Let's say you're a musical artist and you see a style of dress or sound that originated in another culture and you think that's beautiful and you'd like to incorporate elements of that into your music or your presentation.
When is that okay and when is that not okay? Or rather, what does an artist have to do to make said incorporation not offensive?
Nikola Tesla is half-Croat and half-Serb so everyone that isn't white, male, Croatian or Serbian shouldn't use electricity because that would be "appropriating my culture"
Nikola Tesla is half-Croat and half-Serb so everyone that isn't white, male, Croatian or Serbian shouldn't use electricity because that would be "appropriating my culture"
I've never understood the problem here. Most of the time people I know from other cultures don't mind it at all, and it is white middle class SJWs who instruct them to be offended by it.
Let's say you're a musical artist and you see a style of dress or sound that originated in another culture and you think that's beautiful and you'd like to incorporate elements of that into your music or your presentation.
When is that okay and when is that not okay? Or rather, what does an artist have to do to make said incorporation not offensive?
There's ways to respectfully bring attention to a culture's art, which often requires bringing to the forefront people who are responsible for the culture:
The first example is much better than the second though, but it's just... like... respecting a culture and treating it like it's its own culture, with a long history that should be respected, that you're interacting with on an equal level, and not just tossing on as a costume for exploitative reasons.
It's like the fact that Southern Asia culture is super popular, but are Southern Asian acts also super popular? If you love the fashion and think it's cute, do you support Indian artists or designers? Do you support Bollywood? Do you respect it or are you viewing it as exotic, and is that "foreign" element that objectifies it in a way influencing your view?
That's why European/White cultures cannot be appropriated. Appropriation relies on a power dynamic. Europe, mainly the Western Europe world, colonized the world and issued forced assimilation onto most of the world (religion, language, etc.). Even in non-white majority countries, Westernization has influenced them to where European/White people are not harmed or disenfranchised by their culture used.
That's honestly why I think it's a confusing subject for people in monoethnic/monoracial countries, as the discussion just isn't there. If there's any othered culture, it's based probably on things like religion or nationality, and there's simply not enough diversity in the population in those countries for such a discussion on appropriation and multiculturalism to take place. For some people, diversity is "these white mountain people vs those white mountain people" and those people are just always going to be willfully ignorant.
Basically, it's a very macro (societal) issue that people mess up in viewing it in a very micro way ("you're calling me a bad person for wearing something!!!") when it's about examining the unfair power dynamics around the globe. People get mad at the concept of cultural appropriation because it asks them to do the one thing they don't want to do - reflect and be critical over how centuries of global history has influenced their mind to prejudices and unfair realities they don't want to admit they're part of or complacent to.
Because that's a sport. If we go down that road, like the comics in here saying electricity and the industrial revolution are somehow a culture then go ahead.
When cultural appropriation mostly focuses on the distinct unfair power dynamics across the globe on the basis of race, yet European posters are talking about how they think it's fine and use examples like some Ukrainian mountain people sharing their favorite types of foods and fabrics with another type of Ukrainian mountain people...
Cultural Appropriation doesn't focus on appropriation across race, it covers what it says on the tin, appropriation between all cultures. Cultures can span races or be specific to one- it's unfair to force that American view onto countries where cultures don't necessarily have that racial boundary. Of course, most of the controversy is around appropriation from ethnic or racial minority groups (Not all though, there's plenty of examples of controversy within racial boundaries), but you can't therefore assume the subject entirely focuses around that and reject viewpoints about any other kind.
I guess my point is that their local experiences with cultural appropriation are just as valid as any other- but it doesn't mean that cultural appropriation is a non-issue globally. It's just a different perspective on this very broad and really very messy subject.
Imo at an attempt to make a somewhat solid statement on the subject- I only think it's an issue where profit and therefore exploitation comes into the equation. A white person wearing dreadlocks isn't really doing any quantifiable harm at all, and the more positive attitude society has to a white person wearing them than a black person is society's issue and therefore society's job to stop, not the white person with dreads'.
when will people get this idiotic idea of "culture" out of their minds and focus on individuality.
just because I share the same race as Lady Gaga, Madonna, Britney Spears, etc. etc. doesn't mean that everything they've done is a part of me and my race. No, that's them as individuals. Stop grouping me with other people just because of same race. That's so backwards and limited-thinking, not to mention false too.
