Cultural Appropriation

[Somewhere_]

Okay, but how often will you encounter a situation were there are multiple ethnicities/races in the same culture? I think it's usually acceptable to "conflate" racism most of the time, or at least in cases where appropriation is a concern. Like, you have "American" culture which covers many races of people, but no one is appropriating American culture (which I think it too broad to really have much meaning anyway).

You are right- races often have their own cultures. And even many subcultures. Again, because of geographical barriers, such as mountains, oceans, etc, in-group preferences, interests.

But even if a has a distinct culture or tradition, then it is STILL not racism.

Culture: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively; the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group

Race: each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics; a group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.; an ethnic group

A race has a culture, but culture is not race. Race is not culture. They are not synonymous. Making fun of a culture is not making fun of a race. If you want to make cultural appropriation about race, you can't. Its just racism, not cultural appropriation.

 

[Rune]

The idea isn't that we're talking about entire cultures in their entirety, but about things that are specific and/or identifiable to certain cultures.

And yes, there's been a lot of change and mixing and all that in the past, but that didn't make it right.

What is specific to a certain culture though? Many 'specific' things that identify a culture now might not have originated from their own native population. Besides, what rights do you have to say that it isn't right?

Okay, let's talk about something specific: Spaghetti. It's an all Italian thing now, nevermind that it originated in China. Now, does this mean Italians appropriated Chinese culture? No they didn't! China was a superpower when spaghetti arrived in Italy. Italians adopted Chinese culture just like how many of the world are adopting American culture now.

In the end, spaghetti is just a bunch of noodles and I'd argue that it actually became better when the Italians got it! Tomatoes were a New World Crop, if Spaniards didn't bring them into Europe from Central America, and the Silk Road didn't bring Pasta to Italy, spaghetti wouldn't have existed!

What if cultural appropriation existed back then? They can't make noodles in Italy because it'd offend the Chinese, so no pasta forever. And no tomatoes too because it'd offend the Central Americans I guess, so no Pizza either! This will be what Italian cuisine would've looked like:

instead of this:

Oh wait, look at this miserable chef! Appropriating the toque from the French too!

People like Ainu, Ryukyuan, they didn't have their cultures appropriated so much as they assimilated into the larger Japanese culture. You don't really see anything from their cultures in the modern Japanese culture outside of Hokkaido and Okinawa.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about China. Yes, there was a lot of war and conquering and it's a big place with many different ethnicities. And?

And you missed the point. I'm not talking about Japan and China as a nation but Yamato Japanese and Han Chinese ethnicities. 'China is a big place with many different ethnicites', Wrong! China is one big 'Han Chinese' with maybe minorities here and there. There are 1.3+ billion of people in China, 91% are Han Chinese. This means that there are 1.1 billions of Han Chinese and .2 billion of everyone else. Most of what makes the Han Culture are appropriated parts from other cultures they conquered throughout the millennia. Western China for example, took many elements from the Xiongnu tribes they used to border.

First of all, cultural appropriation is defined as taking one aspect of one's culture by another culture. This is what assimilation is. The Ryukyuans and Ainu adopted specific parts of the Japanese culture into their culture, making their current a mix between their older cultures and (Yamato) Japanese culture. Right now, they're Japanese, but way, way back, they weren't. Back then, the Ryukyuans might as well be like Filipinos because they were similar to native Taiwanese people (who are the origins of Austronesian people) than they were to Yamato Japanese (who originated from the steppes of Northern Asia).

The 'larger' Japanese culture itself is a bunch of ethnic groups in it of itself, but Ryukyuans and Yamato-derived Japanese cultures are always distinct. Basically, if Ryukyuans became a part of China instead, they won't be a Japanese culture.

Now, let's take something specific again distinct to East Asian cultures: the writing system. They 'appropriated' them from China. How could they?! Can't they see how 'offended' the Chinese are towards kanji and hanja? It's despicable.

Speaking of writing systems, we're all at fault here too for appropriating the Latin alphabet from the Italians. What the hell, we're speaking English! Why aren't we writing things in Runes!

If you tried to steal a historical figure from Japan and distort it... no one there would even know, or care. They have enough authority on the history of Japan to dismiss you, to not take you seriously.

Isn't the whole point of cultural appropriation is that they actually care and their feelings are hurt?

The thing with guitars and such is that it's been years since white musicians developed rock music from black rhythm and blues music and we can't undo that now. Most of the people who first appropriated that are dead anyway. At a certain point you can't go back and change things. But you can affect things happening currently. We can currently acknowledge what happened in the past and recognize the artists who didn't get credit in their own time because they were overshadowed by white artists. We can use that knowledge of history to help guide us going forward.

Basically, learn from history about how despicable it was and to prevent something like it to ever happen again. Guys, modern world is cancelled! Turn off your TV, radio and Internet because we can't let the world appropriate other people's cultures anymore!

Also, most people who first appropriated are dead... well yeah but Les Paul, the guy who invented the electric guitars and thus the whole rock and roll music, died in 2009. Lived long enough to watch Youtube videos! Also, 'it's been years', is actually 60 years. When people talk about cultural appropriation are about things that are way older than 60 years. You speak about non-Indians wearing the Sari to be wrong. Nevermind that the appropriation might have dated back to the time of British India. Why the hell are you upset about it now?! Ditto with the 'spirit animal thing', Americans have said that ever since they weren't even Americans, I bet. If not, I'm sure they were appropriated long before Rock music was appropriated so shut up about them! It's the past already!

My brain cells are dying, sorry. But if you say not putting down the guitar is okay because it's a 'long time ago' then these other stuff were appropriated even longer than that. I could go further... sigh... but I'm gonna stop... Don't look up abaya because that was a filthy cultural appropriation of the sari.

Race is more than a scientific term. There is race as a cultural concept. Should there be a cultural understanding of race? I don't know, but people have it and it forms the basis for a lot of prejudice. You can't say "Race has no scientific basis" while people are still being abused and discriminated against for their race.

Race has no scientific basis. There, I said it. Science isn't something that exist just because you belieeeeve in it. People are being abused for their race has nothing to do with science. Science refers to the scientific method where you make an assumption, gather empirical evidence, test it, and make a conclusion out of this process which will be put up to peer review.

Race is unscientific, genetic evidence doesn't support it. Also, it isn't a cultural concept as you think. Race originated as a concept from one anthropologist using old-timey, non-DNA science to classify people according to political needs at the time. The need was obviously to show how Whites were more superior than the other 'primitive' races. This was the basis of racism as it is today: a faulty and bigoted science. Race as it exists now, in countries that recognize it, is merely legal fiction.

If race is such a 'science' why do countries all around the world disagree on what it is? With that, why are there countries that don't recognize it at all? I mean, countries do recognize ethnicity for the most part, but the White, Black, Asian, Hispanic world view is mostly an American (and Western) world view. You're judging race by how you understand it, not by a real understanding between all the world's culture about it.

I've lived my entire life in this non-USA country and I've definitely seen 'racism' but it's not about Whites oppressing people of color. No... racism is all about brown people oppressing yellow people. These people, taken into the 'American' classification, are all 'Asians' but in the faulty science that racism was defined, they were of different races (Austronesians and Mongoloids).

In that regard, Indians are 'Caucasians', White people are 'Caucasians'. How is it racist for white people, Caucasians, to wear Sari, an Indian, and thus Caucasian culture. How could you steal from your own race?! Oh wait, Americans call Indians 'Asians' and White people are apparently the only Caucasians around with maybe some Middle Eastern people. See how flawed this thing is?

Race is stupid, unscientific, and doesn't exist globally. How could you push a concept that nobody even agrees on what it is? I mean, I guess they already duped people into thinking that Europe is a continent but Race? They tried that and it's only a political tool now, not real science.

 

[Esper]

~*~

What is specific to a culture is going to depend on the culture. If we go back, war bonnets are specific to several plains peoples and nobody else, certainly not Europeans or others who eventually settled in North America. That is one example, but use it as a template. If something doesn't exist in other cultures then it is specific to the culture it does exist in.

Cultural appropriation did exist back then, at least not as a concept of perceiving the world, but we're talking about truly awful times to be alive for 99% of people. Disease, war, death, rape, oppressive religions, little to no sanitation, short miserable lifespans with no education, barely anything that could be called medicine, or freedom of thought and expression. It was just part of the awful landscape of awfulness. The idea of cultural appropriation is a more modern idea that's come about as we have a better understanding of cultures and how the interact. To be sure, an act that we today would call "appropriation" would still be appropriation if it occurred in the past, but we would not have called it that back then because we did not have the concept of such an idea.

But like I've already said, when something is so far in the past you can't "undo" it so I'm (again) not suggesting that Italians give up pasta or rock musicians give up playing guitars. Maybe there is some nut out there on the internet which is suggestion these kinds of things, but I am not. Most instances of cultural exchange are fine and I have no problem with them.

200 million non-Han Chinese doesn't seem like a significant number to you? That's more than the population of all of Japan, or over half the population of the United States. And again, whatever we today call "Han" was constructed from lots of things in the past and I'm not saying that we should go back and undo that. I'm not even saying that the changes that have happened to Han culture over the last 2000 years are all bad. Plenty of the changes they've gone through have been perfectly innocent, either normal cultural exchanges or developments from within their own culture. (That's also not to say that they didn't do bad things, but that's getting too far off topic.)

Cultural appropriation is not defined as taking an aspect of culture from another culture. There has to be a power imbalance before it can be appropriation. Assimilation is a different matter wherein a smaller group adopts aspects of a large, more powerful group (culturally speaking) and the power imbalance there is in the opposite. If there is pressure or violence or threats against the smaller group to conform that not the larger group trying to appropriate elements of the smaller group's culture (in fact it's the opposite). So if China and not Japan had gained control over the Ryukyu islands a few hundred years ago then, yes, those islands would probably be more Chinese in their makeup than they are now, but on the whole you would likely see instances of Ryukyuan culture removed in a similar way to how Tibetan and Uighur culture in the far western parts of China today are clamped down on.

So when the Japanese began using Han characters (hanja, kanji, or whatever you'd like to call them) they weren't taking anything away from China. China still had their writing system, was still the cultural superpower of Asia for a long, long time. That wasn't a case of appropriation.

Most of the examples and arguments in your post are based on the idea that any exchange of culture is bad in the eyes of someone opposed to appropriation. That's not the case. Nor do people opposed to appropriation want to go back in time and undo all the appropriation of the past. They're concerned with current cases where people are having their culture appropriated.

The "point" of cultural appropriation can include hurt feelings, but it isn't limited to that. It's about representation, having the final say (culturally) of what elements of your culture mean. It's about not having your voices drowned out in a sea of people who don't know the meaning of your culture speaking or acting like they're authorities. It's about not being erased from history when an incorrect narrative of an element of your culture comes to supersede the one that you and your culture have.

I should also point out that I didn't say that it was wrong for non-Indians to wear saris. That was someone else's example that I was referencing to explain my points.

The point about race is, you can say it has no scientific basis (which is true in the common sense of race, and sort of true depending on exactly how you define race), but us people in the real world see race as a thing that exists and it informs many of our views (and prejudices) and that cultural idea of race can't be ignored because it forms such a strong part of people's worldviews.

 

[Rune]

Cultural appropriation is not defined as taking an aspect of culture from another culture. There has to be a power imbalance before it can be appropriation. Assimilation is a different matter wherein a smaller group adopts aspects of a large, more powerful group (culturally speaking) and the power imbalance there is in the opposite. If there is pressure or violence or threats against the smaller group to conform that not the larger group trying to appropriate elements of the smaller group's culture (in fact it's the opposite). So if China and not Japan had gained control over the Ryukyu islands a few hundred years ago then, yes, those islands would probably be more Chinese in their makeup than they are now, but on the whole you would likely see instances of Ryukyuan culture removed in a similar way to how Tibetan and Uighur culture in the far western parts of China today are clamped down on.

Most of the examples and arguments in your post are based on the idea that any exchange of culture is bad in the eyes of someone opposed to appropriation. That's not the case. Nor do people opposed to appropriation want to go back in time and undo all the appropriation of the past. They're concerned with current cases where people are having their culture appropriated.

The "point" of cultural appropriation can include hurt feelings, but it isn't limited to that. It's about representation, having the final say (culturally) of what elements of your culture mean. It's about not having your voices drowned out in a sea of people who don't know the meaning of your culture speaking or acting like they're authorities. It's about not being erased from history when an incorrect narrative of an element of your culture comes to supersede the one that you and your culture have.

I should also point out that I didn't say that it was wrong for non-Indians to wear saris. That was someone else's example that I was referencing to explain my points.

Alright, I'm gonna trim this post down and reorganize a bit to which I think are your main points. Erhmm... correct me if I'm wrong but there has to be a power imbalance for cultural appropriation to happen. Alright, and then it's also about representation and having the final say about your culture so that it isn't drowned out by the voices of people misrepresenting it.

Now, from all these statements. All I can say is, they're very Western-centric concepts that are all about preserving culture. Not only that, it's a very 'modern' way of thinking too, but it doesn't mean a 'better' way of thinking. More on this later.

First of all, power imbalance. You see, culture seems like something very important now but if we go way back, culture meant very little to people. There's a reason why assimilation happened and sometimes, the direction of power mattered less than the exchange itself. The following is a little bit of history about how we got the Arabic culture. It's a long read but I think it explains why the power imbalance thing isn't an argument.

As we look at how big the Arab World is. Isn't it amazing that all of that happened within a span of very short years of conquest by the Arab Bedouin tribes against the two superpowers at the time, the Persian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire? Still, It would be stupid to say that Persians adopted some Arabic customs because the Arabs were more powerful than them (even though they lost the war but that was neither here nor there). In fact, look at the map and Iran isn't part of the Arab culture.

The Iranians, willingly adopted some of the customs of their Arab conquerors... and that was to the expense of their own culture. You don't see Iranians being Zoroastrians anymore. They adopted Arabic clothing, instead of the distinct Persian garment like you'd see Xerxes wear in the 300. In fact, there are barely any Zoroastrian temples anymore, I'm pretty sure their destruction would've involved the Persians themselves.

Now, the Arab conquest wasn't the first time Persia was conquered. We all know about Alexander the Great and then after the Arab conquest, the Mongols conquered them again. Yet from all of these conquests, the only time they decided to appropriate another culture was from the Arabs, despite the fact that they saw them as nothing but desert brigands. The Mongols who settled in Persia would later adopted these Arabic-influenced Persian culture, one of them was Tamerlane whose descendants conquered India as the founders of the Mughal (Mongol) Empire, that were Iranian culture-wise...

From all of these... which would be assimilation and which would be appropriation? The Persians, though lost the war against the Muslims, didn't need to actually adopt the practices of the conquerors. They were a superpower, and in fact, they showed it right away when they supported Ali ibn Abi Thalib when the Islamic Caliphate was split into two, creating the Sunni, Shia split. But never in all of these did Zoroastrianism factored in anywhere. Really, when Muawiyah rebelled from the Caliphate, why did they support the Caliphate instead of idk, maybe breaking off and declared that Zoroastrianism was the true religion and Persian culture was superior to the Arabs?

But wait, they were conquered so they were weak and they assimilated? The Sassanid Zoroastrian Persian Empire conquest was complete in 651 and three more years for muslims to consolidate power there. The First Fitna, aka when the Muslim World was in disarray and very vulnerable, happened in 656. Mere five years after they were conquered. By then, traditional Persian culture and Zoroastrianism = poof gone! It's still a very interesting topic to this day about what happened with the Persian culture since they were definitely one of the world's oldest and powerful culture at the time, forever altered when they decided to adopt some Arabic customs who were, in their eyes mind you, desert brigands.

If we're talking about power imbalance, wouldn't they be appropriating Arabic culture than assimilating? Even today, the Iranian culture is still very distinct to Arabic. However, their culture isn't all about Zoroastrianism, Saoshyant, God-Kings who married their siblings, communicating to their God through fire. No, they are Shia muslims. Which is pretty distinct from the mainstream Sunni with the major difference that they revere Ali ibn Abi Thalib as a very important figure.

This is just one part of the cultural conversion that happened during this time. Remember the Eastern Roman Empire? Yeah, the territories that got conquered also did the Arabification the Persians did. Many of these peoples were Greek but we all know them as Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian... Arabs. I guess it is a more normal assimilation thing than the Persians with one little problem: They were the ones who started the First Fitna in the first place.

Muawiya was the Emir of Syria. Along with his relative in Egypt, started a rebellion against the Islamic Caliphate for revenge of the murder of his kin, Usman bin Affan by the Egyptian delegation (aka ISIS v.1.0). Many historians said that the First Fitna was the continuation of the ERE vs Persia perpetual war but this time, under Muslim rule. I... do not understand this at all. How could conquered peoples, with thousands of years of culture, hundreds of years of fighting each other, suddenly found themselves conquered by a less powerful culture, fight each other again but this time, they don't even care about their old cultures!

Look, Egyptians/Syrians and Persians were the main fighters in this war. Thousands of years of culture, abandoned to become Arabs, all just in the span of half a decade. Now, we all know them as 'Arab cultures'. Isn't this an insult to true Arabs like idk... me? Aren't the true Arabs being misrepresented here? Nowadays, when somebody pictures an Arab, you might still picture a person from Saudi Arabia (a country which is ruled by a minority mind you, the Wahhabist are actively destroying Arabic culture!), Egypt (who appropriated Arabic culture and integrating it with Pyramids and stuff), Syria (who appropriated Arabic culture with their Greek/Levantine traditions, ever wonder why they're so blonde?), Iraqis (who appropriated Arabic culture with Mesopotamia culture, which already 'didn't exist' back then but somehow it still has its elements). The Arabic culture got totally altered after these other cultures started calling themselves Arabs. I guess we conquered them but still... it started as self defence!

Okay, I'm gonna add another paragraph here but just to correct your misconception about the awful 'past':

Cultural appropriation did exist back then, at least not as a concept of perceiving the world, but we're talking about truly awful times to be alive for 99% of people. Disease, war, death, rape, oppressive religions, little to no sanitation, short miserable lifespans with no education, barely anything that could be called medicine, or freedom of thought and expression. It was just part of the awful landscape of awfulness. The idea of cultural appropriation is a more modern idea that's come about as we have a better understanding of cultures and how the interact. To be sure, an act that we today would call "appropriation" would still be appropriation if it occurred in the past, but we would not have called it that back then because we did not have the concept of such an idea.

I see...

Well, alright I think I understand now.

Truly awful times for 99% of people. Where do you get that number? Maybe in Europe during the dark ages and the Black Plague lol. But that wasn't like, 99% of people. China had, and still has the most of the World's population. Remember the thing about them being a superpower? Well, they sure didn't have...

Disease, war, death, rape, oppressive religions, little to no sanitation, short miserable lifespans with no education, barely anything that could be called medicine, or freedom of thought and expression.

The great disease of the past was the black plague. It was terrible yes, but it affected mostly Westerners. Countries that took care of their sanitation didn't get hit with the disease as worse as Europe was. The combination of filth and urbanization did Europe in. Countries like China managed to contain the plague.

Rape was severely punished in China. We all know about how beheading happy people were back then. Again, the 'rapin and pillagin' thing were the times of chaos, not unlike the modern times of chaos we have right now either. In the peaceful time, rape was as uncommon, if not more uncommon than now.

Oppresive religions... China didn't have that either until the Yuan and Qing dynasties perhaps. Confucianism wasn't a religion as much as it was a philosophical doctrine like Aristotle and Plato was. It was more that they used this doctrine for political use but all in all, most of China was ruled by legalism than religion.

Little to no sanitation... Again this was the perfect picture of medieval Europe who forgot what bathing was. Native Americans were so squeaky clean, they thought the Europeans were... smelly. But sticking with China again, they never forget that bathing is a thing. They had rivers, irrigation, wells and a bunch of mountains giving them freshwater. Couple these with soaps (which had existed since Prehistory mind you), they were hygienic AND had clean water to drink. They also remembered to not drink where they pooped.

Short miserable lifespan... To be fair, lifespan was short but miserable? I mean, Angolans and Sierra Leone people nowadays still have life expectancy of 40 years. You're looking at this from a modern perspective where you see people living to 100. Most of us still live up to 70 years old and god, we're all stressed out and miserable.

And no education. Fun fact, the first university in the world was built in 859 in Morocco and first University in Europe in Bologna in 1088. All were during the Dark Age and in the middle of plagues. Also, you mistake lack of schools with lack of education. Mentorship was the norm back then, institutionalized education happened at all because Victorian Era people were all about teaching JESUS to kids. They were educated, just not in the same way we are now. Of course, this is not mentioning... China again, the country that had schools like we do now. Most people just didn't want to be a scholar.

Chinese medicine, though reduced to extracting bear oil and grinding rhino horns now were actually pretty good for their time. So much so that lifespan in Ancient China was super long compared to the Western countries up until the 19th century. There wasn't much war, at least not in the times of peace (which could last for centuries) but when it was a time of chaos, it did get bloody, like millions of people dead. It was the scale that the Western World wouldn't see until World War I but the peace periods... were still 100+ years compared to the Forever War Europe had going for them.

As for freedom of thought and expression, are you kidding? As far as I'm concerned, this is what's happening right now what with you pushing the agenda of cultural appropriation, which is exactly this. Freedom of thought and expression isn't restricted by whether your culture is more dominant or not, it's all about having the freedom to say your piece of mind without people getting all too stabby about it.

Arguably, we have less freedom than we did then, again, taking out the whole Papal Europe thing. China, once again, were all about the freedom of expression even more so than the censored communist China of today. Yes, people did get killed if they insulted the Emperor but for everything else, it was allowed. Just stay away from pissing off the big guy or your lord and you could be as deviant as you wanted. You know, this still applies to this day. Ever heard of defamation and libel lawsuits?

The modern world isn't inherently better than the past. Just because we're more advanced technologically doesn't mean we're better. There's a popular saying on the Internet that goes, 'You wouldn't want to live in the past. You were not born in the wrong era.' Well, maybe I don't want to live in the past at a certain place and time, but to call this period of time in human history is the best is very conceited and arrogant. I for one, would love to live in the Dark Ages, but not the 'plague-y' part, but during the Frankish Renaissance, when Charlemagne was crowned the Holy Roman Emperor. That was a great time and people still bathed and disease free!

Also, you can't judge standards of people back then by your own standards, it's pretty unfair. In fact, saying that the modern world being better is turning a blind eye as if places like Somalia doesn't exist. Somalia is arguably a worse place than many kingdoms during the Dark Ages were. They have little access to modern medicine, diseases like HIV, no government, mob rule... I'd prefer to live in Scandinavia during the Viking raid times.

The idea of cultural appropriation is a more modern idea that's come about as we have a better understanding of cultures and how the interact. To be sure, an act that we today would call "appropriation" would still be appropriation if it occurred in the past, but we would not have called it that back then because we did not have the concept of such an idea.

And this brings me to this last bit. 'We'... this is an exclusive we, right? I'm not a part of this 'we' crowd because I don't think I'm conceited enough to think that I have a better understanding of cultures and how they interact. And I don't recognize appropriation as a thing either so I would not have called it that back then, and I won't call it this now as well.

Remember that 'we' is more than 'you' and people who believe in this idea. Look, cultures are all different, and they have their own ways to look at things. That's what cultures are. Who are you to say that you have a 'better' understanding of every single culture in the world there is and how they interact? Why that instead of 'cultural appropriation', each individual cultures should just gather up, and say "Hey, we're the culture who are okay with this appropriation thing" and the others say "We're not cool with appropriation". There should be an app for this, and a website: Appropriation.com. In this website, you can find the database of every culture in the world, and polling data from each culture about whether they're okay with things of their culture being appropriated. Perhaps, add a section of 'licensing' some parts of the culture like maybe Sari is a Creative Commons thing where you need to attribute their creator.

We have the technology for this. And heck, we managed to do the Human Genome Project, this wouldn't be impossible. Just start a #ApproprationYes and #AppropriationNo campaign on twitter for every culture and BAM! We have the data! And this problem will be solved once and for all! Modern world and democracy, right? If we're so much better than the past, then this is what we should do. If this issue is important enough, then this is gonna happen, right?

I think this is a better way than the current 'safe space' imposing, tumblr SJW-ing, BLM protesting, or internet preaching method. I'm all about the solution! And of course, this is the job for the people who believe in Cultural Appropriation. Because unlike like 'real' marginalized people like the LGBT and Blacks/Women rights to vote, you are representing all marginalized cultures of the world. You can't argue for yourself even if you are a part of one of these marginalized cultures because, have you asked everyone else? And by 'everyone' I mean EVERYONE, including people not of your own 'marginalized' culture. Because as I've proven and you confirmed:

The point about race is, you can say it has no scientific basis (which is true in the common sense of race, and sort of true depending on exactly how you define race), but us people in the real world see race as a thing that exists and it informs many of our views (and prejudices) and that cultural idea of race can't be ignored because it forms such a strong part of people's worldviews.

You can't use Race as evidence! Look, 'people in the real world', or iLLuminati, Race as a scientific... and thus 'universal' evidence, doesn't exist. Race by your view, Illuminati's view, is that it is a thing that exists (in your head) and informs many of your views, which clearly, has no scientific basis. You think it can't be ignored because it forms such a 'strong' part of people's worldviews...

Well, so do religions. We're not ignoring religions, but we respect other people's religion as long as they keep it to themselves. Religious indoctrination hurts young, impressionable people. Sometimes, it might disseminate absolutely wrong view like 'Creationism' which, I'm not even talking about the POV of science even, within Christianity itself, people are questioning it.

This is what Cultural Appropriation is, you're actively disseminating false information just because people believe in Race. The whole foundation of it is based on Race, which is absolutely wrong, which is even worse than religions, which are at least unprovable than wrong. As I've said before, 'Race' only existed from faulty science back in the 18th century. Since it was begotten from science, just like how Creationists argue with the Bible, Cultural Appropriation crowd must argue about this from the scientific perspective which, as I've demonstrated, and you have admitted, isn't scientific at all!

Honestly... think about the ideas you're spreading, please. Gather proof, evidence, solid reasoning, purpose, and heck, just try to inspect it and really understand it. A tumblr post or a hundred, college bulletin boards, youtube videos, and people's opinions aren't facts. Look for the facts, look at the opinions, and always weigh facts more than opinions. All that I've said in these discussions are all a mix of facts, assumptions, and opinions that I can source from in detail should you need me to although I did put in several mistakes in which some were intentional. Most of your replies are assumptions about how other people feel, opinions and beliefs.

Now, I will give you one thing about the War Bonnets though. After Cultural Appropriation became a thing, some of them started to become offended with people wearing it. This isn't because of them though, it's because of Cultural Appropriation. The source of their 'offendedness' dates only to this millenia. Now... as far as we know, War Bonnets originated from Native Americans alone. But move over to the old world, you'll see just how...

If something doesn't exist in other cultures then it is specific to the culture it does exist in.

breaks down miserably. As I've said before, most of the cultures today are a mix of extinct cultures. In the previous post, I was going to talk about the Peranakan Chinese: a culture with no distinct traits that don't exist in Chinese and Malay culture but I cut it out because it had no place then. It does now, but to sum it up, you can't find a lot of things that are specific to a culture, especially old world cultures. I'd even say that War Bonnets would probably originated from any tribal headdresses that came before, and we still see in the more tribal societies. At one point, the Native Americans must have adopted it from another group as Native Americans were the very last people of the 'great migration'.

 

[Esper]

too long

Okay, I'm not going to do a quote-by-quote because that would be too long. Let me summarize some points of mine which I think are not getting across to you (which might be my fault, your fault, or both of ours):

- Regarding the "awful" past. The point is: People ON THE WHOLE in the past were more concerned with survival than we are today. Survival was harder then. Even in taking into consideration places like Syria, Somalia, North Korea, we people of the world today ON THE WHOLE have more education and information so we can afford ON THE WHOLE to concern ourselves more with issues like culture and appropriation.

- This is also why equating actions of the past to today's actions aren't the best examples. So I don't see why you went into a lengthy history lesson.

- Not all elements of a culture are immediate products of past instances of exchange/appropriation. One cannot claim that everything that exists in a culture is a product of exchange with a previous culture. Yes, there are lots of things that get borrowed, but not everything. And even if we are talking about borrowed elements, once a culture has put their own spin (so to speak) on that element it can become specific to that culture. That means there are distinct elements of cultures which are specific to a particular culture.

- To the above point, keep in mind the power balance among cultures. It doesn't hurt a powerful culture if a weaker one adopts something, but the same can't be said for the reverse.

- I don't claim to be an authority on every culture or to speak for everyone. I advocate for listening. If someone from a marginalized culture says that they are being taken advantage of I think it's worth listening to what they have to say. We don't need to hear from every single individual within a culture. A significant enough number of people from within a culture is enough to take their point into consideration.

- Once considered, if there appears to be a something of a consensus within a culture that an element of their culture should be respected better then those outside the culture would need a pretty good argument against that. (Personally, I think most often arguments against such a consensus are pretty weak.)

- Race exists as a concept in people's views of the world and how they think of race can affect how they act, how they treat people. Beliefs about race, however misguided, affect actions. I don't say I believe people should act this way, but I don't ignore that it happens and should be addressed.

 

[pastelspectre]

i don't mind if people use things from other cultures, as long as they're not being rude or offensive about it and mean no harm. i think people make a big deal about this, more than it should be.