cultural dread piracy
A friend just posted this image on Facebook and I liked it a lot. I got to thinking about my own cultural appropriations, which are many, and what makes them the same as or different from other people's. I think a major defining factor in the significance of cultural appropriation to me is the fact that my base culture, the one from which I set forth to appropriate others' culture, is pretty much entirely appropriated in the first place, and rather up-front and unconcerned about the appropriation it's doing. So I think what I'm doing is really less "cultural appropriation" and more "cultural armed robbery": I have no culture except for what I steal, and all things considered I steal pretty unreservedly and gleefully. So by that token I probably won't be first in line to criticize cultural appropriators (maybe fourth or fifth), although I am rather well placed to make fun of them.