A serious question deserves a serious poll

[megwrites]

I know, I know. It's that Cultural Appropriation Thing^TM again, but hey. The worst thing we could do is pretend that it doesn't exist, right?

Don't worry, it won't hurt. Just take the poll.


[Poll #1352312]

Comments

[coolmajaka.livejournal.com]

In my mind, cultural appropriation is bunk in America. We're all so mixed and matched it's all a heterogeneous mess. And that's a good thing.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

My cultural heritage isn't all that mixed. It's only Jewish, English, Scottish, Irish, Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusan......

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

To my mind, the flip side of railing about "cultural appropriation" is a - covert, at best - call for some sort of cultural "purity" in which mixing is discouraged or even punished. And as the distance between a thing and its obverse is often quite small indeed... well. Seriously, who wants to live in a world where cultures are expected to remain unmixed, forever separate and everyone is constrained to "stick to their own kind" of whatever? And what about people who happen to be born of mixed cultural heritage - are they seriously supposed to choose only one facet and identify with that?

I really do tend to see the majority of cries about "cultural appropriation" as so much BS. Not all, mind you, but the vast majority, yes.

YMMV, as always.

[ladyslvr.livejournal.com]

What summers_place said.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

To my mind, the flip side of railing about "cultural appropriation" is a - covert, at best - call for some sort of cultural "purity" in which mixing is discouraged or even punished.

See, this is what really disappointed me about the Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom - nobody ever got around to serious discussions of what is and isn't cultural appropriation, and what is and isn't negative about it. Everyone got really sidetracked talking about race and racism, and in just defending themselves and wow did it get messy.

Not that race/racism doesn't tie into the issue, but boy did it ever drown out any other subjects.

I would really have liked to have seen more serious posting and commenting about this topic, and about what it is means, what it's effects are, and the people affected by it.

Especially since I tend to agree with you. The idea of cultures swapping words and music and food and clothes and all sorts of things seems to me to be a good thing. But, at the same time, I'm wary of being that simplistic.

Because cultures aren't just two equals at a swap meet. There can be dominance, there can be one culture drowning out another. There can be unfairness in the process, and there can be abuse.

An extreme example of something bad, I think, would be taking something sacred to another culture (like, say, a religious object) and using it as a paperweight on your desk. That sort of thing is disrespectful and negative.

But of course, we didn't get around to talking about it because things just went kablooey in the space of a couple of days and no one could ever wrangle the topic back on track.

[ladyslvr.livejournal.com]

The problem, in my mind, with the cultural appropriation issue is that any time one says that white people (or dominant people) shouldn't be able to share in other cultures, the implication is that those other cultures also have no right to share in the dominant culture--and that's racism at its core. As soon as you start drawing lines about who has rights to what, then you're making race/privilege/etc. the only real point of interest.

I'd even grant allowances in the situation you give example of: taking a religious object and using it as a paperweight. If that were done knowingly, then it's disrespectful and negative. If it's done out of ignorance and no correction is offered/forthcoming, then it could be a sign of respect: one is showing appreciation for something from another culture in one's own way. Now, if one continues to use the object as a paperweight after being corrected, we're back at disrespect.

Because cultures aren't just two equals at a swap meet. There can be dominance, there can be one culture drowning out another. There can be unfairness in the process, and there can be abuse.

Of course. In fact, it's not that there could be. There will be.

However, in the long term, every culture gets to share in all the roles. Sometimes cultures are the dominated and sometimes the dominant. To scream foul when a culture is being dominate is to have no sense of history.

Especially, it misses out on how incredibly often a dominated culture--or aspects thereof--can sneak in and completely take over. Early American culture certainly made every effort to squash the cultures of the Africans who were transported here. Yet, three hundred years later, significant chunks of what makes our culture beautiful and distinctive (read: our art, in all its forms) is heavily influenced by, if not directly appropriated from, those same African cultures. Was the slave trade right? Of course not. But jazz, gospel, blues, rock n roll, hip hop, and rap ... what could be more American? Through appropriation we ended up with beauty in a half dozen or more new forms that everyone can enjoy.

[denoue-moi.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. II thought the very definition of culture was being learns something, being teaches other beings. Something that is aggregate. Something we all contribute our elements to in order to form a somewhat integrated, fluid network. If we didn't all copy each other once in a while, we'd be missing out. We'd have to create everything ourselves. We'd still be cavepeople.