Charges of cultural appropriation and demands that it stop are ways of taking control over someone or some group you don't like. Hate white people? Demand they stop wearing cornrows or cooking fried chicken. Insert yourself into the tiniest dimension of their lives and demand they confirm to your idea of what their lives should be.

Like Crid's two-degrees separated link to "weaponized empathy" on another thread, it's a way of manipulating people to compel them to conform to your standards, to your demands. Backed by political rhetoric and government fiat, it works terribly well.

And it never stops. You don't stop at cornrows or fried chicken, you increase your demands incrementally. Want reparations for slavery? You don't settle on an amount, you demand endless payments to feed a never-sated appetite.

Thing is, not all of these things are equal.

If someone's Halloween costume is "Jew" and they use clip-on payess, a giant prosthetic nose, and carry a huge wad of money around that they won't let anyone touch, that crosses the line from poor taste to racist and offensive. While I wouldn't ban it, I think if large amounts of people were wearing such costumes at college parties it would absolutely be appropriate for the President or Dean or other authority figure to make a statement asking students not to wear them. This is not the same as forcing students not to wear them.

I don't think mocking and insulting falls into the same category as buying Tevas or Bagels.

I also don't think it would be appropriate for someone to say, teach an Torah Tantra Sex class and talk about how it is an ancient Jewish practice. Or to steal some sort of sacred secret text or something and charge people money to see it.

I do think it would be ok to call people out on those sorts of things. I think it is disingenuous to pretend not to see the difference between calling someone out on something truly offensive and calling someone out on a hairstyle or food choice.

> Or to steal some sort of sacred
> secret text or something and
> charge people money to see it.

Okay yeah but... Most things that are sacred aren't secret, because almost everyone who holds something they want you to regard as "secret" has usually gone to considerable trouble to let you know how sacred it is, and vice versa. And they let everyone else know as well, so you (the paying customer) can get the electric social charge that comes from being in on the secret. The one that everybody knows about.

You see what I'm getting at?

This is why some of us don't want to be bothered by sacred things or people in any context, whether religious or showbiz. Or political. Or Financial. Or sporting.

Except guitar. Sanctimony about guitar players is okay.

No it isn't. No sanctimony no how no where no exceptions.






Seriously, Nic, there's nothing worth "stealing" on this planet but insight, and those are everywhere for free. "Sacred" is a term of art for salesmen.

If someone's Halloween costume is "Jew" and they use clip-on payess, a giant prosthetic nose ... that crosses the line from poor taste to racist and offensive.

Allow me to point out that particular costume would likely be a big hit on the typical liberal arts college that has fallen for the BDS movement.

And they are calling people out over what I would consider ticky-tack stuff, like food and hairstyles. The morning linkies on this here website is littered with examples.

My favorite was the Vietnamese student at Oberlin complaining that the bánh mì Oberlin served weren't authentic enough, and was a form of appropriation. And not contemplating that the bread used in the authentic version is a variation of the French baguette.

Who appropriated whom? without "appropriation" we wouldn't have nearly as varied and rich music libraries as we do have.

Consider soul food: BBQ, grits, hush puppies, fried catfish, fried chicken, watermelons. This was originally poor people's food in the South, and thus poor black's food. What do you do with a tough and questionable cut of meat? You BBQ it until it is tender. No one wants the ribs? BBQ them. Watermelons are cheap. If we say only blacks can eat soul food, we are being racist because the food dates back to slave (really post slave) times and implies blacks are still like slaves. In fact, even mentioning watermelons can be considered racist. Should we not appropriate BBQ? Idiotic question.
The idea that you can stop people from adopting a clothing style, hair style, type of food, or musical style that they have seen/heard/tasted is insane. Once you hear/see etc the genie is out of the bottle. And how does the UN plan to enforce this? If people start cooking like some native group, are they going to send the UN army to Dayton Ohio?

If people start cooking like some native group, are they going to send the UN army to Dayton Ohio?

Probably, I'm sure those UN peacekeepers would jump at the chance to rape white women, get a little variety in the women they abuse while out on maneuvers

The cultural appropriation fascists would say that technological innovations don't count as "culture." So, they would go right on using their electronic devices and On the contrary, I would call white culture very rooted in inventions. It was series of whites, over a period of time, that invented the internet.

I once exposed someone's bullshit claim that Philip Emeagwali (a Nigerian mathematician who now lives in the states) invented the internet.

As I researched him, I realized that if Emeagwali is remembered as anything, it will be as a very successful charlatan. He once won a small-time prize for programming the Connection Machine to simulate oil reservoirs, known as the Gordon Bell Prize. Emeagwali did not hesitate to exaggerate his accomplishment to obscene proportions, calling his Gordon Bell "the Nobel Prize of Computing." (The Nobel Prize of Computing, if any such award can be called that, is the Alan Turing Award.)

Although such a program has nothing to do with the internet, and he actually used the internet to access the Connection Machine, he claimed that that made him "one of the fathers of the internet." That title is actually shared by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, who created the TCP/IP.

They were lauded as inventors of the internet, but they, quite properly and modestly, claimed that no one person could be said to have invented the internet.

The internet is a collection of many inventions over the course of decades. In researching who invented the internet, aside from discovering that everyone who had anything to do with the internet was white, I found someone who actually surprised me: actress Hedy Lamarr.

Although untrained, she learned about radio-controlled torpedoes used by the Allies during the second World War from her first husband, a military officer. Concerned that these signals could easily be jammed, causing the torpedo to go off course, she got together with her friend, composer George Anthiel, and together they created a frequency-hopping technology. By randomly changing frequencies, the torpedoes would become all-but-impossible to jam.

This same frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology is used in your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Just when the leftie wierdos got it so guys can hang around in girls' bathrooms, now nonwhite people can't use indoor plumbing at all, because it was invented by white people. Like everything else was.

Cheese fries? Bleh...
Hot brown beef sauce covering chewy cheese curds and crisp (but getting soggy) french fries...

Open 24/7/365.

Come to Montreal and I'll treat you ;-)