I’m white and while I have been educating myself about racism I still have a lot of things to learn. So please don’t consider this post a “this is the be-all and end-all of what cultural appropriation means”; this is just my current understanding of cultural appropriation, which I am presenting in the hopes that someone will tell me where I’ve wandered off into the wrong direction. (Also, I’m going to be using the abbreviation “POC,” which stands for “people of color.”)
The definitions of cultural appropriation I’ve found are usually something like this: “Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission.” This is a bit difficult to understand to me, because I find it hard to grasp how you could get permission from a culture. You can only get permission from people in that culture, some of whom will be all “dude, whatever, don’t give a fuck” and some of whom will be all “the fuck? Why are you doing that? Give that back!” (Even the Seminoles, who have an actual tribal government the Florida State University Seminoles talked to to clear their mascot with, have dissenting Seminoles who are pissed as fuck about the whole matter.)
I think that part of the problem might be that when people use the term “cultural appropriation” they mean one of about four different things:
1) Dressing up as or incorporating in your art or naming your sports team after an offensive stereotype of POC. This is the definition that comes up every Halloween when people insist on dressing up as Pocahotties and Injun Braves, and when Victoria’s Secret decides to put Native American headdresses on their models. I am not sure why people think this is okay. Do not dress up as an oversexualized stereotype of the people your culture fucking committed genocide against. Similarly, this point covers Native American sports team mascots, Urban Outfitters “Navajo” bracelets, etc.
I’m… also not really sure why people call this cultural appropriation, because to me it seems like a pretty cut-and-dried case of “offensive stereotypes are bad.”
2) Do not use sacred shit from religions you don’t belong to. This is basic respect. People take their sacred shit very seriously, and it greatly upsets them when you use their sacred shit in ways other than the approved-of one. Do not upset people for no reason. (This guideline also applies to non-POC religions, of course, but very few people put on Mormon temple garments because they look cool.)
3) Do not use things associated with POC in ways that reinforce stereotypes of POC. For instance, do not do Tantra because it is spiritual and exotic and ancient and totally sexy. It is a common Orientalizing stereotype that Asian people are exotic, spiritual, and the heirs to ancient wisdom; thinking that Tantra is awesome because it is exotic ancient spiritual wisdom from the East is playing into that exact stereotype.
Similarly, white-people dreadlocks are problematic. Black people still face all kinds of racist shit– from white people trying to touch their hair to losing out on jobs– if they style their hair the way it naturally grows instead of making it look like white hair; it is incredibly fucked that black people having their hair the way it naturally grows is considered “rebellious.” Many black people are, understandably, somewhat irritated when white people decide that it is cool and countercultural to have dreadlocks. For black people, dreadlocks are a rebellion against a racist society and a statement of pride in their race; for white people they’re… um, cool because, like, black people, man.
4) Don’t steal POC’s ideas and cultural artifacts without credit. See also: the entire history of rock music. Rock music was deeply influenced by black musicians– blues, gospel, vocal groups. So of course white men like Elvis and Bill Haley ran off with their ideas and got all the credit for being musical fucking geniuses. Because, y’know, white. Similar things happen with everything from nail art to feminist theory.
It’s difficult to figure out a way to deal with this toxic dynamic. “White people, you don’t get to wear nail art or listen to rock music” is a suboptimal solution. I think ultimately the solution is to be very intentional about pointing out your influences and promoting the careers of talented POC within your field and seeking out POC’s work instead of assuming that what white people are doing is the only interesting culture that’s going on. (For instance, it would be incredibly dishonest and fucked of me to pretend that my thoughts on class and race within feminism and polyamory aren’t influenced by Audre Lorde, or that my thoughts on masculinity or love don’t come straight from bell hooks. I am not original.) But I’m not sure if that’s enough to end that dynamic.
So. That’s what I have. Your thoughts?
As a white atheist Jew with very little experience in these matters, I feel very uncomfortable commenting on this subject, but I think I have a couple of important questions and points for this discussion. Obviously, I am quite open to having my mind changed on the points, and the questions are genuinely intended.
1) How far into history do we go?
We have pretty good ideas of what many cultures were like for as far back as we have records of/from those cultures, and a humongous amount of the history of cultural development, as I understand it, involved one group stealing/borrowing/copying/appropriating something from another culture. For one ancient example, the Phoenicians invented the idea of an alphabet, and it has since spread to a large portion of the world. For a more recent one, New-Age spirituality has as a major influence the tenets of Theosophy, which was founded largely on Helena Blavatsky‘s understandings and misunderstandings of Tibetan Buddhism. What does cultural appropriation have to say about these historical examples and how can that inform us going forward?
2) What about dead cultures?
I imagine that it matters why a culture died, for example if Spain had appropriated some element of Aztec culture (yes I’m aware that descendents of the Aztecs still exist and that elements of their culture live on, but I think that their culture as it was before Columbus has been entirely exterminated) that might be inappropriate, whereas Germany appropriating elements of Roman culture is probably fine. But where do we draw the line?
3) The conquering culture.
Something which hasn’t been mentioned is that using another culture’s icons/beliefs/traditions incorporated into your own is perfectly fine when those icons/beliefs/traditions were forced upon you through conquest or control, even if they now continue through standard processes of intercultural transmission. For example I don’t think very many people would complain about Carribean syncretic religions’ “appropriation” of various Roman Catholic saints.
4) Where are cultural borders?
As they have been and still are an opressed group, I can understand to a degree the desire of some African Americans to reconnect with African culture, but in some cases even this is a misappropriation (i.e. the Nation of Islam, which includes the misunderstanding that Islam is fundamentally a black African religion, an idea which is rejected by mainstream Muslims). But even so, is “African American culture” a culture unto itself or part of African culture? If the former, what is the general principle which makes it okay for African American culture to adopt certain uniquely African objects/traditions/practices? If the latter, how different do the cultures of two groups have to become before they are considered different cultures?
5) Gradients are everywhere.
In the same way that a culture cannot truly “give consent” for another culture to adopt one of its traditions, a culture cannot truly be said to have a singular “reason” for adopting a tradition from another culture, nor even a single “usage” of that tradition once adopted. At what point does a tradition/practice/idea become appropriate to modify within one’s own culture, when it still exists in the “originating” culture? (Here, quotes signify that in many cases the culture from which a tradition is adopted has previously adopted that tradition from yet another culture.)
6) How do we judge traditions/practices/styles/items which could have been adopted from more than one culture, and hold different significance in each culture?
For example, the differing opinions on dreadlocks already expressed in this thread.
Also, @ozy:
“Daisy: “Don’t take sacred shit from religions you don’t belong to” means just that. If you’ve converted to Hinduism, great, do Tantra! If you’re a Christian using Tantra to spice up your sex life… no, that’s kind of fucked.”
Does this mean that you condemn the widespread Western practice of Yoga? After all, it is (or at least was) a sacred practice in certain Hindu traditions, and is now used in the west largely as a form of exercise and/or exoticising the Spiritual East.
Yiab: I in no way know enough about Hinduism to comment.
@Yiab: It’s not “what does cultural appropriation have to say”, it’s “what do the people who these cultures belong to have to say” because, while there are ways to play it safe, there are no hard and fast rules. Culture is a human construct. Appropriation is a human construct. Consult the humans about how to approach the construct, not the construct. I know you like your rational objectivity, but there’s just no way to be completely objective here.
@L: Thank you for that correction. I guess I should be asking what do the humans at this blog have to say about these dilemmas, if anything?
@ L: Since you apparently know “my position” better than I, I’d probably just be in the way in this debate, so feel free to argue against “my position” all you want. I won’t hold you back.
Or, if you’d actually prefer to have a civilized conversation and would take the effort of actually reading what I write, and responding to my points in a bona fide spirit, let me know.
@ The_L: I don’t really see how your analogy applies here, but if someone wanted to wipe their asses in my favorite book, as long as it’s not my copy, I say go nuts. For all I know, those people are in a really tight spot and really need the paper.
And yeah, if someone treats some thing I like with disrespect, and basically shits all over it, then yeah, I’ll probably feel offended. Hurt, even. But that’s irrespective if it’s a “cultural artifact” or whatever. And, well, the thing is, we can’t stop people from doing it. Some people will always think some things suck, even if other people hold those same things “sacred” to themselves. A thing can have very deep personal significance to one person, and another person can basically say “that thing is a POS and I hate it”, and it can feel very hurtful to the other person – again, regardless if the thing is a part of a “culture” or not.
Also I don’t know who you mean by “we”, but I’ve already seen some people here basically say that ANY use of other culture’s things is offensive, no matter if you’re respectful or not. And that’s what I’m arguing against. I’ve no problem with the idea that you should be respectful of other people’s cultural values.
Except, in some cases, I do have a problem. For example, I’m going to say genital mutilation (both male and female) is horrible, and no amount of “you have to respect it because CULTURE” is going to change my stance on that. I’m also going to say that forcing women to wear burkhas is a horrible practice, no matter how much it’s a part of a culture. (note the word “forced”, if people want to wear burkhas I don’t have a problem with that). Stoning women to death… well, you get the picture.
So it’s not like we should just tolerate everything simply because it’s part of a culture. Not all things about cultures are good, just because it’s tradition or defines someone’s cultural identity or whatever, doesn’t mean a thing should be above all criticism. Pretty much all the cultures in the world have some really icky aspects to them, so I also feel we should be cautious about that.
A major criticism I have of some cries of ‘Appropriation!’ is that it often takes the form of criticizing relatively powerless individuals while ignoring the powerful people and institutions who actively perpetuate oppression.
Which ties into my biggest problem with Online Social Justice, especially the Tumblr form. Too much of it involves mockery, pointing and shaming the relatively powerless who don’t happen to be as educated as the mockers (at least, on that particular SJ issue). It feels uncomfortably high-school to me, too much like bullying as revenge for being bullied, way too self-congratulatory, and acts as a substitute for actual attempts to make change in the world.
Also, I don’t really think you should be disallowed to practice Tantra or Yoga if you dont subscribe to the religion. I’ve no horse in this race, I don’t practice either, but here’s my reasoning on this issue:
If those things actually work and are not just rituals that kind of give a placebo effect, then everyone should be free to practice them in a non-spiritual context, regardless of the origin of the practice, because holding a possibly beneficial exercise or medical practice for only one group of people because CULTURE is just plain lunacy. Even if the purpose is “spicing up your sex life”, which I happen to think is a very legitimate and worthwhile goal in itself – there could be worse reasons to try out some new type of exercise.
And if they are just rituals, then perhaps the practicioners should just stop claiming they have any actual non-placebo effects, so people wouldn’t have reason to “appropriate” them.
@ The L – who can say if i’m anglo or not? my existence started on a day in 1980 and i have no history before that. i am somewhat white-colored. that’s what i know.
@Yiab: Uh… prepare to be frustrated I guess.
@d: I can only reply to the stuff you’ve written, and if you’re trying to make a point that your words aren’t adequately representing, then that’s not my fault. Here are the points that I’m replying to that you’ve made:
“Firstly, I don’t like the idea of policing the way other people dress or express themselves. I don’t like the idea that certain ways of expressing yourself are only “reserved” for people of certain backgrounds. I don’t think culture can be owned. Culture evolves and changes constantly, and old boundaries are broken.”
“I don’t exactly approve of people wearing costumes that represent offensive stereotypes, but at the same time, I think a difference should be made between this kind of offensive usage and then the other kind, of merely expressing yourself in a way that while it may borrow influences from cultures other than your own, is still respectful towards them.”
“I don’t want a peace pipe or a “war bonnet”, but if I did, what business would that be of yours? None, to my knowledge. I didn’t know we were in the business of policing other people’s identities or their ways of expressing them. I wear what I want, I look the way I want, and that’s none of your business, you don’t get to make fun of me, or insult me, because of my choices of expressing my identity.”
“And that also doesn’t mean that I approve of people wearing blackface or dressing up as klan members or things of that sort. I think it’s idiotic, I don’t want it to be forbidden, but I think people who do that are being racist and should be, I don’t know, educated about it or something.”
What I’m getting from those quotes:
- Calls of “cultural appropriation” are racist
- People should be allowed to be as insensitive and offensive as they want without consequence, so long as it’s couched in the language of “personal expression”
- Some expressions, however, are worse than others and shouldn’t really be done by anybody
- All cultural mixing is inherently good
- Cultural appropriation is a compliment?
My response to these extrapolated points:
- Reverse racism doesn’t exist
- People should be allowed to be as insensitive and offensive as they want, but are not exempt from negative reaction (not policing someone’s opinion is OK, but policing opinions reacting to it is not OK?)
- You claimed that blackface is too extreme for anyone to be able to do respectfully; how is this different than many other kinds of racist stereotyping that you do not seem to be aware of? To use the war bonnet again, you said that wearing one is not comparable in any way to the use of blackface despite the near unanimous consensus from NA communities that it is. To ignore this fact is extremely irresponsible.
- One person from a limited number of cultures cannot make the claim that all cultural mixing is good without consulting the people of other cultures. This point likely suffers from extreme sample bias.
- Cultural appropriation is a compliment? To some, yes. To many others, not in the least.
sigh… need any more straw?
I don’t care what you’re “getting from the quotes” because what you’re “getting” seems to bear a merely superficial resemblance to anything I’ve said. This conversation has assassinated my patience, I don’t have time for people talking past me and purposely misrepresenting what I’ve said.
The_L
You may note, if you were reading, that I specifically said that it is a recognized holiday in the US, but *not* in many other countries who have recently began to practice it.
But it just goes to highlight my point: if you’re white, no one cares about your culture being appropriated, even if historically you were oppressed just as much as any other ethnic group.
@Yiab – I actually do think a lot of how yoga is practiced involves cultural appropriation. I am certainly not the most qualified person to say this (not being Hindu or from a Hindu culture), but I don’t that the physical practice is *necessarily* cultural appropriation. It may be sort of unfortunate that people call it “yoga”, but it is a beneficial physical activity that can be practiced in a way that is mostly divorced from the religious practices that the poses come from.
That said, I think that many, if not most, yoga studios in the US do engage in some cultural appropriation. There is widespread appeal to “foreign mysticism”, shallow use of religious icons and very stereotyped imagery that is. And there is the way it’s sold to you – not as a Western exercise routine based on a Hindu practice, but as the Real Deal, that’s really gross.
So, I think it’s one thing to do a exercise routine (which has been empirically demonstrated to have several health benefits) that is based on the poses and breathing practices from the texts of another religion, but a lot (possibly most) of yoga, at least in the US, is both masquerading as the same as the Hindu practice and appropriating it’s imagery, icons, and mythology in a very not okay way.
@d: Seems you’ve typed out your own strawmen instead of your actual arguments, then. I can’t really argue with someone who’s making a point that only a mind-reader can identify.
Culture and color are being discussed and overlapping in ways that are making paper cuts on my brain and rubbing salt in them. They aren’t synonymous, and they don’t have singular meanings or manifestations.
Searching for a clear or elegant definition of cultural appropriation is worthwhile. But this… this….
For starters, defining culture would help–what the hell does that mean if we’re talking about cultural appropriation? And by appropriation do we mean that something was stolen? adopted? borrowed? misused?
Would characterizing the effect of cultural appropriation help to define it?
Does it help to consider why we even need the term? People created it for a reason–to name something that they think isn’t easily recognized or discussed with the words we’ve been using. Is it because there are so many words required to talk about it? Or is it because ideology makes it hard to see why we should?
If we cast a wide net, Gangnam style is cultural appropriation–hell, dressing up in a Klan robe for a school assignment is cultural appropriation.
Why are we using the term? When we decide to pull out a term like cultural appropriation, shouldn’t we be thoughtful and use it meaningfully?–like the term sexual harassment, what we identify as sexual harassment matters. If we’re careless, at best such things become a joke.
I’ve rambled. What a great topic and thanks for sparking this discussion (Yes, I know I cringed and howled and bitched but it made me think!
).
I don’t really get this concept at all. I have a dual nationality; I criticise both of my cultures of origin along everyone else’s; I utterly reject the notion of cultural heritage; there’s no swell in my breast on hearing (either of) my national anthem(s); I feel zero kinship with people who happen to have the same skin tone as me and I live by the following quote by one of my absolute favourite dudes, Bruce Lee:
“Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.”
Should a black person ever ask me permission to use an idea that had nothing to do with me – or anyone else living today – purely because I have the same skin tone as the guy that came up with it, I would be insulted. And I would be further insulted if he asked me to do the same.
This is just pandering to tribalism and seems like something I’d expect from conservatives.
I like this post, but I do disagree with the remark about white-dreadlocks being problematic, and there are a few reasons for that.
The first is that dreadlocks are not as a ‘naturally occurring phenomenon’ (whatever that might mean) unique to people of (relatively recent) African decent, as evidenced by the fact that, for example, they exist in Indian culture as well. Dreadlocks can also occur quite ‘naturally’ on white-skinned people with hair of a certain type. Hair that is prone to knotting and that is not regularly maintained will, eventually, develop into dreads of a more or less well managed state. You make a good point about the appropriation of culturally significant objects, and in the context of racialized standards of beauty/acceptable appearance in a colonial/post slavery society, for black people to grow their hair in a natural way is definitely culturally salient. However dreadlocks, unlike turbans or crucifixes, are imbued with culturally specific meaning not by their form but by their context. A white (or any non-black) person who has dreadlocks is not asserting their identity as a black person or even representing themselves as being socially comparable. The exact same line of reasoning applies for ‘afros’, which are naturally occurring for non-black people despite their name.
The second is that dreads aren’t cool because “black people” any more than guitars are cool because white people. Lots of people have dreads because they like them, full stop. There is a difference between white suburban kids who wrap themselves in Jamaican flags and speak of Babylon and people who simply like wearing their hair a certain way. Just like there are lots of white people who like hip-hop, and then there are white people who like hip-hop and speak in African-American-English and wear oversized Fubu outfits. Some white people have dreads merely for aesthetic purposes. Some white people have dreads to make a counter-cultural statement. That counter-cultural statement is not (or need not be and in my experience hasn’t been)black solidarity or pan-Africanism.
The third point I want to make is that cultural appropriation is always a bit ambiguous. When you start identifying certain body-types or hairstyles with particular cultures you are going to run into problems. Is your argument about dreads in relation to black people comparable to beards in relation to Sikhs, or shaven heads in relation to monastic Buddhists? Obviously there is are different racial histories at play in the U.S, but my point is about symbols. Symbols are important and often contain culturally salient meaning which can be identified strongly with the particularly cultural group who initially imbued it with that meaning. Like you said, it is problematic when members of another group use those symbols for reasons other than their intended purpose (hence the obvious problems with feather headdresses and poccahotties). But I think you start running into seriously muddy waters when you start treating the human body, body types, or unadorned physical appearance as such a symbol without consideration of the larger personal context (ie. intention, history and behaviors of the individual) in which they occur. For a black person living in the context of a racist society with a long history of oppression and centuries of cultural-shaming, to allow their hair to grow in it’s “natural” way (note though that almost no one actually allows their hair to grow completely without interference) can be a symbolic action. But it’s not the hairstyle that bears the meaning, it’s the decision not to alter their appearance to appease the society that bears the meaning, and that is not what everyone who has dreads is doing or attempting to do.
Cultural appropriation is a problem when a (usually dominant) group uses symbols specifically belonging to another group ignorantly or disparagingly. Dreads are not, to my thinking, inherently problematic because they are not a symbol specifically belonging to any group, and non-black people who wear them are not (necessarily) motivated by a desire to mimic black culture.
There’s something pretty iffy about the idea that white people (oh, sorry, Dominant Groups (so white people)) should be discouraged from seeking inspiration from the most talented people in their fields if those people happen to be not-white.
How is that a recipe for developing respect between cultures? Or for producing great culture in general?
Surely the problem here isn’t
White Guy Got Idea From Black Guy And Got Rich
but
Black Guy Didn’t Get Rich In The First Place Because Racism.
The latter has absolutely zip to do with cultural appropriation. Displacing the problem onto “They took our idea!!” is basically just an exercise in white guilt and validating tribalism while ignoring the actual problem.
The ideas that, for instance:
1) Present-day white Americans belong to the same culture that committed genocide against Native Americans literally hundreds of years ago.
2) Black people have a claim on Rock Music merely because it was invented by a black guy
have gone totally unquestioned. And yet they really don’t withstand much questioning at all. Such propositions are entirely the product of the extended pride and shame that tribalism brings you. You simply don’t have to relate to other human beings in this way, there is an alternative.
You could just grow out of tribalism altogether, and decide to only claim ownership, or accept pride and shame for things that directly involve you.
OR you could continue to pander to the righteous indignation of people who still hold an extremely narrow-minded view of humanity.
Is it okay for an atheist to write stories about vampires wherein they are repelled by crosses?