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Cultural Appropriation, and the Art of Offending … Well, Everyone
American society, such as it is, has always been an amalgam of various cultural entities that come together in a complicated intermixing. From the very first days of Europeans escaping religious bigotry at home, and meeting Native Americans, this has been the case.
It is somewhat strange now to watch modern Progressives attack that basic American concept.
Cultural appropriation, such as it is, is a concept that has risen in modern sociology to explain the practice of adopting elements from minority populations into that of the greater society. As used by modern sociologists, it is distinguished from the concepts of assimilation and acculturation because, when it is abused, it is presumed that there is an imbalance of power that imposes some kind of ‘theft’ or abuse of the original intent of the minority belief system. In short, modern progressives view it as another form of oppression of minorities by the majority.
The ludicrous part of this is the interpretation of this ‘oppression’ in the context of the United States of America, especially modern America.
The modern version of the U.S.A., such as it is, is not a colonial power invading other nations and cultures to impose our values upon them. In every single example in modern America, we are discussing an interaction in which the minority is an immigrant class, who voluntary chose to become part of the modern American society.
Now, if these issues were relegated to how Native Americans were treated by invading Europeans, or by how slavery subjugated Africans, then we’d have a more relevant topic.
But that, is of course, not the real relevance of modern interpretations of cultural appropriation.
Modern progressives have expanded the meaning to mean that any minority culture is purposefully and willfully being appropriated and oppressed any time the majority of Americans willfully adopt and accept any facet of their culture.
Which is, of course, an insane interpretation of the initial intent of the term.
This past week, the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo started a new silly eruption in the latest iteration of the cultural wars. For those that are unaware, the historical significance refers to the date observed by Mexico to commemorate its Army’s unexpected victory over the French at the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Of course, in modern America…it is primarily a day to enjoy Mexican food and drink; that is true even among Mexican immigrant communities.
Apparently, the social justice warriors feel such joy should be suppressed as soon as possible. And it didn’t start with some random Twitter user either; it started with, of all things, a tweet from the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Now, in past decades, the SPLC was a serious warrior in the efforts of equality and minority rights. This tweet shows how far they’ve fallen. When a national organization is wasting their time chastising people who simply are enjoying themselves on a holiday, things have gone seriously awry.
Amazingly, this isn’t even the first time in recent years that a burrito caused claims of cultural appropriation. Last year, two White women were forced to shut down their popular burrito food cart in Portland, Oregon. Were they shut down for health violations? Or for lack of proper licensing? No. They were shut down because they had the audacity to research recipes for burritos from Hispanic women, perfect those recipes, and then provide a successful product to the public. For the extreme progressives in Portland, that was a form of oppression and cultural appropriation that simply could not be allowed to stand. How dare white women benefit from a cultural remnant of a culture that is not their own?
The most recent absurd example, of course, is the case of Utah teenager Keziah Daum, who had the audacity to wear…a Chinese themed dress to prom.
Any sane person would have just assumed that the entire episode was started by someone mentally insane. What possible positive result could occur by discussing the garment choice of a teenager to her prom?
But welcome to modern social media, 2018.
Once the issue erupted, it exploded on Twitter, Facebook, and later extended to the news networks. Twitter even promoted it on their ‘Moments’ page, which only fueled the fire. Other news outlets compounded the idiocy by reporting on the ‘major mass online criticism’ of the dress…barely noting that they themselves created the mass online criticism.
Simply put, this is another example of modern America simply looking for a reason to be offended. If these were actual attempts by perpetrators to cause stigma and offense to minority immigrant classes, that would be one thing.
But these days, it seems that it is a rite of passage among some: Find someone, or something, to be offended about; make it the cause célèbre; and then using the notoriety for self-promotion. The template has been repeated so often, one wonders if there is a written guidebook somewhere explaining to people how to create, and then benefit, from these fake controversies.
It seems many progressive social justice warriors simply can’t find enough real racism issues to focus on, so they have to bring up make-believe issues like this one to the forefront. I personally believe there are many racial issues that we as a society need to focus on (disproportionate educational opportunities, wealth disparity among minority groups, lack of access to adequate housing, etc)…but activists seem to want to waste their time and energy on these frivolous issues instead.
If the goal of these activists was to inform and educate, I might actually support them. But their purpose largely seems to be to first shame the individual in question, force them to admit some questionable crime against the greater good, and then use the entire episode to benefit themselves.
To young Ms. Daum’s credit, she didn’t take the bait. She refused to apologize, claiming that she was all along being respectful of everyone’s culture, and her dress choice was simply one based on appeal and beauty. Although progressives in the US didn’t accept that…actual Chinese in China did. Major Chinese news outlets reported that many Chinese were not only fascinated by the controversy, but actually applauded the fact that teenagers in the US considered Chinese style fashionable.
Again…intent matters. There was no intent here to offend the Chinese, or anyone else. It was an innocent choice by a teenager who was simply having fun. Like our above examples regarding burritos and Cinco de Mayo, these are innocent and playful interactions people have with alternative cultures. There is literally no harm involved.
It is in many ways similar to the recent outrage over the character of Apu from the Simpsons, which I have written about extensively. People want to be offended because bigots use a character that was created without any intent to offend. Instead of facing the bigots and their bigotry, people are displacing their anger at something that was never the root cause of the problem in the first place. Now, instead of a cartoon character, we are targeting margaritas, burritos, and prom dresses.
Again, as has long been the case with racism and prejudice, we keep missing the point. There are times to be truly offended, but those times are few and far between, and definitely are not represented in the cases presented here. Furthermore, wasting our energy and anger over issues that are not truly harming anyone only dilutes the true power of anger of the masses, when true prejudices arises, such as when people are shot or abused for their race or identity. These episodes do more harm than good, and the people using these issues to benefit themselves should really question their intent. Constant anger, in response to all things, is counterproductive.
The above Bloom County comic does as good a job of any of explaining this nonsense. People just want to be offended by the “offensensible.” Being offended for no reason other than to be offended. Be like Ms. Daum; ignore the haters. Don’t take the bait.
Published in Culture
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“American society, such as it is, has always been an amalgam of various cultural entities that come together in a complicated intermixing. From the very first days of Europeans escaping religious bigotry at home, and meeting Native Americans, this has been the case.
It is somewhat strange now to watch modern Progressives attack that basic American concept.”
Nice.
Essentially the rage against cultural appropriation or misappropriation -whatever your viewpoint – is a war on the “Melting Pot”. This should not be surprising that we have this cultural war against the “Melting Pot”‘s assimilation because assimilation often brings people, often people of different backgrounds, together in a good way. To your typical deranged Leftie/Progressive this happy occurrence is a bad thing. A very bad thing, indeed.
The Left you see, despite it’s high minded lofty and charitable rhetoric, wants much pain, a whole lot of suffering, gut wrenching violence , red hot animosity, boiling to the point of exploding envy and a explosively threatening discord to descend unmercifully on the American people. How else are we to foment our glorious Marxist revolution that will bring about the nirvana of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat? There will never be a glorious revolution if things are good. No, comrades, things must be made to be excruciatingly difficult if there is going to be a revolution that brings about our preferred “social change”.
This is very much what I would expect. I’m certainly not offended when I see pictures of Japanese people wearing cowboy boots and hats. I think it’s cool that some of them appreciate some aspect of our culture. I doubt that Russians and Finns are grumbling because Americans like vodka or that Tennesseans are upset that Jack Daniels is enjoyed around the world. Forty years ago people who wanted barriers to keep different cultures pure were called bigots. Now apparently that sentiment has gained credibility among the woke.
Seems to me we could apply that to most societies. For instance, the United States is older than either Germany or Italy, each of which is an amalgam of several to several dozen former states. Or if we look at India, what do we see? The Dravidians, the Aryans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Danes, the British. All of these (and many more) influenced India to become what it is today.
And then we get to China itself where there are fifty-six recognized ethnic groups. The largest, the Han, are supposedly about 91%, but some genetic studies have shown that many Han were of other groups either assimilated into the Han or of folks “passing” as Han over the centuries. So, it is not as uniform a culture as claimed.
As for the fellow who started this hue and cry, didn’t he do it in English? That just seems like cultural appropriation to me.
As with many things left, mission creep eventually blurs the original purpose of the cause to the extent that it becomes almost unrecognizable. Somewhere, way back at the beginning of all of this, intent may have mattered. But today’s reality is that, like social justice addicts, those obsessed with victimhood can’t just stop.
Sooner or later a white man can’t eat spring rolls because white liberals think he might offend some Chinamen in China. By the way, can I say Chinamen? After all, I have 0.008% of Chinese blood in me.
I’ll play devil’s advocate-a little; when I was kid, the Catholic bulletins and newsletters always decried what St. Patrick’s Day had become, a spectacle of rowdiness and mass drunkenness. In truth, the American Irish now have mixed feelings about the holiday, as it’s an excuse for every ethnic group to act as bad as they presume we do. The “sainthood” aspect gets buried in advertising promotions–“Tis Time for The Sharing o’ the Green!”, leprechauns pitching tires, Chevies, and cases of Bud and Miller.
Do we make a Federal case out of it? No. But I can understand how many Latinos–far from all of them–have become sick and tired of what I’ve seen described as “Cinco de Drinko”. That’s not political correctness coming from them. The PC comes from the (almost always white) activist.
I think there is some truth to that. And as I said in the piece, if this was about educating people about what they have wrong about holidays, etc…that I would support. If Mexicans were really angry about Cinco de Mayo (and honestly, I spent the whole afternoon drinking with a bunch of Mexican and Hispanic friends that day, not one of whom was angry about anything), and they wanted to teach people, that’s cool.
But the Twitter mobs are just dumb.
TS;CR.
I’m waiting for the day when “the masses” simply react with a shrug. With “microaggressions” like these forever filling the news, it’s got to happen reasonably soon.
The idea that America and the rest of the West are a powder keg in search of a match is an old Bolshevik one. Get back to me when American poor are famished. Fake “issues” drive me crazy, and there’s way too much beer out there to drink.
God forbid that American culture should find something useful, fun, or tasty from another culture and seek to make it part of the whole.
No. We cannot have different cultures casually mingling with one another over something so important as a burrito. (Be sure to roll the “r”s when you read “burrito.”) Such behavior might lead us to discover we are more alike than different. The next thing you know, we are making a friend from another country. Then before you know it, somebody will go so far as to – gasp – marry a person with a hard-to-spell surname! They might even have children – who aren’t all black, or all white, or all brown. (And it’s so very hard to label kids like that, isn’t it?)
If the unenlightened from different cultures learn to live together and borrow from one another, then how can the elite, righteously “woke” SJWs stay in business selling their philosophy of division and hate?
The most genuine culture of racism in America is the political Left.
And, as I recall, although his last name is Lim, his first name is Jeremy. And he lists his family name last, in the Western traditional, rather than first. Who’s doing the cultural appropriation here??
Cultural appropriation is a slip and fall act. I don’t believe any of these Twitter-addicts are truly “offended” by a qipao style prom dress, or authentic recipe burritos, or Hank Azaria’s voice acting, for the same reason I don’t believe the scuzzy meth-head screaming from the floor of the produce section is truly injured. Like the slip and fall artist, these folks are acting offended (injured) as a means to extract something from the alleged offender, or just enjoy the thrill of exerting their cultural muscle.
@raygunner Oh, you should believe they are offended. They really are. The real question is, how seriously should we take such silly, simple minded people?