Big whoop if yoga isn’t practiced in the US 100% like it’s practiced in India. There are lots and lots of popular cultural things that have spread worldwide that aren’t practiced 100% the way they’re practiced in the home country.
No one loses sleep over Americans sipping cappuccino after 12:00 noon. God bless whoever came up with kimchee tacos. And even in Japan, you can get California rolls in sushi restaurants.
Germans may have invented Christmas trees, but they don’t set them up in November. Even the secular Chinese have coopted Christmas & Santa Claus.
The strangest case of cultural appropriation I can think of is St. Lucia. She was a Sicilian, Santa Lucia, and somehow become adopted so strongly by the Swedes as Sankta Lucia that most people visualize her in the Swedish style with long blond hair, the white dress, and red belt. Even the song is the same, with different lyrics and instruments. The Swedes rejected Catholicism, but kept a tight grip on Sankta Lucia! How did that happen?
ok I am of Indian origin - born and brought up in India… Yoga was created in India. So what? This political correctness BS is too much for me to handle. What the heck does cultural appropriation mean? Yoga isn’t just for Indians - its for everyone who can practice it. Good luck to all who can bend in funny ways - you will always see me look at you all confused. Me? Nope, I indulge in the great american pastime of Fantasy Football while on the couch trash talking my buddies. Will I now be accused of culturally appropriating what is American like Pie? This is getting ridiculous. Safe spaces, some lives matter something, cultural appropriation… I have not understood half of all this odd stuff happening around me. Completely missing any messages the PC police is trying to send. I think its time we turned everyone into numbers, I don’t care about your gender, race, orientation, whatever else. Just your grades and scores. Lets see what happens - these idiots crawling out of the woodworks have nothing productive to do so just bother us regular folks with new confusing agendas every year. Next year, they will be agitating about something else. I have truly had enough. I have liberal social values - if they lose someone like me, it is not good sign. I foresee a vicious backlash against all of these people.
Oh and by the way I love thanksgiving. I have told all of my friends that they cant have a true thanksgiving event without an Indian present (and i am the only Indian they really know so…)
So am I now going to be banned from thanksgiving events by the “Cultural Appropriation Police” because I am culturally appropriating turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and all the fixings? I need a lawyer. Pronto. Oops, I just appropriated Italian words. Tony Soprano is at the door indignant at my cultural appropriation.
My niece just had a baby this morning. She is half Jewish half Cuban. I texted a friend with the news and the name and my friend texted back what a pretty Irish name! Come to think of it, it is a traditionally Irish name. Is this cultural appropriation or just a pretty name? (Think something about as Irish as Maureen, though that’s not the name)
^^I think for your niece, it’s just a pretty name–but some Irish person may take offense. Years ago, one Jewish person I met (friend of a friend) seemed offended by my son’s Hebrew name (we’re not Jewish but lived in Israel for an extended period).
Defending culture would make sense if it were something with significant cultural value. For instance, if people got fired up on people wearing, say, hijabs or Native American headdresses as fashion accessories, that would totally make sense as to why it would be deemed cultural appropriation; the religious significance would be stripped. At that point, it would be like taking some other nation’s flag and stomping on it. That would be like burning a cross.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Yoga, if I am not mistaken, does not have that kind of ties to culture. Of course, another culture created it, and different belief systems do practice yoga. However, yoga in itself is not sacred or religious, per se. It lacks that kind of connection that a headdress or hijab would have.
I’m all for defending cultures, but honestly this is just ridiculous.
How extremely odd.
To the poster who said “People have complained about race and socioeconomic imbalances within the yoga community for years”, can you elaborate.
I have yet to practice yoga, but my friends who do love it, revere it, respect it, truly find it life changing. It seems to me that is the highest respect we Westerners could give. No?
I take yoga classes now and then-- even though in my current physical state I think of it as a mild form of torture–because my back benefits from the stretching. So far I have not noticed any religious component in the classes I’ve taken. I believe slowing down and focusing on breathing to have a therapeutic value, but that is not related to anything religious, unless one wants it to be, I think. There has never been any chanting in any class I’ve taken. At the end, most teachers do say Namaste, though. Which I confess, I don’t know the meaning of – I’ve always assumed it was something like peace to you – based on the atmosphere in class. I did google it after reading this thread, and came up with the spirit in me bows to the spirit in you. Those of you in the know, is that an accurate translation? Now that I’ve become aware, via this thread, that yoga is controversial, I’m interested in the history of it. It is so helpful, like physical therapy, for stiffness, helping with posture. What are the origins? I’ve never really thought of it as anything but exercise, with a meditative aspect.
We were discussing this at home, and dd mentioned that a student at her high school thought she was committing cultural appropriation (is that how you use the word?) when she sang a Japanese song dressed in a kimono at an event put on by Japanese language students at the school. The kimono was worn at the insistence of the Japanese teacher (native of Japan).
50 years ago I celebrated Hannukkah with my Jewish friend during her birthday along with a bunch of other friends. Her mom made latkes, we played dreidel games. We asked questions, learned a lot about some of the Jewish traditions. Opened birthday presents
. My friend exchanged Christmas presents also with some of her friends. Because that is what THEY did–
I happen to think her parents were very open-minded (her dad was the principal at the school). Their actions so long ago made an impression on me and has made me want to learn about other cultures and religions.
Learning about cultures and adopting, adapting traditions, philosophies, learning new things is what life is all about. It enhances the life experience. There are pros and cons to everything–choosing the good (what works for you) and rejecting what doesn’t work is a great thing and should be encouraged not condemned.
I think a (fuzzy) line can be drawn between adoption of elements of other cultures because we like them, and adoption of those elements in ways that show disrespect for them. Upthread, somebody said:
Of course, Madonna gets to do these things because this is a free country. That doesn’t mean, though, that she is immune from criticism if she does them in a way that shows disrespect for those cultural elements. Personally, I think some of her use of Christian imagery is disrespectful, using those images for shock value and to make money. Not everybody has to agree with me about that–again, it’s a free country. But I do think symbols and practices that are meaningful to one group can be appropriated disrespectfully by another group. You have to use some kind of reason to draw lines, though. I certainly don’t think that eating bagels and lox is disrespectfully appropriating Jewish culture. But if a non-Jewish fashion designer dressed models in tallit and other similar items, well…
Agreed, but then the question becomes - how do we “regulate” that? In the case of Madonna, those who are offended by her use of crucifixes can boycott her records, concerts, write letters to the music industry, etc. I daresay those who are offended (and I get their offense) would not be well received if they demanded that a safe space be created so that they didn’t have to look at it; I think most of us would say - the onus is on you not to look at it (by not buying Madonna records, not watching her on TV, etc.).
I still think the intersection of these “uncomfortable” ideas with the world of modern art is an interesting one, and how it changes the discussion if these are being done purposely as part of a modern art exhibit. I mean, I can certainly see Marina Abramovic doing “offensive” things - and getting paid the big bucks to do so.
I would be the first to say that government entities shouldn’t regulate this kind of thing. However, if you are deciding whether or not to, say, sponsor a yoga class, you might take this into account if somebody made a reasonable complaint about it. Or, for example, if you were on a church council, and somebody suggested holding a Christian seder, you might take into account how your church’s Jewish neighbors might feel about it. If you go ahead and do it anyway, those Jewish neighbors might complain directly.
Again, in my opinion, this case is about somebody who made the wrong decision in a case like this. In a somewhat different case, deciding not to sponsor something (the Cinco de Mayo tequilafest, maybe) might be the right decision.
Remember the Chris Ofili, Andres Serrano and Robert Maplethorpe controversies in the 1990’s? The art, academic, and intellectual communities were united in favor of artistic and academic freedom against the likes of Jesse Helms and other right wing activists who threatened to cut off all federal funding for the arts and who sought to impose “decency” standards on artists who directly or indirectly received federal subsidies.
I wonder if those debates would play out any differently today. As someone who is squarely in the artistic freedom camp, I would hope that the position of the academic and intellectual world would be the same.
(That being said, there wasn’t much nuance in those debates; you were either in favor of artistic freedom or a philistine. Or, from the other side, a upstanding citizen or a blasphemous pornographer. No one on either side seemed to find any interesting issues worth wrestling with).