Americans tied up so much of their image of a "good person" with not being racist, that when in environments with no way to demonstrate that they are not racist, they had to invent new racist things to oppose.

As a millennial, racism was taught to me in k-12 as being perhaps one of the fundamental forces of evil in the world; kind of an analog to what Christian students learn about Satan. As a result, people in my generation have moral codes that revolve around it, sometimes in twisted ways. Someone gets hit by a car but hey were racist? Had it coming.

This really hit it on the head. Racism was presented as the worst transgression anyone could make. Is it a surprise that when the generation raised in that environment reached adulthood - and realised that racism wasn't quite as dead as they thought, some of them would take their internalised morality to the extreme.

The strongest form of that argument I know about is really about how capitalism is eating the world. It's a common refrain that "white people have no culture", but if you replace "white people" with "globalized capitalism" it starts making more sense.

Everyone drinks the same can of coke and eats the same grocery store sushi. If you look closer at the woke crowd you'll see that grocery store sushi is pretty "white".

One of the big things they're actually complaining about is enshittification of other cultures via capitalism.

So the idea is that cultural appropriation is a way to keep capitalism from eating the world, to keep shitty grocery store sushi from competing with people who actually know what they're doing. To try and keep capitalists from pillaging every developing economy.

That's a really weak argument.

1) It has nothing to do with racism but uses the accusation of someone being racist as a tool to push an agenda.

2) Japan still makes good sushi. Supermarket sushi has not destroyed japanese sushi culture

3) I'd argue that capitalism has made the world better in pretty much every aspect. You could argue that capitalism has destroyed the environment, but the fact is that leftist countries have a history of being even more destructive.

4) "white people have no culture" But people all over the world drink coke, watch american movies, drink french wine, eat italian food, drive german cars and they seem to like their smartphones.

Yeah, but it's the strongest form of that argument I'm aware of.

Yeah it's such a garbage phrase & concept.

It's like goldilocks.. you can't like another cultural too much (cultural appropriation) or too little (racism). Often the statement is made by people who aren't even from the supposedly wronged culture. Please let me know how much and in what manner I am allowed to appreciate and participate in other cultures, Mr Cultural Gatekeeper.

America is great because people come here, participate in and enhance the existing culture.

My grandmother loved Chinese takeout cuz she was a Jew who grew up in NYC. My Southeast Asian in-laws love Italian food and always insist on taking us out to it. Also, hate to break it to people, but Southeast Asia has some really crazy localized Italian dishes involving ketchup & hot dogs.

Yesterday for breakfast I had greek yogurt.. from a company founded by a Greek! Last night I had leftover Thai (made by Thais!) and stopped by a Jewish bakery owned by Muslims for dessert. Had a black&white cookie with some baklava.

My parents who live outside of any big city, who have never been to Asia, now frequently go out for Pho. A couple generations ago Vietnam was synonymous with "bad war". For a GenZ American it's now synonymous with "good food".

What's not to love here?

It could be argued that water makes people healthier, yet it's also documented to kill people.

Because it turns out nothing is perfect, including capitalism.

> Japan still makes good sushi. Supermarket sushi has not destroyed japanese sushi culture

Japan and other Asian countries expressly push their food and culture as a component of political and economic diplomacy. Like, literally, that's a stated goal. Anime, the Hilux, and sushi have done more to ensure good will to Japan than any lame goodwill gesture.

There’s quite a lot of Americans who don’t believe in any of that stuff.

>cultural appropriation

As I remember it, this really took off in popular culture after native americans got sick of dude-bros/girls wearing war bonnets to music festivals. Around 2012-2014 it was a hugely popular piece. When 'cultural appropriation' came up then I mildly agreed with the sentiment because the look was pretty openly disrespectful.

And then it expanded like kudzu until digital hairstyles became off-limits:

https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2020/11/30/21734131/ani...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...

as a native american myself, I have no recollection of anyone I know ever taking issue with this.

I don't doubt there was someone somewhere complaining, but similar to the rename of the washington redkins, most of us didn't give a shit.

The most grumbling I've ever heard around this is complaints that pow-wow's are too commercialized but, if anything, that was criticizing our own tribes.

The popular phrase was “my culture is not a costume” at the time. I also remember a bit of encouragement to distinguish between native and native-inspired fashion on the one hand and mimicry and stereotyping on the other.

I don't doubt there were people making noise, but I live in a state that's known for Native Americans (I'm sure you can guess) and it just wasn't a concern for anyone I know.

It's the old adage about a few loud people.

"Indians" were renamed "native americans" by white people against their will. Another act of imperialism by the "woke". Cultural appropriation is exactly the same.

Cultural appropriation is a very real thing, but the line between disrespectful/mocking and genuinely participating in a different culture can get gray. Unfortunately sometimes people take this understanding to the extreme.

>Cultural appropriation is a very real thing

No it's not. It's about as real of a thing as the miasma theory. It's a idea that's been laundered through academia, but that doesn't make it anything but "well researched" fiction.

cultural appropriation is related to colonialism and post-colonialism, its relation to racism as a concept is really a function of how racism relates to the other two fields.

Of course many terms mutate in meaning.

I have a university degree and I know all the words but I don't understand what you are trying to say. I'd say colonialism - at least from a european perspective - has a lot more to do with subjugating the identity of the colonized. That's the opposite of "cultural appropriation".

Oh, no; it's absolutely part of it. Cultural appropriation involves the dominant culture taking practices (including things like clothing, music, dance, etc, especially if it's part of a religious practice) of a colonized or marginalized culture, removing them from their cultural context, and using them for their own purposes.

That's absolutely subjugating the identity of the colonized: it takes these parts of their identity and says "these are not yours; like everything else, they are ours, and we can do with them as we please."

As I said, the european/my german perspective does not see this - at least what I have learned. An essential motive of colonialism was the missionization and education of the "primitive, uncivilized race". The Germans saw it as their task to civilize the colonial population by introducing them to German culture and the Christian religion. Other colonial powers, such as Great Britain or France, also followed this ideological motive and tried to educate the "inferior race" in their sense.

Even if it would have been as you described: it would have nothing to do with me cooking african food because I love the taste. It's admiration, not theft.

well I mean that's cool that you have a different opinion of the meaning of the term, but the term was created as a critique of the effects of colonialism / post-colonialism and first use of the term comes here AFAIK https://www.archivesdelacritiquedart.org/wp-content/uploads/...

I guess I'm sort of old fashioned, when a concept is coined by some person I go with their definition and not what my feelings on it as a Dane might be.

cooking African food because you like the taste would probably not be cultural appropriation as the concept was originally defined, although I guess people may feel that is what it means now.

While it's certainly not an exclusively American phenomenon, cultural appropriation is vastly more likely to occur here than nearly anywhere else, both because we live on (recently-)colonized land, with the remnants of the people we stole it from still living among us, and because we are such a cultural melting pot, so people can much more easily come into contact with the cultural practices of marginalized cultures.

In most cases, Europeans don't live close to the people their countries colonized (though there are some exceptions, like the Basque and Catalonia regions), so there's less of a likelihood for people to want to appropriate them.

And no; cooking African food, no matter whether you belong to a culture that colonized that particular African culture, is not appropriation (unless, as I mentioned in another post, the food is part of a closed religious/ritual practice).

What's so special about food? Why is it cultural appropriation to wear African clothes, but not appropriation to cook African food? Both are important parts of their culture.

You usually eat food at home, away from scrying eyes.

The appropriator needs to get some profit or acclaim for doing the thing, while the people it came from are denigrated for the it.

Well, for one thing, food is, for the most part, something you're doing purely for yourself, in the privacy of your own home.

Clothing is a much more visible identity marker: if you're dressed in clothing from particular African cultures, that's a strong signal that you belong to that culture—so if you do not, in fact, belong to it, that can cause a number of kinds of problems in the right (or wrong) circumstances.

Furthermore, for many cultures, the clothing that most recognizably signals membership is related to some form of cultural or religious ritual, and wearing it outside of that context can be very disrespectful.

Imagine if, for instance, you were in Nairobi (or Tokyo, or Mumbai) and saw someone wearing the traditional robes and cap of a Catholic cardinal—and you saw them partying, being vulgar, doing drugs, that sort of thing. Obviously, the connotations are not the same, because of the overall dominance of the Catholic Church and Western culture generally, but I hope that it gets across the general idea of why clothing can be more prone to appropriation, and why that's a problem.

So if I brought African food to work with me, and ate it during lunch with my co-workers, that would be cultural appropriation?

> Furthermore, for many cultures, the clothing that most recognizably signals membership is related to some form of cultural or religious ritual, and wearing it outside of that context can be very disrespectful

Fair enough; it would be wrong for me to wear a soldier's uniform if I've never served in the army.

Still, I can't help but feel that complaining about cultural appropriation is just a way to maintain USA's cultural dominance. The message seems to be: It's fine for Americans to spread their culture, but it's wrong for other countries to do the same.

It’s more cultural appropriation if you bring something in to the office and everyone is like “oh, that’s interesting, what is that, can I try it?” - while your coworker brings the same thing in and everyone’s reaction is different, “um, what is that, what is it, why don’t you just bring normal food” - followed by a passive aggressive note on the microwave not to reheat particular foods. You know?

It’s not just whether you’re ‘allowed’ to eat certain foods - it’s more whether your allowance for foods is different than someone else’s, because of your level of cultural status versus theirs. It’s about double standards.

For the food context, it'd be you opening an African food restaurant, that all the white people go to instead of an African food restaurant run by somebody from Africa. Meanwhile, Africans would be looked down on for making and eating said African food when they're supposed to be "integrating" to the local German food.

You're stripping the value of African food from African people, the same as colonialism stripped their resources from their land.

To me, this argument makes no sense at all.

Opening restaurants with food from your culture is pretty much the standard way of doing it and certainly not looked down upon.

All of this sounds racist to me. People are now forbidden to do things if they have the wrong skin color.

It is exploitation of culture in the same way that natural resources of other countries were exploited: they were seen as something they could take and do what they wanted with it regardless of what the people that were already using it though.

Food is more of an edge case. I know there have been situations where someone who is white opened up a restaurant that sold food of a particular ethnicity. I'm not familiar with the specifics however. I would imagine that people debated whether or not that was cultural appropriation. Again, I don't know any specifics in that case.

I would say that cultural appropriation is less about individuals and more about the overall taking of something that means something to one culture and removing all that meaning. An example that comes to mind are things like turning Native American clothes into fashion or kids dressing as indians for Halloween.

So eat what you want to eat.

The food thing - and a lot of the other cultural appropriation touchstones - is more about double standards than anything else.

So if you’d be worried about hiring a black man with dreads, but you wouldn’t have the same hangups about a white woman with dreads, that’s an example. Or if when you make Ful Madras it’s very cultured and experimental and basically laudable of you - but if someone from Egypt brings it in, it’s more like a “oh isn’t your culture quaint” kind of situation, if not flat out “why did you make food that smells so bad.”

Like the enduring nonsensical racist gripe that people from indo/pak background smell like curry… while the UK had simultaneously made tika masala into a national dish. It’s brave and adventurous when white people do it, it’s separatist and foreign when brown people do it, even though it’s what brown people grew up with. That’s the angle.

You are saying this like it's a fact. It's just your opinion on something.

I think Colonialism is more of a neologism for 'imperialism' since the US empire has a pretty different form from the old European empires. In US Parlance it seems to refer to a wealth pump moving resources from the undernourished colonies to a corpulent administrative center. Cultural artefacts could be an example, though of course this doesn't refer to physical artefacts that the original owners lose. It's a bit weird to me as well, though I can see how stealing a cultural artefact to put in a museum and copying a hairstyle could feel similar to someone living with inherited trauma.

Ah, it's related to fictional grievance studies! Make sense since cultural appropriation is also fictitious.

Apparently it is related to the whole Woke stuff, I also don't get it.

The term "cultural appropriation" has been widely misused and diluted by people who don't really understand it.

If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation. It refers to a dominant culture taking the trappings of a colonized or otherwise marginalized culture and using them for entertainment, for clout, or otherwise for our own purposes.

On the other hand, if I were to travel to Japan, stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), and wear the simple kimono they provide for guests, or go to a kimono rental shop and rent a kimono from them for the day, that would be cultural appreciation, because that is something that the Japanese offer openly as a way for foreigners to connect with and understand their culture.

In general, cooking and eating food of another culture in your own home cannot be cultural appropriation. (The only exception I can think of offhand is if the food is part of a closed religious practice of some sort.) Similarly with music—it's very unlikely to be cultural appropriation unless the music is part of a religious practice or being used disrespectfully. Hairstyles and clothing require a bit more nuance and can depend on the situation.

Among the people that care about cultural appropriation, there are so many different interpretations of which acts are offensive that it is a minefield of uncertainty. A lot of it feels to me like a vocal minority trying to railroad the discussion.

people without power trying to flex that power. often people with tenuous connections to their culture.

and then bougie middle-class white people getting upset about stuff they don't really understand

Most ryokan did not want foreigners. The government had to crack down as part of their big tourism campaign.

Who gets to decide if it's disrespectful? Making fun of religious practices is a god given right!

Making fun of dominant religions, that are in no danger of being wiped out because people find them ridiculous, is fine.

Making fun of marginalized religions, which are already frequently ridiculed because they're different from what the dominant culture does, and which are under threat, either overall or within a given area, is a very different matter.

The problem with cultural appropriation is specifically that it exacerbates marginalization and discrimination against already-marginalized groups.

>Making fun of dominant religions, that are in no danger of being wiped out because people find them ridiculous, is fine.

Making fun of any religion is fine. No religion is above reproach, no religion is beyond mockery. None of them.

>Making fun of marginalized religions

Here's a newspeak term. There is no such thing as a "marginalized religion". This is a fictitious concept.

>which are already frequently ridiculed because they're different from what the dominant culture does, and which are under threat, either overall or within a given area, is a very different matter.

Good, every religion should be ridiculed. There's no culture that's beyond ridicule.

You're trying to create an illogical concept where hatred of White people is a reasonable thing. You can't come straight out and say it, so you launder the idea through a luxury belief and magically the hatred is tolerable.

>The problem with cultural appropriation is specifically that it exacerbates marginalization and discrimination against already-marginalized groups.

No it doesn't, because "cultural appropriation" doesn't exist. Upholding cultures even if they're backwards because it's politically fruitful breeds resentment. This is "baizou" behavior.

> If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation.

This is insufficient to be cultural appropriation. The context in which you wear the ritual gear and do the dances matter, the same as with the Japanese example.

True. I should have added "without the permission or invitation of the Haudenosaunee."

Thanks for making HN more entertaining. I do feel sorry for those cultures that didn't come up with computers, they can't read your comments, because that would be cultural appropriation.

Maybe a better example would be if you donned that ritual gear and started a tourism company that taught traditional ceremonies to rich tourists. And having no idea what the actual ceremonies are you just copied it off a Hollywood movie.

Yes, I can see how that could be perceived as demeaning.

See also: Häagen-Dazs. Foreign people speak funny and can't write. Very funny.

>If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation.

No it wouldn't. It wouldn't be because cultural appropriation doesn't exist. Culture is not a zero sum game. You doing that takes away nothing from the originating culture.

>It refers to a dominant culture taking the trappings of a colonized or otherwise marginalized culture and using them for entertainment, for clout, or otherwise for our own purposes.

Ah yes, White original sin and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion-tier rhetoric about the international White conspiracy. Conspiracy theories about some "dominance" and hierarchy of cultures on some fabricated scale is what the Nazis used to justify cleansing Europe of the Jews.

>On the other hand, if I were to travel to Japan, stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), and wear the simple kimono they provide for guests, or go to a kimono rental shop and rent a kimono from them for the day, that would be cultural appreciation, because that is something that the Japanese offer openly as a way for foreigners to connect with and understand their culture.

Japanese offer openly people to wear kimonos anywhere. It's often a gift given so others can wear them outside of Japan. You can appreciate culture anywhere.

>In general, cooking and eating food of another culture in your own home cannot be cultural appropriation. (The only exception I can think of offhand is if the food is part of a closed religious practice of some sort.) Similarly with music—it's very unlikely to be cultural appropriation unless the music is part of a religious practice or being used disrespectfully. Hairstyles and clothing require a bit more nuance and can depend on the situation.

Not in general, in totality: none of the aforementioned things are "cultural appropriation". The concept is an illusion.

Some of the comments I see kinda get to the point, but not all the way. I've grown up in a fairly liberal part of the southern US, with a high African American population so these are the kind of conversations I encounter fairly often.

Cultural appropriation is widely understood to be when someone in a position of power (most commonly a white person) utilizes something that is heavily related or socially seen as "part of" a minority community. For example, a white person wearing a Native American headdress. The issue that the minority community has with that is that they are routinely belittled or put down for participating in that part of their own community. For example, a white person wearing a Native American war bonnet to Coachella is appropriation, as war bonnets are culturally significant to Native Americans and you have to earn the ability to wear one. Meanwhile, many white Americans still put down Native American customs as "witchcraft".

When it comes to food, music, or clothing, you're pretty good there. It's primarily just avoiding things that are culturally or spiritually significant to a culture. I.E., don't wear a headdress if you're not Native American, don't act like you're the best rapper ever if you grew up on a farm in Kansas, or say you make the best gumbo in the world if you've never even been to New Orleans.

Seems like a fancy way to argue that it’s ethical to discriminate against white people because there is a historical debt to settle.

Laying claim to culture is dumb, but everyone wants to feel special. One’s culture is less at risk from appropriation than from extinction as the world continues to trend towards an internet transmitted monoculture.

Also, not sure what discrimination against white people over a historical debt you're referring to. The appropriation statement is specifically about how a significant aspects of certain cultures are repressed in modern American society, but when they are utilized by the majority (in America, white Americans), they're celebrated as fashionable or acceptable.

Laying claim to culture is dumb? That's kinda how things have been for the past thousands of years. A lot of these cultures have existed longer than many modern countries have. Yes, they do have risks from a cultural extinction, but watering a culture down or disconnecting it from it's roots doesn't save it from extinction. If anything, it advances that. Having people of that culture continue their cultural practices and protecting those practices, helps ensure that culture continues on.

Yes, there can be an internet monoculture, but everyone is part of some subculture. And the subculture is what is being protected. These cultures have existed for hundreds or thousands of years, and they carry historical importance in understanding history and the evolution of society.

Oh you are right I definitely over projected here and did not recognize the nuance in your argument. I do find in my experience, that most people do not restrict their definition as much as you have.

No worries, it's definitely something that can be very nuanced and it definitely has different meanings and interpretations depending on who you're asking. It's one of those societal things where no two people will say the same thing or have the same relationship with it. This is just the best way I've been able to explain it in a way that, in a way, brings it down to the meat and potatoes of the concept.

Discriminate against white people how though

> don't act like you're the best rapper ever if you grew up on a farm in Kansas

Isn't part of being a rapper acting like you're the best rapper ever?

It's not. It's completely insane. No cross pollination of ideas allowed, as that is appropriation too.

As a European, the closest you can usually get to this is when an American company decides to take your local custom or tradition and commercialize it without any understanding of its context. As a German the closest approximation is "Oktoberfest" which usually condenses all of Germany into an extremely tourist-y idea of Bavaria, but of course this is hard to even notice anymore because "we" are doing it to "ourselves": a lot of money is made by German companies selling "Oktoberfest" as a tourist-y fabrication.

Now compare that with Hawai'i: instead of locals profitting of the local culture, Hawai'i was a kingdom colonized by the US and most of the tourism is done by mainland US companies rather than locals. The locals stand by as not only their land is sold off to rich Americans piece by piece but so is their culture and heritage. Religious traditions become scenary, sacred symbols become decoration and so on.

It's not immoral to take inspiration from foreign food, music, architecture, dress or traditions and weave them into your own (or even lift them wholesale). But this isn't about an individual act, it's about something happening in a very one-sided power relation where the more powerful side not simply copies the original but replicates it out of context and then (intentionally or non) uses their power to popularize their hollow replica to the point that it replaces the authentic original and that original context is lost.

Much like "racist" it's really more about the predisposition of a system towards emergent outcomes than individual belief or intent.

That's not the point of cultural appropriation. The point is people in the dominant culture using symbols of other cultures in a way that is socially acceptable for them to use, but non-socially acceptable for them to use. It's kinda fucked up if I can't wear my natural hair style or I'll get fired from my minimum wage job, but that isn't the case for someone of the dominant cultural class wearing the same hairstyle.

If it's acceptable for everyone, then it isn't cultural appropriation, it's just culture sharing. It's when society takes it away from those who grew up with it but allow others to use it that it's cultural appropriation.

It's a problematic/flawed concept, but that's the core idea and it makes some sense.