i think its getting pretty silly with all these "cultural appropriation" accusations. its not black-face or a white person wearing a bindi. its someone wearing a dress. if they were wearing the dress and pulling their eyes back with their fingers that would be a whole other issue. the other thing ive noticed is people piling on coachella dorks who wear indian headdresses. sure, they look like douchebags, but its silly to make a bigger issue out of it and accuse them of cultural theft. i play in a band that does a very regionally specific kind of music from a country i have never been to. im always conscious about being seen as "ripping off" or stealing another cultures music. but im actually into the music and pretty knowledgeable about it. we arent posers or a band trying to co-opt someone elses thing. we genuinely love the music and playing it. the biggest compliment i get is when people who are from the area tell us we sound like the bands they hear back home and that we are the best american band they have heard playing "their" music. i think if youre being sincere and real with what you do than its all good...be it dress or music or whatever.
When people complain about "cultural appropriation" they are really just asking you to laugh at them. Nothing more.
It is unknown if the prom dinner pre-party was able to secure reservations at Yellow Fever. ______ Whole Foods is slammed over Yellow Fever restaurant. The owner says it’s not racist. Kelly Kim and her husband wanted the name of their new pan-Asian restaurant to stand out, eschewing bland or stereotypical phrases, like bamboo, dragon and lotus. Then it hit them. Yellow Fever. “That’s memorable,” Kim recalls saying to her husband Michael before they opened their first location in late 2013, in a Saturday interview with The Washington Post. After Wednesday’s opening of a third location in a Whole Foods 365 store in Long Beach, Calif., it may be memorable in a different away. The announcement triggered a national outcry on social media, with many criticizing the name’s racist undertones. Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne infection that kills thousands every year, mostly in Africa, and named for the jaundice hemorrhage that the virus produces. But the phrase is also a common reference to a term associated with a white man’s sexual fascination with Asian women. Kim, who said that before this week the name wasn’t an issue, did not take the term to have an overtly sexual or even negative meaning, adding that it is more nuanced than what critics have said. The term implies “an attraction or affinity of Asian people or Asian things,” such as Korean pop music or karaoke, she said. “I never took it to a have deeper meaning. … It’s a little tongue in cheek, but I never saw it as offensive or racist or anti-feminist,” she said. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...with-that-critics-say/?utm_term=.2a15ab521d4f
people who whine about cultural appropriation are the same people who are in favor of multicultural societies. Well, you can't have it both ways.
Eh.....if people like “black culture” and want to emulate what they perceive as aspects of it that’s there business. The only exception to that would be things like black face. On a somewhat related note I do find it mildly irritating when someone uneducated in African history attempts to give me a lecture on “African culture”
You're painting yourself into a corner as a minority by claiming superficial imagery and then reinforcing others' association of you with it. You're also neglecting to acknowledge or address that someone in your cohort saw a marketing and entertainment opportunity that harvested your mutual culture as a shortcut around either technical competency or creative originality.
Whales learn songs from other pods and songs catch on around the world. Been happening w tribes of humans for tens of thousands of years. It strikes me as an unwieldy concept to somehow police. Easy for me to say, as a mostly ethnic Irish guy, but just as a human, it seems absurd. I refuse to just eat Irish food and listen to Lord of the Dance. **** that. Don't even love Guiness. Not sure I can even spell it. I was raised on texmex, gumbo, zydeco, punk, country and blues and thank heavens for it all.
I just colonized all the asian culture at the houston japanese festival. my oppressor mindset fit right in. those fools thought sharing and celebrating their culture was a good thing lulz
That chick looks nice in that dress. It's not like she's trying to make a name off of it. For the topic, I don't think tearing down other people accomplishes anything. We all laugh at and do stupidly cool things other people might get pissed of at. I'd rather tear down institutions that promote and profit off of spreading distorted stereotypes, like the Washington Redskins. It's already an unending topic elsewhere but that seems more of a subject than randomly combing Twitter for hate or troll tweets dealing with race or identity. Look! Hot chick rocking a foreign language tattoo!! So ugly.
Cultural appropriation isn't racist. It's mostly just annoying. Usually because the people doing it are idiots. And technically no one owns anything. If you want to wear a bindi as a fashion statement even though to a billion people you have just converted to Hinduism. That's fine. Annoying? Yes. Wrong? No.
I'm going to continue to culturally appropriate every damn cuisine and dish I can get my hands on, because they're all delicious. I'll probably have on a guayabera and flipflops while I'm planting my okra and eggplant in the morning, and picking my peppers and tomatoes in the afternoon. I do promise that I will not annoy Sweet Lou by wearing any of his dresses.
Ruminating on this because I don't see anything wrong with cultural exchange, aka appropriation. This is what humans do and should do. It is how civilization works. No one complains we appropriated the idea of democracy from the ancient Greeks, nor do we complain if a country in Africa wants to adopt it. But America occupies a particular place in an asymmetrical system of cultural exchange. We are the 'cultural imperialists' of this age. We export our language, movies, music, blue jeans, fast food, women's lib, free markets, etc to the rest of the world by dint of our relative power. Things do not come back the other way in some equal exchange. We don't adopt communism or sharia law or learn Korean. Mostly, we just cherry pick the things we want, like food and clothes and sometimes music, and leave the rest of that culture and its practices and values behind. So, I suppose its a little reminder of this asymmetry when you see a white girl in a chinese dress or a sari. I still can't really say its a problem though. This is how culture works. Can't expect a white girl to not wear a pretty dress anymore than you can expect Buck to not eat delicious food. It's not the cause of imperialism, just a sign.
I can't walk a mile in the person's shoes so I don't know how she feels. I would think I would feel honored that someone appreciates my cultural dress. It obviously means they like it, and not only do they like it, they like it enough to wear it to a big occasion. It is, in its own way, an appreciation of the culture. That being said, I would be willing to listen to someone who was offended and hear their explanation.
Let's be real. The problem isn't "cultural appropriation" it's backlash against white people. Black people have the biggest gripe here, but certainly Asians have it as well. While they were second class citizens or worse, resentment built over things like entertainers using their musical styles while ignoring them, never giving them credit, etc. Black people are fighting for their right to vote, being lynched, being denied the right to buy homes, etc. and Elvis Presley is getting famous using their rhythm. Chinese people were relegated to second class status, mocked, limited where they were allowed to work, etc. White people in particular, but America in general, is facing a reckoning from empowered minorities over the "I wasn't good enough to be treated like a human being but you sure like my clothes/music/food/etc." I think a great example is Donald Trump's general position towards Mexicans and then he eats a taco bowl lol.
I like drilling down on the economics, b/c it's the only place that this whole appropriation thing makes much sense to me. If there's no direct impact (e.g. white person wears corn rows but is still driving a bus or flipping burgers), I can't see any reasonable grounds for even much discussion (though some liberal friends disagree vehemently). #1 is a great economic example and topic, and to me #2 is funny but is not as great. If Two Scoops opened a taco bowl chain that outperformed anything owned by a Mexican American b/c he could more easily get loans, etc, it might be closer to musical examples. In #1, Elvis (and later the rolling stones, to cite but a couple of many) literally appropriated music from another, less privileged culture. Step through it. A. Blame Elvis? I don't. You don't have to like him, but he was talented and made money. If he actively held down black performers, then that's another matter. But if he loved making music and was successful, then don't hate the player, hate the game. (IMHO). B. Blame the record producers? To a degree, you sure could. Did they try to book black elvis? In many cases, sure, but they most assuredly paid their black performers a lot less money. But can you blame them for promoting Elvis when he was talented and white consumers would literally eat up his records? C. So that leaves the big cultural boogeyman again. The white public had more money and was more comfortable with the white dude shaking his hips and white women fainting than a person of color doing the same. I don't have much of a pithy "answer" to all that. And I don't blame someone one bit if they're in a minority and they're sick of being told to be "patient" because culture changes slowly. :-(
Somebody dug up the complainer Jeremy Lam's twitter. He tends to use a word that a lot of people are not allowed to use.
