"Nobody Can 'Appropriate' Anybody Else's Culture!" (Are We All Four Fucking Years Old?)
What kind of ridiculous toddler of an adult thinks they get to stamp their feet and say only their particular people get to partake of and enjoy their culture? (And what kind of idiot thinks that could possibly be a good thing?)
What, we now have gated cultural communities? Cultural segregation?
A guy named Jeff Kaufman posts this fabulous satire on what I call the "cultural appropriation" crypussies:
When I see Japanese people square dancing I feel physically sick. They wear American drag--because that's what it is--when a person who's not American wears a cowboy hat, boots, and a western shirt, or high-waisted frilly petticoats out of a 1950s stereotype. They dance hundreds of invented figures which they learn in weeks of classes, instead of the couple dozen traditional figures that I learned as a child dancing in the kitchen with my family. But the most hurtful aspect is the music. They dance to recorded music, something that was never done in New England where I grew up. I remember people would say "I'd rather dance to a single fiddle, played by someone who only knows one tune, than to any kind of canned crap." The recordings lack the vitality and spontaneity, the communication between the dancers and the musicians, and they reduce the music to a simple phraseless beat to be danced to.Japanese square dancers I have confronted about this have said, "But I have been dancing for 15 years! This is something I have built a huge community on." These people are more interested in their investment in Square Dance than in questioning and examining how their appropriation of the art causes others harm. To them I can only say, I'm sure there are people who have been unwittingly racist for 15 years. It's not too late. Find another form of self-expression. Make sure you're not appropriating someone else's.
When I have argued, online and in person, with Japanese square dancers, they have assured me that they learned to dance from American callers and white callers. This is supposed to make the transaction OK. Instead I point out that all this means is that it is perfectly all right with these callers that their financial well-being is based on self-exploitation. As a follow-up, Asian square dancers then focus on the community aspect of square dancing. But, here's the thing. American dancers are not vessels for Japanese people to pour themselves and lose themselves in; we are not frilly skirts or string ties or oversized belt buckles. We are human beings. This dance form is originally ours, and does not exist so that Asians can have a better sense of community. Just because an Asian square dancer doesn't profit from their performance doesn't mean they're not appropriating a culture. And, ultimately, the question is this: what's different between this and Why I can't stand white belly dancers?
Is it possible that this "no cultural appropriation!" jeremiad is about cutting out the competition? Bari Weiss writes in the WSJ about novelist Lionel Shriver's argument at a writers' conference last month that (gasp!) fiction writers should be permitted to write fiction -- fiction that does not necessarily include clones of themselves, but fictional characters outside the realm of their experience:
"Taken to their logical conclusion," Ms. Shriver said in her address, "ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all. Meanwhile, the kind of fiction we are 'allowed' to write is in danger of becoming so hedged, so circumscribed, so tippy-toe, that we'd indeed be better off not writing the anodyne drivel to begin with."To write in the voice, say, of a black woman if you are a white male writer, is rapidly becoming taboo--a form of cultural appropriation, to use the proper jargon. But such theft is the job of fiction writers. The novelist, as Ms. Shriver put it, is "the premier pickpocket of the arts."
"If Dalton Trumbo had been scared off of describing being trapped in a body with no arms, legs, or face because he was not personally disabled--because he had not been through a World War I maiming himself and therefore had no right to 'appropriate' the isolation of a paraplegic--we wouldn't have the haunting 1938 classic, 'Johnny Got His Gun,' " she said.
Ms. Shriver delivered her speech while wearing a sombrero--a literal representation of her deeper point, which is that the job of fiction writers is to embody characters unlike themselves. If identity politics reaches its absurd conclusion, Ms. Shriver said, "all I could write about would be smart-alecky 59-year-old 5-foot-2-inch white women from North Carolina."
via @sentientist
Mr. Haspel is concise.
Crid at October 2, 2016 10:42 PM
Mr. Haspel is correct. Especially about American culture.
Amy Alkon at October 2, 2016 10:44 PM
Cultural appropriation is a sign of just how good minorities have it here today. Can you imagine Martin Luther King Jr. giving speeches over who is wearing what today and how they are not giving due credit to the culture they supposedly appropriated it from?
Cultural appropriation is not a thing.
Patrick at October 2, 2016 11:01 PM
I would say it depends.
If someone did some sort of Christian parody, like threw parties where they served wine and hosts, or an exercise class where you genuflect a lot, and started marketing it as "real Christianity", It'd be pretty tasteless.
NicoleK at October 3, 2016 5:21 AM
Are the black "rioters" looking to beat up whitey appropriating BLM fight for justice (and white bread)?
Bob in Texas at October 3, 2016 5:34 AM
What would happen if they told the communities that depend financially upon "Octoberfest" activities that they were being abused?
Can you foresee what would happen if they blocked access to the beer garden?
Bob in Texas at October 3, 2016 5:37 AM
Bob in Texas,
We can't have that. It might result in a Beer Garden Putsch.
spqr2008 at October 3, 2016 6:37 AM
Stop appropriating Acidophilus cultures! Yogurt lives matter!
Ben at October 3, 2016 6:41 AM
The Germans are appropriating Chinese culture and they should stop immediately.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/23/479186257/5-000-year-old-chinese-beer-recipe-revealed
Sixclaws at October 3, 2016 6:52 AM
Ben, that was low. But I liked it.
Amy Alkon at October 3, 2016 7:53 AM
Obviously all of us who aren't German need to immediately stop playing or listening to music based on the equal-tempered chromatic scale. Nothing but Pythagorean scales from now on... oh wait, that's appropriating Greek culture. How about pentatonic... no, Japanese. Maybe we need to abandon tone and just focus on playing polyrhythms... er, African. So obviously we can only be allowed to listen to music that has neither tone nor rhythm... oh heck, that's appropriating the Germans again. We can't even have silence, because that's appropriating John Cage!
Cousin Dave at October 3, 2016 8:08 AM
Is that where you have trouble walking after several beers and someone has to putsch you?
I have a difficult time imagining MLK worrying over white people wearing dreadlocks or belly dancing. He had real battles to fight.
It's like the guy who was in the war and craves the adulation of hero worship, but was in a non-combat position. So, he wraps himself in the flag and makes up stories so his service sounds as heroic as Audie Murphy's. Today's SJWs don't have a real war to fight, so they're making one up. Dammit, they're just as brave and historically important as Eldridge, Rosa, Malcolm, and Martin. And the causes for which they fight (bathroom equity, rape culture, free birth control, cultural appropriations, etc.) are just as vital to societal equality as ending segregation and stopping lynching were.
Conan the Grammarian at October 3, 2016 8:16 AM
Cultural exchange of fashion is one way that women bond.
I've lived in Central America and traveled extensively in India, and we ladies couldn't wait to dress each other up and try on each other's stuff.
Insufficient Poison at October 3, 2016 9:14 AM
I'm waiting for them to blockade tattoo parlors. That should be really interesting. Plus the tattoo shaming will be fun to watch. All those butterfly tats got to go.
College guys really want the ladies to give up those foreign bras. They are not native to any ancient culture (speaking generally) so free them suckers!
Bob in Texas at October 3, 2016 10:08 AM
Amy has said it before: This is just another attempt to exert unearned power and control over others. The common theme among racialists, feminists, globalists, etc.
Jay R at October 3, 2016 11:16 AM
Culture includes the arts, customs, values, clothing, language, religion, and political organization of a society.
Are we to say that:
The big country-western tradition in Kenya is not to be allowed?
That religion cannot be adopted/changed anywhere?
That everyone must keep wearing the same clothing they always wore in the past? That would mean no more western clothes around the world. Sticking with the past clothing is what Mennonites and Hasidi Jews do, and they do stand out, don't they?
No more food innovation? Southerners must go back to eating only fried chicken and okra?
And who gets to decide? It seems in these cases that even 1 person upset is viewed as enough to shame someone, but I can find a single person upset that we are allowed to drive cars or eat meat or fly. Do the nut cases get to decide?
cc at October 3, 2016 11:43 AM
You wouldn't want to get into a debate with my "Hula Sister" about her book and take on Hula Dancing and cultural appropriation:
https://www.amazon.com/Sister-Nanette-Kilohana-Kaihawanawana-Orman/dp/1617102571
About the Author
Aunty Nanette Kilohana Kaih wanawana Orman is a hula dancer and competition-level performer, a veteran journalist, a composer, and a physician. With the blessing of her kumu (hula teachers), Aunty Nan shares in lively prose her five decades of personal hula knowledge and experience. She supplements those experiences with the voices of revered hula masters such as Kumu Frank Kawaikapuokalani Hewett and Kumu Keali`i Reichel, and many others familiar with or embedded within the culture.
Jay J. Hector at October 3, 2016 12:11 PM
Sixclaws' article about beer PROVES that ancient aliens provided earthlings w/valuable scientific knowledge.
Impossible that China, Iran, Egypt, and Armenia started making beer/wine at the same time 5,000 years ago w/o help from above. (I knew it.)
"McGovern says the new findings show that the Chinese became brewmasters early on: They were making barley beer in the same period as "the earliest chemically attested barley beer from Iran" and the "earliest beer-mashing facilities in Egypt," as well as "the earliest wine-making facility in Armenia," he writes in an email."
Bob in Texas at October 3, 2016 12:43 PM
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