Nelly, I’ll try answering your questions if I can but I’m not the author of the pyramid meme. Although a lot of its content does hold true in Britain it originated in the US and they experience system racism in different ways to us. So what I write can only be based on interpretation.
‘Over familiarisation’ of PoC, I suspect falls within the remit of micro-aggressions. I recently worked with an Indian woman who thanked me when we first met for not just assuming her country of origin wasn’t British. Another African American colleague is constantly getting comments about her hair and has people wanting to touch it. It’s also lazy assumptions, however well meaning – ‘so where are you from originally? Why don’t you have an accent?’ Etc.
Also, the one bit of this I can never grasp (and I’m willing to accept that’s rooted in my white privilege) is the concept of cultural appropriation.
I agree that’s tough, particularly as it’s a term that seems widely misunderstood and has ironically been misappropriated itself. My understanding is that in its anthropological context it described the coming together of two cultures in some kind of seismic event like colonisation, invasion, genocide etc. When this happens the culture asserting dominance ‘appropriates’ the positive aspects of that culture, whereas the subservient culture is seen to ‘assimilate’ (as in the diaspora, for example). In the humanities theorists like Homi BhaBha talk about it in terms of cultural hybridity, but this is never problematic nor seen as a positive coming together of diverse cultures. He acknowledges the power struggles that exist during this process. He also talks of migrants living in a state of perpetual liminality, falling into the cracks and ‘interstices’ in social structure rather than even existing visibly on the margins. They are then experienced as a 'polluting' presence and experience discrimination on that basis. The Jewish diaspora is a good example of this.
Where this differs from the kind of Twitter nonsense spouted about Adele is that it all relates to major impacts on particular cultures, not individual foibles of fashion like wearing ethnic jewellery etc. Considering the history of cornrows I would never wear these, but a lot of the stuff on social media lambasting the crude definition of cultural appropriation is pretty ignorant. It isn't about personal foibles of dress etc., the definition is as its name suggests: cultural.
I’m genuinely interested because the CA part is the part I really struggle with (unless in the context of representing oppression as I said)
Me too! It’s a very complicated set of issues, and these are hard to understand if you’re in possession of the kind of cultural privilege (not the same as economic privilege), you and I have simply by means of having been born white westerners. LF it seems is incapable of even the simplest recognition of that point.