IMO something like this is edging towards offensive. Or maybe it’s just super tacky.
If it really happened the woman was quite obnoxious with the grabbing and shoving. Is this the kind of crap aggression that is happening on colleges over every little thing…if so…yuck and grow up. Who even dreamed up the phrase cultural appropriation anyway…who cares? Cultures have appropriated forever, isn’t the real term assimilation? Cultural appropriation sounds like a term that a group who feels they are a minority uses to explain why they are so very unique and should be “allowed” to be an isolated minority separate from everyone else and nothing about them should be allowed to escape their group status…and then also have the ability to complain about it if any tiny thing “escapes.”
I thought the tattooed bare arms of the White hipster sushi chef serving me sashimi at a sushi bar Portland was culturaly offensive. No respectable Japanese would sport tattoos. You can’t even get into an onsen in Japan if u have a tattoo.
This dude’s inauthenticity probably explained why there was too much vinegar in the sushi rice.
Wouldn’t her actions be a “macro” aggression that would have gotten a man kicked off campus for laying hands on someone else?
HRSMom…would have gotten him in deep doo doo.
No, Cali. We know what cultural appropriation is. We just think a lot of the examples are trivial and people need to grow up and focus on real issues. On the list of “real ills borne by black people in the US,” a white kid wearing dreadlocks is about #938 on the list and Kylie Jenner getting praise for big lips is about #1,276. Maybe let’s focus on crappy inner city schools, continued legacy of single parenting, insufficient training for jobs, discrimination in the work force, threat of being harmed by policemen, and gang bangers first?
@Pizzagirl 1. Are you a person of color?
- I acknowledged that the dreadlocks in this specific case is a big deal.
- Cultural appropriation isn't just a small issue. It sheds light on a greater issue. When people of color get ridiculed for something and white people get praised for "inventing" that thing that we have been doing, that's problematic. It's one thing to borrow from a culture and acknowledge the heritage. It's another thing to take something that has been insulted and used to oppress and then make it into a trend just because a white person is doing it.
Do I believe that Kylie Jenner is appropriating black culture? Well, yes, I believe her as well as all of the Kardashians do want to be black.
But in other cases, I don’t think that it’s intentional or purposeful, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t something worth addressing.
Posts #4 through #9 are all examples of people who don’t have the slightest clue about what appropriation in.
Paying homage to someone’s culture is different than appropriating it.
Hair texture and is not unique to any specific culture or race or ethnicity.
Comparing the invention of the telephone to black women being objectified and made into spectacle is beyond ignorant.
Are you familiar with the name Sarah Baartman? She was made into a circus freak because of her large butt and was routinely objectified and ridiculed until the day she died
Iggy Azaelea gets implants, Kardashians waist train, Jen Selter works out and all of a sudden 2014 became “the year of the booty.”
I think the young woman was wrong in this case, but that doesn’t mean that cultural appropriation is something people of color are unjustifiably upset about.
Black women don’t have a natural monopoly on big booties. If anyone gets credit for the bootie phenomenon it would be a latina, JLo, and booties were in long before 2014. Sir Mix-A-Lot released Baby Got Back in 1992. I bet you weren’t even born then, @CaliCash.
@doschicos Regardless, it’s something that women of color embrace, whereas for a long period of time, most Americans shunned that. I am FULLY aware that many people have embraced their large butts from before 2014, which is why the article calling 2014 the year of the booty received so much backlash.
Again, she was off base by going after the guy with the dreadlocks. He did nothing wrong and I personally don’t believe this was an example of appropriation. But there are some more blatant examples worth looking into.
@Hunt: “In my majesty, I decree that wearing dreadlocks is not inappropriate cultural appropriation, unless they are hair extensions. (See, e.g., Adam Duritz of Counting Crows).”
Or threadknots.
“Do I believe that Kylie Jenner is appropriating black culture? Well, yes, I believe her as well as all of the Kardashians do want to be black.”
What if they do? The Kardashians’ collective taste are just not of any importance. Whatsoever. They are flashes in the pan and will be answers on Trivial Pursuit 20 years from now.
So your feelings are butthurt (har har) that the beauty of a big butt was not celebrated until recently? And that’s oppressive, not just annoying?
I think you are giving waaaaay too much power to a fashion magazine’s statement about the year of the booty.
And then there was Michael Jackson.
Fashions and “ideal” body types come and go. The whole skinny, straight phase started in the 60s with the Twiggy look but there are plenty of time periods in history where a voluptuous and full bodied or curvy woman has been appreciated and admired more so than a slender, stick figure which was the rage pretty much only in the 20s and more recently. I still think your viewpoint is biased by a short time frame of personal knowledge when it comes to body types and body image.
The article you linked lost all its credibility with me when I got to this part: “the Vogue article cited a white rapper and a light-skinned, mainstream Latina as examples of “trailblazing” butt ambassadors”
Psshhhh…like questioning someone’s latina-ness for being light-skinned is okay?? Please. THAT is shameful. Besides, who gives a crap about what Vogue says anyway? Or what the Kardashians do?
@Pizzagirl @doschicos It’s called an example. And if reflects a wider societal issue. It’s not simply borrowing and exchanging ideas.
I’ll try putting this in simpler terms. Imagine you’re a kid and have been wearing the same magenta sweater to school everyday. It’s your favorite sweater, but people routinely insult you for wearing that magenta sweater because they think it’s ugly and they don’t like it. Somewhere along the line, a more popular person buys the exact same magenta sweater, wears it, and then all of a sudden people start complimenting that person about how they created the magenta sweater trend, and somehow, everyone forgets you were the first person who wore a magenta sweater. Now, everyone is wearing magenta sweaters, calling it the new trend, ignoring the riddle you underwent when you were first wearing it. That’s very literally an elementary example of appropriation. That’s how I would explain the basics of it.
Like I said, it’s very clear that there is a clear lack of understanding of what cultural appropriation is. Taking a stance on something you don’t understand is rather myopic.
No, doschicos is right. Different body types have gone in and out of fashion for years and years. You have been alive for fewer than 20 of them and you are seeing only a small portion of it.
Re your magenta sweater example. Guess what. Such is life. Some people will be deemed tastemakers at certain points in time. Sometimes it will be geeky to wear a Batman or Star Trek t shirt, and sometimes it will be cool because that’s what Sheldon Cooper wears or it’s soooo hipster and ironic. Oh well. I suggest you consider not making your self esteem dependent on the you-go-girl approval of others.
“Like I said, it’s very clear that there is a clear lack of understanding of what cultural appropriation is. Taking a stance on something you don’t understand is rather myopic.”
What is myopic, perhaps, is your lecturing of others that we don’t understand what cultural appropriation is when you don’t know who we are or our experiences. But thanks for your elementary magenta sweater example.
I think there are legit instances of cultural appropriation and misguided attempts to call some things cultural appropriation. We disagree on where that line is drawn.
She actually crossed the line into battery. He told her to get her hands off him and she then grabbed him again. Both times, that was battery.
She is lucky he is either nice guy or too dumb to know he could wreck her public record for life. She is not too bright in this regard as there are people who taught their kids not to not take that nonsense from anyone and one day she will run into someone who will ruin her life.
OK, I must have lost my senses, but with all this talk about needing to come together and integrate etc. is not telling someone that they cannot enjoy something developed by another culture just another form of segregation?
Not sure how telling people they cannot enjoy what another culture has created is any different than telling people they should stick to their own kind.
So interracial marriage is OK, but sharing ethnic clothes and hairstyles are not? This is like a comedy show - you can sleep with another race, but don’t you dare enjoy their food, clothes or hairstyles as that will make you racist. Seriously, this goes under the “get a life” column.
Does no one else see the irony (or maybe it’s just plain weirdness) in calling out a family of Armenian-Americans for cultural appropriation?