Things happening these days:
A college apologizes for hosting a Mexican themed dining night.
A Canadian college cancels its yoga classes because they might be ‘culturally insensitive’.
These acts are conducted under the umbrella of fighting ‘cultural appropriation’.
Now, the term ‘cultural appropriation’ has a fatal flaw. Its definition currently stands that the negative connotations of the act are only applicable in the case of a dominant culture utilizing any trappings of a less dominant one. To simplify in most cases, anything a white-skinned person does might be said to be cultural appropriation. But nothing a non-white does can, because in most cases they’ve been oppressed.
The notion that one life, or one opinion, one culture or one skin colour is somehow on a different exemption-level to another is fundamentally WRONG. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard to grasp, after all these years. And the irony that this very tenet is the value supposedly being defended would be funny if it weren’t tragic.
Some who tout the virtues of fighting cultural appropriation are superficially well-meaning. Don’t make fun of people or belittle them. Fair enough. That's just a rule in life, though, called 'being decent', and hardly needs categorizing any further. Here’s a fairly well-reasoned ‘for’ article. However, the problem is still this fundamental knickers-in-a-twist state of insisting that the oppressed (past or present) are on a different moral plane than the oppressors, and different laws apply.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
Apart from this obvious imbalance, there are two major problems.
But how about Indians eating chilies? Or potatoes? Or tomatoes? Or corn products? Oops. Or non-Africans drinking coffee? In fact let’s leave the entire food issue alone because most of the globe would starve immediately. Or how about countries that are both oppressed and oppressors at various times? Can a Mongolian learn Karate without offending anyone? How about two oppressive cultures appropriating from each other? May an English person wear Lederhosen? Is it OK for the Portuguese to eat Danish pastries?
So who should we blame? Because we love the blame game. ‘Not I, said the cat.’ Should we blame the twisted-knickers brigade, of either well-intentioned or the plain bullying variety? Should we blame the catering company who host Mexican fiesta days, without the credentials of Mexican heritage?
No. We should blame ourselves. You, the reader, who has taken the trouble to read nearly 600 words on the subject. We let this happen. We allow deans of universities to be forced to resign because they refused to suspend students who hosted a Mexican party. We allow black students to expel whites from demonstrations supposedly against racism. We don’t stand up to it because we’re shit scared of being called racist.
Where does this supposed colour/race separation even come from these days? Who in a crowd of a thousand people can claim ‘pure’ descent from anywhere? No-one I know is pure anything. Where are these arbitrary lines drawn? If you’re expelling ‘white’ people, what percentage shade of mocha does your skin have to be to be exempt? Are we talking genotype or phenotype? Mixed-race siblings from the same parents can have completely different skin colours. Do we treat them equally or do we expel the one with the lighter skin? Do we ask for proof: birth certificates of the relevant ethnicity you’re claiming? DNA testing?
Or do we just go back to the principle that everyone is equal, which is what we were fighting for in the first place?
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. Heard that one before?
A college apologizes for hosting a Mexican themed dining night.
A Canadian college cancels its yoga classes because they might be ‘culturally insensitive’.
These acts are conducted under the umbrella of fighting ‘cultural appropriation’.
Now, the term ‘cultural appropriation’ has a fatal flaw. Its definition currently stands that the negative connotations of the act are only applicable in the case of a dominant culture utilizing any trappings of a less dominant one. To simplify in most cases, anything a white-skinned person does might be said to be cultural appropriation. But nothing a non-white does can, because in most cases they’ve been oppressed.
The notion that one life, or one opinion, one culture or one skin colour is somehow on a different exemption-level to another is fundamentally WRONG. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard to grasp, after all these years. And the irony that this very tenet is the value supposedly being defended would be funny if it weren’t tragic.
Some who tout the virtues of fighting cultural appropriation are superficially well-meaning. Don’t make fun of people or belittle them. Fair enough. That's just a rule in life, though, called 'being decent', and hardly needs categorizing any further. Here’s a fairly well-reasoned ‘for’ article. However, the problem is still this fundamental knickers-in-a-twist state of insisting that the oppressed (past or present) are on a different moral plane than the oppressors, and different laws apply.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
Apart from this obvious imbalance, there are two major problems.
- Take it to its logical conclusion. We’ll say because of the ‘oppressed/oppressor’ rule, it’s fine for Indians to wear suits, for Mexicans to use electricity, for Africans to use penicillin and for an Aboriginal Australian to play Bach. Even for them to play Bach liturgical pieces. (Ooh, see all the religious appropriation there? Might be termed blasphemy, desecration. But no, we’ll use the oppressed/oppressor rule.)
But how about Indians eating chilies? Or potatoes? Or tomatoes? Or corn products? Oops. Or non-Africans drinking coffee? In fact let’s leave the entire food issue alone because most of the globe would starve immediately. Or how about countries that are both oppressed and oppressors at various times? Can a Mongolian learn Karate without offending anyone? How about two oppressive cultures appropriating from each other? May an English person wear Lederhosen? Is it OK for the Portuguese to eat Danish pastries?
- The second issue is that the very act of cherry-picking a few victims, such as the ludicrous shutting down of yoga classes, serves as a meaningless salve to the dominant culture’s conscience. Shutting down yoga will do nothing to enhance the lives of yogis or practitioners in India. But it’s too hard for Canadians to stop buying cut-price t-shirts made in Indian sweat-shops by underage workers who die under piles of rubble when the sub-standard uninsured factory collapses onto them. It’s too hard to pay a fair price for what countries still rape off each other. But it’s easy to shut down a yoga class and feel good about having bullied someone into something. It’s easy to ignore the fact that all it’s done is make a few more Canadians a bit more stressed and made society a bit more scared, a bit more xenophobic, a bit more likely to bow to public pressure in the face of overwhelming moral evidence to the contrary – that’s easy to ignore.
So who should we blame? Because we love the blame game. ‘Not I, said the cat.’ Should we blame the twisted-knickers brigade, of either well-intentioned or the plain bullying variety? Should we blame the catering company who host Mexican fiesta days, without the credentials of Mexican heritage?
No. We should blame ourselves. You, the reader, who has taken the trouble to read nearly 600 words on the subject. We let this happen. We allow deans of universities to be forced to resign because they refused to suspend students who hosted a Mexican party. We allow black students to expel whites from demonstrations supposedly against racism. We don’t stand up to it because we’re shit scared of being called racist.
Where does this supposed colour/race separation even come from these days? Who in a crowd of a thousand people can claim ‘pure’ descent from anywhere? No-one I know is pure anything. Where are these arbitrary lines drawn? If you’re expelling ‘white’ people, what percentage shade of mocha does your skin have to be to be exempt? Are we talking genotype or phenotype? Mixed-race siblings from the same parents can have completely different skin colours. Do we treat them equally or do we expel the one with the lighter skin? Do we ask for proof: birth certificates of the relevant ethnicity you’re claiming? DNA testing?
Or do we just go back to the principle that everyone is equal, which is what we were fighting for in the first place?
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. Heard that one before?