Still I Rise tattoo - inappropriate for a white woman?

[teawamutu]

Probably stupid middle class navel gazing, but...

Maya Angelou's poem is the most inspiring piece of writing in the world to me. Beautiful and uplifting and universal.

I've been toying for ages with getting a line from the poem as a tattoo, but concerned it would be cultural appropriation. I know MA was a self-declared feminist but that's not the primary focus of the poem.

Would you? And MNers who are POC, would you find it disrespectful?

This poem is rooted in the idea of being oppressed as a black woman due transatlantic slavery.

Hi OP. As a black woman this poem means a lot to me. It describes how black women deal with the ignorance of being judged and discriminated against simply because of the colour of their skin. Maya questions why others feel threatened by an almost seemingly powerless race of people. She questions if people are offended because black women are outspoken and proud or is it because they don’t show any outward signs of suffering? The poem proudly explains that she (Maya or other black women) will always rise above the negativity of racism and she will not let any amount of prejudice defeat her.

So, yes, it's a nice thought, but I would see your tattoo as cultural appropriation.

@MorrisZapp

Very true, I do hope the OP doesn't hang out with the purity posse though.

God no!

But it's not so much about whether I'd be called out for it; even if no-one ever did, if I knew it would be seen as inappropriate and CA by people whose culture it was, I would know and I'd feel uncomfortable about it.

I have a tattoo of a bird cage with the bird flying above it to represent her poem Caged Bird as I identified so strongly with it. I love Maya Angelou's poetry. So I'm being a hypocrite but I do think Still I Rise is so specifically about black female oppression that it would be a bit odd on a white woman.

It's often hard to articulate when something tips from admiration into cultural appropriation.

Googling "still I rise tattoo" brought up gazillions of results, many on white skin, so for that reason alone I wouldn't.

Oh and Lewis Hamilton.

www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/712876/hamilton-crosses-the-line/

I wish I didn't Google the tattoos.

If I ever voluntarily had a tattoo - and I don't think I will - it would say, "Nevertheless, she persisted."

I get so exhausted thinking about this whole cultural appropriation thing. We ALL have, use, listen to, read, watch, etc,etc,etc, so many things from different cultures, half of the English language is actually french. I think it's nice a white woman showing solidarity with black women with a tattoo like that. I'm sure many white people have Bob Marley Tattoos. I'm sure many black people love art created by white people and recognise that is some way, ratios, dress, hair, whatever.

Is there a discussion to be had about what is traditionally black cooking/fashion/music/style and what is black pain/struggle?
Isn't part of the problem with appropriation when two races are treated differently, eg. traditionally black female hairstyles have been criticised and the women who wear them seen as unprofessional and had negative judgements made against them, but when white women wear them they get praised etc.
It's taking some aspects of being black without also taking any of the difficult parts of being black which black people can't pick n mix their way out of.
It's white people being rewarded for doing things a black person would be ignored/judged negatively for.
Also where it takes opportunities away from black people. If a white chef became famous from sharing/writing about traditionally black dishes I would say they and those behind the marketing were profiting from black culture by repackaging it as more acceptable to white people and it would be white people that were financially rewarded. Maybe a marketing team wouldn't have thought a black chef would have had more 'universal appeal' and so structural racism and lack of representation goes on....
That's different from a white person just enjoying some jambalaya

recognise that in someway, tattoos, dress...

Sorry a white chef would have had more 'universal appeal'

I maybe naive here, but I thought that by accepting and loving black culture we are actually making these things less unusual and therefore more acceptable. No it shouldn't be like this but I've been told several times white people have to step up and make changes to support black people.

How do we do that without cultural appropriation?

@NoAdventureNoTime

It's often hard to articulate when something tips from admiration into cultural appropriation.

This is why we need to promote a culture of it’s ok to be wrong/ it’s ok to change your mind after learning more about a topic.

That’s the bit that’s missing from current public discourse - people are afraid to speak unless they are deluded enough to believe they will hit the sweet spot of being perfectly right-on, not just now but also in 15 years time when someone goes through your ye olde social media posts to find a metaphorical stick to beat you with.

That’s why Mumsnet is so valuable to me - it functions very differently to what we now know as ‘social media’ and we are able to have in-depth discussions with people outside of our own bubbles.

@NoAdventureNoTime

It's often hard to articulate when something tips from admiration into cultural appropriation.

That's why conversations like this are so important, I think.

Feels like 'stuff on your own body' might be a useful rule of thumb to start with.

If a traditional African hair style is considered unprofessional on an African woman and a white women wearing the same hairstyle is not, in the same company, doesn't that make it easier to prove racism and help the black woman's right to wear that style without discrimination?

traditionally black female hairstyles have been criticised and the women who wear them seen as unprofessional and had negative judgements made against them, but when white women wear them they get praised etc.

I don't think that's true at all. Quite the opposite. Didn't one of the Kardashians and Miley Cyrus get ripped to pieces for having braids?

@teawamutu Don't know if your interested in my two penneth, I'm a committed lurker. I'm black and would see it is a celebration of her work. Unfortunately I know a hell of a lot of people who would see it as cultural appropriation and would have no problem giving you grief about it. I'd factor that in when considering.

I agree @Broomfondle and no one is saying people can't enjoy black culture at all.
I would compare this to say unethical environmental companies. For example, if they were damaging the environment in persuit of profit they would pay a government environmental tax on top to balance or address the harm they cause.

However it feels sometimes that people are taking from a culture and paying no tax in the damage it can cause to those people. Or doing anything to stop the damage caused to those people by generations of being taken advantage of and oppressed. The people being taken advantage of feels no benefit from having being used ifyswim. No tax has been paid.

If a traditional African hair style is considered unprofessional on an African woman and a white women wearing the same hairstyle is not, in the same company, doesn't that make it easier to prove racism and help the black woman's right to wear that style without discrimination?

Good luck to any white woman who wears a traditional African hair style. I very much doubt she would meet with approval.

Good luck to any white woman wearing a traditional African hair style. She'd be

I don't think that's true at all. Quite the opposite. Didn't one of the Kardashians and Miley Cyrus get ripped to pieces for having braids

Well yes, but not for the same reason a black woman would be judged for having them
They were judged as it was considered appropriation, not because it was considered ugly/unprofessional within crappy white beauty standards. Miley and Kim very much fit those beauty standards and aren't just trying to live their lives as black in America as many others who have black hairstyles are. They get all the adulation and advantages of being rich and attractive and white and when they take out their braids they'll have straight European hair, that's very different to why and how black people wear braids and their experience of them.
But like I said I'm white!! This is just my understanding of the discussion and I absolutely don't want to make out like I'm an authority on the subject of cultural appropriation or black women's hair!!

I think people just jump to the conclusion that appropriation is mixing/appreciating/taking inspiration from other cultures, when I think there is a difference between that and gaining things by doing that as a white person, when people from the original culture wouldn't be able to.

[quote TwinsandTwoMore]@teawamutu Don't know if your interested in my two penneth, I'm a committed lurker. I'm black and would see it is a celebration of her work. Unfortunately I know a hell of a lot of people who would see it as cultural appropriation and would have no problem giving you grief about it. I'd factor that in when considering.[/quote]
Very much interested, and very much taken on board - thank you.

To be honest I'm surprised to find myself on this side of the argument. But there's just something so 'me! me! me!' about that particular quote that I think crosses the line between staying in your lane and taking over the microphone. (Excuse mixed metaphors.)

But if it were another line from the same poem then I might feel differently. And equally someone else might take issue with me feeling differently, in which case I hope I would listen to what they had to say.

And yes think we need to be able to talk about it.

The poem is “problematic” by the standards of today's sin-finders anyway, because it says "slave" instead of "enslaved person".

Well here is the great woman herself reading the poem. It is anything but clunky, to the pp who said as such. It is meant to be spoken aloud, in the tradition of people who had no means of writing down their stories, and had to pass them on through spoken word alone. It is beautiful, undulating and hypnotic.

In this video, Maya Angelou first speaks of her admiration of all people, whatever their colour, who manage to "rise" every day, despite their suffering. She is a black woman speaking about her own experience and that felt by her ancestors. But this does not mean that the sentiment - the resilience of the human spirit to keep on rising no matter what is thrown at them - cannot be applied to other people in other circumstances. I think Maya Angelou herself would have been much more generous than to guard her work only to those people who share her skin colour.

I’m sure if you just say you identify as a black woman you’d be just fine... 🤔