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Thread: cultural appropriation

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    Default cultural appropriation

    i'm missing the empathy gene capable of understanding why this is so offensive.
    i mean i can sort of get it intellectually, but..i'm just like. eh. headdresses are cute?

    can anybody who is bothered by it explain it to me?
    in everyday language not swiped from an anti-racism handbook, if possible.


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    (itt i suck at )

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    I've never been so unoffended.

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    Not really. It just looks like some kind of AMERICAN Indian head dress? I dunno...

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    -Krishna

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    Mmm yeah I like what the girl's got on

    I think it's cool as hell when people from far away, with different sets of cultural baggage and all, end up picking up something and taking it in a whole new direction that it never would have went otherwise. Reggae happened because people in Jamaica had shitty radios that didn't pick up on the bass drum frequencies, so the people there ended up putting it where it made the most sense to them. On the three of the beat. Not the one. Ska happened because the radios chopped in and out, and staccato upstrokes on the guitar were the most accurate way people there found to replicate the sounds they heard. Three guys from the UK liked what they heard over there, passed it through their own minds and bodies, and came up with stuff like this:



    Here's some slightly more obscure stuff I love the shit out of! All sorts of stuff probs ended up in the blender for the next one and I love what came out:



    And here's what happens when ska and punk rock and lots of other awesome stuff goes over to Russia to be sent back into the world again as this:

    p . . . a . . . n . . . d . . . o . . . r . . . a
    trad metalz | (more coming)

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    something about first chasing them off their land & raping their broads & refusing their dysfunctional offspring welfare and then usurping their culture & misrepresenting it for entertainment & assorted variants of tripe.

    its not offensive.

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    Quote Originally Posted by labcoat View Post
    something about first chasing them off their land & raping their broads & refusing their dysfunctional offspring welfare and then usurping their culture & misrepresenting it for entertainment & assorted variants of tripe.

    its not offensive.
    lol, i don't think you're being sarcastic but i'm not sure?

    i guess i don't see it as "usurping" just using. and it applies to things like bindis, too, cuz they're religious i guess.

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    Quote Originally Posted by lungs View Post
    i'm missing the empathy gene capable of understanding why this is so offensive.
    i mean i can sort of get it intellectually, but..i'm just like. eh. headdresses are cute?

    can anybody who is bothered by it explain it to me?
    in everyday language not swiped from an anti-racism handbook, if possible.

    It didn't offend me when I first saw it. But I think the source of the image could make it offensive. Like if it is from a retail chain making money by showing off their cultural sensitivity when they actually give no money to native American charities. But I think the hypocrisy of it tends to make it backfire. Also, people wearing tribal clothing that has spiritual significance that they know nothing about could be offensive to those who care about it.
    You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek.
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    So indians are like endangered species. And this is like mounting a stuffed snow owl on your headboard?
    I do find it offensive because models are offensive.

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    I don't necessarily agree with this personally btw so nobody criticize my posts too harshly like they are some narcissistic know-it-all, I'm talking out of my ass kinda but...

    It's probably offensive because it's a form of mockery. Only the person of a particular culture/group really knows what it's like to be part of that group. Before those two boys killed Matthew Shepherd, they pretended (mocked) that they were gay. That looks like some all american chick that doesn't really know anything about native american culture and just using the headdresses for 'fashion' which can be considered shallow.

    Now it's important to be objective with this. Obviously there's no Mary Sue-ing with any one minority or any one person. Nobody is a 'unicorn' that can paint themselves completely in victimology, while you are a minority in some aspects you are also always part of a majority as well. It would be just as offensive if a native american person mocked an asian person. That reminds me of when Rosie O'Donnel was like all 'ching chongy' on TV lmao.

    I also really didn't know how to respond to 'don't sound like an anti-racism textbook.' I like you lungs but I think that's a cheap cop-out. I don't think we can talk about these issues rationally without being a little politically correct and unhumorless or whatever. It's hard to explain what I mean... but if you really want a serious reply then I obviously am going to have to sound a little corny & heartfelt or whatever.

    Also everybody probably has a double standard or 'pet favorite group' with these issues. I don't like it when people mock mentally ill people (although I honestly lightened up about this recently when I discovered that yes, down syndrome people can be assholes just as anybody else!), my sister hates when people mock black people (because she's romantically attracted to them). So some people for whatever reason are going to care that native americans are being mocked, others won't care at all. Some people don't care if anybody is mocked really, and pat themselves on the back for being sooo hard-ass and politically incorrect.
    Last edited by Hot Scalding Gayser; 07-30-2013 at 02:56 AM.

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    Picture is very offending and racist - two feathers pointing North symbolise the persecution of Indians by Americans actually. Anyway, I don't see how dressing as, say, a priest is cute. It's a matter of your views and beliefs(?), not unless you would show up in Black Panther (paramilitary) attire at both KKK and Black Panther meetings.



    That it got commercialised and set for mass selling is another story. Best part it this guy's nationality(?) in vid and maybe sociotype if one is interested in Socionics studies (satire or not)...

    Someone might get offended, and taking into account that people get offended on this site (first hand knowledge), it's pretty plausible.

    Quote Originally Posted by truck View Post
    It's probably offensive because it's a form of mockery. Only the person of a particular culture/group really knows what it's like to be part of that group. Before those two boys killed Matthew Shepherd, they pretended (mocked) that they were gay.
    That's what Cunt Grishnack, a.k.a Varg Daemonic Darkness wrote, word for word. Although you wouldn't make it in Ásatrú BnD. They would crucify you upside down, Roman style.

    "Narcissistic know-it-all, off."

    Quote Originally Posted by woofwoofl View Post
    Three guys from the UK liked what they heard over there, passed it through their own minds and bodies, and came up with stuff like this
    Actually the way reggae and later ska developed in U.K. was due to slavery. Early reggae songs are dealing with slavery themes: plantations, etc...

    Quote Originally Posted by returnofxenu View Post
    So indians are like endangered species. And this is like mounting a stuffed snow owl on your headboard?
    I do find it offensive because models are offensive.
    Yeah, species going extinct. OMG, OMG, OMG. The language may go 'extinct' and Native Americans aren't a species you smart person, besides, I thought you banned yourself 10,999 times already.

    Not unless you count in Hebrews with their racial purity doctrine who offed themselves actually. Native Americans don't have one last time I checked...
    Last edited by Absurd; 08-24-2013 at 05:50 PM.

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    bindis are religious? i didn't know that. they look gross either way. like an oddly symmetrical pimple.

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    I would liek to see you in a burka, Ashton.

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    EDIT: I didn't check the word "appropriation" so the following is all kind of off-topic.

    Is this Finnish oatmeal brand offensive to my Aryan heritage?

    Redskins, an American Football team has also recently faced criticism for their name and logo.

    This anti-racism hunt is getting really old. In Finland, it's run by white people who want to feel guilty about the atrocities committed by the white heterosexual man.
    -A historian suggested that Finland is also guilty for slavery since the tar in some of the slave ships to America was of Finnish origin.
    -"Racist" candy brands were drawn from the market:
    -Liquorice


    -An old chocolate product changed it's name from Neekerinsuukko (Nig-ger's Kiss).
    -A blog writer got fined for "agitation against an ethnic group" and "violating religious peace" when he tested an overzealous bureaucrat by saying:
    "Robbing bystanders and living parasitically on tax money is a national, perhaps even genetical special trait of the Somalis." (A newspaper column had recently said that Finns have a genetic inclination to alcoholism and violence.)
    "Prophet Mohammed was a pedophile and Islam is a religion sanctifying pedophilia, it is indeed a pedophile religion. Pedophilia is the will of Allah."
    The same bureaucrat filed those charges.

    Where will you draw the line? Should different ethnicities follow different rules?

    In my opinion people should grow a thicker hide or close their eyes.
    Last edited by Aquagraph; 08-25-2013 at 10:16 PM.
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    There is no such thing as "Aryan heritage". Silly nazist ILEs. Feel free to offend the Iranians, though.

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    you can go to where your heart is Galen's Avatar
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    What I imagine with cultural appropriation, at least in relation to the OP's picture, is that the party in "power" is seen to demean the "lesser" group by stripping its popular or meaningful symbols of their cultural significance. Saying "so what, it's just a headress" as you walk down the catwalk with it would then be similar to ... actually, there isn't much I can compare it to that a middle-class white guy could really sympathize with.

    By importing some alien cultural artifact into your own lifestyle, you're removing it from the context in which it came to exist in the first place. To them it's not just some arbitrary thing, it was born out of necessity, whether agricultural or religious or anything else, and its significance grows from that. To members of that community, it becomes a symbol of their own heritage or sense of belonging to a group, in the sense that "without this object my people wouldn't be alive today, ergo I wouldn't be alive either." In that sense, when another group somehow gets their hands on this object, particularly when that group has historically been in greater power over the other for much of their relationship, the lesser party will always flip out because they feel some sense of ownership by bloodline. And historically the white folk have had a good run with subjugating Natives to their own manifest destiny mantra, so the fear that Natives will continue to be subject to the white man's will would spark up once again.

    It's oh so easy for a white guy to come along and say "get over it" when they have no such cultural attachment to the thing in the first place, and thus have the privilege to dismiss its importance without any personal rammifications. This is especially the case for modern-day white folk who've lost most all of their cultural totems, whether due to rampant built-for-the-dumpster commercialism rendering pretty much everything replacable and ultimately obsolete, or due to the proliferation of the internet causing people to connect more with the world at large and lose focus over one's own cultural upbringings.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Galen View Post
    This is especially the case for modern-day white folk who've lost most all of their cultural totems [...]
    Yeah, all they want to to do is rap rap rap...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Galen View Post
    =It's oh so easy for a white guy to come along and say "get over it" when they have no such cultural attachment to the thing in the first place, and thus have the privilege to dismiss its importance without any personal rammifications. This is especially the case for modern-day white folk who've lost most all of their cultural totems, whether due to rampant built-for-the-dumpster commercialism rendering pretty much everything replacable and ultimately obsolete, or due to the proliferation of the internet causing people to connect more with the world at large and lose focus over one's own cultural upbringings.
    Yeah, I guess so. I wonder why have the white people 'lost their culture'.
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    The moment they started wearing kilts. Culture isn't race, though, if any one actually pays attention to race just like the breeds of dog.

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    Quote Originally Posted by lungs View Post
    i'm missing the empathy gene capable of understanding why this is so offensive.
    i mean i can sort of get it intellectually, but..i'm just like. eh. headdresses are cute?

    can anybody who is bothered by it explain it to me?
    in everyday language not swiped from an anti-racism handbook, if possible.

    That's not racist at all. If anything that photo is honoring the Native Americans by having the wardrobe worn by someone who would be considered attractive to Western sensibilities.

    I think most Americans have been raised to be mostly tolerant people of different ethnicity and appearance. It's the people from the Old World who bring their old rivalries and racist sentiments who're the problem.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterNi View Post

    I think most Americans have been raised to be mostly tolerant people of different ethnicity and appearance. It's the people from the Old World who bring their old rivalries and racist sentiments who're the problem.
    You need to get out more.
    “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kim View Post
    You need to get out more.
    I live in a place where I meet at least three people of different ethnicities or nationalities if I go for a short walk. How about you?

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    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    You might like Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West for perspective—written nearly a century ago in 1918:

    According to the theory, the Western world is actually ending and we are witnessing the last season — "winter time" — of the Faustian civilization. In Spengler's depiction, Western Man is a proud but tragic figure because, while he strives and creates, he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.

    Winter: Coming fissure in the world-urban civilization. Exhaustion of mental organization strength. Irreligiousness rises.
    • Religion: Materialism, cults of science, utility, and luck.
    • Ethical-social ideals: Philosophy without mathematics, skepticism. The last mathematical thinkers. Decline of abstract thinkers, and the rise of specialized academic philosophy. Spread of the last ideas.
    • Art: End of symbolic art. All art becomes meaningless subjects of fashion.
    • Politics: Democracy, rule of the rich, followed by Caesarism and bureaucracy.

    Decline is also evidenced by a formlessness of political institutions within a state. As the "proper" form dissolves, increasingly authoritarian leaders arise, signaling decline. The first step toward formlessness Spengler designates Napoleonism. A new leader assumes powers and creates a new state-structure without reference to "self-evident" bases for governance. The new régime is thus accidental rather than traditional and experienced, and relies not on a trained minority but on the chance of an adequate successor.

    Spengler predicts that permanent mass-conscription armies will be replaced by smaller professional volunteer armies. Army sizes will drop from millions to hundreds of thousands. However, the professional armies will not be for deterrence, but for waging war. Spengler states that they will precipitate wars upon which whole continents—India, China, South Africa, Russia, Islam—will be staked. The great powers will dispose of smaller states, which will come to be viewed merely as means to an end. This period in Civilizational decline he labels the period of Contending States.

    Caesarism is essentially the death of the spirit that originally animated a nation and its institutions. It is marked by a government which is formless irrespective of its de jure constitutional structure. The antique forms are dead, despite the careful maintenance of the institutions; those institutions now have no meaning or weight. The only aspect of governance is the personal power exercised by the Caesar. This marks the beginning of the Imperial Age.

    Despite having fought wars for democracy and rights during the period of Contending States, the populace can no longer be moved to use those rights. People cease to take part in elections, and the most-qualified people remove themselves from the political process. This marks the end of great politics. Only private history, private politics, and private ambitions rule at this point. The wars are private wars, "more fearful than any State wars because they are formless". The imperial peace involves private renunciation of war on the part of the immense majority, but conversely requires submission to that minority which has not renounced war. The world peace that began in a wish for universal reconciliation ends in passivity in the face of misfortune, as long as it only affects one's neighbor. In personal politics the struggle becomes not for principles but for executive power. Even popular revolutions are no exception: the methods of governing are not significantly altered, the position of the governed remains the same, and the strong few determined to rule remain atop the rest of humanity.

    Spengler asserts that democracy is simply the political weapon of money, and the media is the means through which money operates a democratic political system.

    Democracy and plutocracy are equivalent in Spengler's argument. The "tragic comedy of the world-improvers and freedom-teachers" is that they are simply assisting money to be more effective. The principles of equality, natural rights, universal suffrage, and freedom of the press are all disguises for class war (the bourgeois against the aristocracy). Freedom, to Spengler, is a negative concept, simply entailing the repudiation of any tradition. In reality, freedom of the press requires money, and entails ownership, thus serving money at the end. Suffrage involves electioneering, in which the donations rule the day. The ideologies espoused by candidates, whether Socialism or Liberalism, are set in motion by, and ultimately serve, only money. "Free" press does not spread free opinion—it generates opinion, Spengler maintains.

    On the subject of the press, Spengler is equally as contemptuous. Instead of conversations between men, the press and the "electrical news-service keep the waking-consciousness of whole people and continents under a deafening drum-fire of theses, catchwords, standpoints, scenes, feelings, day by day and year by year." Through the media, money is turned into force—the more spent, the more intense its influence.

    For the press to function, universal education is necessary. Along with schooling comes a demand for the shepherding of the masses, as an object of party politics. Those that originally believed education to be solely for the enlightenment of each individual prepared the way for the power of the press, and eventually for the rise of the Caesar.
    Yup, many of the reasons why I want a zombie apocalypse to happen are mentioned there. Sounds like my stuff. And also answers my clumsily formulated question.

    I'm off to buy a legal copy from the appropriate vendor.
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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterNi View Post
    I live in a place where I meet at least three people of different ethnicities or nationalities if I go for a short walk. How about you?
    I have lived in the South. Need I say more?
    “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kim View Post
    I have lived in the South. Need I say more?
    Well I've only ever lived in the blue states. The southern red states are pretty much as conservative as this country can get.

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    you can go to where your heart is Galen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aquagraph View Post
    Yeah, I guess so. I wonder why have the white people 'lost their culture'.
    My educated guess is that it's because white people as a whole have primarily been on the top of the social food chain. They've/we've never had to have some large-scale struggle to overcome the power of another race, so they/we never felt a need to create solidarity against a common enemy in that sense. Character builds best through struggle, I suppose.

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    I'm missing the gene that says it's offensive too. I like differences in people, it makes us so much more interesting. I would hate uniformity to be imposed on people, I don't like it when people are subject to qualities that don't make them individual or individually expressive and more like "brave new world" like ....eeeeek.
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    i want white stereotypes.
    “I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden

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    c esi-se 6w7 spsx ashlesha's Avatar
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    over time i can see the perspective of what i used to see as the whiny privileged white guy more and more.
    maybe i'm a SELLOUT

    seriously though, it just comes down to..it makes people feel bad on an individual level. and that sucks, but, okay? i remember feeling indignant bout trucker hats and dumb college kids glamorizing poverty because it was like they just didn't get it and who did they think they were!?! and i'm guessing its a similar concept? but i accepted it was my problem and not theirs. i mean don't wear anything with feathers if you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. stay in your house and eat the mold in the walls. take responsibility for everybody elses feelings and never do anything. unless its a white dude because then none of their feelings are justified.

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    What a cute little star-bellied sneech.

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    you can go to where your heart is Galen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    IMO it's someone's personal choice if they want to view themselves as the 'lesser'. Obviously it'd be different if there were laws institutionalizing someone as a 2nd-class citizen, but there are no such things in this case; they'd be reacting to a hierarchy existent only in their own minds.
    This is absolutely not true. Check out the Jane Elliott Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes classroom experiment if you haven't already:



    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    I don't buy that. Everyone has personally experienced times in their life of—and can therefore empathize with—being marginalized as an 'out-group', or stereotyped for something they're not, or demeaned by others on account of their own race/background/whatever. These aren't alien feelings somehow incomprehensible to those comprising some mythical racial hegemon.
    I'm not trying to use that example as a means of outlining out-group bias, rather it was meant more as a precursor to my final paragraph in that post.

    But re: the bolded part, sure of course most people have been out-grouped in some fashion. But how often do they receive that treatment on a daily basis, and how much does that daily treatment affect their outlook on life? I mean, how often have you yourself experienced regular unequal treatment simply due to circumstances outside of your control?



    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    I think you're making a lot of assumptions here about how deeply connected the avg. person of said community is to Native headdress objects.
    I wasn't trying to refer specifically to a Native American headdress, rather towards any object that has some particular cultural significance that's since become misappropriated.

    But you're right, I am making a lot of assumptions here. This is because I don't know what it's like to be a Native American. There's a whole wealth of day-to-day experiences that they go through (or have gone through in recent history) that's I'm not at all privy to. I'm simply speaking from what I consider to be a generalized experience of people who might be offended by some cultural object misappropriation, but again I cannot ever really feel it for myself, seeing as how I'm a pretty well-off White American male.



    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    I mean, if I were to imagine myself as Native… I'm pretty sure I'd be highly annoyed at such a patronizingly coddling outlook towards me as a person (even if said object did in fact bear intensive cultural meaning to me). And amidst that annoyance likely write you off as a 'typical meddling White person' who had no business being such a bleeding heart over my culture; it'd feel rude/invasive.
    Except that you, like me, have no idea. You can only speak from your own life experiences, and maybe throw in some random factual knowledge about whatever tribe you're trying to imagine about. You've never gone through life as a representative of a relatively oppressed people (I don't think?), so you can never have that particular perspective which allows you to say "if I were" with any sort of confidence.

    Just look at the OP:

    Quote Originally Posted by lungs View Post
    i'm missing the empathy gene capable of understanding why this is so offensive.
    i mean i can sort of get it intellectually, but..i'm just like. eh. headdresses are cute?
    You both, like myself, only kind of understand it intellectually because you have 0 experience to really internalize what the mindset is and how people would react. You're making just as many assumptions about how you might react in a very specific situation given a very specific set of life experiences.

    Do you think that I, as a gay man, see straight people as condescending for advocating gay marriage on my behalf? I certainly don't feel coddled by their expression of support, even though it doesn't affect them in any way. I don't see those supported as somehow "meddling" in my own affairs. It feels like support, which any people who are experiencing on-going bigotry and discrimination actually need because there's absolutely no chance in hell that the gay rights movement would have made the headway that it has without support from some people who were supposedly representative of the "oppressor."


    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    Right, albeit a sorely misplaced and non-proportional reaction since no White person alive today had anything to do w/ subjugating Natives by imperative of Manifest Destiny (in my case, even if I could magically be held accountable for the actions of my dead ancestors, most of mine didn't arrive in the US until ~1900…).

    I understand the reaction insofar as the feelings involved and why, but I don't condone it—it's silly, irrational, and racist.
    Sure it's irrational, but what other choice do they have? Of all people I wouldn't expect you to view history as just some list of stories that happened a long time ago that have no bearing on reality today.

    To me saying you "don't condone it" achieves about as much as saying "I don't condone bleeding." If you beat somebody to the ground, they're gonna bleed, and it's gonna keep bleeding until something changes to stop it. It's about as pointless as saying "get over it," you absolve yourself of all possible responsibility that you might allot yourself. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, a man can only give himself so much room to accommodate for others; but saying that you don't condone that sort of irrationality provides no constructive steps forward, and tells me that you'd rather just stay out of the matter altogether.


    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    Sure, but this is also one of those situations where there's not much of anything practical anyone can do to prevent this from happening.
    Well yeah, but the question here as I understand it has nothing to do with whether or not cultural appropriation in this way is *wrong* or not. It absolutely happens, and in this day and age information is disseminated more rapidly and more freely than it's ever been. The question has to do with why people might find it offensive to have their own culture re-appropriated by the people who have historically beat them down.

    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    Well, what's this so-called 'White culture', anyway? Unless you're loosely referring to Western culture… which, technically incorporates a multitude of different races (as does "Black" culture too, for instance). Point being that racializing culture is bad form IMO.
    Except that race and culture are so intimately related, especially when between two groups of highly unequal social power. Do you think there'd be Negro Spirituals or Minstrelsy if black people weren't enslaved for centuries? I don't mean that as a guilt trip, but as a consideration of racism and discrimination creating a strong lateral out-group/in-group demarcation; a "They are like that, We are like this" mentality being in part the basis of particular cultural icons like the aforementioned two.

    (FTR, I am referring to *White* culture as an extension of Western culture in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion, although my point still stands.)


    Quote Originally Posted by mfckr View Post
    Anyhow, I do think the ailing Western cultural totems are still present, but being embedded in that culture might make them more difficult to discern. Compounding said difficulty in seeing them is the fact that many Western cultural elements became disseminated abroad as global culture began to emerge a few centuries ago via dominion of the British Empire. Then ofc as Britain faded, this globalization process continued under heavy US-influence… unfortunately it seems only the more regressive aspects of Western culture—like popular democracy & mass consumerism—were spewed everywhere; I'd surmise this since metastasized into some kind of autonomous 'McWorld' cancer that, despite being US-borne, can now thrive perfectly well as a dominant cultural form w/o the US…
    I would like to think that there are some important Western cultural totems as well, like cell phones or cars or any other ubiquitous technological tools. The problem with comparing a Native American headdress to an iPhone though is that I don't see the iPhone as containing some sort of deep-set cultural relevance, rather it's more just a tool that can be broken and replaced with relative ease and without much heartbreak or offense to "my people."

    Then again, Native American headdresses might have received much the same treatment a long time ago when their own culture was all they knew. Were Western technological civilization somehow overthrown by space aliens and made to conform their own mannerisms and culture habits to those of this new foreign species, perhaps we would begin to see iPhones in a very similar fashion. But since I don't have that sort of experience, I cannot possibly know how I would feel because such experience would be so foreign to my everyday life.
    Last edited by Galen; 08-26-2013 at 05:07 PM.

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    It's not about hurting any one's feelings, it's about getting one's head treated with a metal bar.

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    "you can never possibly understand my viewpoint so you should just comply with my demands on faith because of my special class."

    that's not good enough. and it just shuts things down and creates different prejudices.

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    you can go to where your heart is Galen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by lungs View Post
    "you can never possibly understand my viewpoint so you should just comply with my demands on faith because of my special class."

    that's not good enough. and it just shuts things down and creates different prejudices.
    That's not what I said at all. Try "you don't know the experiences I've been through on a daily basis, and you're not actively doing anything to help, so you have no right to say how I should feel about the matter."

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    Quote Originally Posted by Galen View Post
    That's not what I said at all. Try "you don't know the experiences I've been through on a daily basis, and you're not actively doing anything to help, so you have no right to say how I should feel about the matter."
    that's definitely fair.

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    I'm offended whenever a woman wears my shirts in the morning because 'cultural appropriation'.

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    (imho) it's often because the "appropriation" is centered on the cheesiest stereotypes of a certain culture i.e. the "weird dress" of indians, the "mafia and pizza" for italians, etc. etc. thus people feel offended that you're conflating their culture with a single and usually somewhat negative-cheesy trait.
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