Is Cultural Appropriation a Real Thing?

It's very difficult to draw specific lines though. Where is it influence and where is it "theft?" How about when one individual from a certain culture originates something and other members of the same culture copy. That's no less the same except if "outsiders" do it you've drawn an arbitrary line between two groups of people, on what basis? How is blues to rock theft but rock to J-rock isn't? How is it that black artists covering Lead Belly get a pass while the Animals and white artists would get dumped on for covering or taking inspiration.

I say throw the doors wide open and be more concerned with whether it's good than who originated it.

 

Because it's less about what the individual does and more about how society responds to it. So, when you have a situation in which black musicians find it nearly impossible to get signed to a record label, have no fame for their skills, and have no opportunity to disseminate that music, while white musicians are finding success in playing that same music, that's a problem. Again, it's a question of scale and level of analysis, not to mention cultural context.

 

Because your not going to change your mind, and I'm not going to change my mind from your argument.

So for the benefit of the conversation, suck it up and move on Barbara.

Ps if I've misunderstood your point, then perhaps reframing it, or repeating it to make it clearer would of been more productive.

 

It's very simple, don't blame living people for the actions of dead people and certainly not with the justification that it's because they're the same ethnicity or look vaguely similar. I honestly can't believe you're saying you can't agree with people being held responsible for their own actions instead of the actions of others, and to not judge people based on their ethnicity or skin colour. It's VERY very simple and it can't be any simpler. The fact that you can't seem to agree with personal responsibility and not being racist is really disheartening. I thought you were a better than that.

 

Agreed but that's a separate problem to my mind. If you banned artists other than black artists from covering black artists, which would be flat out wrong, it wouldn't have made people suddenly flock to see those artists. It wouldn't have solved the problem of racism. In fact I wouldn't even know who someone as influential as Lead Belly was if it weren't for the multitude of artists both black and white who either covered or took inspiration from them.
And that has little bearing on say, a white artist covering Michael Jackson. Or the way Bruno Mars got attacked for drawing inspiration from a variety of sources. If he hadn't been defended by black celebrities it would've been blood in the water with the sharks circling. And that was one of the rare instances where someone being attacked for taking influence from outside their culture, was not white.

 

My head is plenty cool, it just seemed the only way to get him to pay attention to the fact that he was twisting my argument at every opportunity to tacitly excuse calling the innocent guilty, and outright racism. Since I had already tried mentioning it in plain English, twice I believe, could you suggest an alternate way of getting someone's attention in such circumstances?

 

I don't agree to this, because as I've already said, on a large scale/systemic level it's not true, the group still inherits the advantage, and again as I've already said, if you view it personally only on an individual level (which is a mistake, life is made up of individuals and groups, hence liberals are all about personal freedoms, and conservatives are all about group cohesion) unless your willing to personally forgo that advantage by having a 100% inheritance tax, it's a disengenious argument.

But as you won't agree with me, and I certainly won't agree with your overly reductive position, nows the time to drop it.

 

You do know its OK for someone to have a different opinion?

You think I'm a racist, (somehow, fact check I'm not) I just think your overly simplifying a situation so that you feel better about being part of it.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe your wrong, it's OK to keep calm not start calling people names and get overall hot headed and emotional about it

 

Any group gains an advantage when they conquer any other group, raid, take territory etc. You want to dig through, pass judgement, decry, and try to equalize all the conquest in human history in order to avoid being a hypocrite? Like I said, the enforced large scale peace is a relatively recent phenomenon and you'll scarcely find any human tribe with no blood on their hands. We can and should deal with present inequalities, and certainly with an understanding of how those came about, but if you want to hold to account every person who is related to anyone who ever did anything wrong, or looks like they did, well prepare for several millennia in back-taxes.

See the above with regard to the inheritance tax, or try to extricate exactly where, say, the money from the fur trade went. How about when it's changed hands a million times and the great grandson of a Chinese guy who set nitroglycerin in mountain train tunnels owns that dollar because he's built a business? When you figure out which percentage of my Egyptian buddy is liable for the conquests of the Egyptian Empire and exactly where those funds are, you let me know.
"If you view it only as individuals" in this case is to not judge people by their skin colour or the happenstance of their genetic makeup. I would just as soon see the world consumed by a raging nuclear inferno before I would see such ludicrous guilt by association be seen as acceptable. What's the statute of limitations of being pale or to have happen to be born with some vague genetic relation to someone who did something bad a long time ago?

Overly reductive nothing. What you're arguing for is guilt by arbitrary association. I mean hell we're not even talking voluntary association like a religion, but "hey you happen to have pale skin therefore you're responsible for slavery and genocide because dead people who happen to look like you did it a long time ago." That's not reductive at all. That's literally what you're arguing for. It's effectively the same as blaming anyone with any German ancestry for both world wars and the holocaust. It's ridiculous.

And having a different opinion doesn't make it good, right, correct, or moral.

I'm taking a situation at face value. You're arguing for judging people based on skin colour and genetic association. You're not even working to provide any argument that you're not doing that.

Insistence is not emotionality. The fact that I'm sticking to my argument does not mean that I'm emotional. The fact that I had to use giant letters to get you to pay attention to the fact that you were twisting my words to try and act as though I was saying something I wasn't doesn't mean I'm emotional. It just means I'm actually paying attention to the discussion.

 

I'm not for holding individuals for account for historical events, but that the group (I. E. The nation) should try to make reasonable amends, and try to not act like a douche about recent transgressions, which are still within living memory (or at least grandparents memory)

A great example is the Washington redskins, imagine a German team called the "curly haired Jews", it's offensive to many, and not needed.

Why we're talking past each other here is that your talking individual responsibility on the micro level, I'm talking responsibility as a group/nation on the macro level.

In the UK there's plenty of public places that were built on the money made by slavers, which at the time were named after the slavers, generally now, we rename them, and put up a plaque explaining the situation. I think that's a good, sensible, attitude to have.
We're not rewriting history, but we are aware that celebrating slavery is not a good thing.

 

Means your shouting, shouting is not conducive to calm rational discussion.

 

No I'm not, an immigrent family who comes to the USA/canada/UK, should feel just as bad about our actions in being slavers/killing the tribal people/whatever as much as a fully, 100% pure English men/ English/French canadian/english/german/whatever American.

It's about nationality/group not individual blood sin.

 

Neither is twisting someone's words and misrepresenting them as something they're not. The fact that I had to "shout" at you to get you to pay attention to that isn't conducive to any discussion. I'll just accept that it worked as intended and move on.

Except that's not what I was discussing. We should all feel bad because of the events of WW2, but we don't all get blamed, do we? If you'll pull back to page #2 you'll notice that I was talking specifically about how anti-European sentiment (bourne from Europeans in the early 20th cen. and prior having been the last and arguably most successful conquerors) has lead to anyone who is or looks European getting jumped on for touching anything which is or appears to be from outside their culture because of the "race to the bottom" for social and political power in some circles. That's purely on the basis of heritage and assumed heritage. See below ↓

At which point you responded ↓

So yes, that is exactly what you were defending because as I pointed out, when there's some social blame to be levied, particularly in the context of "cultural appropriation," it's "white folks" who get the blame because some dead people who vaguely look like or were distally related, did something people now find unpalatable. Because when the answer to why it's okay, for example, for my Vietnamese friend to embrace New Jack Swing but I'd be jumped on by the mob is "because you're 'white' and some dead 'white' guys did something I don't like" then it's literally because of skin colour, it's a "group responsibility" which is guilt by association based on skin colour and hertiage or assumed heritage, and on top of that I'm being asked to bear personal responsibility for it. It's the equivalent of blaming the nice little kid who lives beside me for the actions of the Tamil Tigers during the Sri Lankan civil war. To call that anything other than ridiculous and racist, well:

 

So you think white people are being unfairly treated?

Haha, I think I'll leave the conversation here.

No good will come of it.

 

Now who is oversimplifying?

 

This is a problem that many Indians (yep, they mostly call themselves that) have with a great portion of US society today. I am only 25% myself, but I grew up around a great many Ysleta and Mescalero, so I heard and saw a lot of terrible things about their history.

First, it wasn't "people long dead" that seriously oppressed the Native Americans. My grandfather was actually in the cavalry (1st, not 7th) when 250 men, women, and children were slaughtered at Wounded Knee in 1890. That hardly qualifies as ancient history or "people long dead".

Second, nobody is holding you, or anyone else, responsible for what was done. However, they do expect you to acknowledge that a horrible injustice was done just because people looked and acted differently. Read the history behind the Trail of Tears. It's heartbreaking what the US government did to the Cherokee people that were their acknowledged allies just because gold was discovered in their homelands. The same story occurred in California where most of the native population was slaughtered for bounties because of gold. Today's Native American population doesn't want you to feel responsible, or to owe them anything. They just want you to acknowledge that they were treated in a horribly unjust manner, and the government should be trying to work out some way to fix the great harm that was done by the government, just as the German government continues to try and fix the great harm and horrible injustice that it caused in WWII.

Here's something for you to think about ... imagine for a moment that slavery had lasted another 50 years, that the government was the one that owned all of the slaves in the US, and that when the slaves were finally freed, they were all forced to go live on marginal, unwanted land that was insufficient for their needs.

Headdresses and costumes don't really bother any Indians that I've talked with. You'll see some really elaborate and fancy stuff (that has nothing to do with their spirituality) if you attend a powwow and watch the dance competitions. The term Redskin does irritate because it is the Native American equivalent of the "N" word. It was a derogatory term most often used in relation to scalp bounties.

OK, that's my rant for the week.

 

Oooooh you haven't had conversations with some of the folks on the far left of the political spectrum. The same kind of folks who take a hardline view of cultural appropriation are people who have literally told me I bear personal responsibility for slavery, European conquests, etc. So maybe no one with any sense. Some of this, though, was a general response to blame for a variety of things which get brought up during discussions over cultural appropriation, not specifically to do with Indigenous Americans. Also I consider dead to be, well dead.

And as I said, I'm all for addressing present inequalities and giving help where help is needed. I think there's a moral imperative there no matter how the situation arose. We used to regularly engage in warfare and conquest all across the globe basically since the dawn of written history. Nearly everyone did it and now we don't, at least not nearly to the same degree and scale. I just think the whole enduring blood feud mentality some people have is something which needs to become a relic of the past if we really want to move past the kind of mentality which created those situations in the first place. We can sit around handing out blame dating back to the dawn of time for every action which insults our relatively recent sensibilities, or we can understand the history, how it created the present situation, and address the present problems to bring about change for the better. That's my personal goal in any case.

It is certainly, to my 21st century sensibilities, a poor way to treat even a conquered people. The only close parallel that comes to mind is the Ainu in Japan. Normally conquered people seem to have lived side by side with their conquerors and interbred until the two populations were indistinguishable, but then the large technological gap coupled with the ethno-superiority complex was a rather unique historical occurrence.

That's an interesting and valuable insight. I find it's a strange split here with some people caring, and some not. It seems that, and circling back to the main subject, in general with regard to cultural appropriation the more urban folks are and if they've been here for one or two generations the more sensitive they tend to become, as in a large and multicultural city they take their ethnic identity to be a greater reflection of the individual self in order to not disappear into the crowd and to have something they consider unique. Of course equally I know many people from a variety of cultures who just don't care at all but most of them have been here for usually two or three generations and don't care about being different. Certainly most people seem to respect and value the people who take time to actually learn about their culture, but I find it funny that while some people take such offense to any seeming adoption of their culture by "outsiders" others are overjoyed at even the most cursory adoption of anything related to their culture.

Equally some people here don't like the term Indian, or Native, or Aboriginal, Indigenous, or whatever the new modern term is and take offense at whichever isn't the newest term, although understandably not to the same degree as with Redskin. I vividly remember one native guy I was having lunch and a chat with saying, "I was born being called an Injun and now I can't keep track of what they want to call me. What does it matter? Who I am doesn't change based on what they call me." I thought that was a very interesting perspective.

 

Nope, I tend to pretty much ignore those on the far left as well as those on the far right. With as many people as there are in the world, and as mobile as a great many of those people are, anyone that doesn't believe in moderation and compromise as the only way to a reasonably civil society is living with their head in the sand. Most of those yelling loudest about "cultural appropriation" simply wish for a cause to espouse that doesn't actually cost them anything.

That's a pretty good insight actually. I've known some people that went extreme in their "cultural influence", and it seemed to me like it was exactly as you say, an effort to make themselves stand out from the crowd.

That's the prevailing view that I've seen at the powwow that I've been to. I've seen a lot of use of the word "native", but even more use of the word Indian. However, it seems to me that the term native has been becoming much more prevalent over the last 10 years or so. I personally attribute this to the large influx of people from India that has begun to create confusion in terms. 30 or 40 years ago you never heard the term native at all.