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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Cultural appropriation

999 replies

Londonerlove · 23/06/2018 17:32

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?

OP posts:
EeebyMum · 23/06/2018 20:51

This is one of the most ignorant threads I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading

WakeUpMaggie · 23/06/2018 20:56

How is the English language racist starryeyed19?

DesignStatement · 23/06/2018 20:59

Tonnes of people wear kilts with clan tartans to weddings with no connection to any Scottish clan.
So what - dress as you like I say.

starryeyed19 · 23/06/2018 21:15

@WakeUpMaggie There are lots of words and images that discriminate against black people. Blackballing someone, black spot, black day, blackmail all have negative connotations. Whereas examples like white knight, white magic are more positive things.

I covered this in my A-levels about 100 years ago, so these probably aren't the best examples but there are quite a few of them.

Also, there is the way the media and the news talk about POC/white people. If you think about the difference in terminology and reporting between when a white kid shoots up a school to when a black man gets shot in the street, for example...

WakeUpMaggie · 23/06/2018 21:24

I see what you mean starryeyed19. I agree with there being differences in how black and white people are portrayed in the media. As there are differences between men and women. I also see what you mean about words with black in having negative connotations. There is racism for sure. I'm just not so sure making a deal out of Kim k having braids is really the way to go to resolve this. To my mind, the less separation between people of all races and the more we share should be a good thing.

TacoLover · 23/06/2018 21:32

"So if a black woman relaxes her hair and dyes it blonde does that woman need to research white culture to do this respectfully? I would guess most people would say no, but then a white person is told that they must research other cultures in order to emulate their styles.

People saying that this is because of the whole oppressor/oppressed thing ignore the really sad cases where paler skinned and fairer haired people have been oppressed such as the Yazadis in Iraq. Do these incidents not count?"

You're struggling to get your head around this?Grin
It doesn't take many brain cells to think about why black women don't need to research white culture before straightening their hair. Because white women are not oppressed for having straight blonde hair are they? And there aren't people oppressing Yazadis in Iraq and then straightening and dyeing their own hair; yes this is discrimination but this is totally irrelevant to discussing cultural appropriation.

Sorry I didn't quote in bold it's not working for me.

TheFirstMrsDV · 23/06/2018 21:33

Hope this link works

twitter.com/i/status/1010189882503950336

LeahJack · 23/06/2018 21:33

Blackballing someone, black spot, black day, blackmail all have negative connotations. Whereas examples like white knight, white magic are more positive things.

You do realise that many of those phrases far predate migration to Britain and even the concept of different races for most people in Britain. And they existed in multiple other countries including those with non-white populations? China and the Middle East?

The origin is in the contrast between day and night.

But of course everything had to be racist right? It’s almost like some people actively search for things to offend them without finding out the proper historical and cultural context and showing respect for it right?

TheFirstMrsDV · 23/06/2018 21:34

Its nothing sinister. A bbc link on twitter. V. funny video

EeebyMum · 23/06/2018 21:50

This is where the world is at right now; people openly discussing slavery top trumps and what a white person deigns racist. we actually have to listen to this shit?
Some of the opinions on this thread are absolutely disgusting.
The rise of populism has a lot to answer for.

LeahJack · 23/06/2018 21:58

Yeah this is where the world is right now. People can tolerate anything except dissent.

And nobody was playing ‘slavery top trumps’. I pointed out that far from white people being a unique oppressive force most races have been involved in oppression and I backed it up with numbers.

I’m sorry if facts and history fuck up your fantasy narrative.

user1495490253 · 23/06/2018 21:59

this is what I don’t understand why is it fashionable because white peoples wear it? Why can’t it be fashionable because black people made it fashionable and encouraged everyone to try the style?

'Black fashion' is generally confined to within black culture. Recently (increasingly so over the past few decades, fast few years it has become very common) the fashion and beauty industries try to be original and interesting by looking to rework things we might have considered cheap/ugly/strange etc etc etc... You only need to open a high end fashion magazine to see evidence of this in spades. Remember when Chanel brought out clogs and they were majorly popular? That has now happened with many aspects of black culture. Those aspects are of course not ugly at all, but have been and often still are perceived to be by the oppressors (largely rich white people). Their original beauty and history and culture isn't being celebrated and explored, they are simply materialistic status symbols. The killer is that only the 'right' people can get away with these trends and be deemed stylish/beautiful, because they are still deemed to be unusual, other, even ugly, by mainstream white culture. This means that just as I would probably get funny looks with a full head of braids on the school run (I am white British living in a poor area- definitely not the right kind of person to wear 'trends'), many black women who wear these styles for practical or cultural reasons are also not considered, by mainstream white culture, to be trendsetters or beautiful; in contrast, they are still deemed to be other, and ugly, and all sorts of other negative things for wearing a hairstyle that is inherently a 'black hairstyle'. Do you see the irony? I hope that explains it!

QuinnElle · 23/06/2018 22:02

This is one of the most ignorant threads I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading

Well said. It's shocking.

peoplearemean · 23/06/2018 22:25

All the ladies on the beach in Barbados and Jamaica offering to braid your hair don't seem offended by it...

starryeyed19 · 23/06/2018 22:26

@LeahJack I'm afraid I don't know the history behind the terms - I'll have to do some research on them but find it difficult to link that up with day and night. What has blackballing got to do with night? Or devil's food cake being chocolate and angel food cake being yellow and pink and white?

Trust me, I don't need to look for things to be offended by. I'm surrounded by them.

And also, just because you as an individual (and by that, I refer to all the posters) don't understand something or aren't offended by it, doesn't make it so across the board

Rather than dismissing it all out of hand, maybe listen to people who have lived experience of this?

As far as Kim Kardashian goes, I have no idea about her ethnicity but whatever she does she gets criticised so...

NotMeOhNo · 23/06/2018 22:58

Tacolover if all white people who wear dreads need to understand and appreciate black culture, what about the white homeless men with dreads? What rules must they follow?
When I was younger hippies wore dreads and people criticised them because they looked like homeless people, ie openly neglecting, or deliberately neglecting hair.
Which identity politics thought police will go back in time and send hippies` olds to re-education camp to tell them dreads are actually black culture not inspired by homeless neglect/Tammylan the Wild Man?

RebeccaBunchLawyer · 23/06/2018 23:02

I’m white European with a bit of Japanese thrown in for good measure and I’ve worn braids before (in my youth) many a time. I’ve known people of many creeds, cultures and backgrounds to do the same.

DwangelaForever · 23/06/2018 23:10

Cultural appropriation is a pile of 💩

LeahJack · 24/06/2018 00:32

What has blackballing got to do with night?

Because the dark has had negative connotations for millennia and for very good reasons which have nothing to do with race. Going back to Confucius and the Ancient Greeks and the bible. “God created light’. That’s when he created life.

These negative connotations where because even then they knew that without light, life couldn’t exist. In winter when it was dark, no food grew, it was cold, it was more dangerous, life was harder, very little work could be done and life was much harder. In the Summer, when there was light and warmth, crops grew, food was plentiful and people were healthier and warmer, work could be done.

Daytime was associated with work and respectable activities that people were seen doing. Night was a time for clandestine activities, robbery and the supernatural. There are all very practical reasons for those associations which have nothing to do with race.

Not to mention that at the time and places we know these ideas and phrases developed, very, very few people would even have been aware of people of different races, racial politics and cultural baggage didn’t exist, and there certainly wasn’t the awareness of race in a way which would have led to language developing in a way to express racial prejudice.

Angel food cake was developed first and was said to taste so good it was the food of the angels. Devil’s food cake was the same but with Cocoa added. As the opposite of Angel’s food cake, it would have been called that because Devils are the opposite of angels and people at the time would have been very aware of that and the story of the Angel Lucifer becoming a Devil as a fallen angel.

There is lots and lots of evidence about these religious and cultural connotations with night and day and the origins of these phrases happening because of the negative/positive associations with night and day and light/dark. And we also know those associations didn’t have racial connotations because they did not come about at a time when those viewing them would have been aware of or concerned about races.

White also has associations with purity and cleanliness (including moral) for entirely practical reasons. It shows the dirt. You cannot hide if you are dirty if you are wearing white or if your furniture is dirty when it’s white. So people wear it to demonstrate their purity, again nothing to do with race.

There is absolutely zero evidence that it has anything to do with race.

If you’re becoming offended by things by making up imaginary connections which have no basis in factual evidence I’m not surprised you are offended all the time. Because you could literally look at anything and make up your own narrative and decide that makes it racist.

I’m sure you could probably make up some sort of narrative about how Bourbons and Custard Creams were racist. After all, Bourbons were very nasty kings and Custards have no such negative connotations.

Brunsdon1 · 24/06/2018 00:52

The current interpretation of cultural appropriation is entirely the preview of the permanently offended

The original concept I agree with...recognising and respecting different cultures sacred issues and showing respect

So a Native American headdress is of course a sacred object it is not acceptable to use as figure of fun and to be cheapened

However with a lot of militants it has now been extrapolated to such an extent it's become a caricature of what protesting cultural appropriation was...somewhat amusingly the permanently offended are doing what they accuse others of

By banging their drum over non issues they are cheapening the issue at heart

If an object,style or behaviour is sacred to a culture...dont take the Mick out of it

If it reduces a culture or race to a mocking form of entertainment that indemically indicates that they are lower than your culture (e.g. blackface in the 1920's) then it's highly offensive

If it's not...for God's sake live and let live

Basically the rule really is simple.... don't be a dick about other cultures

NotMeOhNo · 24/06/2018 00:59

Excellent posts LeahJack. I'm still waiting to hear why the hippies/ferals of my youth who were protesting logging by living in the bush and dreading their hair to reflect their stylised neglect/roughing it is Black Cultural Appropriation.

MDFalco · 24/06/2018 04:37

Cornettoninja: First off, she (Kim K) ’s not white.

Actually, she is. Kris Jenner is of Dutch, English, Irish, German and Scottish descent. Robert Kardashian is Armenian.

Bumpitybumper · 24/06/2018 05:25

@TacoLover
You're right, I'm obviously a complete idiot as I still am not sure I get it, but I don't know how being so condescending is going to help educate and enlighten anyone. I genuinely am trying to understand this issue and am pretty open minded that my initial thoughts could be misguided.

So let's get this straight, it's irrelevant that there are clear examples of where fairer haired women are being oppressed by other races as that's just "discrimination" because the perpetrators of the oppression aren't the one's who are emulating their style? I would think that this is true at an individual level but are we talking about individuals, nationalities or races? So if a Sunni woman in Iraq who was unconnected to the oppression of the yazadis dyed her hair lighter she would be guilty of cultural appropriation? What about a black woman in Zimbabwe who emulates white fashion/hair styles?

I guess what I'm trying to question is whether all white people are considered to be oppressors of black women irrespective of their actions and behaviour because of what is going on in our wider society? If that is the case then I would expect the examples I've asked about above to also be considered cultural appropriation as they satisfy the "wider society" argument.

Just a side note but does this kind of theory also hold true for people with red/ginger hair? I know it isn't cultural appropriation if another white person dyes their hair red but a lot of these arguments about the styles being traditionally viewed as undesirable and the favouring of people who artificially create the hair type made me make the connection. Although lots of people (including me) love red hair there has definitely been a bit of a stigma attached to it in the past.

BitchQueen90 · 24/06/2018 06:00

Black people are teased and ridiculed for their hairstyles and features, they get told braids etc are "inappropriate" for the workplace but when white people wear braids they suddenly get called trendy by fashion magazines. I'm white and even I can understand how annoying that must be for black people. Also I don't think as white people we should tell black people what they should and should not be offended by when it comes to things like that.

Aside from that I think braids on white people look absolutely dreadful. Hair isn't the right texture. Grin

Londonerlove · 24/06/2018 06:57

They are not being called trendy, that’s the point, she’s been attacked. I’m far from a Kim K fan, but this is ridiculous.

This thread is a jumble of cultural appropriation, cultural appreciation, racism and discrimination.

If you are from an oppressed background, where does the hate stop? If it never stops then we’ll continue into a whirlwind of division is communities.
I teach children each day that we are all different and to appreciate and respect other people’s cultures. We teach this early on so that what previous generations may deem different, strange or unknown are no longer seen in that way.
Cultural appropriation undoes that teaching. We must respect and appreciate but don’t you dare adopt any other cultures.

If people are so offended by others adopting their culture, surely that’s just breeding hate and discrimination.

I would be honoured if another culture adopted one of our traditions/cultures. It’s called progression and education.

OP posts: