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

[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.