#cultural appropriation

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“They sat theredressed in African garb & dark sunglasses listening to the brothas play taking “They sat theredressed in African garb & dark sunglasses listening to the brothas play taking “They sat theredressed in African garb & dark sunglasses listening to the brothas play taking

“They sat there
dressed in African garb & dark sunglasses
listening to the brothas play
taking notes
We didn’t realize who they were until their next recording had been released:
The Beatles Play Soulmusic”

. - Haki Madhubuti

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oak23:

I hate how a lot of cultural appropriation discourse has forgotten the reason why it started appearing. It wasn’t meant to punish white people for being ignorant and ban them from partaking in other cultures.

It was a discussion meant to draw attention that people of colour were constantly being overlooked or punished for the exact same things that white people were celebrated for. It was meant to elevate people of colour to an understanding and respect that white people had been afforded for years, often unearned.

So seeing people go “white people don’t partake in anything that isn’t white” misses a lot of nuance in the discussion, because a lot of different cultures ARE willing to share and allow people into their culture on their own terms and in a respectful matter.

There’s a massive difference between a white person going “I just invented the BEST version of this” where everything had been watered down and stripped away versus one going “I try out this thing to appreciate cultures and viewpoints that aren’t my own”.

As a first generation Asian Australian whose own cultural identity is a massive clusterfuck I do think we need to remember that cultural exchange and sharing is incredibly important for an ever changing and global culture.

gem-femme:

gem-femme:

icelingbolt:

gem-femme:

gem-femme:

gem-femme:

I hate when non black people appropriate aave in general but goddamn the word I hate seeing y’all (but mainly white people) use most right now is “simp”. Y’all bastardized the fuck out of that word and I’m so fucking tired of seeing y’all use it.

I am really begging y’all to please stop using this word. It’s not a good word to use. Please use a different one.

I said this in the notes but I might as well put this on the post itself so y’all know what the term actually means.

So yeah, use something else!

Isnt it a good thing a word with connotations like that is being reworked?

Not when it’s done in tandem with cultural appropriation. This isn’t being done with the express purpose of turning a bad word into a good word, it’s being done as the result of bastardization because white people wanna be trendy. The current trend isn’t even turning it into a good word, it’s being thrown at men who don’t treat women like objects because it’s supposedly bad and demasculinizing to treat women like people.

There is absolutely nothing good happening around the term ‘simp’. Just use something else.

Why would you add discouraging shit like this onto my post. Do you think I wanna see this in my feed while I’m essentially begging people to not appropriate my culture? This is straight up a microagression. Y’all need to get in the habit of thinking before you add tags to posts.

badgyal-k: jamaicanblackcastoroil: *rolls eyes* These people don’t even like us….. like they can do badgyal-k: jamaicanblackcastoroil: *rolls eyes* These people don’t even like us….. like they can do badgyal-k: jamaicanblackcastoroil: *rolls eyes* These people don’t even like us….. like they can do

badgyal-k:

jamaicanblackcastoroil:

*rolls eyes*

These people don’t even like us….. like they can do this but will never see us as people and I hope they suffer tbh.


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afronerdism:

afronerdism:

afronerdism:

The conversation surrounding cultural appropriation has been so severely mutilated by white “allies” that the original intention behind that conversation has become almost unrecognizable in most social contexts.

To explain what I mean, the conversation around cultural appropriation was started by black and native people to discuss the frustrations we feel at being punished socially and financially for partaking in our cultural heritage while white people could take, I.e. appropriate, aspects of our culture that we are actively shamed for and be heralded as innovators. It was about the frustrations we feel when the same white people who shamed us would take our culture and wear it as if they were the ones who created it while still actively shaming us for doing the same.

The original push behind naming cultural appropriation and having these conversations were so that we as a society could evaluate why we were punished for our heritage while white People were not. It was supposed to be about seeking solutions. The idea was to create a society where we could celebrate our cultures with impunity. It was never about telling white people that they “weren’t allowed” to do certain things. We did ask that white People stop doing certain things because they weren’t doing them respectfully and were not invited to do them, but the primary reason we asked them to desist was to reclaim the things they had stolen and to reassign them culturally back where they belonged.

White “allies” saw these conversations happening and instead of trying to aplify our own voices or even try to learn about the complexities behind why we were saying what we were saying, they instead began screaming over us and creating a narrative that was hardly even the bones of what we originally set out to say. It was like they took the conversation we were trying to have, completely decontextualized it, and stripped it of all it’s nuance in order to gain social currency by seeming progressive.

So the conversation around cultural appropriation went from “This aspect of our heritage belongs to us and we find it egregious that we are shamed for it. What steps can we take to address the racism that’s creating this situation as well as rehome the things that have been stolen” to “you’re not allowed to do that because if you do that you’re racist, we don’t really understand why that’s racist but you’re not allowed to do that and if you do that you’re a klansman no exceptions. So you’re not allowed because because”

At the end of the day, did I like the fact that sally was wearing dreads? No. But my primary concern was not that sally was wearing dreads but rather that sally could wear dreads and I couldn’t. THAT was the intended focus of those conversations. It was about addressing the inequality. It was about us. Now the conversation is just about sally and were completely forgotten.

White People are always asking me what they can do to help. You want to know? Stop talking. Aplify our voices and shut the fuck up because you all have pretty much derailed this conversation and many more like it to the point that we no longer are trying to make steps to understand and dismantle the racism around cultural appropriation and instead are just using it as social shaming tactics.

TL;DR: read my post. Most things worth learning about can’t be summarized in the bullet points of a buzfeed article. Don’t come into academic circles and complain because everything hasn’t been conviently summarized for you. Stop pretending that things aren’t accessible to you because you refuse to do the intellectual labor that is learning.

kaamosnoita:

Karjalaiset Nuoret ŠuomeŠŠa ry

Lähteitä ja lisälukemista:

  • Martti Penttonen, Karjalazil očkil (2014)
  • Anneli Sarhimaa, Vaietut ja vaiennetut karjalankieliset karjalaiset Suomessa (2017)
  • Virpi Kivioja: Olli Kleemola ja Louis Clerc (toim.) Sotapropagandasta brändäämiseen. Miten Suomi-kuvaa on rakennettu? (2015)
  • Outi Fingerroos & Häyrynen Maunu (toim.) Takaisin Karjalaan (2012)
  • Pirjo Lyytikäinen ”Suomalaiset syntysanat. Suomen kirjallisuus suomalaisuutta kirjoittamassa.” Teoksessa Tuomas M.S.Lehtonen (toim.) Suomi, outo pohjoinen maa. Näkökulmia Euroopan äären historiaan ja kulttuuriin (1999)
  • Antti Laine, Suur-Suomen kahdet kasvot. Itä-Karjalan siviiliväestön asema suomalaisessa miehityshallinnossa 1941-1944 (1982)
  • Hannes Sihvo, Karjalan kuva - Karelianismin taustaa ja vaiheita autonomian aikana (1973)
  • Pekka Suutari (toim.), Karjala-kuvaa rakentamassa (2013)
  • Helena Pilke, Propagandaa Itä-Karjalaan - Heimokansan suomalaistajat 1941-1944 (2017)

oviids:

oviids:

oviids:

western witches/wiccans can be some of the most bigoted and willfully ignorant people alive

‘burning times’ ‘heirs of salem’ ‘ancient mother goddess ’ why don’t you read some wikipedia articles and calm down

all snark aside the number of practitioners who genuinely believe the salem witches were burned at the stake (they were not), or that men were never accused of witchcraft in american or european trials (they very frequently were), or even believe that there actually WERE members of an ancient hereditary matriarchal witch cult living in new england (lol no) is mind boggling

Though the church had a special interest in burning midwifes and other powerfull women. But yeah “Wiccan” and “Celtic witch” are kind of big red flags for general ignorance and often cultural appropriation. Wicca was formed in the 1940-60s by white people and is generally a cultural cherry picking mess. Celtic is an umbrella term coined in 1707 and is later applied to Gaels and Gauls. But basically the problem is that “celtic” includes wide array of ethnic groups from Scotland to Bretagne and if someone says “celtic people believed..” it’s in similar vain as “the native americans believed”. So someone claiming to be a “celtic witch” hasn’t really done their research.

I don’t care how much you think Sitting Bull was a hero, I don’t care how much you admire and look up to him, dressing your dog up as a Native American, no matter how awesome he/she/they/zhe/zir/plir was, is absolutely cultural appropriation, no matter what your intentions are, and I hope your racist arse kills itself to better the world.

By Evan Stewart on April 25, 2018

The first nice weekend after a long, cold winter in the Twin Cities is serious business. A few years ago some local diners joined the celebration with a serious indulgence: the boozy milkshake.

When talking with a friend of mine from the Deep South about these milkshakes, she replied, “oh, a bushwhacker! We had those all the time in college.” This wasn’t the first time she had dropped southern slang that was new to me, so off to Google I went.

According to Merriam-Webster, “to bushwhack” means to attack suddenly and unexpectedly, as one would expect the alcohol in a milkshake to sneak up on you. The cocktail is a Nashville staple, but the origins trace back to the Virgin Islands in the 1970s.

Photo Credit: Beebe Bourque, Flickr CC

Photo Credit: Like_the_Grand_Canyon, Flickr CC

Here’s the part where the history takes a sordid turn: “Bushwhacker” was apparently also the nickname for guerrilla fighters in the Confederacy during the Civil War who would carry out attacks in rural areas (see, for example, the Lawrence Massacre). To be clear, I don’t know and don’t mean to suggest this had a direct influence in the naming of the cocktail. Still, the coincidence reminded me of the famous, and famously offensive, drinking reference to conflict in Northern Ireland.

Battle of Lawrence, Wikimedia Commons

When sociologists talk about concepts like “cultural appropriation,” we often jump to clear examples with a direct connection to inequality and oppression like racist halloween costumesorripoff products—cases where it is pretty easy to look at the object in question and ask, “didn’t they think about this for more than thirty seconds?”

Cases like the bushwhacker raise different, more complicated questions about how societies remember history. Even if the cocktail today had nothing to do with the Confederacy, the weight of that history starts to haunt the name once you know it. I think many people would be put off by such playful references to modern insurgent groups like ISIS. Then again, as Joseph Gusfield shows, drinking is a morally charged activity in American society. It is interesting to see how the deviance of drinking dovetails with bawdy, irreverent, or offensive references to other historical and social events. Can you think of other drinks with similar sordid references? It’s not all sex on the beach!

Evan Stewart is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota. You can follow him on Twitter.

tainbo:

What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.

What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.

Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.

1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.

2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.

3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.

I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk ™

——

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If you really appreciated a culture, you wouldn’t appropriate it because you’d care about the people of that culture too.

really-big-clams:ancient-rome-au:@romanrightsactivist look at this tasteless cultural appropriat

really-big-clams:

ancient-rome-au:

@romanrightsactivist look at this tasteless cultural appropriation I saw at the California State Fair last weekend

Ancient Rome is a culture, not a superficial branding strategy ugh

@romansocialjustice can Roman culture be appropriated?

Of course it can’t. Roman culture is BUILT on appropriation from OLDER and BETTER cultures (Greeks, Etruscans, Carthaginians, YOU GET THE PICTURE). Oppressed masses living under Roman rule adopting symbols of the dominant culture that were FORCED on them is just the tragic process of assimilation

Any Romans upset about this can stfu!!!!


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Other people guilty of cultural appropriation: Romans who display genuine Greek red-/black/figure pottery and act like they’re so ~~~cultured~~~~~ (and, y’know, stinking rich) to have it. I BET YOU STOLE IT, STOLEN FROM ITS RIGHTFUL OWNERS IN GREECE!!

  • Gallo-British torcs, reproduction or original. They’re a symbol of HIGH RANK, worn by NOBLES, not some upper-middle class kid from the suburbs of Rome
  • Vintage togas that haven’t been in fashion since the Julio-Claudian dynasty, mostly because they’re ugly
  • Armenian hats worn by people who’ve never been further east than Corinth
  • “““““Traditional”“““““ handicrafts from ““““Galatia”“““ which are actually made by three Libyan women crammed into an insula room somewhere in Tarentum
  • Using Oscan words in Latin to ~honour your ancestors~ (or to show off how well-read you are!!!)
  • Women wearing the toga “ironically” and appropriating from sex workers
  • Obsession with Romanised Persian food and acting like you’re politically subversive for liking it

hexfeathers:

Hey, so, when someone practicing in a closed religion tells you to stop appropriating their deities, traditions, holy texts and such, and you respond with:

But x deity reached out to me why would they reach out to me if they are closed to people outside of x culture?

That is a bullshit excuse lol

First of all, the voices of physical, tangible human beings that are a part of a marginalized group are who you should be listening to.

Second of all, I am sorry, but no amount of “x deity reached out to me so I am gonna listen to them before I listen to you lol” is going to erase the fact that you are choosing to be disrespectful and violate living cultures and living people, rather than using discernment to see whether or not that closed deity is even actually communicating with you

Some of you folks claiming to be communicating with Lilith, despite not being Jewish, are so desperate to work with a Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss™ that you are not taking into consideration the countless, COUNTLESS deities and spirits who actually DO fill that role, and are not part of a closed practice.

At the end of the day, there is no true tangible proof that you are communicating with a god. We are all believing in what we do out of faith. But practitioners, minorities, and people who are part of closed cultures are 100%, undoubtably, sitting there and watching you show your ass in the name of disrespect and ignorance.

It costs 0 dollars to listen to active practitioners.

Stop stealing from Judaism.

Stop stealing from Vodou.

Stop stealing from Brujeria. 

Stop stealing from things that do not belong to you.

Hey as someone who works with Greek gods,butis alsoPOC,Native Americanand raised practicingBrujeriabecause it’s a part of my culture:

When I say “I believe x god wants to work with you because you’re drawn to them.”

I’m ONLY talking about the Greek gods becausethey are not a part of any closed practices! This is why I don’t talk about the other gods a part of my closed Native American practice who I do work with but are not for others to take and run with.

THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO CLOSED PRACTICES!

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garconniere:

Cultural Appropriation: A conversationbySanaa Hamid

This body of work is an exploration of the extent of cultural appropriation and encourages a discussion about it. I give the appropriator and the appropriated the opportunity to defend themselves and create a dialogue between them, while maintaining a neutral stance myself. I am not attacking those who appropriate, merely educating and creating awareness. Neutrality is key in this series, as i remove myself from my political and social status and opinions, stripping the problem to the most basic issue; taking an item that means a great deal to somebody and corrupting it.


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Re: cultural appropriation

It’s common to see comment threads where people note that second-generation immigrants are often the ones most offended by cultural appropriation, whereas first-generation immigrants or people that grew up in their cultural homeland are happy when foreigners want to experience aspects of their culture. Underneath that sentiment is the feeling that the offense taken by second-generation immigrants should be taken less seriously because they didn’t grow up in that culture. But…that’s exactly why cultural appropriation is such a sore point – we didn’t get to grow up in our family’s culture. We straddle two identities. We grew up in places that mocked the weird food we brought to school, the weird clothes we wore, the weird traditions we celebrated. Then when we went to visit extended family, we found that they didn’t accept us either; we were foreign there, too. So when people readily consume the culture that was denied to us – suddenly, our weird food is cool and our weird clothes are ethnic – it hurts.


Re: not eating animals

When discussions about veganism and the commodification of animals devolve into metaethics, it’s interesting how far people will go to justify a few minutes of palatal pleasure.


Re: reacting to asexuality

I’ve told a few people that I’m asexual and I’ve found all of my interactions to be largely positive. Reactions have ranged from immediate acceptance of it as a non-thing to long conversations about the difference between sexual and romantic attraction. For a while, I took questions like “what if you haven’t found the right person yet?” and “how can you be sure?” as indicative of skepticality or erasure of asexuality, but now I see them as indications of curiosity and care. They open up dialogue for me to explain what asexuality broadly means, and what it personally means to me. One of my favorite reactions was from my mom who asked, “are you okay with it?” It showed a level of empathy that I didn’t expect, and showed how much she cares about my own comfort and acceptance of myself. She didn’t question it, but questioned how I felt about it. I can’t describe how much that meant to me. Now, I really like it when people ask questions because it shows that they want to understand me better.

I understand the concept of racial fetishism, but I fail to see why it’s problematic.

So a white guy likes asian women because they’re asian (and thus he associates them with stereotypes like submissiveness and softness etc) and he likes manga and schoolgirls and japanese culture etc. And he wants a gf who looks east asian… so what ?

It’s not that he doesn’t care about these women or doesn’t see their humanity, it’s just that he likes their appearance. And he’s not appropriating the culture or doing anything disrespectful, he just has a preference when it comes to his romantic partners.

Before multiculturalism was a thing, people could say “I prefer blonde girls, I prefer girls with big thighs, I don’t like skinny, I like brown-hair, I like a submissive girl, I like an assertive girl” but now that different people live together and cultures mix together, it’s somehow innapropriate to say “I prefer Japanese girls, or Latinas, or "I don’t wanna date within this particular ethicity”. Why ?

I love Trader Joe’s, don’t get me wrong. And right now I live next-door to one, which certainly makes day-to-day planning a big convenience. But my family didn’t shop there much growing up - it didn’t carry bags of rice large enough or offer discount gotta-go frozen meats or stock industrial jugs of Kikkoman; and honestly we thought of it as “fancy” (in fact, we thought of a trip there as a special treat and one time my sister was asked what her favorite restaurant was and she responded “Trader Joe’s”). 

Times have changed, obviously. As Trader Joe’s has expanded, the prices have gotten more reasonable and they’ve started including more cultural foods to reflect changing palates and demographics - though their shoyu sucks (and comes in some tiny ass bottle….like is it for dollhouses????) - which seems nice and inclusive in a lot of ways. But I have to admit I definitely paused when I saw generically boxed Mochi Cake Mix, something I grew up calling Butter Mochi that was made by my mom from scratch, being sold to the exact kind of people who looked at me like I was eating a greasy slab of rubber when I was a kid. And I felt that same feeling creep up again when I saw the Chili Lime Flavored Rolled Corn Chips….which are just basically Takis Fuego but packaged to be more approachable to white people, I’m guessing. 

So. I’m just gonna go ahead and share the “original” version of some of these TJ’s products because I think it’s just as good to support the companies or the groups that have been making and enjoying this stuff for years, as it is your favorite grocery chain.


Mochi Cake Mix < Hawaii’s Best Hawaiian Butter Mochi Mix

image

While Butter Mochi requires only mochiko, eggs, butter, sugar, and milk - you can always opt for the mix from Hawaii’s Best which has been pumping out variations on the ono treat (and other local desserts like kulolo and haupia) for years. Not to mention, it’s a Hawaii based company that employs local Hawaiians during a time of financial decline for native Hawaiians in their own homeland. You can buy it from Hawaii’s Best directly, but it’s also available on Amazon or, even better, on Snack Hawaii (another family owned and operated company that has been selling local goods out of Hilo for 25 years). And - shameless plug - I’ve been buying from Snack Hawaii for a long time, so if you need a discount link, HMU.


Chili & Lime Flavored Rolled Corn Tortilla Chips < Takis Fuego

image

The company that makes Takis was founded in 1978 and has been pumping these guys out in different flavors since then. And while Trader’s only offers one flavor, the Takis from your local convenience store come in Fuego, Guacamole, Fajita, and Nitro. The company was founded in Lerma Municipality, Mexico, but has since moved to the US. And for me, this is less of a “support your local company” plea (because Barcel is a big corporation) but more of a “support your local culture” plea. Takis is one of those foods that has existed for a long time in specific cultural circles and so, gets looked down on as a marker of being poor or lower class. Which is utter bullshit and which makes the TJ’s version feel like gentrification in snack form. So instead of buying the “safe” version, maybe instead broaden your horizons and support your local Northgate Marketplace, and grab some homemade tamales or visit the panaderia while you’re there? Also, hot tip, Takis cost $1 while the Trader’s version will set you back $3.99. 

P.S. If you’re going to say “but Takis have MSG,” please allow me to educate you on how the fear ofMSG is a racistand xenophobic myth


Amba Fermented Mango Sauce < Galil Pickled Mango

image

So this one specifically depends on if you’re looking for Indian, Israeli, or Middle Eastern Amba and Trader Joe’s doesn’t really specify which one they’re aiming for here. But Galil has been selling their Amba since 1985 and has been family-owned and run since then. Their Amba is also Kosher, and you can buy it on Amazon as well as this awesome site called Super Kacher that specializes in Middle Eastern and Israeli specialty food. If you want a more Indian Amba, try Ship Brand, which has been made by Poonjiaji’s Spices in Mumbai since 1883. The bottle looks crazy generic and if you live in LA, can be easily spotted at Bharat Bazaar at Samosa House, or again - available on Amazon


All this to say, don’t knock the originals because you have to go to H Mart or Tehran Market to get them. Maybe you haven’t been to those places before or maybe you just don’t have time to hit two markets (in which case, I have provided you with links for online shopping) - but give the cultures that have provided fodder for your favorite chain a fighting chance to prove why they were good enough to be appropriated in the first place.

A comic panel filled with horizontal bands representing skin tones ranging from beige to a dark brown has a white question mark in its center. There is black text above and below this panel reading: "It was still racist... even if you didn't know."
Another comic panel filled with horizontal bands representing skin tones ranging from beige to a dark brown has a white toothy grin at its center. There is black text above and below this panel reading: "It was still racist... even if you meant well."
A third comic panel filled with horizontal bands representing skin tones ranging from beige to a dark brown has a white checkmark at its center. There is black text above and below this panel reading: "It was still racist... even if you thought it was fine."
A fourth comic panel filled with horizontal bands representing skin tones ranging from beige to a dark brown has only black text in its center reading: "If racism was dependent on intent, few people would be complicit. And ignorance wouldn't fuel it."
A fith and final comic panel filled with horizontal bands representing skin tones ranging from beige to a dark brown has only black text in its center reading: "But racism is a system. Its not the sailors, its the whole sea. No matter your intent, you are responsible for your impact in this system."

Intent over Impact. Responsibility over abdication. Growth over fragility.

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