Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I must admit I don't see mexican themed parties involving tequila and sombreros as particularly odious...

Well there's probably a sliding scale, I guess. Of course drinking tequila doesn't constitute "pretending to be Mexican" any more than drinking gin and tonic constitutes "pretending to be English". Even wearing a sombrero, in itself, is surely not a big deal unless you're the sort of dreary prig who thinks there ought to be a special Cultural Hat Police. But I don't think you have to go out of your way to be offended by a white person 'browning up', wearing a stick-on droopy moustache and putting on a "White pussy! Black pussy!"-type 'Mexican' accent.

...but then I've got no culture of my own to appropriate so perhaps that's why?

I appreciate the deliberate irony here, but lol all the same.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think this is one of those things I'm condemned by my upbringing to not understand, or at least not be able to feel properly outraged about. The white privilege runs deep. I guess the only thing that separates me from Jeremy Clarkson here is that I know I'm wrong.

"White pussy! Black pussy!"-type

EH?!
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
What makes cultural appropriation a problem is the relative power balance between the people appropriating and the people who feel that their culture is being appropriated, I think that has to be mentioned first and foremost.

It seems to me that c.a. is about about people who have less power materially or culturally (in terms of making their voices heard) being further hindered by people from a group with more power taking cultural tropes and either: (i) using them for monetary gain in a way that crowds out the market and diminishes the ability of the less powerful group to profit from culture that they have originated, or (ii) using them for cultural gain, so that members of a more powerful group end up strongly influencing how the experiences of a less powerful group are viewed by the world at large (a warping of empathy, basically).

Re writing fiction - I think that literary types get away with things that others supposedly less intellectual would not. What if Eminem suggested that he was going to write a concept album from the point of view of an African-American - I wonder how that would be judged?

I wouldn't call blackface or similar 'cultural appropriation' at all tbh - it's just straight up racist carcicature, done in a spirit of mockery/contempt/patronisingness. I think Lionel Shriver is intentionally muddying the waters by choosing such an example.
 
Last edited:

droid

Well-known member
Shriver is a pox. Writes a white American family drama where the only black character is a drooling simpleton who has to be kept on a leash AND defends iggy azalea.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
The white privilege runs deep.
EH?!

Yes, I am fully indulging in the white privilege thing 5-6 days a week about 50 hrs to bring in the cash so In the process my taxes can be used to fuel college courses and build safe spaces and giving the brightest of the young the opportunity of being in constant alert mode regarding being triggered and being victimized by micro-aggressions.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yes, I am fully indulging in the white privilege thing 5-6 days a week about 50 hrs to bring in the cash so In the process my taxes can be used to fuel college courses and build safe spaces and giving the brightest of the young the opportunity of being in constant alert mode regarding being triggered and being victimized by micro-aggressions.

zOWspvR.png
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
What makes cultural appropriation a problem is the relative power balance between the people appropriating and the people who feel that their culture is being appropriated, I think that has to be mentioned first and foremost.

.

Fine and I agree with you and Droid that what Shriver is saying (and no doubt her fiction work too, though I haven't read it) is highly dickish. But... using 'cultural appropriation' as a critique is problematic itself and raises a lot more questions than it answers. From the Freddie deBoer blog post...

What defines the “relative power” of vast and complex cultures, when people claim that the problem is power imbalances? Given that any culture contains vast internal inequality in political power, economic power, social status, etc, what is the coherent meaning of a culture’s relative power? Is it perfectly congruent with the historical military and economic power of a given country? Is it simply an artifact of historical imperialism? Japan was both the victim of imperialism and guilty of imperialism. How does that historical complexity inform our understanding of its relative power? Do rising non-Western, non-European world powers like China count as appropriators or the appropriated? If the United States continues to decline in power relative to other non-Western, non-European countries, will it in time become a culture that is the victim of appropriation?

These are not trick questions. They’re not a joke. I’m not asking them rhetorically. I’m asking for actual answers, for a simple reason: if cultural appropriation is an immoral behavior that should be stopped, then it’s the duty of people saying so to articulate a positive vision of how to avoid that bad behavior. I’ve never heard such a thing, and I’ve looked really hard.
 
Last edited:

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Fine and I agree with you and Droid that what Shriver is saying (and no doubt her fiction work too, though I haven't read it) is highly dickish. But... using 'cultural appropriation' as a critique is problematic itself and raises a lot more questions than it answers. From the Freddie deBoer blog post...

Re the part of the blog you quoted - fine to ask these questions, but the suggestion that we don't know enough to give us a good guide to what cultural appropriation might be in most cases, is misplaced imo. That's because cultural appropriation usually happens precisely when there is a power imbalance -it's usually a precondition of the phenomenon, because it depends on one group riding roughshod over the will of another.

But then as said, I think I'm using a (older?) definition of what cultural appropriation is, that is different from the definition that's now dominant (and which to me seems to be unhelpfully unspecific).
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yes, I am fully indulging in the white privilege thing 5-6 days a week about 50 hrs to bring in the cash so In the process my taxes can be used to fuel college courses and build safe spaces and giving the brightest of the young the opportunity of being in constant alert mode regarding being triggered and being victimized by micro-aggressions.


Herr Finga is expressing himself in a deliberately inflammatory way, of course, but it can't be denied that he has half a point. This whole mad cult of safe spaces and no-platforming is a massive pile of wank, and it's negating the entire point of going to university, which is - or once was - to expose yourself to new ideas, broaden your horizons and maybe even learn some critical thinking skills. Not to cosset yourself in mental eiderdown for three years at great expense to the taxpayer/your parents/your future self. A culture that revolves around the idea of 'diversity' is producing a whole generation of graduates who think and feel exactly the same about everything.

I strongly suspect, or at least hope, that a large number of intelligent leftists are concerned about this, too, but are inhibited from saying anything about it either because they're employed in academia themselves or because the most vocal criticism so far is coming from conservatives. But come on, an opinion isn't bad and evil by definition just because it's being expressed in the Spectator.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've explained this before but safe spaces exist to marginalise people like you tea. White middle class men with an overweening belief in their own rightness, to wriggle out from the suffocating blanket of boorish 'common sense' ie the unthinking prejudices and unexamined assumptions of the shires.
 

luka

Well-known member
Boorish overbearing men who dominate discussion with guffaws and sniggers and appeals to what kpunk would call the big ovver
 

luka

Well-known member
All your rhetorical devices rely on this invocation of the Reasonable Man. I've pointed this out before. Steady on old chap, etc
 

luka

Well-known member
People who then justify their domination of discussion by believing it's a product of superior cognitive ability and 'critical thinking'
 

luka

Well-known member
Women's groups are safe spaces. Why might some women want an all female environment? Is that 'a massive pile of wank?'
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If women want to meet and talk in a women-only environment then that's fine by me. But that's not what I'm talking about here at all. I suspect you realize this and are just going through the old routine to wind me up.
 
Top