Skip to main content

What's Wrong With Cultural Appropriation?



Yanked shamelessly from Androphila:
Anon asked:
What’s wrong with cultural appropriation? I mean, I know it’s bad, but I need this one kind of spelled out for me. Is it always bad? Are some cases worse than others? I want to be a good anti-racist, but I fear I’m not educated enough.
whatfreshhellisthis responded:
Cultural appropriation exists because of centuries of:
  • Imperialism: more specifically, cultural imperialism which is essentially one cultural dominating another. (IE: white folks and everyone we’ve ever invaded ever. Including each other.)
  • Racism: justifies the appropriation by making various cultural/racial/ethic groups marginalised, oppressed and seen as inferior by the privileged group.
  • Exoticism: justifies commodification and objectification.
  • Orientalism
  • Colonisation
  • Entitlement: thinking that oppressed people’s culture, society, and spirituality are up for grabs.
  • Oppression
  • Power
  • Capitalism
  • Unawareness of privilege: based on misunderstanding of power dynamics, entitlement, exoticism and racism
Why is cultural appropriation harmful?:
Cultural appropriation reinforces oppression because it invalidates and commodifies marginalised groups.
  • Invalidates: the culture/society/the people
  • Homogenizes: lets look at the white girls wearing warbonnets and mukluks. War bonnets are worn traditionally only by various Native plains tribes and mukluks are boots made of usually seal skin warn/made traditionally by Alaskan/Arctic natives. This haphazard and disrespectful throwing together different pieces of two completely different Native cultures which is portraying an image of homogeneity and reinforces the stereotype that there is just one Native American culture and they are all the same, which reinforces oppression and racism.
  • Commodifies: putting a monetary value on something that should not be sold or purchased or marketed in any way, eg. spiritual practices.
  • Reinforces stereotypes: which reinforce oppression and racism-a tool of colonisation.
  • Distorts traditions into inaccurate and offensive caricatures
  • Romanticises cultures: often this is something that results in entire groups of people being seen as ‘something that used to exist’ as opposed to people with lives and cultures that exist and flourish today. You get this a lot with Native American and Canadian culture.
  • Eroticises/exoticizes people: this is incredibly dehumanising.
Here is an awesome post about the line between appropriation and appreciation. (Reboggable version).
Here are some awesome people who talk about appropriation and how it is shitty- linked is all their posts tagged appropriation. Please look through their archives, and do not just message them asking the same question, they are people not encyclopaedias.
Jaded
Karma
Thursday
Dr. Syrup
These are just the first four who lept to mind- there are doubtless many, many more.
Original post: http://whatfreshhellisthis.tumblr.com/post/5261084308/whats-wrong-with-cultural-appropriation-i-mean-i
This bears repeating.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notes To Myself - Rambling

Just thinking out loud here – rambling is to follow To go along with my last entry (song lyrics about coming to terms with yourself “when a man of my age”) Love It hurts. It cuts. It’s intense. Let me explain: I know how I feel about Jon, we have dated for a little over two years. It’s wonderful from the get go. I’ve dated him for two years and known him for a little over three years. What I have learned, I love.   Our feelings for one another have progressed along the way.   Am I in love?   Yes. Do I love him? Yes. Emotional barriers came tumbling down in the course of our interactions. I feel as though I know him and I equally feel that I am known by him. This is a powerful thing to me. I want this intimacy more than I care to admit.   How wonderful to share with another, to allow them to know the good and the bad, and in turn, they continue to want to know you and to be with you. The same is true in reverse, I know about him and I continue...
Post a Comment
Read more

Let Go Or Be Dragged

The following thoughts have been simmering in my mind as of late. I’ve had a lot of time to think during my recent bout of illness. I wasn’t feeling well enough to do anything else and so I had time to contemplate my current state of  internal affairs, that is, do a self inventory of sorts. I discovered that I was believing something that was no longer true, I was holding on to something that had passed, but in my mind, it was still something for me to latch onto and to “keep alive” and kicking so to speak. I know I shouldn’t believe everything I think, but was surprised when I examined this particular item. Perhaps I should say this was more of an assumption than anything, but I do think I have been cultivating this idea and giving it life, when in all reality, I should have released it some time ago.  A relationship that had come and gone, and yet, I found myself attached to this thought process that it was something still, and in thinking about this, I realized I was ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Virgin Offered as a Burnt Offering

An observation from this weekend.  I attended a funeral for a relative of mine who recently had passed away. She was a member of the Eastern Star (an order associated with Free Masonry). My aunt was a wonderful lady, generous and kind and full of good works to her family and community. My thoughts here are not in relation to her, or to the Order itself, it has more to do with the scriptural references that were used.  In association to the five pointed star that symbolizes their Order, they referenced several Biblical figures as exemplars to consider. Three of the five caught my attention as ladies from the Order spoke ·          Adah (daughter of Jephthah) ·          Ruth ·          Esther These heroines of the Bible, persevered seemingly because of their faith in G-D and their submission to men. Men wrote the words that eventually became cod...
Post a Comment
Read more