtedly adopted it as a kosher substitute for ham.

And the Jews didn't originate the idea of cooking cured meat with cabbage, and or other vegetables. They learned it in Northern Europe (mostly likely from the Germans)

In northern Europe they pickle a lot of things. As they do in Asia also.

Corning is a salt pickeling process that can be applied to any meat or vegetable. The process predates both the Irish, and the Jews in America, in fact pickling, as a means of food preservation goes back thousands or years, and may have its origins in Asia.

Try not to rely so heavily on Wikipedia. They are only as good as the people making the entries, and I doubt that very many of them are dietary anthropologists.

And Italians most likely learned how to make noodles from the Chinese.

Even in Japan, Most cuisine is of either Chinese, Korean, or Eurpoean origin.

Very little true native cooking.

If there is a truly American cuisine it is probably the corn/ potato based cooking of the Indigenous peoples, but even that has been heavily influenced by European tastes, and ingredients.

The Columbian exchange was a marvelous thing.

Conan, I am not arguing with you, that corned beef and cabbage didn't become ubiquitous among the Irish until they were in the U.S. It probably did, but they knew about it way before then, they probably just could not afford it,

I just sincerely doubt, considering the fact that the British had been Corning beef for over three hundred years, that they learned about it from their European Jewish neighbors in New York.

If there is a truly American cuisine?

my vote goes for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succotash

While I don't care too much for lima beans we still have to have some every Thanksgiving.

I guess I should feel guilty while eating it? Nah, the hell with that. I'll make it "European" by adding loads of butter.

Love that gif. Almost as much as I love "Tigger warning."

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/06/19/tigger_warning.html

"Hell, Paul Simon gave credit to those Africans who helped with his album, paid them triple the going rate, brought their music to the international stage which gave them record contracts and sales they wouldn't have had otherwise. "

This goes to show how long the Left has been attempting to police popular music for political incorrecness. You should have seen some of the stuff that was written about the band Rush back in the '70s, after they released 2112 -- an album based on a Ayn Rand novel. Many violations of Godwin's Law were committed; people tried to organize boycotts of their concerts and there were even a few cases of protestors trying to block venue doors so no one could enter.

Isab, I never said there wasn't corning (salting) of beef before the Irish met the Jews in New York City.

I said the association of Corned Beef and Cabbage as an Irish dish began there.

And the Irish immigrants in New York purchased salted brisket from the Jewish delis nearby as corned beef.

In the US, salted beef was affordable where it was expensive in Ireland. So, the Irish immigrants viewed it as a luxury food. They consumed it on special occasions, like St. Patrick's Day.

In Ireland, the Irish were poor and didn't each much beef. Their proteins were mostly pork and chicken.

The English raised beef on Irish lands and salted and canned it in processing plants in Irish cities, but the Irish, by and large, did not have enough money to purchase the product and so it did not become a staple of their diet.

Go to Ireland and ask if they eat corned beef on St. Patrick's Day and you'll be met with blank stares. It's an American thing.

Go to Ireland and ask if they eat corned beef on St. Patrick's Day and you'll be met with blank stares. It's an American thing.
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In that case, I have to wonder what Scotland's J.K. Rowling was thinking when, in the first book, she had Ron (presumably of an Irish-Catholic descent, but it's never confirmed) complain, after opening his package of four sandwiches, that his mother "always forgets I don't like corned beef."

leona, you answered your own question.

She was neither englsih, nor irish, and neither were her fictional charecters

How do you KNOW Ron isn't supposed to be Irish? I've never seen anything to suggest he isn't.

I think most readers would agree that that scene was one of several examples of Rowling's paper-thin attempts to go against stereotypes, whether the stereotype in question is 80% true in society or only 5% true. E.g., Harry looks every bit the nerd but is great at sports and not that great in school; Cedric is somewhat dim and good-looking, but not blond; and Cedric's mother is stoic in the face of death, but not his father. Maybe there are others examples, but I don't remember them, offhand.