always-have-a-towel:
I learn a lot about things because of Tumblr. I hear about new things and am purposed with researching them and formulating an opinion, making me a more-faceted, more interesting person. But this is one thing I just can’t seem to agree with.
Exploitation, that’s wrong. But because I’m a white American, I shouldn’t have been allowed to learn Japanese martial arts? Or study Indian and Thai culture and religion? To adopt the most beautiful things from every culture, to live my life in the best way possible?
Many things from outside of my heritage have changed my life, permanently and for the better. Just because it isn’t called discrimination doesn’t mean that it isn’t.
It’s almost as crazy as saying that you HAVE to pick an organized faith and believe everything in it, good and bad.
I very much prefer cultural assimilation. Because that’s what it is… it’s about the education of people from different cultures to make one, larger, better culture.
This is an article you need in your life:
http://clairelight.typepad.com/seelight/2009/01/defining-cultural-appropriation.html
As a geek, I just want to point out the cultural context of the word you picked. Assimilation. You say it like it’s a good thing. Here’s a quote that many other geeks will be familiar with:
“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
And in defense of cultural appropriation it is way, WAY too apropos. Because it’s exactly what you’re condoning, though you probably didn’t mean it to fit so perfectly. Of COURSE you, a person of cultural privilege, are all up for assimilation. You’re the Borg in this scenario. You get to take the best and shiniest of all that you see and add it to yourself to further your personal abundance. We are the people it is taken FROM, and it leaves us diminished.
Cultural appropriation is stealing.
It’s not to be confused with sharing or cultural discourse, in which two cultures share and reflect fashionable trends; that implies a willingness of both cultures and equality between the cultures. Cultural appropriation is theft of important, especially sacred items by a culture that has the power to steal those items - because the dominant culture finds them aesthetically pleasing.
One of the greatest disservices that privilege does to -everyone- is that people who have privilege are led to believe that everything in the world is theirs to have.
Learning Japanese martial arts that are taught to you by Japanese people or Americans of Japanese descent isn’t cultural appropriation because this is a skill set that you are being given (or sold) freely by a member of the community. That’s a case of cultural syncretism, as discussed in the article above. When you study a culture using materials provided to you by members of that culture, when you enjoy cultural food or music or performance, when you enjoy a visual aesthetic etc you are not participating in cultural appropriation, but cultural celebration. No one is trying to take that from you.
It’s when you try to take shit that isn’t offered, including identity, that the record scratch and cold stare happens.
It’s when white people read books by white people about nonwhite people that turn nonwhite people into a hollow, exotified other, excluded from the ongoing conversation.
My culture will not fucking adapt to service you.