Cultural appropriation...how bad is it?

[malificent7]

So Rhianna is under fire for braiding white model's hair. What if a black model wanted to straighten and bleach her hair?
I love african wax print fabric but don't want to be accused of cultural appropriation if i wear a bit of it. I also own sari fabric clothes.

Aibu to ask mn who may or may not be from different ethnic backgrounds would they consider Rhianna or my behaviour inappropriate and what constitutes real cultural appropriation?

This is not a racist thread as dd is mixed race.

@strivingtosucceed

I'm West African and can agree that most instances of cultural appropriation are nonsense and used by some people to continue their trend of being offended by almost anything. BUT there are various instances that really do upset/annoy me.

1. "Creating" something that minorities have worn/used.eaten for years by misusing words/ingredients a la Jamie Oliver and his jerk rice.
2. Speaking about cultural things without having done the proper research and giving wrong information.
3. Selling culturally significant items as trinkets or fashion.
4. Repackaging/stealing products created by minorities and gaining money + fame.

So it's really not the wearing or eating different food that is the issue, it's being insensitive to it's origins and trying to make a fast buck out of it.

That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

Strawberrryfields

‘I can see why it may seem relevant to your post BUT someone’s child being mixed race doesn’t exclude them from being racist. I’m absolutely not suggesting that you are OP but that’s sadly not the case for everyone. To me, its along the same lines as “some of my best friends are black” comments which are not helpful.’

^This 💯

@strivingtosucceed

‘I am West African and…’

^This 💯

Some of this insistence on cultural segregation does risk tipping into racism itself.

A university near us in the name of respecting people's different cultures and giving people spaces in which they would feel comfortable, actually set up separate black only and white only introduction events for their undergraduates.

Rosa parks would be horrified!

@strivingtosucceed

Out of interest if someone e.g. Jamie Oliver wants to create an interesting variant on a recipe from another culture, is there a way to do it without being offensive?

Or is cultural fusion cooking doomed!?

@Watchingyou2sleezes

I know a former World champion kick boxer. He is black. His main fighting style came from Taekwondo - should he now start apologising to Koreans for having the nerve to appropriate their culture?

It is all a load of toss stirred up by the permanently aggrieved.

Take Kwon do is not a cultural practice that Koreans were oppressed for. It originated from people mixing karate with indigenous fighting styles in the 1940s. Now if he was doing Taekkyeon and marketing it as some cool new British thing and messing with the concepts but keeping the names the same then yeah it would be as that practice was brutally put down by the Japanese colonial government. Then again your post wasn’t a genuine attempt at understanding was it? It was just a way to claim it’s only really white people who get accused of it.

[quote Aria999]@strivingtosucceed

Out of interest if someone e.g. Jamie Oliver wants to create an interesting variant on a recipe from another culture, is there a way to do it without being offensive?

Or is cultural fusion cooking doomed!?[/quote]
In my mind, Jamie Oliver is a difficult example, because it’s all about making money. But if another chef said “I spent some time in XYZ, and tried some amazing ABC. It really inspire me snd I’ve tried to create some of those techniques in chicken in this recipe.” It’s very different to “he’s my authentic ABC” packaged up and sold.

I think it would be sn incredibly sad thing if we lost the ability to share and swap cultural things like food and music and be influenced by each other and create things that borrow a little from each other. That’s a really beautiful thing.

I think hair braiding is a bit tricky, just because black women directly face discrimination for their hair, so for someone white to have that hairstyle, when they can do so without the same judgements, is problematic.

My Indian husband (born and brought up, and lived in India for almost his whole life) thinks the whole thing is totally ridiculous, when it's in regards to Indian culture.

He says it's just people who aren't Indian, getting annoyed on behalf of people who are, without considering the fact that people in India who see someone wearing something from their culture are usually overjoyed and really proud.

He thinks the cultural appropriation thing is a) British people with Indian (or other) heritage feeling clingy of the culture as they don't live this culture at all, and have no real connection to it other than maybe through their clothes or personal style. Or
B) white people getting annoyed on behalf of other people without considering whether they actually care.

My MIL is so excited to see someone wearing her traditional dress, she sees it as a huge compliment and thinks it's lovely. Simple as that. She said about that issue that she doesn't understand why a British/American person with Indian heritage get to decide it's not okay, when Indian people are happy to share their culture.

My husband also said, and I quote "I don't appreciate white people making this another big issue between difference between races, and another source of tension, because it's not white people who will suffer as a result of any further divide "

@YourFinestPantaloons

I'm also very much in the "just fucking listen" camp. If POC en masse are telling us cultural appropriation is damaging, how about we listen to them? Would that be so hard?

I also feel that this attitude is very much: "Just f**king listen (to the few people who agree with you, but ignore the masses of people who aren't offended."

I can't help but feel that the idea of 'cultural appropriation' is yet another Americanism that has made its way to the shores of the UK.

There's no way to know where the threshold lies between celebration of a culture and appropriation of it. Will speaking another language one day be frowned upon?

He thinks the cultural appropriation thing is a) British people with Indian (or other) heritage feeling clingy of the culture as they don't live this culture at all, and have no real connection to it other than maybe through their clothes or personal style

We don’t talk about this enough. A lot of second and third-gen people think they can speak for a whole culture/ethnicity that they barely even experienced. It’s very irritating

@UsedUpUsername

He thinks the cultural appropriation thing is a) British people with Indian (or other) heritage feeling clingy of the culture as they don't live this culture at all, and have no real connection to it other than maybe through their clothes or personal style

We don’t talk about this enough. A lot of second and third-gen people think they can speak for a whole culture/ethnicity that they barely even experienced. It’s very irritating

Yes this is important. When you have people like very wealthy actors using their heritage to claim legitimacy but is it really their culture if they've never experienced it?

Take Kwon do is not a cultural practice that Koreans were oppressed for

Braiding hair is also not the reason that black people are oppressed. It's the colour of their skin that is the problem. Hence white people with braided hair get away with it.

Am I, as a white person allowed to drink bubble tea?

No. Bubble tea is gross. Big surprise blobs of frog spawn mucous.

@UsedUpUsername

He thinks the cultural appropriation thing is a) British people with Indian (or other) heritage feeling clingy of the culture as they don't live this culture at all, and have no real connection to it other than maybe through their clothes or personal style

We don’t talk about this enough. A lot of second and third-gen people think they can speak for a whole culture/ethnicity that they barely even experienced. It’s very irritating

So are you saying that black African American actually don’t have. Word to say about braided hair because they’ve lived in the US for many generations and only African still living in Africa do?

@Snoozer11

No speaking/ using anouther language wont be frowned upon

Its wonderful to learn other languages BUT its appropriation IF someone was to take a minority language that has in the past been oppressed and users punished and then take aspects of that language and without skill of the language make educational videos or courses of that language which are poor quality or incorrect. I used BSL example above but a different example would be Welsh where in the past children caught speaking welsh in school were forced to wear a wooden sign around their necks and caned. After a long battle Welsh is now taught in Welsh schools by welsh speakers. Imagine a non welsh speaker teaching their own 'Better more English' version of Welsh. Which other non welsh users think is amazing and far better than actual welsh as it sounds more English and is easier to learn as it uses English Grammer. Soon welsh speaking children are being corrected because this who have learnt feom these non welsh speakers think they know better than native language users.

This could happen to any language and is currently the battle BSL users are facing.

If you are going to learn a language, learn the language not a watered down incorrect versio of the language. If you are going to gain money or status from teaching a language make sure you actually know the language. If you are learnong and posting videos for feedback to aid you learning this is fine but dont post the videos making out you are teaching. Post a video which clearly states you are a learning wanting feedback (ideally with a link to ways to learn for those you want to)

So are you saying that black African American actually don’t have. Word to say about braided hair because they’ve lived in the US for many generations and only African still living in Africa do?

I’m talking about something very specific, where second and third-generation children of foreign nationals plant themselves as gatekeepers to a culture they’ve little direct experience of.

Please don’t make a ‘so what you’re saying’ strawman

I wore a sari when I got married, simply because they are beautiful garments and I love them.

@pinkhampoppy

I wouldnt think wearing a sari is a problem. Posting on social media promoting your own sari making or a non culture company could be considered culture appopriation

@UsedUpUsername

So are you saying that black African American actually don’t have. Word to say about braided hair because they’ve lived in the US for many generations and only African still living in Africa do?

I’m talking about something very specific, where second and third-generation children of foreign nationals plant themselves as gatekeepers to a culture they’ve little direct experience of.

Please don’t make a ‘so what you’re saying’ strawman

Yes, this is exactly it!

@malificent7

So Rhianna is under fire for braiding white model's hair. What if a black model wanted to straighten and bleach her hair? I love african wax print fabric but don't want to be accused of cultural appropriation if i wear a bit of it. I also own sari fabric clothes.

Aibu to ask mn who may or may not be from different ethnic backgrounds would they consider Rhianna or my behaviour inappropriate and what constitutes real cultural appropriation?

This is not a racist thread as dd is mixed race.

I honestly think it’s time to stop looking to America for lessons on what is and isn’t racist. They’re a very different country to us, a country so obsessed with race, they decided Spanish people are no longer white.

I find the concept of it nonsensical.

It depends on two assumptions to make logical sense. Neither hold up.

Firstly that cultural practices can be neatly and discretely ‘owned’ by individual cultures, which is fundamentally not how human cultural practices work.

Secondly, that we can make a neat list of all cultures from most to least oppressed and proceed accordingly, which is also silly.

I’ve never come across an example of problematic behaviour attributed to cultural appropriation that isn’t just pure and simple racism. We don’t need another word for it.

As humans, we’ve benefitted hugely from cultural assimilation and sharing. Creating barriers to this strikes me as a huge step backward.

He thinks the cultural appropriation thing is a) British people with Indian (or other) heritage feeling clingy of the culture as they don't live this culture at all, and have no real connection to it other than maybe through their clothes or personal style

Very much agree with this. Holding onto something you don't have much of because if you did, you'd be more generous. A pp said if you were secure in your identity, you wouldn't be bothered about CA. I think that's right too, given the people who tend to be VS those who aren't.

@Covidworries Your post has reminded me of AAVE and how a lot of gen z think it's just "internet speak"

Braiding hair is also not the reason that black people are oppressed. It's the colour of their skin that is the problem. Hence white people with braided hair get away with it.

The issue here is how natural black hairstyles have been undermined and deemed ‘inappropriate’ in many environments for decades.

What white girls do with their hair is totally irrelevant to that and the whole braids thing (which are native to many cultures) is a distraction from dealing with the actual issues around black women and their hair.