Oh good God.

It's not "cultural appropriation" to say "these folks also belong". What'd you prefer, "no, only Westerners here"?

"Cultural appropriation" is a fancy way to say "I only want to learn from people just like me".

Perhaps I and my fox want to "belong" in general (to the community of life on earth) but they don't want to take on other people's baggage (belong to a community that excludes participation in other communities)

> "Cultural appropriation" is a fancy way to say "I only want to learn from people just like me".

Cultural appropriation is learning about things only from people like you, not from the people outside your culture who created it and who may have jarring perspectives and expressions of them.

For example - just something I recently saw - lots of 1950s-60s rock musicians like Elvis and the Rolling Stones appropriated music from black musicians and cashed in on it with legions of white teens. The teens never heard the original musicians or music; they got sanitized, safe, and familiar forms of it - they never encountered much of the original culture or heard from the original people. Apparently some RS performances were note-for-note, vocal-riff-for-vocal-riff copies. (To be fair, the RS apparently often toured with some of the original musicians as opening acts.)

exactly! to the point that that music is now synonmous with Elvis and the original culture is lost.

I dont even think 'Cultural Appropriation' describes like, what we ought to do about that in any specific terms. maybe nothing. it more just identifies a problem

"To be fair, the RS apparently often toured with some of the original musicians as opening acts"

What more would you like? These notes have been played this way before, therefor no other group will ever play them again?

Yes, the exploitation of other (especially minority) cultures is an issue. And that's very much not how "cultural appropriation" is used any more - it's very specifically used as "this belongs to that other group, nobody else can have it". And thus precludes any learning.

It is, in its common use, asking for fully siloed cultures. I don't think humanity benefits from those siloes.

Maybe that's how its used now, but it was never the intent, and plenty of people still mean it in the original sense

> it's very specifically used as "this belongs to that other group, nobody else can have it". And thus precludes any learning.

Nonsense. Whoever told you that was projecting.

Nothing precludes respectful collaboration and learning, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHgdrzgtBik and numerous other examples.

For people who are really interested: A big part of the problem is that the black blues musicians were excluded - they were kept out of the mainstream, which created opportunity for people like the RS to cash in on the black artists' music.

For example, imagine if today people of East and South Asian descent were excluded from SV. Then white developers stole their ideas and code, changed a few things and put their own name on it, and cashed in.

Art has many more cultural consequences than for-profit software, of course.

Cultural Appropriation is super often misused (as it was in this case), but does describe a real thing.

Just like how people complain that 'crypto' now only means cryptocurrency, or people complain that the new star wars movies 'killed their childhood' etc, having something that you have a strong connection to have its meaning distorted sucks.

Imagine if seeing a holy cross, the first thing you thought of wasn't the religious meaning but that it was the logo for some company.

One of many terms that got taken way out of context and abused by lots of people, some with good intentions and some not

>Imagine if seeing a holy cross, the first thing you thought of wasn't the religious meaning but that it was the logo for some company.

It is; they're just tax exempt and have their own country.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

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