Thinking Thoughts

[chasingtides]

So theoretically I'm reading Jorge Luis Borges at the moment, but I still have my Mongolian and Sami research bouncing around my skull and trying to find a monster of the week to put in my lgbtfest entry. My brain's all over the place.

When does something become cultural appropriation? When is something culturally yours to begin with? Where are the lines?

(To note, I have a vague idea of what is culturally "mine." It's a fairly limited group, but I've been told by others that there are things that are culturally mine that I don't think are - and vice versa. I'm also interested in seeing where people think the line is - when are you stealing someone else's culture and when are you drawing on it?)

I suppose this could be in any life aspect - religiously (I know this comes up in the pagan community), in art or writing, in lifestyle (with the stereotypical weeabo coming up). Thoughts?


As an unrelated addendum: It's snowing like anything here. It was 60F yesterday. I'd better not have my classes called off because of snow.

Comments

[subordinate.livejournal.com]

I think cultural appropriation is something that really should be paid more attention to in general.

Honestly, and this may be an unpopular opinion outside the social activist circles that I'm accustomed to, but I think most Americans can only safely claim general American culture as theirs 100% of the time. Individuals can, of course, claim religion and cultural heritage, but it's always a good idea to respect people who are currently members of that heritage themselves in ways that you specifically aren't as having more cultural clout, if you will. I'm thinking of the white ethnic heritages on this one. Being ethnically Irish or Italian or Polish or Russian or what have you is obviously not the same thing as being currently a person who was born/raised in Ireland, Italy, etc. I'm thinking of Irish cultural appropriation specifically, because I know plenty of raised-in-Ireland Irish who get pissed about 2nd/3rd generation Irish-Americans who get very involved with St. Patrick's Day, for instance, but I know this applies to many other ethnic white identities.

I think appropriation is very interesting but obviously very problematic. People should definitely feel free to explore cultures, learn other languages, visit different countries and demographics, etc. People should do this as much as they can, actually. But there's a huge difference between a white person from the suburbs who decides to emulate hip hop culture vs. a white person from the suburbs who decides to read up on race theory, for instance, you know?

I think some people get annoyed at appropriation when it's obvious it's only a skin deep faddish interest. People's cultures, races, religions, etc. should not be mere fodder for fandom or that kind of exotic other-ing.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

If we're thinking of the same Irish appropriation, it also makes a lot of Irish-Americans upset, too. (If you want, I can tell the story of the St Patrick's Day party that ended with me almost in tears and ready to lock myself in a closet. That was not my culture - as an Irish-American - at all.) However, I would argue that, at least in some areas, that white ethnicities do have different cultures. I would argue that my culture is different from that of, say, my Italian-American friends. We eat different foods, celebrate holidays differently, behave differently with family and friends.

I guess what I'm asking is - what if I'm from the suburbs and like hip-hop? What do I do then? Should I pretend that I don't like it because I'm white and from the suburbs and shouldn't like hip-hop? Or is there another avenue that isn't appropriation?

[subordinate.livejournal.com]

re: hip-hop -- no, not at all. Liking hip-hop is totally awesome. Pretending you are "street" because you like hip-hop is a whole other thing. Denying who you are, and your own reality, and taking on the identity of another minority group, is the problem. Generally, people have a problem with stuff like this if a person emulates only the surface trappings -- clothing, demeanor, language, food, etc. -- without bothering to educate themselves about anything behind the scenes, or deferring at all to the demographic that the specific art is speaking for and catering to. Then you become a cultural "tourist," and that's offensive to people, I think.

It really is mostly a matter of not pretending to be an expert in a culture when faced with someone who IS a member of that culture, I think. Like, with weeaboos, what is so gross is that some of them don't get that it doesn't matter how much Japanese they learn, or how much Japanese culture they consume (be it pop culture or more, even), or even if they DO arguably know "more" about some Japanese history than some arbitrary actual Japanese person -- they still AREN'T Japanese. The faddishness, the frenzied fandom thing about an entire cultural demographic, it's just -- at the very least -- kind of bizarre.

re: the Irish-American example: OHHH yeah, ethnic American-born whites can get pissed about other Americans appropriating their culture too, no question. I consider myself an "ethnic" American white myself. But that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend I'm a person of color, for instance, or a "minority" who can 100% relate to what it's like to live in a racist society, or that this gives me some kind of carte blanche about appropriation issues, etc. This also doesn't mean that I can't appropriate "my own" culture if I'm not careful (and this is the point I was making about the raised-in-Ireland vs. Irish-by-several-removed-generation problem). Ways to appropriate my own culture would be to deny the reality that even my own heritage means different things to different cultures in different countries from different times, etc. (Like, I'm Jewish, but I'm not going to pretend I understand what it's like to suffer from antisemitism to, say, a Holocaust survivor, or what it's like to be visually marked as an "other" to someone who is Chasidic, or act like Jewish identity means the same thing to me, who grew up in Los Angeles, as it means to someone who grew up in Wyoming, or Israel, or Spain, etc.) This is all stuff I've seen people do that is kind of wtf, to me.

[maccaj.livejournal.com]

I agree.

Speaking only of Irish culture (cause that's what I'm familiar with), though, there's also a huge difference between an Irish-American who defines Irish-American as "drinks a lot on St. Patrick's Day," and an Irish-American raised in the ex-pat community, who may never have set foot in Ireland, but for whom St. Patrick's Day is a day to go to a specific Irish ex-pat owned pub, have a meal with ex-pats and their kids, and have an ex-pat priest give a homily about being Irish in America and being grateful for that - which is what *I* grew up with and still practice, even though I'm Irish-American and four generations removed.

That's why I don't like, and don't usually use, the term Irish-American... because that term in particular tends to mean "American of Irish descent who may or may not know what that means, nor care," whereas to me, my heritage is a huge part of my life, and an *active* part of my life - I've never in my 27 years *not* celebrated a holiday with my local ex-pat community, and my way of unwinding at uni was to go to the local ceilis. Yet there's no real term for someone who's American by birth, truly identifies with their heritage, *isn't* terribly American by culture (there's more ex-pat culture in me than American culture... I've never celebrated a fourth of July, and my Thanksgiving is spent with ex-pats, eating prawns and scotch eggs and trying to explain to them why the shops are all closed) but doesn't claim (and in fact would not dare to be as presumptuous as to claim) to be Irish-born. I've always felt like I'm in cultural limbo in that respect... I'm not Irish-born, and American traditions often feel alien, but I'm not an acutal ex-pat either, though I have in large part been raised by/with them.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

And then of course, there are those of us who do both. You just described my St. Patrick's Day down to a T (and why I had trouble at college when I was the only person I knew who culturally identified the way I did), though I also do American holidays as well (though, admittedly, often in our own little way and dissimilarly from our friends who are culturally different). There aren't really words for that - I would say that the way we act (re:Irish) is respectful (as in, no one is saying we're from Ireland and no one is drinking green beer), but I agree that Irish-American has other connotations.

[maccaj.livejournal.com]

oh, exactly. I think that's why the term hits me so wrong, as a *term*... because there are a million different ways to be Irish-American, most of which are respectful, but popular culture has sort of stolen that particular term to the point where it's perfectly acceptable to be "Irish for a day", where that phrase means "dye rivers green and drink yourself unconscious"... so when *I* say "Irish-American," or when *you* say "Irish-American," we really mean something by it... but neither of our ideas about it match the popular cultural perception of the term, outside of a heavily Irish Catholic neighborhood.