Do minorities actually care about "cultural appropriation"?

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Chronos, I agree that that distinction should exist. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, no one who complains about cultural appropriation as though it's a huge, offensive problem seems to make it. A white peson having dreadlocks, tattooing themselves with the chinese sign for "cattle" (and claiming it means "sacrifice") and listening to jazz music are all perfectly reasonable causes for violence,in their eyes.

There was a white lady in Portland who had to shut down her burrito stand because she was being harassed over appropriating Mexican culture.

But some observstions.
1. There are white Mexicans.
2. Burritos aren't actually Mexican, they are TexMex and not very common in Mexico.
3. Most Mexicans and Mexican Americans probably don't care if non Mexicans make burritos.

I'm Askenazi. I don't care who makes matzo ball soup. I'm just glad some of the markets around here do so I can go out and buy it rather than have to make it myself.

Go ahead, make challah bread and noodle kruegal and lox and bagels. A christian polynesian can open a "jewish deli" for all I care and it wouldn't bother me one bit.

If someone makes good burritos, more power to them.

i feel cultural appropriation make a lot of sense when you talk about it in a large scale, I remember a few years ago one of biggest Brazilian accessories brand made an editorial full of black culture elements but only white models... it sparkles a lot of debate over cultural appropriation, which seemed fair specially because it's a somewhat common portrait in media.

But at the same time, I feel a lot of this debate focus on an individual level which is just insignificant. Some individual can enjoy another culture and take elements of it, it always had happened, and many cultural elements nowadays aren't even "pure" or exclusive of one culture.

Here's another phrase that I hate.

"You are trying to destroy our culture and uniqueness!"

White nationalists say this all the time, but some non-white POC activists spew this sort of crap all the time. I honestly don't understand why so many people are so obsessed with "preserving their ancestral culture" or whatever. First of all, we are all individuals. Second, we all belong to the same species. Why do old cultural traditions need to be preserved?

Also, I've noticed that some SJW activists on Tumblr will throw around the term "cultural genocide" willy-nilly. I've never really liked the term "cultural genocide" anyway. Supressing someone's culture is obviously not as bad murdering millions of people. The far-left's misuse of the phrase "cultural genocide" is similar to the far-right and its use of the phrases "white genocide conspiracy" and "abortion Holocaust".

Overall, Tumblr is a cesspool. It's full of losers who rant about how they want to kill white people and males. Tumblr sucks.

I've never really cared. I'm white/mexican so I'm only a half-minority (or a super minority since there are probably less white/mexican people than white or mexican people.)

I pretty much mock the whole cultural appropriation thing, and I have sorta noticed it is more white people than minorities that are angry about it. It makes me think of "hey everyone, look how super-duper ultra progressive and open minded I'm being!" kind of "white savior" complex to give themselves some sort of pat on the back. I have come across a few instances where the minorities thought of it more as appreciation than a negative thing.

I think most of the posts in this thread are unduly harsh on the concept. When people talk about cultural appropriation, they're usually not talking about these vanilla examples taking inspiration from other cultures, or saying people should isolate themselves in some artificial cultural vacuum. They're talking about stereotyping or fetishising foreign cultures, or exploiting them for profit.

For example, the burrito stand that closed after being criticised for cultural appropriation wasn't criticised "because a white person was running it", it was criticised because she took the recipes from a Mexican woman and it wasn't clear that she'd received permission. It could help to think of it in intellectual property terms. There is anger that white, Western ideas are fiercely protected and considered valuable, but this protection isn't extended to other cultures. Hundreds of black bluesmen and rappers lived and died in poverty and squalor, but Elvis and Eminem took the same ideas and became filthy rich. (see later)

Similarly, it seems to genuinely hurt and offend many Native Americans when people reduce their culture to a feather headdress, particularly after they've been discouraged from continuing their cultural practices by American society. There was outrage when JK Rowling referenced the skinwalker legend in some of her writing around Harry Potter, because she was reducing a culture to one misunderstood folk tale and capitalising upon it. Japanese people have their culture reduced to geishas and kimonos without the surrounding context.

Mistress Weatherwax raised non-Brits reading Terry Pratchett as a deliberately ridiculous comparison. I agree that this isn't bad - Pratchett became phenomenally wealthy off his work, which is owned by him alone rather than being public domain. I am sure she would join me in expressing distaste if an American were to re-write Night Watch with all the subtlety removed and the jokes replaced with teen movie material, particularly if that went on to become the definitive version of the story. I know it's common for Brits and Anglophiles to complain about "Americanisation" (or "Americanization") when their favourite works become watered down in adaptation. This could be considered a form of cultural appropriation, but it wouldn't be labelled that way.

Regardless of your thoughts on copyright law (personally I'd like it to be dramatically loosened), hopefully you can acknowledge that we more readily attribute things to "the commons" when they come from non-white cultures. If you don't think that's a bad thing then OK, but let's engage with the substance of what people are saying rather than just straw manning them.