Is Cultural Appropriation a Real Thing?

No, not making a joke. You're criticising "these people" for enforcing the divides they criticise, but in a way that is further enforcing those divisions and delineations. It's a vicious circle.

Even if you think of "them" as your enemy, or vice-versa, why not apply some principles of de-escalation and verbal judo? Surely the only way to progress is to stop shouting at each other from either side of the aisle?

You are not personally responsible, but your nation is the same entity, by it's own terms.

Regardless, if people are not being treated fairly in society, whether due to historic or modern factors, I am in favour of addressing that iniquity.

 

I'm referring to a group of people other than myself who operate within a general sociopolitical grouping and using a function of English. I'm not sitting here calling them nasty names, just pointing out that they exist.

I have their de-escalation right here: don't treat people as the same based on their skin colour, and don't be a hypocrite and preach that while in fact doing it.

And like I said, you can either decry all of human conquest, which includes that which native tribes engaged in and makes them morally no better regarding the same action, or you accept that humans conquered each other before nuclear weapons led to a generally enforced peace, and you deal with current issues instead of trying to point fingers at dead people.

As am I and frankly I think that's the more important bit.

I'm talking like you should hold people personally responsible for their actions and not for those of people who simply happen to resemble them.

That's another subject in its own right.

 

Personally I think that Sounds like an excuse for an abdication of national responsibility, but if we take it to that level, and it's every man for himself, that also means inherited wealth shouldn't exist.

Are you also for a 100% inheritance tax?

 

Well to be fair, if my country was invaded in my grandfather's time and the invading population grew along with its own way of life which was counter from my own, I might be upset too.

 

You know it's funny because my Chinese friends never seem to get included in that blame for "national responsibility" nor my Arab friends, Tamil, Indian, etc. Our national responsibility is to help our citizenry and I am perfectly fine with that. I am not fine with myself and other being blamed for things dead people did merely because we happen to bear some general similarity in terms of physical features or share a relatively similar genetic heritage. It's not shirking moral responsibility in present to disavow blame for things which happened in the past. Just because I didn't make the man a beggar doesn't mean that I shouldn't help him, and the fact that your argument here implies that one has to have personal responsibility for a wrongdoing in order to help the victim of that wrongdoing is quite frankly baffling to me.

You think not blaming people for things based merely on their vague physical resemblance to dead people is the same as people inheriting things from their family?

I'm for not blaming people for the actions of other people simply because they seem to look like them. Let's start there. Can we agree that is a bad thing?

 

Sharing the same nationality, bloodline, and economic benefits is much more then just looking alike.....

 

Nationality → So literally everyone who is a citizen of this country
Economic benefits → Good luck disentangling that one from national and global capital flow
Bloodline → So people who are what?
→→ Directly related → Again we're back to blaming living people for the actions of dead people
→→Have relatives of the same geographic origin → Racist
→→Happen to look like they have similar geographic origin → Racist

 

Haha I'm a racist, for thinking recent history whereby an entire people got royally "duped" is something that we should't be proud of?

Of course I am.........


But anyway I digree, Not blaming, but asking that if money is needed to redress as institutional wrong, then the current national goverment goverment should fund it, which in turn comes from (on average) the descendents of the people who did the dirty deeds, as well as everyone else with citizenship, who partakes in the land etc taken from the natives.

Also if my father stole something from your father, rubbing your nose in it, is kinda tasteless. Which is what I view real culture appropriation as.

 

Exactly!

 

On the flip side I thought it was really unfair the way professor Snape treated Harry Potter just because he looked like his father.

 

I know you're smart enough to know that you're twisting my words into something I haven't said. Why don't you address the argument I'm actually making instead of the one you're pretending I am?

Oh, the Canadian government has thrown a LOT of money at the problem over the years with little result. It's hard to deal with a population which acts like a country within a country, has big issues with corrupt tribal leaders, has a average population growth greater than the rest of the country while on average being dirt poor, and doesn't want to integrate with the rest of Canadian society yet can never return to their ancestors' way of life.

It's certainly vicariously being a poor winner.

 

And before you get your ire up that second paragraph is simply an acknowledgement that lots of money has been thrown at the problem in various ways, it hasn't worked, and there don't seem to be any good ideas.

 

I havn't got any answers, but I do at least acknowledge that as a people, "we" stole their land of them and made our wealth off of that.
If your still poor despite that, (and really living in Canada your not) that's not their fault, that's the systemic fault of the system you live in, in addition to your own personal failings for not persuing the affordable education your government provides.

Claiming tribal people are all racists for holding the nation who stole their lands liable is disingenuous at best.

 

Spoke with a social anthropology friend of mine about this last night. She said the term "cultural appropriation" is too simplistic and instead the terms "cultural appreciation" or "cultural apologism" should be applied based on the indiviual's intent (the latter meaning an absurd imitation of something).

 

I was talking with Ero-Sennin (always a mistake) about liberalism and conservatism in the US and errors on the order of scale. Somehow we got to talking about how conservatives often use good personal advice for terrible and cruel policy - eg good personal advice for someone might be don't go through that neighborhood at night alone becomes segregation when its translated to policy. The flip side of that, he pointed out, was that liberals do the reverse, moving from larger picture problems to personal call outs. I think this is where I'm most uncomfortable with whatever the left is doing these days - I agree that different cultures should be respected and their traditions maintained, and large scale phenomenon like the whitewashing of black music to make rock and roll, are offensive. But I don't think that the solution is to seek out teenagers who chose a different culture's dress and lambast them.

 

That's an excellent point.

Also to me, adopting another cultures music isn't really a bad thing, as long as you acknowledge that, it's only offensive when the intent behind it is offensive, so rock and roll is fine, but the segregation which also went on at the same time and place wasn't.

 

A good example (if slightly extreme) of this is Al jolson



Lots of people find his act very offensive nowadays, and apparently he wasn't generally a nice man, but he also did do lots of very good things for his Co performers who were African Americans.

Real life is always more nuonced then a simple black and white answer.

Even trump (he's more orange of course).

 

Right, see, we're back on the individual scale - I agree, it's not bad for an individual to play a different culture's music. On a large, systemic scale, it becomes a problem when a culture's music is taken from them, and only the, in this case white, musicians are rewarded. In such a system, on an individual level, it would behoove someone to highlight their influences and promote the culture that inspired them.

It gets tangled quickly don't it?

 

Just highlighting Sister Rosetta Tharpe:

 

I didn't do anything of the kind. People long dead did something to other people long dead. There is no "we."

It is certainly difficult to get out of poverty, even with assistance.

Firstly, and again, why don't you respond to my actual argument instead of what you're pulling out of your backside and pretending it is?
Secondly, the nation of Canada didn't conquer the native populations, that would be the United Kingdom. The conquered lands then became Canada.