Cultural appropriation

[ms_ann_thrope]

I took you as being serious. I don't know you as fun, I know you as the angry Milkshake.

I've always thought of him as Diet Coke.

 

[smoothg103rd]

Best post I've ever read from you.

The sun shine on every dog ass once in awhile.

 

[smoothg103rd]

I've always thought of him as Diet Coke.

Nasty?

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

Nasty?

Artificially sweet.

 

[marshalt]

Artificially sweet.

It's a milkshake.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

It's a milkshake.

...a likely story...

 

[marshalt]

...a likely story...

I've had a Master Shake avatar for 11 years. Master Shake is a milkshake, a pistachio one at that.

 

[bg23]

Here's the thing about cultural appropriation - if you're the dominant culture, your culture can't be appropriated because it's the dominant culture. In fact, anyone who doesn't assimilate into the dominant culture is ostracized and regarded as alien.

It just doesn't work as an analogy, unfortunately.

Here's the other thing - cultural appropriation isn't always harmful. Sometimes it's just offensive. For example, when someone who is say... Jewish puts on a french beret and carries around a baguette - they're appropriating French culture, but it's not harmful, because the French don't really have a history of being oppressed by the Jews.

But, take this example: An aryan german person puts on a Yamuka and uses it like a fashion accessory. That's cultural appropriation, and in this case it isn't just fucking offensive, it's harmful, too. And you get why, right? Because the Jews were persecuted for being Jewish by a bunch of blonde haired blue eyed Germans and then for this person from that race to turn around and use a symbol of their cultural heritage as a FASHION ACCESSORY?

That's a pretty far fetched example though. So let's use one closer to home. Black people were enslaved, murdered, beaten for a fuckload of time, and people STILL GET KILLED for being black. Black culture, as displayed by black people, is insulted and denigrated by mainstream society. Rap music? There's a radio station here that specifically says it plays "ALL THE HITS WITHOUT THE RAP" because people find rap so unpleasant, supposedly. Well, they do if it's by a black artist - this radio station still plays Eminem and Iggy Azalea.

Cornrows, dreadlocks? A black girl who wear her hair in dreads is said to look like she smells. Black people who wear cornrows get labelled as thugs or gangsters. But white people do it, and it's regarded as edgy, or cool.

An example that's close to home for me - as an asian, I got mocked for the shape of my eyes. It really bothered me as a kid, until I figured out that people are assholes to anyone who is different to them. Anyway - there's this eyeshadow palette that's called the China Doll Palette - specifically designed to create "exotic, oriental looks" - and you know who they used as a model for the promotional pictures? A white girl. Because of course they would. That's what appropriation is - a culture that will insult you for being different, and then turn around and USE THAT DIFFERENCE THEY INSULTED YOU FOR, for their own profit. Oh - editing to add this - It'd be one thing if the world had collectively decided, "Oh you know what asian eyes are exotic and awesome looking and we love the shape of your eyes asian people!" but they haven't. I DO still get the "pulled back eyes" face made at me.

My point is, cultural appropriation isn't really the biggest fucking deal in the world. When people stroll around wearing other cultures like fashion accessories...it can be insulting and it can be pretty hurtful to see. But it's not the worst thing ever. But when you start actively PROFITING off of it without any acknowledgement of how fucked up it is that that culture doesn't actually get any credit for it...that's downright harmful.

Iggy Azalea profits from her appropriation. Cosmetic companies profit. Clothing companies profit. The Jenner chick? She makes a living off the way she looks - so in that way, she profits.

When was the last time a person of colour profited from wearing a baseball cap?

The only profit to be had from donning white culture (?) there is to look like you've assimilated. Which most of the time is something that we're forced to do.

But white culture is kinda like... Not a thing. It's like... there are gay bars, right? And straight people sometimes go, "WELL WHY ARENT THERE STRAIGHT BARS ITS NOT FAIR". Um, the world is your straight bar. Every bar is a straight bar. Ditto women's spaces. THE WORLD IS MAN SPACE. White culture falls right into that. The world IS white culture. At least in America.

Having said all that I do find it idiotic to dedicate news time to the Kardashians or their hair or whatever. Like...spend more time talking about shit that's actually killing people.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

I've had a Master Shake avatar for 11 years. Master Shake is a milkshake, a pistachio one at that.

Green nuts....eww.

There's this book sized post sitting above me that you have to address.

Good luck with that.

 

[marshalt]

Here's the thing about cultural appropriation - if you're the dominant culture, your culture can't be appropriated because it's the dominant culture

Who the fuck decided that?

 

[bg23]

Who the fuck decided that?

because it's not appropriation, it's assimilation.

ie, there are clear negative consequences for minority cultures for NOT adopting the dominant culture.

for example - day to day dress. there's standard wear, and there's..."that weird ass shit foreigners wear". dudes who wear turbans are actively penalized and discriminated for it. that same guy dressed in "normal" attire (jeans a t-shirt, baseball cap) is accepted as being "normal".

when your culture is the dominant culture, everything about that culture is "normal". you can't appropriate "normal" - that's an oxymoron. outsiders, or foreigners, are, however, penalized if you do something that isn't regarded as "normal". which is why its pretty much expected that everyone act the way that's defined as normal in mainstream society.

Edited for clarity.

 

[marshalt]

because it's not appropriation, it's assimilation.

ie, there are clear negative consequences for minority cultures for NOT adopting the dominant culture.

for example - day to day dress. there's standard wear, and there's..."that weird ass shit foreigners wear". dudes who wear turbans are actively penalized and discriminated for it. that same guy dressed in "normal" attire (jeans a t-shirt, baseball cap) is accepted as being "normal".

when your culture is the dominant culture, everything about that culture is "normal". you can't appropriate "normal" - that's an oxymoron. you are, however, penalized if you do something that isn't regarded as "normal".

I give up with this shit, I really do.

 

[Yardley]

Who the fuck decided that?

It's a thing. It's perfectly OK to say anything at all that offends WASPs.

 

[bg23]

I give up with this shit, I really do.

It's ok. This is quibbly shit and I tend not to want to spend energy on it when there's stuff that's pretty much 100 times more important.

Side note - I appropriated an amazeballs smashed potatoes recipe and it is so good I am just eating the potatoes without anything else just because.

 

[marshalt]

It's ok. This is quibbly shit and I tend not to want to spend energy on it when there's stuff that's pretty much 100 times more important.

Side note - I appropriated an amazeballs smashed potatoes recipe and it is so good I am just eating the potatoes without anything else just because.

Potatoes come from South America, you're appropriating them and that's racist and you shouldn't do that.

 

[Disgustipated]

It's ok. This is quibbly shit and I tend not to want to spend energy on it when there's stuff that's pretty much 100 times more important.

Side note - I appropriated an amazeballs smashed potatoes recipe and it is so good I am just eating the potatoes without anything else just because.

Potatoist

 

[bg23]

Potatoes come from South America, you're appropriating them and that's racist and you shouldn't do that.

don't be a butt

these potatoes are so delicious

 

[bg23]

Potatoist

im pretty sure you're discriminating against potato-ism and THATS JUST AS BAD /racistlogic

 

[marshalt]

don't be a butt

these potatoes are so delicious

Corn also comes from the Americas and it's racist for black people to call that hair style "corn rows" since there's no corn in Africa.

 

[Disgustipated]

im pretty sure you're discriminating against potato-ism and THATS JUST AS BAD /racistlogic

After I typed that, I kept reading it as "potaTaoist" which could possibly offend the pro-oriental eye makeup people.

 

[bg23]

After I typed that, I kept reading it as "potaTaoist" which could possibly offend the pro-oriental eye makeup people.

I read it as potatoist to rhyme with hoist and then i spent far too long saying it out loud to myself

 

[DMBFFF]

Here's the thing about cultural appropriation - if you're the dominant culture, your culture can't be appropriated because it's the dominant culture. In fact, anyone who doesn't assimilate into the dominant culture is ostracized and regarded as alien.

So if the dominant, or most dominant, culture—call it Culture A—represented, say, 40.1% dominance, and Culture B represented 39.9% dominance, then B could borrow from A, but A couldn't from B.

Here's the other thing - cultural appropriation isn't always harmful. Sometimes it's just offensive. For example, when someone who is say... Jewish puts on a french beret and carries around a baguette - they're appropriating French culture, but it's not harmful, because the French don't really have a history of being oppressed by the Jews.

What if the Jew isn't French, but is, say, American?

Nor might all French be offended.

Walloons, Québecois, or those not in Paris.

Some French might be humoured.

But, take this example: An aryan german person puts on a Yamuka and uses it like a fashion accessory. That's cultural appropriation, and in this case it isn't just fucking offensive, it's harmful, too. And you get why, right? Because the Jews were persecuted for being Jewish by a bunch of blonde haired blue eyed Germans and then for this person from that race to turn around and use a symbol of their cultural heritage as a FASHION ACCESSORY?

1. Among some non-Jewish Germans, Jewishness is cool.
2. Many Germans were Jewish—they even had Yiddish—a dialect-of-sorts-of German. (Might be like "black speach" or Patois.)
3. Not all Germans had blond hair and/or blue eyes. Some Jews did.

I'm not so sure Jews would have a case if Germans wore Star-of-Davids like fashion accessories given that Jews might not have been the first and others might have come up with it independently.

That's a pretty far fetched example though. So let's use one closer to home. Black people were enslaved, murdered, beaten for a fuckload of time, and people STILL GET KILLED for being black. Black culture, as displayed by black people, is insulted and denigrated by mainstream society. Rap music? There's a radio station here that specifically says it plays "ALL THE HITS WITHOUT THE RAP" because people find rap so unpleasant, supposedly. Well, they do if it's by a black artist - this radio station still plays Eminem and Iggy Azalea.

So make fun of them. Call it a "KKK rap station."

Cornrows, dreadlocks? A black girl who wear her hair in dreads is said to look like she smells. Black people who wear cornrows get labelled as thugs or gangsters. But white people do it, and it's regarded as edgy, or cool.

Such were worn by cultures independent of black culture, including European.

An example that's close to home for me - as an asian, I got mocked for the shape of my eyes. It really bothered me as a kid, until I figured out that people are assholes to anyone who is different to them. Anyway - there's this eyeshadow palette that's called the China Doll Palette - specifically designed to create "exotic, oriental looks" - and you know who they used as a model for the promotional pictures? A white girl. Because of course they would. That's what appropriation is - a culture that will insult you for being different, and then turn around and USE THAT DIFFERENCE THEY INSULTED YOU FOR, for their own profit. Oh - editing to add this - It'd be one thing if the world had collectively decided, "Oh you know what asian eyes are exotic and awesome looking and we love the shape of your eyes asian people!" but they haven't. I DO still get the "pulled back eyes" face made at me.

Ever see that David Bowie video China Girl? He and the presumably Chinese (or at least Oriental lady) he's with does the pulled-back-the-eyes thing.

Mind you, even the name of that song is problematic.

Why not condescend on them. "It's called a [whatever the scientific name it is]! Nearly 2 billion people on this planet have them."

Besides, why would a Chinese person use a China Doll Palate anymore than a black person use a tan-in-a-bottle?—Of course it'd be a white woman!

My point is, cultural appropriation isn't really the biggest fucking deal in the world. When people stroll around wearing other cultures like fashion accessories...it can be insulting and it can be pretty hurtful to see. But it's not the worst thing ever. But when you start actively PROFITING off of it without any acknowledgement of how fucked up it is that that culture doesn't actually get any credit for it...that's downright harmful.

It probably hurts only if you let it.

As for profitting, do Jews have a trademark on yarulkas or Jamaicans on dreadlocks?

Some are working on it. Do you support such efforts?

Iggy Azalea profits from her appropriation. Cosmetic companies profit. Clothing companies profit. The Jenner chick? She makes a living off the way she looks - so in that way, she profits.

Who's she?

I wonder what Iggy Pop thinks of her name.

But white culture is kinda like... Not a thing. It's like... there are gay bars, right? And straight people sometimes go, "WELL WHY ARENT THERE STRAIGHT BARS ITS NOT FAIR".

I never heard of that.

Corn also comes from the Americas and it's racist for black people to call that hair style "corn rows" since there's no corn in Africa.

Corn (maize), potatoes, squash, pumpkins, tobacco, chocolate, peanuts, tomatos, peppers, and I think blueberries and cranberries.

Corn has likely been growing in Africa for decades.

Moreover, aboriginals have be playing blues and rap.

 

[CandiCame]

Not at all! I love my culture! My culture is the culture of Ancient Greece, of Dante and Goethe, Baudelaire and the Nibelungenlied, Shakespeare, Michaelangelo and Dostoevsky. It is what might be called High European Culture, and it is called elitist, but it is quite the opposite. It longs to include rather than exclude. It's just rather hard, as cultures go, and people seem to prefer other ones.

It makes me sad, because it's one hell of a birthright, and one open to all.

You've got a hell of a culture. But uhhhh... when you long to include with so much passion that it spawns genocide? You're doing it wrong.

Here's the thing about "High European Culture"- "Europe" is not a hive-mind. Europe is not a monoculture. There's no real "white" culture. My white roots are German- which, yeah, is Nazis, but it also amazing historical fashion, dance, Rammstein, learning from your mistakes, a Germanic religious pantheon with interesting mythology, etc. I can trace those roots- I have a family history, I know when my ancestors got off the boat (if the shit my aunt paid for is correct). When my family goes to ancestry.com, they don't get "incomplete profile due to missing information" notices.

The reason that African Americans get this, and the reason that "African American," or "Black American" as a culture exists- is because those people can't have pride in their specific roots; because they don't know what they were. I can specifically say, "These are Germanic gods that were part of my ancestor's culture. I have pride that my people were able to create or experience something like this."- but all those people can get is, "Idk, somewhere in West Africa". Their culture was /literally stolen from them/, so they were /forced/ to invent a new one. So when they have pride in being Black, or African-American, that's not all Black people- that's a specific group who found solidarity in a past that was stolen.

Here's the thing- you're all over the map. If your roots run that deep, that's great! You can have pride in the accomplishments of your culture! But you've named like 5 cultures there, and it honestly seems like a LOT of pride. I already mentioned that my family immigrated from Germany, and the FIRST person who came to mind was Hitler. It's annoying to people to have pride in Bach, Frank, and Nietzsche and then just gloss over that. It's weird to have pride in Michelangelo and just gloss over Mussolini.

And it's extra weird to do what I suspect you're doing here- which is to not trace your specific roots or culture because you want to know where your family came from and what that means for you- but rather that you think white people, as a whole, are some kind of monolith. There is no "white culture"- even here in the states there are white subcultures. Rednecks aren't WASPs, for example. So when you try to invent a "white culture" when there aren't any shared values or a shared sense of history, that is built SOLELY on race... it's offputting. I'm not part of that culture, and it's disingenuous for me to say, for example, "My culture is the culture of DaVinchi," even though I LOVE me some DaVinchi and if I could go back in time I'd totally suck his dick and ask him about robot lions. Because I'm NOT Italian, and if I showed up in Italy, not having done ANY research on how their society functions, just like, "What's up, Italy! I'm white and I love pizza, mafia movies, fascism, and gay painters!" they'd be like, "Oh god look at this asshole tourist."

Now, if Italians WANT to share their culture, and I decided to learn about it from them because I genuinely WAS interested in the culture, and then I came back to the states and was like, "Hey I just invented this new thing: It's called a robot lion." And everyone was like, "Holy shit Candi invented the best thing ever! Let's praise him! Robot Lions are an American thing, everyone! Invented by an American, Candi!" That would make me an asshole. Because, see, the truth is that I didn't invent it, I stole it from DaVinchi, who had invented it, but then I got rich and famous for it. Even if I never SAID I invented it, I just let everyone praise me and give me money, and never once said, "Oh yeah, this dude Leo has a WHOLE workshop I saw when I went to suck his dick." I would still be an asshole. Because I STOLE something, and got rewarded for it, and it would take NOTHING for me to be like, "I didn't do this, an Italian did."

 

[CandiCame]

So if the dominant, or most dominant, culture—call it Culture A—represented, say, 40.1% dominance, and Culture B represented 39.9% dominance, then B could borrow from A, but A couldn't from B.

No, because history is important. If two cultures exist simultaneously with no extenuating negativity, the numbers being what they are here, then Culture A and B would have what is called "cultural exchange", which I've been heard called "The Mixing Pot". We saw this here in Appalachia- there was a pretty free cultural exchange among enslaved black folks, indentured servants from Ireland, and conquered woodlands tribes. What resulted from that exchange is what we would consider modern "Appalachian" culture- music with African structure played with native percussion and Irish fiddles, for example. There's a lot of great research on this topic, and it happens all the time. Cultural exchange is GREAT and it gives us not just music but a sense of self and a growth of ideas. And just great fucking food. The Irish brought the taters, the natives brought the cornbread and soupbeans, and the Africans brought the deep-fat frying and then we as a region just decided that we were gonna just all have heart disease because you put that shit together and it's simply THE BEST.

Cultural appropriation, as opposed to cultural exchange, happens when one culture FORCIBLY dominates another. So in that same vein, we saw a class structure forming, with a wealthy "master" class that tried to enforce their culture on those they wielded power over. They changed people's traditional names, clothing, religion, family support system, etc- one of the few things folks had left, and the reason it bears mentioning, is the music. Another is the food.

Cultural exchange is a potluck. Cultural appropriation is a fancy dinner party where Culture A eats and Culture B cooks.

But in that situation, where Culture A, the dominate culture, literally tries to destroy Culture B, until all Culture B has left are the remnants that Culture A thought were "pretty", or decided were "pretty" years later- then Culture A doesn't get to take that. They took everything else and threw it away, so they don't get to have that. Culture B doesn't /borrow/ from culture A, it was forced to assimilate or die. No one borrows anything in an appropriation situation, people take, and people are forced to accept.

So for hairstyles, since that's apparently what this thread was about- if you have hair that's like, let's say 4C, and you live in a culture that has appropriated black culture, you may be punished for wearing your hair naturally. You may be FORCED to chemically straighten your hair, because it's "unprofessional" to wear it the way it grows out of your scalp. If you don't want to subject yourself to expensive chemical treatments, maybe you decide to put it in a protective style, like corn rows- and even then, the dominant culture may say that that style, too, is unprofessional. You need to straighten it. You need to change the way you were born to adhere to Culture A's beauty standard to be taken seriously in your career. Then one day, you turn on TV, and you see a famous person from Culture A wearing the hairstyle that you were not only ridiculed for, you were denied opportunities for- even though she doesn't have the hair type for it. Even though she didn't need a protective style. Even though she only took something, one of the few things you had left because it /literally grew out of your head and they couldn't permanently take it/- and she had taken it, and was being praised for it. She stole your homework, copied it- and she got an A, even though the same teacher gave you a D. That's appropriation.

 

[CandiCame]

Corn also comes from the Americas and it's racist for black people to call that hair style "corn rows" since there's no corn in Africa.

I was thinking about this and had to search back to find this thread, and I know this was meant as a joke, but there's actually some interesting history behind that name. The name "cornrows" is actually something that came from cultural exchange. The original name was "canerolls"- meaning it looked like rows of sugarcane.

Well, some of those indentured servants that worked alongside African slaves, had pretty kinky hair- think Merida from Brave style hair. They already had an intense braiding tradition, so it's not shocking when there arose that one chick in the slave quarters at the plantation who did hair, they would go to her. When you went in asking for traditional Celtic braids, she'd give you canerolls. And you'd be all, "That's not what I meant. What is this?"

And she'd be like, "Canerolls."
And you'd be all, "Sweet."

And then you'd be hauling in the corn harvest and some other Irish chick would be like, "Oh sweet your hair looks great. Who did that? What's it called?"

"Oh, Betty Anne did this. I think she called it something rows? Cornrows?"

For a long time, those two phrases had about equal popularity, and gradually, because people had had their original culture stripped away, we just saw the language gradually change. Some people do still say "canerows", especially from places where sugarcane is the more dominant crop.

The thing about cornrows is that it's a protective style- it is pretty, but that's not its function. It's function is to make hair more imaginable and protect it from breakage while you work. And because it's a protective style, even these Celtic cornrows are distinct from the original canerows, because the texture of the hair determines the type of braid, so Celtic rows are, by their nature, going to be bigger overall and thicker (that is they stick up more from the head) and leave less of the scalp exposed.

If you don't have the hair texture that would need to be protected, like say you're me and you have type 1 hair- you won't have the structure to hold the braid because your hair won't hold together properly on it's own. The texture is wrong. So if I were to get cornrows, it would 1: hurt like a motherfucker- I'm not tenderheaded, but to get the hair to be the right structure you'd have to braid at the root, like RIGHT into the follicle, like you'd rip a bunch of the hair out with it. There was actually a trend of people who didn't have the right texture trying to do this in the 90s, you learn about it when you research hair at cosmetology schools or even at an amateur level, and it causes your hair to all fall out because you're putting so much pressure on the follicles. 2: It isn't serving it's protective purpose, and because your hair isn't the right texture on its own, the braids will instantly become to come undone. Right away. You'll have half your head coming out by the time the other half is done. There's a couple ways to fix this- but the problem is that they're both gross as fuck.

So you can backcomb/tease your hair, where you create breakage on purpose to try and mimic the natural hair texture of people who WOULD need cornrows- which is like the shittiest thing you can do for your hair. You're literally creating breakage on a strand that isn't designed to have it. You're DESTROYING your hair for aesthetic. And that doesn't affect new growth, so you have to redo this every time, and it just... it's a bad idea. And people realized that very quickly.

So they moved on to option 2- coating that shit in anything they could to get it to hold shape. Literally anything. Folks were really out here putting school glue on their heads. A better option is hair cement- but here's the rub. If you use this method you can't wash your hair. Because that would obviously wash the product out that you're using to keep it in the braids. So for as long as you wanted to have this style, you just couldn't wash your hair, at all. You had to just keep applying the hair cement, because if you let that shit slip, the braids'll come out. You had to keep that shit under CONSTANT surveillance, constantly putting in more gel, without EVER washing it. I find that straight up gross. And, people with hair types on the lower end of the spectrum tend to create more scalp oil, in general, so a lot of people who tried this had problems with mold. (This is an even bigger issue with dreadlocks if your hair doesn't naturally lock.)

We got a little away from the history of the name, which is all I really was going for- but I just fucking love beauty history. Went overboard.