Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
An Unexpected Gift: A Culture of Appropriation
Years ago I was told about a family letter. In it, a relative had asked another who was into genealogy about the family history. The letter began:
When a man steals a loaf of bread, one calls him a thief. When a man steals a kingdom, one calls him “The Conqueror.”
My antecedents are English. In that mix of my ancestry is included William the Conqueror and many of his companions whose later descendants became the Magna Carta barons. I am also descended from Vikings who were not filtered through France, Anglo-Saxons, and probably Brittano-Romans and Brythonic Celts if one could precisely trace these things back far enough. The language of the English is a mishmash of Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Viking-age Danish, and other languages from many cultures. Since the language started stabilizing into what we call Modern English at about the time my patrilineal ancestor left Warwickshire for Virginia, our language has added many words and roots from all over the world: Latin and Greek, German words like schadenfreude, French words, Portuguese words that the English found being used in India, such as “veranda.” We have stolen words from every culture where we found a useful word.
My family has lived in what is now the United States for more than four hundred years. We accepted foods from other cultures into our cuisines. We eat hominy grits, which was part of the cuisine of the Southeastern Indian tribes. More recently, we have taken in foods from other cultures: pemmican and jerky, tacos and enchiladas, spaghetti and other pastas, pizza, curries. We never turn down more food choices, and we make them our own. We’ve stolen cooking ideas from everywhere around the world.
I’m sitting here in jeans and a plaid shirt. England did have a weaving and cloth producing tradition, but jeans and denim came from what is now Italy and France. Plaid, or tartan, is usually associated with Scotland. Now, admittedly, another of my family lines did rule Scotland for several centuries, but they were a Norman or Breton family that had settled in England and then went north with King David. They were certainly not highlanders. In the other room, I have dress clothing, such as I shall be wearing on Sunday. All of my dress shirts have French cuffs. My ties, well over a hundred of them collected over the decades, are mostly made from silk, not a cloth native to English or American cultures. Some of those ties are in patterns that have come from far countries or have used techniques of production that originated in other than England or the United States. Others were made in foreign countries using English-developed techniques or American designs. For instance, one Frank Lloyd Wright tie was made in Italy of silk, probably using techniques developed in China and refined in Europe and the US. We have picked up types of cloth, raw textile materials, and processing techniques from every culture under the sun.
Other types of English culture? Well, there is Shakespeare. He stole from everywhere. The whole copyright thing didn’t really get seriously enforced until Queen Anne’s day in the Eighteenth Century; thus Shakespeare happily appropriated Greek and Roman plays, putting them into English and updating the stories here and there. While Shakespeare used the English form of the sonnet, the sonnet itself came from the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and was adapted by Henry Howard to be more easily written in English. Shakespeare also borrowed from English and Scottish history and myth, of course. But if there was a culture he ran across to steal from, he certainly took anything that wasn’t nailed down. We discussed the words above. He was one of the greatest word creators in our language. He used roots from Latin, Greek, French, and anywhere else he knew of to create words.
My forebears have left me an unexpected gift, a boon for the ages. Do you want to accuse me of cultural appropriation? You don’t understand. My culture is appropriation. If your culture is not English in origin, you cannot appropriate any other group’s culture. Not only will you be appropriating that group’s culture, but you will also be appropriating my culture of appropriation. Don’t appropriate my culture.
Published in Group Writing
One never knows with Mr. Camp.
Je plains les imbéciles.Oui, mais il semble que vous ayez copié cela à partir d’un site de traduction.
It sounded better in the original Mr. T.
Yep As they say, your ancestors probably went to different schools together…
It was once the fashion to claim prejudice and provincialism if Americans refused some foreign dish or art. Now the fashion is to attack use as misappropriation. This is similar to first denouncing America for causing catastrophic global cooling, then switching the charge to causing catastrophic global warming. Both of these streams are fed by the same poisoned spring.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the March 2019 Group Writing Theme: Unexpected Gifts. There are plenty of dates still available. Tell us about anything from a hidden talent to a white elephant. Share a great surprise or memorable failure (oh, you shouldn’t have!). Our schedule and sign-up sheet awaits.
March’s theme is posted: “Unexpected Gifts.”
Too bad you’re not within a hundred feet of each other! You go to Family Tree website and select the Relatives Around Me section. The person you want to find out needs to be doing the same. Within minutes, you can find out if and how you’re related to someone! Technology is wonderful!
Of course, that would require using that site. 😉
You could download the app and make it easier. I use it all the time. My ancestors came via the Star Chamber route. Stay here and die, or go to the Colonies.
Download the app onto what? A “smart” phone/NSA spying aide? I don’t have one. And it would still require putting in my family tree information for it to work and correlate who was related to me and how.
the 4th
@shaunahunt, Ancestry.com has some huge errors you should know. I never go there anymore. Quit about 10 or more years. I have been researching genealogy for myself and many others since about 1960. I have 17 huge binders of research materials, as well as about 4 large packing boxes of research materials waiting for me to sort and file. When Ancestry.com first started out they weren’t so bad, but then they started buying up all the genealogy web sites were people posted their family trees, whether verified or not. Now, Ancestry accepts any family tree with no providence as to accuracy. To give you an example:
I have a 5th great grandfather who died in 1802 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which at that time was Spanish West Florida. He left a Will, written in Spanish naming his place of birth, his parents first and last names as deceased, his two wives both deceased, and his two living children, living in TN. The Spanish recorder, stated that James was too ill to sign his name. I have copies of the original in Spanish, as well as several translations. And a number of people who witnessed the writing of the will as well as the death of the man.
Ancestry.com has picked up some declared family tree from somewhere AND has the parents, wives, and children all dying at the same time in 1802.
Don’t trust anything on Ancestry.com until you have researched your family tree for yourself and have providence.
Edited to add: Ancestry.com makes a statement that “because you found somebody” on their website, it verified that the information is true. Total baloney sauce.
I don’t use Ancestry for the basis of my genealogy. I use FamilySearch. It’s reliable. Ancestry has lost it’s easy interface and can be frustrating. FamilySearch is the one behind Relatives Around Me. Plus, everything is free.
@arahunt, you can use a computer. It’s website is actually FamilySearch.
Again, though, that would still mean giving my information to someone I don’t know and cannot trust as to their motives (or the motives of companies who may buy them in the future). Sometimes one is truly the customer, and sometimes one is mostly the product. I also will not be taking a DNA test, even though I would love to know the information. I can’t trust these companies with my precious bodily fluids. 😜
Amen. My mother has serious issues with the provenance of information in the family tree she has created. She does have the tree all the way back to Adam and Eve, though. 😲
Almost all those web sites are controlled by the Mormon Church, and they all interweave. Most of the data you give will give the church the opportunity to baptize your ancestors as Mormons. The Jewish community had to sue them to stop baptizing their ancestors. Going to some web site to gain information that you believe is absolutely correct, is a farcical, as you don’t have to do any work digging out information from courthouses, cemeteries, hitting up the National archives, etc. You are depending that someone else work is accurate. Few people know that the University in Greenville SC has an archive records or church minutes of every single baptist church from SC in the 1790s and the 1800s, loaded with marriages, baptisms, acceptances and dismissal, and one of my ancestors got tossed out for drinking and bad language. I only had enough time there to copy the minutes of one church, so need to go back and find others. One of the web sites that had marriages from a court house, when I actually went to the court house found other records of marriages they had missed.
However, I am a stinker for valuing accuracy and demand proof. Some of the states send a computer generated birth certificate, and I will refuse them. I tell them I want copies of the original birth certificates. Same with marriages, want the applications for the marriage license and the certificate. Same with Citizenship, want the application as it list the the place where they are from, and their family members. Needless to say, over the years I have traveled thousands of miles and spent thousands of $$. I’m too old any more to do that but I caution young people who are starting out, not to depend on social media and genealogy web sites for true and accurate information. Maybe you could use it as a starting point, then followup.
I forgot to mention that “all this is free” is a draw for the uninitiated. True genealogy is not free, nor is it easy. It is hard work and copies of the documents cost money. The clerks and workers in the archives need to get paid, some of the documents are very fragile and need special handling. Looking at rolls of archived film to find the documents can make you feel blind. Go into the Mormon Family History Center and start looking at rolls of film. Same with looking in Newspaper archives looking for a story. One of my grand uncles was the Coroner of a county in AL, managed to get himself killed. That one I tried to get the D.A. of that county to do a cold case investigation, but since the killing occurred in the early 1900, no chance of catching the killer and bringing him/her to justice so he passed.
This sounds like “cultural misappropriation” to me. Is that a triggering offense as well?
Abby, @She,I have a tough problem. I don’t want to be a cultural
apropprmissapproperson who does naughty things. But how can I be sure?In my head, my voice sounds exactly like James Earl Jones, who is as you know a colored man. Sometimes when I am singing in church, I catch myself sounding like James Earl Jones, and I suddenly switch to the tenor part, hoping nobody noticed.
But Abby, nobody else thinks I sound like James Earl Jones, or any other African-American for that matter. I’ve been told twice that I sound a lot like Don Knotts, who was also an actor but who was a Caucasian like myself. I’ve tried and tried to talk to my wife about this feeling that I sound like James Earl Jones, but Abby, she just laughs hysterically.
Am I just being too sensitive? Am I overthinking this?
Sign me,
Booming But Baffled in Ohio
Dear BBBO,
This one is quite simple to solve. Just tell your wife and all of those people at work and at church that you identify as James Earl Jones. Once they get over the initial hysterical laughing fit they will eventually begin to see your skin darken. They’ll begin to hear your voice change from Bobcat Goldwaith to the booming of JEJ.
Next?
For @markcamp:
I think my solution is much easier.
True, and more risible.
To those of you concerned,
First of all, the correct name of the church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Of which, I am an active member.
Second, and respectfully, the information you have is incorrect. I am not going to argue.
I have been doing genealogy for most of my life. It is an integral part of my life and my beliefs. I have been part of a worldwide movement to make records more readily available for everyone called Indexing. I know the work I’m doing is important.
And thus did the hilarity come to a resounding thud.
Dear Booming,
When I sing in the shower I sound much like Nina Simone. You just have to believe in yourself; you are CNN.
– Abbey, Dear
Just one thread in the hilarious tapestry, and it was a more serious thread anyway. We still have @markcamp “Don Knotts” to kick around.
Just watch your step. I have my service weapon, and will not hesitate to requisition a bullet if there is any sign of lawlessness.
Also, we are dead serious here about respecting each other’s religious beliefs, including the right to proselytize. It’s an American thing. I am going to try to make you all Presbyterians unless you make me Jewish, Catholic, or CLDS first.
Good luck with that. Given your background, though, you would probably find quite a lot in Unity. It was founded by a couple, and the husband, Charles Fillmore (second cousin to Millard), had an interesting and hard-headed mystical way of looking at the world. He would have made a great process and data modeler.
Proselytizing is fine but this is cheating. Even so I am determined to resist the temptation to learn more.