Cultural appropriation

[Londonerlove]

AIBU to be totally annoyed by cultural appropriation.
I read this today and though wtf!

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/newsbeat-44572555

I’m not a fan of kim but if she wants her hair in braids she can have her hair in braids?

Shouldn’t this be praised rather than attacked?
Is eating pasta cultural appropriation?

t’s exactly the same. It’s the theory of collective guilt. That individuals can be viewed as guilty of real or perceived wrongs purely because they share some genetic characteristics with people who lived hundreds of years earlier

You compared violent and widespread discrimination caused by discrimination and accusation of deicide (and also other imagined things like blood libel, well poisoning etc) to reactions / prejudices caused by real, historical oppression that still has a real impact on certain groups today...

You may be right about claiming that the concept of collective guilt remains the same.

But the reasons for the assigned guilt (money lending vs genocide etc) and the consequences of it (the shoa vs public outage about cultural appropriation) are not comparable. Which is what you did...

or the money making activities of a few money lenders or blacksmiths. But a poor peasant Jew living on the Steppes or a child living in Hamburg or a teenage girl in Amsterdam or pregnant Jewish women in medieval London were to blame.

Which sounds like you're assigning guilt to the money lender and blacksmith.

Or the systematic oppression of plantation owners and slavers. But a poor woman living in Scotland, a child living in Denmark or a teenage girl living in Amsterdam were not to blame...

Do see what makes these two examples fundamentally different?

@ohmy, a culture is part of you, it’s part of a person’s make up. It forms a major part of your life experience ! For people whose culture has been ridiculed or actually taken from them it becomes even more important to protect as you are protecting yourself and your own survival.

@strongmummy your culture maybe part of you but it can also be adopted. Marrying into a specific culture or a child being adopted into a different culture are two examples. @ohmy is correct a culture does not belong to anyone, the same as a religion does not belong to anyone. Religion and culture go hand in hand. My religion is a huge part of my culture.

And no one would ever acknowledge that women have always been at the bottom of the pile whatever colour or race.

That’s a totally separate argument.

As I said some people embrace their culture others don’t feel it’s that important to them. You can adopt or reject your culture that’s up to you.

What you can’t do is seek to deny other people to adopt other cultures or dress/live how they choose too.

Ok, I’m going to be Maori today then. No understanding of their food, language, history, but I like their tattoos 🙄.

*Gosh what to wear today! It’s a minefield! Who can I least offend. I have a chicken outfit but I will be walking past a farm later so that’s out.

Well On with the welsh national costume then to offend by Swansea born mother.*

Was that meant to be funny? If so it fell way short of the mark.

Strong

Yes you can. You can have any tattoo you like and dress how you like. That’s the law thankgod in this country. I can’t see how you dispute that.

NotACleverName

Yep people who seek to control and patronise and vilify other women for their choices usually don’t have a sense of the ridiculous.

@ohmy - you seem to think that somehow I am trying to stop people wearing or doing what they want. I’m not. Feel free to wear what you like, get a Maori tattoo etc....However, you can’t stop me and many others thinking you’re being culturally insensitive.

Men are allowed to say they are women because they feel like it and no-one is allowed to challenge it, so why they hell can't you dress like a Maori because you feel like it? You're not actually saying you are Maori, afterall

You can wear anything you like. Nobody is trying to stop you. If you want to look like an insensitive dick fill yer boots.

Men are allowed to say they are women because they feel like it and no-one is allowed to challenge it

People are constantly challenging it.

Cultural appropriation is a lie. Choosing to buy into this ideology will lead to violence and division when what we need now more than ever is evolution of consciousness. We must embrace the fact we are ALL related. We need to work together now to solve the challenges of this age. Our ancestoral culture is human culture. One Love.

@taxicum, so you’re blaming people upset by cultural appropriation , ie mainly people of colour whose culture is being appropriated , for racism and division? This thread gets even worse .....

We’re about 500 years, numerous genocides and wars too late for this kumbaya, I don’t see colour, we’re all one race bullshit.

Ohmydays you should try appropriating some decent humour sometime.

The white woman that wrongly accused a black man of assault/rape etc (one area where white women were undeniably the perpetrators) used their privilege (being white) to oppress black men. (=Orchestrate lynchings, death sentences etc...)

Sorry to derail, but I absolutely have to pick up on this because it’s rewriting history.

Women who were raped, or lied about rape, did not have any power. They were looked at as cheap, people would think they asked for it, no man would want them as they do been “ruined”, plus you couldn’t convicted someone on a woman’s word, you had to have witnesses etc. It was a seriously shameful thing for a woman, she was not seen as a victim. So to suggest that this was something women routieenly lied about for some kind of revenge is crazy.

Now having said that, I’m sure police or husbands or families may have put pressure on women to point the finger at a black man, for sure, but it’s NOT an area where women had power. Their lives would be ruined by rape, and therefore, false rape claims.

*routinely

Yep people who seek to control and patronise and vilify other women for their choices
Nobody on this thread has done this. See this situation(something that I've seen many times) of a white woman posting about her new dress, which happens to be of Bangladeshi culture(I know this because I am Bangladeshi). She captions the photo with 'Indian vibes' and 'vintage' and 'exotic' and has said these things to me as well when she saw me in person. I corrected her(politely of course) that the dress was actually Bangladeshi. She then got very offended and other white women there jumped to her defence to tell me that it's just harmless, there's barely a difference anyway and that I should stop attacking women for their choices(something you've suggested on this thread).

I then pointed out that saying that there's barely a difference between countries because we are same skin colour is racist(you wouldn't say that Germany and France were basically the same culture would you) and that I personally have worn the same style of dress out and about as it's part of my culture and have been told by other white people that I should integrate more into British culture instead of separating myself by wearing 'strange clothes' . I asked her to consider finding out the name and where it is from next time to be respectful of the culture, knowing that she gets praised when wear it something she knows nothing about whereas I, somebody of the actual culture, gets belittled and told that I need to be 'more British'.

Was I seeking to control, patronize or vilify this woman? Was I playing into the hands of men without knowing? Is calling this cultural appropriation misogyny? Because this choice the woman made is offensive(she saw brown people wearing it and immediately called it exotic, vintage, Indian) so am I being sexist to point this out? You seem to think that women can do what they want regardless of how it affects others

I'm talking about cases like
for example Emmettt Till's...

Her position in her family or society in general may have been weak (compared to others). Her husband and jis brother (?) ultimately were the ones that killed him, yes.
But when we compare her position to Till's? Or his family's?

Her actions were imo clearly oppressive. And she came imo from a position of privilege (compared to him).

Claiming something else would be more than dishonest imo.

Also, I should have said:

Those that wrongfully accused black men of assault or attempted rape.

I agree, the stakes were very different when a woman accused someone of actually raping her.

@taco - how you have kept your patience in this thread is beyond me. I have had these conversations so many times (as I’m sure you have) and for some the bottom line is they’re so scared of looking at their own behaviour and to consider that it may actually be insensitive or even racist, they will defend that behaviour to the end. They then claim victim. They then say they don’t see colour/we’re all part of the human race.

I just don’t understand some people here. It’s nothing to do with analysing history, collective guilt, bla bla bla. It’s really not complicated. Surely most decent people don’t want to do something entirely frivolous (which most instances of cultural appropriation seem to be) that might really offend some one from a minority group. In our current society white people are born with an advantage over pretty much all other ethnicities. If you deny this you are deluded. If you accept this then the only logical step towards decency is to not do something that might be offensive to some people with less privilege than you, especially if it’s something as easily avoidable as a hairstyle. Are people so self centred now that it’s so hard to give up ‘expressing themselves’ to be a bit polite and respectful? Its a simple concept, white people dont get to dictate what black people should or shouldn’t offended by, just as men don’t get to dictate what women should or shouldn’t be offended by. This is exactly how this insidious wave of misogyny has been sweeping through our current society. ‘Oh she doesn’t mind a hand on the knee, it’s flattering, I’m being complimentary, how could that be deemed offensive, she clearly likes attention or she wouldn’t have posed in a corset’. The saddest thing is I actually don’t think many men even think they are being sexist half the time, they are just so used to assuming their behaviour is acceptable to women. Just like many people here can’t seem to understand that cultural appropriation is disrespectful to some people with less privilege than them. You are assuming your actions will come across as benign.

Whilst the argument that no-one owns a culture is technically correct in a legal definition kind of way, to fail to understand cultural norms within certain groups and how those norms are then treated in by majority sections of society is just being wilfully blind. Why black school girls are sent home for having black hair is beyond me but white school leaders like to do that kind of thing.

But as I have noted a number of times here, race issues are a weakness in the Mumsnet Community. Often starting with telling black people what is and isnt racist. Yet when me tell women what is and isnt sexist the response is somewhat different.

And my dad has been called a terrorist before for wearing his keffiyeh. However a European man or woman wearing one is fashionable. How people can’t see why that is upsetting is just astounding

@strongmummy if you continue to hold so much resentment towards history, society will never progress.

@tacolover you are essentially saying it’s inappropriate for a white woman to wear a sari. Why?
Do you not think that if your acquaintances disagree with you. The majority on this thread disagree with you, then there is a pattern?

@london - why on earth do you think I’m resentful? Resentful to who? And about what ? You seem to think I’m the mastermind behind a plot to keep the races separate 🤣🤣 I’m actually a successful business woman so I don’t have time to do that I’m afraid.

However, I’m surely be allowed to be hurt and upset when my father is a victim of racism, no?