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.
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.
Mocking cultures is fine. Mocking anything is fine.
Obviously, but the intent is important.
And also the representation of that culture. An ignorant attempt at mocking a culture can be offensive even if the intent is purely comic or positive.
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It doesn’tIt does
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Lol, you got me there.
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I’m not, I even edited the prior comment I made.
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
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.
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.
Absolutely, or it’s like an internet liberal thing not a real person thing.
I was at a puzzle meet and had brought a harry Potter puzzle and had a moment of “oh shit, JK Rowling is not the best choice for this group” but no one actually cared for something that tangentially transphobic.
Its a real person thing, I have had the displeasure of interacting with them.
Of course, they were young college kids who heard the term for the first time in class and were eager to prove how enlightened they were, but holy shit have I heard some hot takes. The college culture at an administrative level also plays into it, since they had an incident where one of the undergrad history professors told students it wasn’t their job to educate the class on racism.
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.
You sometimes see it on social media, where people dogpile on someone wearing a piece of clothing. But while there’s plenty of that sort of lunatics, I think there’s way more people out there calling those people loons
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).
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.
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
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
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.
oh yeah, as an academic term it’s probably useful
You’re being trolled, there’s nobody saying that unless online trolls convinced them. It’s concern trolling to stoke division.
I think there’s a mix. I get the impression that cultural appropriation as a thing to be offended about is well past its peak and dying out, but back when it was popular I knew people in real life angry about these things. Not bad people either… well meaning people who spent a bit too much time online and didn’t think things through themselves.
There’s things like native American sports mascots which are but some Native tribes say it’s ok, but they also don’t speak for every native American.
I can see how it’s extra sensitive, given the genocide
now i want a t-shirt/tote-bag with that line.
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.
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.
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I’ve never seen anyone that wasn’t lily white complain about cultural appropriation.
I know a bunch but they are in (sub)cultures that either get popularized and have very specific dictates for membership. The clearest example of this are how Rastas feel about non-black people appropriating the imagery of their faith whoch is dedicated to bringing the African diaspora back to Africa.
Selection bias
Maybe you need to interact with more minorities, bro?
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“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
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.
How do Puerto Ricans dress up?
In reality? Like anyone else.
As a costume?
The not-puerto-rican editor of the magazine bon appetit went to a Halloween costume dressed as a caricature of a Puerto Rican with his also not Puerto Rican wife.
It came into my head as an example of something less obviously problematic than blackface, but more obviously problematic than dressing as a Disney character that’s a depiction of a different race.Feel free to substitute any other ethnicity or race into my example as it makes sense to you.
How is that being dressed as a Puerto Rican?
You’d go to Venezuela or Colombia and see people dressed the same as well
Hell even Ecuador or Peru I think
Baseball is very popular in Latin and central America, is not unheard of that someone is fan of a baseball team from another country
I don’t see how being dressed with something resembling merchandise of a baseball team means you are Puerto Rican or dressed like one
And to go further, I believe it is EXTREMELY racist to think so.
Well, it’s what he said he was doing, so that’s why I went with that. Also note the specific terminology associated with Puerto Ricans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/dining/bon-appetit-adam-rapoport.html
In isolation it would be racist to assume a man wearing a baseball jersey was Puerto Rican or dressed as a one as a caricature. It’s not when it’s labeled as such by the people in the photo, and when asked about it they admit that’s what they were doing, and then apologize and then ultimately resign.
To be honest, all that just seems like an incident blown out of proportion
As I see it, someone else is referring to this dude as papi, which is basically daddy but in Spanish, and then added a hashtag on Instagram that says “boricua”, which might as well be related to food as the guy is apparently a chef?
It never says he is cosplaying as a Puerto Rican. At least in the picture they post, nor it looks like it’s the intention.
Then there is a lot of people saying something about brown face or black face? What, can’t people be tanned? Or somehow do they think everyone from LATAM is brown or black?
Alright. It’s entirely incidental to the point I was making so I don’t feel particularly invested in defending his actions being the way he said they were.
Replace it with one of the news stories about a politician wearing blackface if it makes you feel better, or fill in what you think would work better as a racist caricature outfit depicting someone from Puerto Rico.
I stand by my original statement that if you think to yourself “I’m going to go to this Halloween party as a Puerto Rican (or any race)” you honestly shouldn’t do that, regardless of what comes into your mind when you picture that race, since races aren’t costumes.I’m not sure why you would think Boricua is related to food. It means a person from Puerto Rico. It’s like arguing that “#new-yorkers” is about food. If it was about food, or his costume wasn’t what it was, why would the picture just randomly be labeled with either this unknown food term despite no food being in the picture, or why would you go to a costume party not wearing a costume or as a generic baseball fan and post a picture of yourself labeled “Puerto Rican”? And then resign, referencing the Halloween costume amongst the list of racial insensitivities behind that choice?
The person in the article who used the term brownface is a person who actually worked with him and would presumably be able to tell if he had put on makeup to change his skin tone.
It’s kinda funny when some crazies are asking to see your family tree and genealogy sample to know if it’s alright for you to wear a certain piece of clothing.
Let’s observe the chart
Oh good grief. Of course the Nazis had a chart. I hardly know any German, but there sure is a lot of “verboten” on that.
Makes me wonder if there was a similar thing for Jim Crow laws in the deep south.
They had an official “one-drop rule”, so no need for a chart I guess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
Sharing culture isn’t cultural appropriation.
Yes, that was the point.
The first paragraph implies they’re the same thing.
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.
Exactly, no Scottish person is getting bent out of shape if Im wearing tartan plaid shirts but dressing up and pretending to be Rastafarian would be inappropriate as Im white.
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.
This gets to the question of what racial identity is and I would argue that someone who isn’t of recent African ancestry, who was not raised by people who have recent African ancestry, who then pretends to not just have recent African ancestry but then claims that their family aren’t the people who raised them (because they are white) is very clearly not stable.
Incredibly generally: gender is the expression of gender identity and is a social construct while gender identity seems to be largely influenced by biological factors. Sex is the biological differentiation, and while the delineation between the sexes is culturally defined (if someone has xxy sex chromosomes, high testosterone, a penis, and a vagina it’s a cultural decision if we say they’re male, female or intersex), it’s a classification based much more on observable factors.
Race and ethnicity are more akin to sex than to gender identity, which would be better compared to cultural identity.
What distinguishes races is a social construct, but within a context racial classifications are relatively consistent. Racial markers that mean nothing in the US might be quite significant in Rawanda.
Similarly ethnicity, being a blend of race, language, culture and heritage is socially constructed but relatively objective within a context.
Culture on the other hand is, like gender identity, more to do with subjective feelings, opinions, and choices on the part of the individual, with the distinctions between them being cultural.The woman in question mislead people about her race and ethnicity by misidentifying her relatives and heritage. Her cultural affiliation is harder to dispute, although being a chapter president for the NAACP shows at least a degree of acceptance by the African American culture in the area.
Race and gender are both social constructs, but they aren’t analogous. Race is inherited in a way gender isn’t. You are the race you are because your parents are the races they are. But you aren’t a boy because your dad is a boy, and you aren’t a girl because your mom is a girl.
This is an exact copy of a YouTube video from years ago
Are you saying this is content appropriation?
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.
Cinco-De-Drinko - yeah that’s a quick yoink, just so we’re clear I will not be citing my sources
Now, in the 20s
Fuck, my back
I don’t necessarily know if that’s the artist’s intention here, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t cross my mind.
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.
How do you not have the money for cocaine man, it literally grows on trees
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.
Lots of fabrication in this story
I mean, that was the point. Previous poster imagined a world. I imagined another one.
As for the Asian kid - one grain of rice at a time. Boiling water in a lot of tiny containers. It ended up being surprisingly efficient, save for a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome.
boiling water in a lot of tiny containers. It ended up being surprisingly efficient, save for a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Just as we all suspected, it was in his blood.
I can’t believe you were so upset by his fairly accurate portrayal of the “reverse racism anti woke” crowd that you wrote 4 paragraphs of nonsense. Did it hit too close to home for you?
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
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”.
White saviorism is the belief that you understand and know how to address a community and its problems in spite of not having any involvement with or ties to that community because you are white abd educated. Me thinking I can fix Puerto Rico’s issues because Im an educated white guy who has a poli sci degree would be an example of this as my Spanish is trash, I have never been to Puerto Rico, and Im unfamiliar with their history.
Cultural appropriation is utilizing imagery or concepts from a foreign culture. It can be good, bad, weird, or neutral depending on multiple factors.
That’s a different thing, you should google these words you’re using.
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”
They aren’t thongs unless they come from the Thong region of Australia, otherwise they are just sparkling flip-flops
Don’t be silly, thongs have nothing to do with Australia, they were invented in the 19th Century by Frenchman Philippe Follope.
Correct. And if they don’t come from the Sandalé region in France, they’re not thongs. They’re just sparkling toe slippers.
insert Ricky Gervais cultural appropriation joke here
A lot of these types of people are just segregationists in a different tone.
Yep. Turns out progressives and racists shared segregation in common
What’s next, an individual’s racial identity is the most important thing and everything should be seen through the lens of race?
I remember seeing a child have a japanese themed birthday. Some white person was giving off to her parents for cultural appropriation while Japanese people were flattered
Found it
I’m more concerned that they’re dressing their kid up to look like what is essentially a member of an escort service (albeit a traditional one) than that they’re appropriating Japanese culture.
She’s wearing chopsticks in her hair which is generally frowned upon. She could’ve used a broach or a traditional kansashi instead which would’ve made her look more elegant.
What a scrub, git gud kid
Of course it was Tumblr
I love this
It turned out that although she looked white and her parents looked white, her extended family was actually asian. So it wasn’t even appropiation to begin with.
Still everyone needs to chill, my fellow honkeys, please stop getting offended on behalf of others. Playing the role of the “White Savior” comes off as more bigoted than progressive.
please stop getting offended on behalf of others
You, and the rest of the posters on here, completely misunderstand. I, a white guy, don’t get offended “on behalf of others” - the fact that white people have to constantly reference other cultures because we sterilized and sacrificed our own for the sake of white supremacism and “westernism” so long ago is offensive, period.
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“whites”
Point taken, reworded it
I saw a The Onion video where a white woman pledged to never say a word that began with the letter N. Not only the N word, all N words.
“I was shouted down for wearing black facepaint and white lipstick, so why does Tom get to wear a kimono?”
Ahh… The Onion, my favorite, most reliable, 100% not parodic news outlet
I want a Green Hat that says “Make The Onion Satirical Again”
Yes, The Onion is satire, but we’re talking about the idea The Onion was satirizing.
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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.
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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.
Interestingly, they also made a heroic “lazy” Mexican in the form of Slowpoke Rodriguez. (He pack a gun.)
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)?
“my culture is not your prom dress” moment.
I don’t know why you are getting downvoted, it is the exact same thing as the comic. People on twitter didn’t like a women wearing a Chinese dress to prom, while everyone from Asia was supporting her. https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/us-teens-qipao-prom-dress-sparks-cultural-appropriation-row-on-twitter
Funny that i’m chinese and living in asia as well and i support that. Western folks have a weird sense of justice that they want to protect everyone, to a point i feels like they’re seeing us as a lesser kind that need protection.
to a point i feels like they’re seeing us as a lesser kind that need protection.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with that observation.
Speaking in accordance with someone’s wishes when they’re not around to advocate for themselves in a private conversation is fine. Someone publicly speaking on behalf of an entire demographic that they know little to nothing about is bigoted as hell. It shows a complete lack of respect by assuming they know what’s best for others without actually taking the time to learn about their values and culture. And it’s super condescending, treating people of the demographic as if they lacked the capacity and autonomy to speak up for themselves.
One thing to note that the one who accused the girl for cultural appropriation is chinese themselves, but even then, who are they to gatekeep our culture?
I think discussions on the qipao are more concerned with it be sexualized/treated as a fetish costume. It’s formal wear.
In this specific instance it was a formal event but I think you were talking generally
Yeah generally dress up is fine, I think people shouldn’t be barred from wearing a costume just because their race doesn’t match. And for children especially, if they dress up to be a hero of a certain race, I think that is more representation of diversity in a good light.
However, IMO there is some due respect for that culture and it would be better to understand the significance of a dress one may wear, but if it’s intended well most should be fine with it. Using casual stereotypes and jokes cheapen the outfit which I think can be in bad taste.
Like as long as they don’t accompany it with racial slurs, I don’t think it’s a hate crime, just a bit cringey. It would be about the same level as if someone were to dress up as the Catholic Pope, a cardinal or a bishop and give people silly blessings.
I agree mostly with your general point, but I want to talk a bit about your example. I think it’s okay to mock the Pope because I think religion is silly and ought to be mocked a bit. Of course, if you’re Catholic, you might disagree. It’s a good example for that reason. However, Catholics have a lot of power in society. They are not as marginalized as many other groups. So the example might not hit for everyone because intuitively, they don’t think mocking Christianity or Catholicism is going to cause much harm in a western country where these groups are incredibly powerful.
Appropriation, and/or, as you said, stereotypes and jokes, are often mocking a culture or a people too. If they are a marginalized group, which often they are if they’re being mocked, then it can add insult to injury
To clarify, here’s a good example: As another commenter pointed out; appropriation is actually about making fun of things that other cultures hold sacred. An example I have heard of (but am pretty ignorant about myself) is wearing a native american feathered headdress.
I have heard it’s reserved for specific people that indigenous Americans want to honor with it. It’s like wearing a medal as a general. So, wearing a feathered headeess and cosplaying as native is belittling something they hold sacred.
I agree with you the main faux pas is trivializing things others hold sacred. Using costume to mock and make fun of any race or faith is different than wanting to embody it, which is where I think some cultural sensitivity policies sometimes mistakenly conflate. There is some nuance when it comes to historical and current power dynamics, certain costumes rooted in racism (e.g. blackface), which would be suitable justification to allow or bar certain specific costumes. However on the whole, I think ethnic cultures should be able to be expressed by anyone, when done in a positive, respectful manner.
