Cultural appropriation is a broad enough term to functionally be meaningless, but I’ve found it helpful to think through 4 distinct interests at play, that I think are legitimate:
Proper attribution/credit. We don’t like plagiarism or unattributed copying in most art. Remixes, homages, reinterpretations, and even satire/parody are acceptable but we expect proper treatment of the original author and the original work. Some accusations of cultural appropriation take on this flavor, where there’s a perceived unfairness in how the originator of an idea is ignored and some copier is given credit. For a real world example of this, think of the times the fans of a particular musical artist get annoyed when a cover of one of that artist’s song becomes bigger than the original.
Proper labeling/consumer disclosure/trademark. Some people don’t like taking an established name and applying it outside of that original context. European nations can be pretty aggressive at preserving the names of certain wines (champagne versus sparkling wine) or cheeses (parmigiano reggiano versus parmesan) or other products. American producers are less aggressive about those types of geographic protected labels but have a much more aggressive system of trademarks generally: Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks. In a sense, there’s literal ownership of a name and the owner should be entitled to decide what does or doesn’t get the label.
Cheapening of something special or disrespect for something sacred. For certain types of ceremonial clothing, wearing that clothing outside of the context of that ceremony seems disrespectful. Military types sometimes get offended by stolen valor when people wear ranks/ribbons/uniforms they haven’t personally earned, and want to gatekeep who gets to wear those things. In Wedding Crashers there’s a scene where Will Ferrell puts on a fake purple heart to try to get laid, and it’s widely understood by the audience to be a scummy move. Or, one could imagine the backlash if someone were to host some kind of drinking contest styled after some Christian communion rituals, complete with a host wearing stuff that looks like clergy attire.
Mockery of a group. Blackface, fake accents, and things of that nature are often in bad taste when used to mock people. It’s hard to pull this off without a lot of people catching strays, so it’s best to just avoid these practices. With costumes in general, there are things to look out for, especially if you’re going out and getting smashed.
It’s called White Savior Complex.
When I was growing up in the 80s and some frat-bro types ran around town dressed like the Three Amigos while swilling beers and fumbling their Spanish, parents and teachers would call it “tacky” and “annoying” and “juvenile”.
Now, in the 20s, the children of those frat-bros puts on the same outfit and does the same stupid shit. But their peers are the ones rolling their eyes and telling them that they don’t look cool, while the parents clap and take pictures and get off on a romanticized youth lived vicariously through their frat-bro kids.
So the frat-bros become resentful. They go home, pull out their crayons, and make up a naked brown man to give them permission to behave miserably. And then they go on podcasts and make Instagram reels explaining how - um, aktuly - if you don’t think the tourist-trap Spirit Halloween tier get-up I’m wearing on Cinco-De-Drinko to celebrate getting wasted is cool, you’re the real racists.
Then Budwiser releases an “Authentic Mexican Logger” and the same frat-bros lose their fucking minds because their favorite beer company just Went Woke.
Now, in the 20s
Fuck, my back
I was hoping to see this higher up. It’s not everyday that truth hits you like a ton of bricks, and this needed to be said.
When I was 16 I lived in a small village. It had the charm of country life, but it also had some off-putting characters. Harry, the town butcher, was an extremely right-wind, religious conservative, and a racist. Sarah, the priest’s mistress, never had kids and couldn’t stand them. And then there was Leah. She was Sarah’s sister’s daughter and I had a huge crush on her, except I didn’t even know it at the time because I wasn’t aware a girl could feel that way about another girl.
Anyway, I could write for hours about small town life, about how my friends were the only thing that got me through the day, about how I fell in love and out of love within the same date because the other person was telling me how they rescued a cat just to drop the other shoe - they rescued it from a black couple. I could tell you about racism and classism, about religion and how it turned the entire village against my parents, I could tell you about the time a young Asian child was forced to boil rice for the whole village because “it’s in his blood”, how his mother wanted to fight it but ended up cheering for the crowd that locked him in old mister Miller’s house for the night with just 20 bags of rice and a pair of drum sticks to serve as chopsticks. I could tell you about the Mexican family who once removed all their clothes and set them on a rope to dry in the town square and proceeded to sunbathe because they didn’t understand why people were saying their backs were wet. I could tell you about the Eastern European mobster who cut off two of my grandma’s fingers when she couldn’t pay for some cocaine, or the British “explorer” who came in and wanted to buy the town and put his name everywhere but he could only pay with some pictures of an old lady. Or I could tell you about when the Arab family moved next door so we all slept in shifts in my house because my parents were afraid of terrorists, until Harry the butcher carved “Mohammed” into a pig and left it on their lawn.
I know racism, I lived it all my life. So I could sit here and say a lot of things, but I think the previous poster has demonstrated well enough how you can just sit there and imagine shit and post it on the internet and all of a sudden it becomes true.
Lots of fabrication in this story.
I’m interested in hearing about the Asian kid locked in a house to cook 20 bags of rice with drumsticks for utensils.
Behold, i have drawn you as the soyjack savior complex.
No, that’s an entirely different thing
A closer example might be the literal plot to Dune
Only superficially. Dune deconstructs the entire heroic archetype. Paul Atreides’ emergence as the hero and leader of the Fremen is completely artificial and engineered for colonialist purposes (so that House Atreides can control the supply of spice with minimal resistance from the population of Arrakis).
The plan backfires, of course, as the Fremen jihad ends up being more successful than they’d anticipated and spreads off-world and out of Paul’s ability to control it.
They meant the literal meaning of literal, as in “you took her too literally” not the common meaning of “real” or “actual”
If you go around being publicly offended for another group because you saw someone wear or eat something YOU think they shouldn’t becuase “That’s not YOUR culture”. Then YOU might be a “White Savior”.
That’s a different thing, you should google these words you’re using.
This video always made me giggle a bit: Students vs. Mexicans: Cultural Appropriation | Man on the Street
Using “cultural appropriation” to drag down regular people is kind of pointless, like freaking out at someone for putting the wrong recyclable type of plastic trash in the garbage.
Cultural appropriation matters at the corporate level, where media shapes what regular people do. Do you want to talk about cultural appropriation? Talk about Disney, talk about Hollywood, talk about Jeep Cherokee, and Decathlon Quechua. To keep with the recycling analogy: your problem shouldn’t be ordinary people messing up their trash sorting, it should be vendors mass producing plastic trash for everything.
nah, it just depends on what you’re appropriating from what culture… doing the stereotypical mexican garb is ok with mexico… so that’s cool, dressing in some religious outfit is incredibly offensive… like a native american headdress with a bunch of feathers… it’s also especially offensive in america because of the native american genocide americans great great grandparents probably participated in….
it’s all context… also in how you wear it… (are you making fun of mexicans or having fun with mexicans?) but mexicans are generally cool with americans wearing sombreros… and have a long tradition of american tourists doing so…. plus a sobrero and a mexican blanket is functional gear, not some sacred thing.
cowboys and their whole style is also entirely mexican originally, our cultures are quite intertwined.
that doesn’t change anything else and it’s just cherry picking examples.
Complaining about sharing cultures IS racism. These idiots complaining about cultural appropriation have gone too far up their own ass.
Melding, sharing food clothing and customs makes everyone better! These bullshit micro divisions need to stop.
What “idiots complaining about cultural appropriation”? It’s not exactly a common thing, despite what caricatures of them might make you think. No one is getting upset that anyone eats food from another culture.
The only actual examples I can think of that I’ve actually heard discussed are “please don’t dress as my race as a costume, it’s basically blackface” and “my religion was systematically driven to the brink of extinction, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use it as a fun activity to express your creativity”.
These things always seem chock full of getting defensive about something that doesn’t really happen, or acting like the smallest pushback to the dominant culture doing whatever they want is incredibly terrible.
Appropriation isn’t an issue when it’s just cultures sharing. It’s an issue when people reduce the culture to the things in question, forget that there’s actually people involved who deserve respect, or outright claim ownership of the thing in question.Don’t go to a Halloween party dressed as a Puerto Rican. Don’t grab a random assortment of native American religious practices, mix them with crystals and use it to showcase your creativity.
Sharing culture isn’t cultural appropriation.
As with most things, it’s a continuum. Some assimilation is good, a hairstyle, a clothing style, food, even customs. Sometimes certain people can go too far, and it gets more problematic. Think the jeweler in Snatch that isn’t Jewish but pretends to be. The episode of The Neighborhood with Nicole Sullivan. Rachael Dolezal.
Rachael Dolezal.
Isn’t race at least as much a social construct detached from any physical or biological reality as gender is? If so, why wouldn’t transrace people be valid for essentially the same reason that transgender people are?
You can go down the rest of the radqueer rabbit hole from there, since most of their positions are just taking positions related to mainstream LGBTQ identities and extending them to ones less accepted by the mainstream LGBQ community, like xenogenders and being trans-things-other-than-gender.
The reason feelings of cultural appropriation exist is because the children of immigrants feel like society treats them as foreigners because they’re not white, despite growing up all their lives in the US/UK etc. This leads to feeling like some dipshit is enjoying the food and fashion of your home culture while rejecting it’s people. Think about a Maga moron voting to kick out all the Mexicans while wearing a sombrero and eating tacos; it’s a hypocrisy of culture vs race.
That’s just racism and you’re not going to fix it by isolating the immigrants more by chastising people that enjoy their culture.
It makes zero sense if the goal is to fight racism. If anything you’d want there to be MORE immersion and exchange of cultures so the immigrants are seen as part of the new fabric instead of separate from it.
I’m telling you how people feel, I’m not writing a manual towards a post race society. When people feel ostracised because they look Mexican, they get salty about the same society who routinely rejected them and made them feel like outsiders gleefully housing down Mexican food and cosplaying at being Mexican.
“We got to keep them seperate but treat them equal!”
Hmm wonder where I heard that before.
In the end, progressives and racists shared the same end goal: Segregation
This. The social Justice warriors that are peddling the cultural appropriation line are not representative of the culture or the people of that culture, their opinions, or feelings on the matter.
What we, as a society, need to do, is let cultures be offended when they feel offended, and not assume that they will be offended by something that we think they should be offended by.
Short version is: don’t be offended on behalf of someone else.
You don’t know them. You don’t know their culture. You don’t know what they see as offensive.
Stop assuming you do.
Exactly, just like when you have bullies in high school. Don’t assume that just because someone is wandering around mocking and relentlessly making fun of another student that the other student isn’t ok with it. We need to leave space for the victims to come forward if and when they feel uncomfortable, and not use our positions of power or authority to try to provide social support to people who we view as victims. After all, it worked for Anita hill and everyone who came after and we gave those dumb whores zero support.
See I can make a stupid, asinine argument too
That’s not really the same thing. People that appreciate another culture and enjoy and use aspects of a culture in their life and might be offending someone accidentally and a bully who is trying to harm someone deliberately are different. Intentions do actually mean something.
I won’t disagree there’s much more nuance than I even attempted to capture.
I’ll disagree if you think the person I responded to cares about that one bit vs just complaining about the woke mob of social justice warriors.
🔥
Great, let’s retread the right-wing’s favorite progressive strawmen for teh lulz. Any other culture war bullshit I should feel unjustly attacked over?
“Wie de schoen past trekt 'em aan.”
If you feel spoken to by this comic then maybe you got a problem…
Do you know what a strawman is?
The concept of cultural appropriation seems to be pretty useless in practice.
The cases I’ve encountered where it makes some bit of sense fit better under the concepts of racism or exploitation. The complaints about cultural appropriation online seem to more often attack innocent behaviour or someone genuinely appreciating another culture.
Drink tea, make tacos, wear a kimono, don’t be an asshole
The actual complaints I see about cultural appropriation online are mostly directed at corporations trying to sell ethnic stuff. But that’s not as controversial.
The silly personal attacks are common in memes just like this one, serving as centrist strawmen to vilify progressives. People love to talk about and ridicule it so much that it seems a lot more common than it actually is.
But that’s not as controversial.
It IS controversial. Its just controversial for the same chuds who demand the right to throw on brown-face and call it cosplay. As soon as a beer company starts releasing their label in Spanish or putting a foreign flag on a product or otherwise identify with the wrong kind of foreigner, a big segment of the population loses its mind.
I think a big part of appropriation is either pretending the thing is from a different culture or just divorcing it from any existing cultural context. People just don’t think about what an actual effect is so just knee jerk accuse anything vaguely similar of cultural appropriation.
Agreed on the first point. But even in progressive circles I hardly ever actually see this kind of behavior. Rather we want it to be a thing because it’s so satisfying to dunk on those ignorant and self-righteous morons.
So it’s been memed hard to the point that the term has become a favorite tool of right-wing pundits pushing culture war narratives.
Just something to consider as we accept and reinforce the trope.
Kimono literally just means “thing to wear”.
I’ve heard multiple Japanese people tell me how funny it is how much foreigners concern themselves over wearing… Clothes.
And katana just means “one-sided blade.” But when you deliberately use a foreign word in English to describe something, you’re talking about a specific kind of that thing.
I understand that it’s a loan word, but my point was that a kimono’s cultural meaning is largely similar to how we would say, “Let me go find something to wear”. A kimono is a specific way to cut a single piece of cloth into a garment, but the result is still just clothes.
It’s like policing what is or isn’t “queso cheese”. It’s really not that big of a deal.
A good example I heard once was concerning the tagelharpa. It’s an Estonian instrument, historically used in Estonian culture, however if you hear it you’ll probably think Vikings. The modern viking/pagan/neofolk music scene uses it prominently, and as it has a much broader reach than Estonian culture, this has lead (through no fault of the musicians I must add) to situations where many people think of it as a “viking” instrument, even though it never was. Thus, a piece of Estonian culture is widely appreciated as belonging to another culture, due to popular media influence.
I don’t know if this is really an example of cultural appropriation, but that example helped me grasp the concept (if it is a good example).
That’s an interesting one. It’s not like you can stop music and explain the instrumentation in the middle of a song. I have seen in live shows when they use uncommon instruments they’ll explain it either at the start or between songs.
That’s really interesting! Nice sounding instrument
It’s not. People use stuff from other places and call them different names all the time
…and then over the coming years, decades, or centuries adjust those things either for differences in practical use or cultural tastes and that’s where a lot of things in most cultures come from. Some things tend to independently evolve in lots of different places though because the idea is simple and the need it fills practically universal (like spears or fermented foods).
But don’t be shocked by the sheer amount of our people modified this thing that those people we traded with used who modified this other thing that some other people used, etc, etc and that’s why our cultural thing is really some ancient Babylonian thing repeatedly stolen, rebranded and iterated upon over centuries. You know, like how we measure time. Or for anyone of European ancestry, writing.
now i want a t-shirt/tote-bag with that line.
Congratulations, You just defined cultural appropriation.
If I had and it was that easy, we wouldn’t have this neverending stream at someone getting offended because someone did something associated with a culture they don’t have obvious blood ties to.
I think there is asshole behaviour that could be described as cultural appropriation, but I think the vast majority of them also fit under “exploitation” or “racism”.
It’s also apparent that if you tell people “cultural appropriation is bad”, you get pretty silly outcomes. Suddenly you have protests because a restaurant serves sushi without being ethnically japanese, or someone yells at you because you post a photo of a california roll.
Given those examples I should probably go have lunch
You’re being trolled, there’s nobody saying that unless online trolls convinced them. It’s concern trolling to stoke division.
Nobody has ever yelled at me for eating or posting a picture of my American Midwest grocery store sushi, get the fuck outta here.
The irony here is that the term cultural appropriation has been politically appropriated, the same way that many of these explorative racial theories are, like woke, like social justice, like critical race theory. They are taken from their academic settings and eventually used to suppress actual concerns raised by denegrating it and reducing it to something that is both laughable and fundamentally not what it is.
Culture is meant to be shared, as long as you’re respectful and you’re not caricaturing or mocking the culture you’re trying to portray, most people from said culture would be flattered.
Mocking cultures is fine. Mocking anything is fine.
Obviously, but the intent is important.
Yeah context and intend make all the difference. Cultural appropriation is when you try to clad yourself in something that is a facsimile of another culture, usually for marketing or influence purposes, but you neither understand nor have any intend to understand the culture itself or the meaning behind the parts you use for your (usually financial) gain.
IDK, even then, I don’t think you need to understand the culture about it so much. E.g. there was some incident about a white girl wearing a qipao to prom and she got called out for it. In the end, it’s just a piece of clothing that looks nice. It isn’t some deeply symbolic thing for people.
I don’t expect her to try to understand Chinese culture before wearing a qipao (which originated in Mongolia before Chinese appropriated it BTW), and I don’t expect Chinese to understand Western culture before wearing a suit and tie.
But obviously there are some cases, as you said where context does matter.
On one hand certain things have certain meaning in the culture and maybe some people will look sidewise but on the other hand people that practice that culture probably don’t expect some random dude to know everything it their culture. But “cultural appropriation” has mostly been used to virtue signal
Lol, reminds me of one of the Mario games a while back - no idea what the context was, but Mario took on different personas, which I’m assuming gave him abilities specific to whatever ‘form’ he took kinda like Kirby.
Anywho, one of them was a Mexican theme, which made Mario don a sombrero and poncho. Lots of touchy white people on the internet were PISSED cuz how could Nintendo be so insensitive to the Mexican culture?!
…meanwhile, Mexican gamers were fucking ecstatic cuz HOLY SHIT MARIO’S WEARING A SOMBRERO! LET’S GOOOOOO!!!
Good times.
That was either Super Mario Odyssey or Paper Mario: Sticker Star (Mario can wear a sombrero in both). In Odyssey it’s just a themed cosmetic that can be bought with coins. In Sticker Star, it’s an attack.
Yeah and one of the reasons why we will never get again paper Mario references in other Mario games
God-damnit
I’ve never heard about “cultural appropriation” outside of jokes making fun of it. And it’s one of the right’s favourite strawmen. Maybe it’s time to let it go?
The counterexample to Mexicans and their Sombreros is Plains Indians and their War bonnet (those feather crowns they used to sell as “Indian kids costumes”), whenever cultural appropriation is mentioned this comes up, so I’d be rather surprised if you hadn’t heard of it before.
Any spicy takes on that one, or have you really just never heard of it?
Idk if I’m just old now and it’s not the parties I go to but I’m sure glad that “sexy native american” isn’t really a Halloween costume anymore.
Case in point: Mexicans loved Speedy Gonzalez.
When I was 12 or 13, we took a trip to Mexico and took public transportation and stayed in small non-touristy places where the people staying in the hotels were more likely to be Mexicans than Americans (not to save money, my parents just thought it would be more fun). I remember sitting in a hotel lobby with a TV on and some Mexican kids sitting around watching Speedy Gonzales cartoons dubbed into Spanish with their parents casually chatting and I was like, “WTF? Isn’t Speedy Gonzales racist? They don’t care? They like it?”
Like VindictiveJudge says, he’s the hero who outwits his opponents and always wins. I’d add that the opponents are always American.
Probably because he always outwits his opponents and always wins. He’s not any more crazy than the other Looney Tunes, he’s as smart as Bugs, and unlike Bugs, he’s never cruel and remains firmly heroic.
That’s the crux. He’s a Mexican stereotype, but at the time, it was rare to have a good guy who looked like that.
He was also the exact opposite of the other stereotype of the “lazy Mexican” - which, for anyone who’s ever worked construction with actual Mexicans, is comically inaccurate.
Rodríguez cousin knew how to pack heat
I think he was a Salamanca.
I wonder how much of the ‘lazy Mexican’ stereotype comes from a combination of an afternoon siesta (…to avoid the hottest part of the day, which could be deadly prior to air conditioning), and the chronic anemia that could be caused by hookworm infestations that used to be common in areas with poor sanitation (incl. the American south; some of the same stereotypes existed regarding rural southerners for many decades)?
Interestingly, they also made a heroic “lazy” Mexican in the form of Slowpoke Rodriguez. (He pack a gun.)
Literally no Latin American is going to be bothered Or annoyed in any way whatsoever if you don typical dresses of their culture.
We love our culture and love it even more when we influence gringos to dress as our ancestors did.
The joy is palpable. It makes you part of the family. And that’s plenty
Besides, no one here knows what the deal is with getting offended on behalf of someone else. If anyone has a problem, they speak up their minds.
Slurs? Motherfückêr, that’s half our language.
I was with you until the last sentence. Can’t say I agree with the n word being a beautiful expression of English.
We in LATAM breath slurs and eat bullying for breakfast
Ew.
This is one thing ive never understood about “cultural appropriation.” If someone is partaking in your nations/cultures traditions, apperal, food, etc. Why is that a bad thing? Wouldnt people want their traditions known and shared and experienced by many?
Idk im just a white guy who loves dia de los muertos
As a Quebecois, I like that Canadians like poutine. I don’t like that they pretend they have invented it. I also like that they like maple syrup and the traditions surrounding it (cabane à sucre). I don’t like that they appropriate it as a thing of their own (we produce 90% of global maple syrup).
As a Quebecois
You may not like it, but as a Quebecois you unfortunately remain part of Canada and thus are part of the set of Canadians and the creations and practices of Quebec are Canadian as a consequence.
To change that, you’ll need to double down on that Free Quebec stuff and cut yourselves away from your English neighbors. Though I don’t think that’s even won an opinion poll in the last twenty years, and I don’t think it’s ever been closer than the failed resolution in 1995.
It’s a thin line between celebrating indigenous cultures and heritage and exploiting it. The Washington Redskins being something I feel everyone can clearly see was over that line, but wearing a sombrero is clearly nowhere near it.
There’s a big difference between participation and appropriation, and the “anti-woke” hive mind goes out of it’s way to conflate the two.
Enjoying other cultures isn’t appropriation. I think the line where it becomes appropriation is profiteering. If you are commodifying and profiting off someone else’s culture that’s pretty shitty. Obviously that’s not a perfectly clear cut line (who ‘owns’ culture?), but it’s a good place to start.
So is every company making and marketing tortilla chips and salsa appropriating culture if they are from New York City? Is every pizzeria that isn’t in Italy profiteering off of Italian culture? Is a French Bistro in Kansas City wrong? Is it wrong to wear a Scottish Kilt made in Viet Nam?
I think each of the described situations has a different specific answer because the topic is nuanced. As stated above, it can sometimes to be messy to say who owns some piece of culture. But beyond that, the most useful tool is an examination of socioeconomic power dynamics.
If there is a cultural group that is poor, and an outsider from a rich/wealthy group commodifies and sells their culture, while giving nothing to those people, you’d probably agree that that’s a shitty thing to do. Their culture obviously had some kind of material wealth value that they received none of.
However, if you take a situation where both parties are well off it seems a lot less shitty. Especially if the cultural group in question is already commodifying and profiting off the same piece of culture.
If you can’t unravel the knot of cultural ownership, then does anyone really own it? It would appear to me that “everyone” owns it at that point and can partake in it freely and adapt it to their wants an needs. And no matter the culture, there is always socioeconomic disparities within that group. No matter how small or downtrodden they may appear to you. Someone is always going to be a little bit better off than you and someone else is always going to have a little more power than you.
So is Tostitos racist for not mailing checks to every Mexican person everywhere? Because they sure as hell are making bank selling those chips and Salsa to you. OMG! are YOU part of the problem?
Sorry for the double reply, but another useful perspective in this is derogation. I often forget this idea because I’m very class minded, but it’s also very important. This is the idea that a culture can be profited off of while simultaneously despising the people that practice it. In practice, this exists as a business around a specific cultural item succeeding specifically because the business is NOT owned/operated by the original cultural group. Some of the best examples of this are around Black American culture in the US. Some cultural products were only valuable AFTER they were owned, operated, and proliferated by White Americans. Which is kinda just Racism Classic™ but allowing certain useful things to cross the cultural line for profits sake.
The know of cultural ownership is absolutely unravel-able in many situations, just not all. In some situations it’s exceedingly clear and in others, not. I think you’re trying very hard to find hard-and-fast, absolute rules for these situations, but they don’t exist. The keyword is nuance, nuance, nuance. Each situation is different and each situation deserves scrutiny as to whether or not it crosses the line. This is a judgement call made by each and every person.
If you really want me to engage on the specific situation of Tostitos/chips and salsa I will, so you can see the process of my scrutiny.
First, I think that as any item of culture becomes more and more diffused (ethically or not), it’s original ownership becomes diluted. Things that were once appropriation in the distant past, if done today, would not be considered as such as the context around them changes (in a myriad of ways).
So, if Tostitos started as a company today, I’d say making chips and salsa is not appropriation. But, if Tostitos was founded a long time ago, before chips and salsa were a foodstuff ubiquitous across the US and Tostitos was created by one outside of that cultural ownership, then I’d say it likely was appropriation. It also might be fair to argue that in the modern day for Tostitos specifically, “the damage has been done” and there really isn’t much fixing it, so consuming their products isn’t necessarily problematic. But this would be a point as to why identifying appropriation early on and stopping it is especially important.
As to whether I’m part the problem - for Tostitos no, but for other things almost certainly yes. I’m human and I don’t know everything, and I’ve certainly made mistakes in this area, but that’s okay. What’s important is that once I’ve learned something is in fact a mistake, I own up to it and stop making that mistake.
I think that’s still tricky. For instance, most parts of the world have few Japanese migrants, yet Japanese restaurants are almost everywhere. Usually these are owned by other Asian migrants. This is clearly profiteering, but I don’t see it as particularly problematic.
I think you can apply the socioeconomic and derogation lenses here. Socioeconomically, Japan has been ahead of nearly every other Asian country for a long while, with only places like China and Singapore recently catching up to them. So, I think that makes it feel okay. And derogatively, I don’t think these restaurants are successful because they specifically aren’t being run by Japanese people. So that’s good on the front as well. So I’d say, yeah, overall it feels fine. However, I’m not Japanese and don’t have a wealth of additional context that might provide counter arguments.
also when it becomes an issue is influenced by how accurate it is, how overused it feels, and (obviously) if it was made with the intent to insult
I think academically, derogation is often considered as a component. Like profiting off a culture while simultaneously despising the culture and the people who own it.
It’s a tough line to draw, because even if they aren’t the main profitees, the culture where the thing originated often still profited. e.g. AFAIK rock’n’roll getting popular with white americans was pretty good for black americans, even though many of the best selling artists (e.g. Elvis Presley) were white.
The popularization of Black American music is indeed a complex topic in this arena. Like, obviously a lot of cultural outsiders made a lot of money off of the situation, but there were at least some benefits to the arrangement, although whether or not they outweighed the cons is perhaps difficult to say. For example, if outsiders had abstained entirely from profiting, what would have changed? Obviously more of the money made percentage-wise would’ve gone to the owning culture, but would there have been less money overall? Would it have reached the same levels of popularity? If so, it almost certainly wouldn’t’ve happened as quickly, right? These are difficult questions to answer and I’m not educated enough in this area to really offer any. So, while not worth a damn, my gut feelings is that there are at least some strong arguments as to why overall the absence of outsider profiting would’ve been better for the owning culture.
I mean I’m Bavarian and if people wear Lederhosen and set up their own Oktoberfest it’s kinda lame. Not that I think it’s bad, it’s just that I’m not a fan of that stuff here either. You can totally have all of that. I keep the many many small breweries making fantastic beer.
Yeah, but lederhosen are just kind of neat. Who doesn’t like their men in short leather shorts, right? (Seriously though, the construction for very traditional lederhosen is kind of neat. I’ve tried it, and it’s a challenge without being able to skive all your seams.)
IMO it’s appropriation if it’s done disrespectfully or in an exploitative or profiteering way. Otherwise, it would just be cultural segregation. Imagine liberalism turned full apartheid.
So if I want to open a Pinata factory, I can only sell them to Mexicans? Or can I sell them to anyone, but only to non-Mexicans at a profit? Or must every Pinata be made at home by a loving Mexican Grandmother for her Grandchildren only?
It’s awesome, racists and progs have the same end goal
Segregation.
It’s called White Savior Complex.
“Only I, a white person can save you from-- pick a thing. Because I believe you are incapable of fending for yourself, I shall be offended for you!”
Yeah. I see and experience this a lot from collectivists. It’s like they try to cover it under a thinly veiled hypocritical facade of “niceness” but still stinks like shit under it
I don’t have to go too far, just me mentioning that I am from Venezuela and that I know for a fact that the leftists destroyed my country, is enough for them to let go of that facade and go into a tirade of vindicative slurs.
Of course, I understand them. From thousand of kilometers away and armed with all of 15 minutes of a collectivist ideology pamphlet, they clearly know more about the struggles and history of the country I’ve lived all my life.
I have no problem with that at all. Please dress up for the 16th of September, the Mexican Independence Day, or as a catrín on Día de los Muertos. My Korean friend looked so good as an Adelita and I was so proud of her.
I guess I’d only have a problem with a Halloween costume that exaggerates a negative and unrealistic stereotype but I don’t think people make those anymore, or at least I haven’t seen one.
negative and unrealistic stereotype
which would just be racism really
Yeah, I wanted to set some parameters for it. I thought it’d be unhelpful without specifying where I draw the line.
“Cultural Appropiation” is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.
All cultures grow by learning about and adopting customs of other cultures, or in other words by appropiating things from other cultures.
And if they did that didn’t we wouldn’t have things like anime (Japan took the art of animation from America, not only did The US invent cartoons, but anime evolve from styles used on early Disney cartoons), rock music (Rock musicians are predominantly white, but rock itself evolved from distinctly black forms of music), or really most food in general (Pizza’s from Italy, French Fries are from Belgium, Hot dogs are from Germany… Need I go on?)
At best, demonizing cultural appropiation is just encouraging segregation.
Now if you’re wearing the colors or clothing of another culture specifically with intent to insult or in a less-than-glamorous way… That’s a different story. (I’m talking about those of you who think putting on an ET Mask and a Sombreo and claiming you’re an illegal alien is hillarious)
This is the kind of Neo Liberal nonsense that makes me wish I had a party to root for that wasn’t the Democrats
“Cultural Appropiation” is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.
Really? Because I’d say it’s the perfect term to describe shit like this.
Because that is not respecting an indigenous culture. That is taking something extremely important to them and perversely twisting it into some corporate sports team bullshit.
What else is that asshole doing if not appropriating someone’s culture?
But can’t we just call that racism? “Haha, I’m an Indian” is just racist. Making a new term of cultural appropriation then leads to all sorts of things getting that label that aren’t problematic. A lot of it I think actually veers back into racism. Like as a white guy, can I eat, for example, Cherokee dishes? Can I open a Cherokee restaurant? I’m not pretending to be from their culture, I just like the food and think other people would too. If I can’t do these things, you are reinforcing that Cherokees are a different group than all other Americans, which is where racism comes from. Being exposed to other cultures is how you combat racism, that’s why cities tend to be less racist.
I guess, but there are many different types of racism and this is not the same as, for example, burning a cross on a black family’s lawn.
This is not active hate. This person very likely has no animosity toward indigenous Americans. He probably has no idea about the significance of the war bonnet or why it’s offensive.
So I think this is a subcategory which needs to be highlighted specifically because of people like that.
Idk im just a white guy who loves dia de los muertos
How dare you
Clothing and food are surface, but important, cultural signs. It can be easy to observe and emulate these for one’s own gain either socially or econically. All the while the culture from which these signs are derive are ignored.
Dressing up like a war chief for Halloween is partaking in the costume, but not the culture.
But who cares, right?
It’s important to root these in a history of colonial exploitation, marginalization, and erasure. A group of people whose way of life has been noted as barbaric, backwards, or savage were often the same reasons colonial powers saw it fit to steal from them, enslave, and murder them. Donning a cultures dress or making their food tastes “better” has done nothing to restore connection with that culture. It is just a more polite form of their erasure. They have been robbed of their soveignty.Another phenomena, as noted in the comic, is the chill acceptance of this by the appropriated culture. Here, they face no real erasure. Heck, you don’t really see this in newly immigrated peoples who want to make a better life for themselves. Being seen is success. But you speak to their first generation children and having their culture flattened to the surface signs can be infuriating if you are the type who views assimilation as a type of loss.
I personally think there is space for a member of the dominant culture to appreciate the culture if they’ve been invited. But it is important to be careful here as well. Because you may have earned that right with one group from within the culture, but that is not transferable and that exception must be earned again.
Heck, it gets even more complicated when people looking to just keep their schools open and working sge adults employed couldn’t care less when asked, but will ask if there’s anything that can be done to stabilize their community.
So I’ve written a lot and feel like I missed so much and glossed over much of what is important. What have you read about the subject that really attempted to wrestle with the concept?
I am Latin American. We couldn’t even give an atomic sliver of a speck of fuck about gringos using part of our culture or the intention behind it.
If anything it’s enjoyable, one more for the family.
And if we get offended? Don’t worry. We don’t need anyone from a “dominant culture” to look down on us, thinking about saving us because we are oh so weak, or speak for us.
We can speak and do speak for ourselves.
Good thing I’m not part of the “dominant culture”. Would hate to speak for you. Just speaking for myself. But there are Latin Americans who disagree with you.
Obviously intent comes into it, where wearing a reductive costume without any awareness (your Halloween costume example) is callous and ignorant of that person. I think some ignorance can be excused if this person couldn’t reasonably be expected to understand all the implications of a costume, even if it’s someone who should be expected to (thinking Trudeau Jr or Prince Harry when younger).
Regardless of the hypothesised (or real) impact to the community of someone wearing clothing arguably offensive to minorities with ancestry in the culture being mocked, those aspects aren’t what this cartoon is about. It’s about idiots who don’t understand nuance and repeat shit they see on social media unthinkingly until you get this absurd situation where someone wearing a hat and wearing it well is screamed at in public for no discernible reason.
I wasn’t responding to the cartoon, but to one comment asking why cultural appropriation is a bad thing.
Lots of people seeing it will do the same kind of wrong-generalisation in the opposite direction though, and take the valid point the cartoon makes to write off all concerns with cultural appropriation, including the valid ones you just made in your first paragraph.
The world is nuanced, and that’s nearly never conveyed well in our current public communications systems…
Some people just love to find reasons to get offended.
Hell, a way to carry a baby was called cultural appropriation by some black people where I live when first Nations have been carrying their baby the same way on our territory since way before any black people set foot in northern America but we don’t hear them complain.
Also, plenty of Latin American culture was basically forced on the indigenous by the Spanish. There’s a reason why poor people in countries like Bolivia dress more like 16th century Spanish peasants than their indigenous ancestors. Those bowler hats people wear in Bolivia aren’t part of Incan culture.
If you dress like what people consider to be traditional Bolivian dress these days and you’re American, I guess you’re appropriating Spanish culture from centuries ago? I don’t think anyone would give a shit.
It’s damn true. I ran a crew of workers that were Spanish speaking. After two years all I gotta say is, is there a word that isn’t used as a dick?
Everything means dick in Spanish if you try hard enough
It applies to everything btw.
To date, “the thing from the thingy” is the most sought spare part in all of Latin America.
You don’t know what it is, no one knows, but it means nothing and everything at the same time.
Our hardware store dependents are fluent in trillion of languages at this point
Besides, no one here knows what the deal is with getting offended on behalf of someone else. If anyone has a problem, they speak up their minds.
I can explain. In theory the person who SHOULD be offended is a member of a minority and speaking their mind would open them to backlash from the majority so they say nothing. Its mental gymnastics that let’s a member of the majority “be a hero” for a minority even if that person doesn’t exist. But who cares about that as long as the white lady can think she is a good guy.
Its stupid and is not really about the appropriated culture.
So, virtue signaling?
Ah, as expected
Snowflakes: “It is offensive for a westerner to wear a Japanese kimono. You are not Japanese!”
Native Japanese: “We insist you wear this kimono so you feel like part of the group.”
Based on a true story.
