That's as much cultural appropriation as the original criticism of the woman wearing a Qipao to prom. It's non-Asians (although some of the T-wolves dancers are Asian) wearing a Chinese outfit for entertainment purposes. Either case isn't something I'm going to get worked up about and actually think it's good that people like that like the cultural style enough to wear it.
A group of people paying respect to Chinese culture by celebrating the Lunar New Year isn't cultural appropriation at all. It's literally celebrating Chinese culture. If they had called it Minnesota Luna New Year and and stripped everything related to China out of it but made it as if it was a white cultural event then you could argue it was cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation isn't about non-ethnic group x celebrating y culture. It's about x taking y's culture and washing it so it can be their own. The girl with the prom dress is not cultural appropriation. A white man with an afro is not cultural appropriation. The white girl wearing a bindi isn't cultural appropriation. Any one who claims that doesn't understand what cultural appropriation is. The Color Run IS cultural appropriation. Do you see the difference?
This rendering is conceptually confused. "Cultural appropriation" can be used in a descriptive sense as well as in a normative sense. In the descriptive sense, the Irish Jig dancer is clearly involved in cultural appropriation--although "celebrating" that culture gives it an added normative dimension. Judging cultural appropriation as "good" or "bad" is evaluating cultural appropriation in a normative sense. a lot more info at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-cultural-heritage/#WhatCultAppr
I'm not distinguishing between good and bad here - I'm making a descriptive not a normative case. The Irish Jig Dancer is just someone who liked Irish Jig Dancing and does it. It's no different that a black American guy going to China to learn Wushu. Neither is taking a culture and washing out the roots and giving it a new identity stripped of its original cultural meaning. Really it should be called Cultural Reappropriation. It's absolutely stupid to say that someone ought to not practice Yoga because it's not their culture. That's the normative evaluation.
A White Author’s Book About Black Feminism Was Pulled After a Social Media Outcry The book “Bad and Boujee” centers on Black women’s experience, but critics said it was written by a white professor and was flawed in its execution. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/arts/jennifer-buck-bad-and-boujee-book-pulled.html?smid=url-share excerpt: The blurb for the book “Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology” says that it “engages with the overlap of Black experience, hip-hop music, ethics and feminism to focus on a subsection known as ‘trap feminism.’” But the book, written by Jennifer M. Buck, a white academic at a Christian university, was criticized by some authors and theologians as academically flawed, with deeply problematic passages, including repeated references to the ghetto. The project was also widely condemned on social media as poorly executed and as an example of cultural appropriation. In response to the criticism, the book’s publisher, Wipf and Stock Publishers, decided on Wednesday that it would pull the title from circulation. The incident touched on a larger debate in the world of publishing over when, how, and even whether, it is appropriate for authors to write about subjects outside their own culture. Wipf and Stock’s decision to pull “Bad and Boujee” was reported on Thursday by Sojourners, the website of a Christian publication. Buck did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. The theologian Candice Marie Benbow, author of “Red Lip Theology,” was “livid” to learn that a white academic had published a book about the theology of trap feminism — an emerging philosophy that examines the intersection of feminist ideals, trap music and the Black southern hip-hop culture that gave rise to it. “It matters that you have an academic text that would situate Black women’s lived experiences and Black women’s spirituality, and it’s not written by a Black woman,” she said. Sesali Bowen, a pioneer of the concept of trap feminism and the author of “Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes From a Trap Feminist,” also took issue with the author’s failure to properly credit or engage with the Black women who have been leading experts in the field. “Even if another Black woman did this, the issues around citation would still exist,” she said. “The fact that this is also a white woman, who has no business writing about this because nothing about the trap or Black feminism is her lived experience, is adding another layer to this.” In a statement, Wipf and Stock Publishers said that its critics had “serious and valid” objections. “We humbly acknowledge that we failed Black women in particular, and we take full responsibility for the numerous failures of judgment that led to this moment,” Wipf and Stock said. “Our critics are right.” Among the objections raised, the publisher said, were the book’s cover, which features a young Black woman with natural hair, and which Benbow called intentionally misleading and “profoundly racist,” and the lack of endorsement by Black experts. The book’s only endorsement came from another white academic at Azusa Pacific University, where the author, Buck, is an associate professor in the department of practical theology. Buck, in her introduction to “Bad and Boujee,” briefly addresses “identity politics” and acknowledges that as “a straight, privileged, white woman” she has “not lived the embodied experiences of a trap queen,” but was drawn to the subject because of her love of hip-hop. more at the link
It should be criticized by its merits. I'd write letters to the publisher if you're against it getting pulled. Maybe they can ship direct advance copies with a proper money incentive.
Seems it was pulled for being a poorly written and inaccurate book. Not sure why it belongs here. As for whether someone has the right to write about the ghetto if they have never even stepped in one, just think about the validity of a Chinese writer in China writing about the German experience without every having stepped in Germany - such a work wouldn't be taken very seriously or ever get published in the first place. I always felt growing up that it was ok for white people to write and tell me about my culture - I've heard white people tell me what my culture is and they understand me all my life - even right here on this board because some guy had an Indian girlfriend. But if I say I understand say French culture because I read a book on it or had a French girlfriend, I think people would laugh at that idea as ridiculous. And to me this is one of the cruxes of what I find to be white privilege - that white people are given more leeway to explore and have legitimacy on topics they really aren't experts at but other cultures are not allowed to return the favor.
you must have missed this part: But the book, written by Jennifer M. Buck, a white academic at a Christian university, was criticized by some authors and theologians as academically flawed, with deeply problematic passages, including repeated references to the ghetto. The project was also widely condemned on social media as poorly executed and as an example of cultural appropriation.
I saw the line about cultural appropriation but that doesn't seem why the publisher pulled it. Seems like that more another issue raised but I don't think it would have even been raised if not for the other much bigger problems. Academically flawed is a pretty serious problem for a book written by an academic.
Brian Leiter: https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/04/mob-review-rather-than-peer-review.html excerpt: There is actually a whole academic discipline in which authors write "about subjects outside their own culture": it's called anthropology. more at the link
Just using that the title Bad and Boujee should have been enough to get cancelled. She was trying way too hard. I had no idea trap feminism was a thing, somebody needs to cancel that too.
This was problematic in the 18th and 19th century with exotic and romanticized half truths still permeating into the 2000s. Thank god we now have fact check orgs, amirite Os?
So does that mean no one can ever again write about events that occurred before they were born? Should there never be any further scholarship on the Napoleonic Wars or the American Revolution or the fall of Rome, etc. After all, none of those topics are within the lived experience of anyone alive today. What utter rot. The publisher doesn't want to get cancelled, so they caved to the "outraged" black women. Where have we seen that before? But I am sure that had nothing to do with it and it was really because of her poor citations. Nonsense, just like every other claim of cultural appropriation.
