Boston Kimono Exhbit removed over racism.

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Beneficii;

I appreciate you keeping on top of this issue, the Chinese making trouble for the Japanese was raised by Grebels early in the thread.

So did the exhibit get closed early or has someone with the Boston Museum seen better sense?

Its not racist, it just seems that people in Boston are stupid and don't know what racism is. Its like seeing Japanese dressing up as cowboys or greasers being racist, its not its just a fandom ffs!

This is just like watching Tumblr throw a fit over people wearing saris while the people from India were like, "We love it! It's an honor to our culture!" And Tumblr was basically telling them they didn't know anything and not to excuse culture appropriation.

It's gotten wildly out of control. It's like the SJW types are saying the minorities can't speak for themselves because they don't know better and need to be protected...

Yes, this!

This video has a pretty good look on the issues Asian-Americans (including Japanese-Americans) deal with, compared to Japanese in Japan, and the divide between them over this issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwoSYWIgV9Y

Egads this is racist toards white people, no its not it is appreciation to the culture. People are so overly politically correct and need to harden the hell up!

How so, from what I understand it is a museum exhibit, most people go to museum exhibits because they respect and enjoy art...not for carnival like entertainment. Not to mention a white women wearing a kimono and/or kimono like dress(as its not confirmed if the dress in the painting is even a real kimono or simply a robe styled as one)...is hardly a proper representation/symbol of japanese culture and the exibit was not meant to mock the kimono or the painting. So not sure how it turns japanese culture into a carnival attraction....just by letting people put on the dress/kimono/robe featured in the picture to have pictures taken.

I mean what is insulting about the painting...that implies anything like a carnival exhibit exactly?

What would be wrong about having a slide show of cultural art? it may be an easy way to show a number of works of art...in a short period of time for say an art history class or something. Going to the museum to individually look at works of art may not be practical in all situations.

SIDE show.

Not a SLIDE show! Lol! (though either one could also be the other I suppose).

A "side show" (for any reader who grew up on Pluto) is a carnival attraction, or a side attraction to the main three ring circus. Ergo something sleazy.

Whats being turned "appropriated", and turned into a "side show" is a master piece by a French Impressionist painter that happens to feature a lady wearing a kimono. Westerners are being invited to "appropriate" highbrow Western culture not Japanese culture.

Following up on this, I think these discussions are very valuable:

http://hyperallergic.com/223694/seeing- ... n-protest/

There is also this panel discussion on the matter, which involved dialogue among Asian-Americans, including the organizer of the protest Christina Wang, regarding the issue and greater issues such as the differences in views among, say, Japanese nationals in Japan, the Japanese diaspora, and Asian-Americans. A transcript of the discussion is available if you do not want to listen to it:

https://soundcloud.com/napawf-boston-an ... ia-america

I think these discussions have the potential to bear great fruit.

Japanese people often dress up as white people....It's called cosplay. So they appropriate western culture but WTF makes non-Japanese Asian Americans think they Japanese object to it?!?! They're probably laughing their asses of at us. *sigh*

Cosplaying as white people?

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2 ... -as-white/

BTW, I'd recommend anyone reading to check especially the second link, and the transcript if they don't want to listen to it. This panel had two Japanese-Americans on it and took questions from other Japanese-Americans. There you will see their opinion on the matter; as well, the opinion of the counterprotestors is well-presented, and I think they answer an interesting question.

It seems they're most concerned with the MFA's contextualization; they are not opposed to white people, or really people of any race, wearing kimono. Rather, they are claiming their right to question and speak on these matters, as they have been silent for so long.

Also on Japanese-Americans vs. Asian-Americans, in the interview the panelists make clear that there is an Asian-American identity because that's what they had to do. This necessity became very important in the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese man murdered because he was mistaken for a Japanese man, as the murderers blamed Chin for the Japanese auto industry depriving them of their jobs. Basically, white Americans largely do not know and seem not to care about Chinese vs. Korean vs. Japanese, etc. They just see them all as a mass orientalist culture. Asian-Americans are simply playing the hand they've been dealt.

This subordination of ethnic groups into racial groups was described by the panelists as a "flattening" of identities. They make clear, however, that this is something that white America invented. Indeed, history bears that out, with whiteness and blackness becoming important in the aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion, when the leaders of Virginia sought to divide and conquer the indentured/working class: Let the whites feel superior by lording it over the blacks, making the white working-class loyal to them, and bam! the elite can stay in power and do as they always do.

The history of white-asian relations is VERY different than white-black relations. And this goes back long before the USofA came into existence. Whites never conquered and enslaved Asians, but once upon a time whites were enslaved by Asian Turks and Mongols. The motive behind the Oriental Exclusion Act was rooted in the centuries old fear of Ghenghis Khan and the Mongol invasion. The fear among the white working class is that if Asians are allowed in, they'll take over and run everything and they will be our masters and we their subjects.

Whites have always viewed Asians as cultured people with an old civilization and moreover they begrudgingly think(mistakenly) that Asians have a more sophisticated culture than whites do. And THAT is the basis of orientalism: An admiration for cultures that are not only very different from the west, but in *superior* way.

Now the Japanese do not dismiss western culture as being lesser than their own, but find it just as exotic as we find their culture. But white liberals is the west never accuse them of cultural appropriation. But other Asian cultures thumb their nose at how vulgar and backward westerners are.

In any case, the Asian-American identity has no significance in Asia unlike the white American identity which has a white European counterpart. That's because Asians speak languages that aren't related to one another.

Sounds like these Chinese American panelists were just looking to get attention and believe that we hairy, white barbarians(by the Chinese emperor himself after Marco Polo's visit)have no business showing off a superior culture in our lowly museums...

Aside from the moderator, there were 3 panelists, 2 of whom were Japanese-American. Did you at least read the transcript?