To not fully understand "cultural appropriation"

[hettyGreek]

It seems like its a US phrase that is slowly getting adopted in the UK.

For the most part I just don't get it. If something is racist just call it racist.

I don't have any issue with someone white having dreadlocks for instance. These have been worn by many people of different cultures across the earth. Or am I missing something? If anything its funny if one culture try to take ownership of something that has a very mixed origin.

I no longer feel I owe any explanation of any form of racism, prejudice, cultural appropriation to non-black people, who normally only ask the question because they want to whitesplain and contradict anything you may have to say about it

Isn't that a bit of a sweeping statement? I don't doubt for an instant that some idiots have bad intentions, but is it really just "stirring" when people admit there's something they don't understand, or aren't there also plenty who simply want to share and learn?

Perhaps much the same could be said about the assertion that folk are just waiting to "slap you down". Again, isn't it possible that some might just genuinely disagree with what's been said?

It's allowed, you know

maybe any time im trying to defend myself is whitesplaining. I dont really have an answer for that. I just dont really see wtf difference it makes to anyone how I have my hair. Im not making any profit from it. Im not passing it off as anything, nor am I mocking.
That is the difference between other races and black people. Black people have to tailor their hair to fit in. It's a fact that every black person knows this. Probably not some of the mixed race black people and African black people. European and American black people understand it.

People didn't understand why I gave the fish and chips example. I used it as an example of something that people would understand but that has bypassed a few people. I didn't say fish and chips was being appropriated.

The Belgium chocolate scenario would not apply in this case. Mainly because of where the products are sourced. Cocoa beans and palm oil. Probably more credit should be given to native Americans. "Fair trade" would be more appropriate.

When I said history helps. I was not talking about where a certain style begun.
More about why a group feels so attached to it. Usually at the bottom line of CA. You find that the particular group where mistreated for having that very thing.

Talking about blues and folk songs, black Americans where singing in the cotton fields before they started singing blues. That is where the soul comes from.

Jassy that was an excellent example. I also still think that there will be people who will not be able to understand it. They will not understand why the artist can't use aboriginal art when he is not enslaving, or preventing the aboriginal from selling their own paintings and making money out of it too.

debbriana

Folk music has been sung for a long time in a lot of different cultures.

for MistressDeeCee

m.youtube.com/watch?v=FN5ZEHBRnj4

I hate the 'you don't understand or don't want to understand so just shut up and go away'

It's a fair common argument on mn lately. Designed to stop any discussion.

CA does exist. The problem is that it's become a 'buzz phrase' and been thrown around needlessly.

A white person with braids or lox being view as OK when black people are view negatively. Is not CA, imo. Because the person wearing them isn't making that judgment. Thats prejudice, which is coming from the people making that judgment.

Food being changed so it sells in a country, it's being sold in is not CA. It's good business to adjust things to sell to the audience you have.

I keep hearing that 'pp has explained it, why don't you understand it?'

Because I have asked questions after that, which people don't seem to be able to answer.

I was invited to Ramadan at my best friends. They did henna on my hands and forearms and gave me clothes to wear. I wasn't pretending to be Muslim. I was honoured to be invited and welcomed. None of my friends extended family would think it was CA. They actively encouraged it. They would be pretty pissed off to be told it was racist to do so.

If I had gone pretending I was a Muslim or from Pakistan (like they are) and talked about my experience as a Pakistani or a Muslim. Then Fair enough.

Food isn't CA imo.

Kim kardashian making her bum, lips and hair African is.

I don't class dreds on a hippy CA, it's racism that a white girl with dreds is seen as earthy and cool whereas a black girl with dreds is seen different.

It's gone a bit to far imo this CA thing. Doing yoga and saying namaste isn't CA. It's doing yoga and being respectful. Me doing a martial art and learning the language of it isn't CA but plenty of IG accounts say it is. The American accounts I've unfollowed on Ig for crusading the CA cause are ridiculous. They want everyone to only eat their countries food, do their countries sport and God forbid you're friends with someone from another culture and do things together from that culture. Oh yeah and don't eat food that's not English if you're English either... Eating non English food and enjoying it is CA.

Well my DNA analysis shows I hav a very high level of Neanderthal DNA (due to having freckles etc) - 3%. So anyone without freckles or who has no Neanderthal DNA had better keep off my patch. We Neanderthal survivors need to stick together.

The difference with the fish and chips is that the sell of fish and chips is dominated by white people. It's British food. The people mostly profiting from it is white people. The people making it is not being looked down upon. It's part of British culture. It dominates. The recipe is not being changed to suit the white market or the dominant market

Fish and chips was originally a Jewish thing brought to England by Spanish Jews.

The 'recipe' is changed, whether the fish has its skin on, what the batter is made with, what fat is used to cook with, whether the fish used is cod or haddock.

There are regional variations, in Yorkshire you will probably get haddock cooked in beef dripping, in the midlands chips are often dipped in batter before frying and in London fish has the skin left on.

I thought the recent JK Rowling kerfuffle was quite interesting:
www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/09/jk-rowling-under-fire-for-appropriating-navajo-tradition-history-of-magic-in-north-america-pottermore

Rowling writes that the myth “has its basis in fact … A legend grew up around the Native American Animagi, that they had sacrificed close family members to gain their powers of transformation. In fact, the majority of Animagi assumed animal forms to escape persecution or to hunt for the tribe. Such derogatory rumours often originated with No-Maj medicine men, who were sometimes faking magical powers themselves, and fearful of exposure.”

Responding to a question on Twitter, Rowling said that “in my wizarding world, there were no skinwalkers”, with the legend created by those without magic “to demonise wizards”.

But campaigner Dr Adrienne Keene told Rowling on Twitter that “it’s not ‘your’ world. It’s our (real) Native world. And skinwalker stories have context, roots, and reality … You can’t just claim and take a living tradition of a marginalised people. That’s straight up colonialism/appropriation.”

The academic also took issue with Rowling’s use of the phrase “the Native American community”, saying that “one of the largest fights in the world of representations is to recognise Native peoples and communities and cultures are diverse, complex, and vastly different from one another"

But mistress your second post has several examples of bad stuff happening where the bad thing is the different levels of appreciation shown to something depending on who has done it. The problem is not in the borrowing but in the acceptance and appreciation shown to it by wider society. That's just ordinary racism.

Getting in to the CA space and criticising people for taking on a style that they like is really damaging imho. They haven't done anything wrong and if they are not in a position of fame and power probably no one will even notice. The issue is with what the wider society makes of the change and we can alter that by learning and understanding more about each other's lives - not by drawing lines and saying this is mine and you aren't allowed to do it.

As for your first post - asserting that everything any white person has ever said on the subject is whitesplaining and you aren't going to take it on yourself to explain any further - well that's just a way of camping on the subject so that no one else can have an opinion ever.

Fwiw I also find the privilege terminology quite unhelpful. I'm a feminist but I don't use it about men. It creates barriers and divisions. I think my dad, a poor white man from a long line of rural poor and powerless people, would struggle to recognise the privilege in his family.

My experience is that white people with dreads are looked on badly, and black people are not. Because white people with dreads are usually "alternative" types who get looked down on by lots of people. But the black people I know who have dreads and are rastafarian, are ordinary respectable people.

Mine too cleaty. In fact i know white people with both dreads and braids, and neither were looked on positively.

What makes me most uncomfortable with it is the assumption, that by looking at someone you know (basically judging them on their skin tone...) whether they are using something "correctly" or "appropriating" it.

And tbh, the whole idea as i see it has come out of america, and i'm not sure they should be advising anyone on how to deal with race relations

Maybe it's just the city I live in then. Black women (not men) are seen as unprofessional unlike white women who are seen as mother earth types with them.

It's a multicultural city getting very them and us as the years go by with all the different groups unfortunately.

Apologies, as I'm late to this thread.

Cultural Appropriation is all about students showing the world that we really must despair for the ability of future generations to not behave like dick heads.

Also what is being described as a black hairstyle on white people is French or Dutch Plaits. This is a hairstyle that has been around for thousands of years. A quick google shows that there are versions in almost every culture, and that the first recording of it is in Algiers 6,000 years ago. It was probably used first in some country in Africa, because humans originate from Africa. But it is not a black woman's hairstyle. In fact when I was a child, I am old, it was viewed very much as an old fashioned white woman's hairstyle. It was very modest and respectable younger woman who wore their hair in this way.

Brand - Are you in Britain? Because mother earth types where I live do not have dreads. They have long usually messy hair. It is young alternative white people with piercings who have dreads. And they are seen as anything but professional.

The history of humans is about learning from one another to move onwards and upwards. I borrow from any culture I encounter if I think there's something useful to be learned.

There was a white lad on my university course with dreads who utterly stunk because he had decided to give up washing. It was his total lack if hygiene rather than his dreadlocks that made people look down on him. White people with natural dreadlocks often stink because their hair is matted, greasy and unkempt.

I can see why a black rasferian might be insulted to be compared with him. Black people with dreadlocks are not lazy and dirty.

Yeah I live in Bristol. There are alternative types with piercings and dreds but there's a lot of hippy types that are vegan, save the whales, steiner school mums with dreds people. Maybe the big Jamaican influence had a impact and I suppose it could be looked at as CA especially with thr vegan / ital sort of thing going on but they're not gaining anything it's how they're living.

Also go to any stone circle on a solstice and it's full of dreds hippies.

I would agree that white people with dreads are generally viewed more negatively than black people in my experience.
(UK - lived in England, Scotland & Wales).

Young, white, dreads = someone trying desperately to be 'edgy' or someone monied doing a 'Pulp'.

Older, white, dreads = someone trying desperately to remain 'edgy' or a new age hippy.

Black, any age, dreads = a hairstyle

I would not go as far as to say that white people with dreads are as a whole viewed more negatively than black people with dreads. There is lots of racism. So a black person with dreads might be viewed more negatively simply because they are black.

Yes, but is that to do with the dreads? Or the skin colour? Racism is racism and I don't think racists rely on dreadlocks or any other physical aspect to remain racist, they will use anything even when there is nothing left to hate but the skin colour.

It's just a hairstyle, I really don't understand why anyone would notice let alone be be bothered by it.

What about the Haka? Rugby wouldn't be the same without it.

Or tribal tattoos?

Or those big stretched ears.

Tattoos do not originate with white people. They could easily be described as CA as well.