Cultural appropriation

[yakalskovich]

Cultural appropriation is what they yell in the (sometimes painfully) Politically Correct circles on tumblr when somebody adapts style element that are associated with some sort of underprivileged culture.

For example:

• White people should not wear dreads -- this hairstyle belongs to the black culture, so it's appropriation (Warning: NSFW image

Comments

[gethenian]

I LOVE YOU FOR POSTING THIS. THANK YOU. SERIOUSLY.

[yakalskovich]

Odd how many people agree with me on that subject. As a Japanologist, cultural cross-pollination was something I studied a lot. People postulating it shouldn't happen are just silly, because it just will.

That's how humans work.

[gethenian]

EXACTLY.

Jesus fuck. I'm a student of historic preservation so yeah, this comes up a lot in my area of academia, too. And yes, it's all very well and good to try to preserve the origins and roots of culture, but you cannot preserve these things to the exclusion of their evolution. And this will happen whether the perpetrators are native or foreign. The history of humanity shows that, if we are nothing else, we are a species of EXCELLENT mimics. Monkey see, monkey fucking do. Only with POWER TOOLS, as the case may be.

Cultural appropriation is just such an assenine concept the way it's been translated into the vocabulary of internet sociologists.

[yakalskovich]

I am a total cultural appropriator. As a Japanologist, I know how it works, and have totally no inhibition to pick up what I like.

If I look silly doing so, I should have done better research.

I even do Thanksgiving.

[yakalskovich]

Only the first four to eight points (depending on a person's age, cultural background, and earnestness) are ever argued in earnest. I just went down the slippery slope all the way to the stone age to show just how absurd it is.

[weemadharold]

Right on! Without 'cultural appropriation' the world would be infinitely bleaker. Hell, the Jamaicans never would have been allowed dreadlocks 'cause the Egyptians got there a few thousand years earlier.

[yakalskovich]

In the end, we'd just have to shovel almost everything back to Egypt. And that would be silly.

I'm sure my cats would hate it in Egypt.

[essayel]

Oh wow. Nicely, if snarkily, put. What sparked this off? Some kind of tumblr conflict?

[yakalskovich]

The thing I linked in the first example. There were a few other examples before that made me go 'WTF?', but this time, my synapses sort of fired. I put in Scyths for you, and kendo for the Nazgul, because I like using examples from areas my friends care about.

On tumblr itself, people seem to think they invented wank and discussion from the start, and are terribly earnest about some subjects that I would just shrug off. So I didn't post it there, because frankly, I am too old to host shitstorms.

[yakalskovich]

Over here, people howl every year about the cultural appropriation of Halloween, which is an 'imported holiday' that arrived via Hollywood movies, and is hence bad.

They can lynch me now for doing Thanksgiving, too...