pure:

tariqah:

I think it should straight up be called cultural misappropriation. The idea that cultures exist in a vacuum and that’s we’ve lived a life of isolation with different people from around the globe is not only a historic but also blatantly harmful and completely erasing the ways different cultures have changed due to influence and mutual exchange and I truly hate the fact that people really would go so far to like, ignore all of that for tumblr politics or something

I mean…I think 99% of cultural appropriation politics in the SJ lexicon is just ethno-nationalism and the term isn’t worth salvaging. I think “cultural misappropriation” is a better term but the issue is that people just have a wrong conception of what “misappropriation” is in the first place so it’d still be the same thing where people deem something harmless as “misappropriation.” Cultural appropriation is a natural phenomenon among social human beings unless some sort of fascism is occurring where people are barred from interacting with each other. White nationalists most definitely can agree with its isolationist ethos. Mr. Nazi McBaldyhead definitely isn’t disagreeing with the idea that cultures aren’t meant to be shared and that cultures are “closed.” Much of it is just plainly compatible with the same right-wing traditionalism that people ought to oppose.

What I see is that people are rightfully upset with, like in the case of black americans, people adopt all of our shit and yet degrade us when we embody our own creations, or they try to excise us from the historical legacy of our creations–like in the case of Rock once being the devil’s music because we were making it and it becoming more and more acceptable once people like Elvis and co stole or made covers of black people’s rock songs for the mainstream airwaves. But the problem there isn’t outsiders using our cultural creations, the problem there is racism lol.

The problem is in the social or power dynamics at play that cause a certain people to be degraded or dismissed for what they create, not the fact that it is being used by outsiders at all. People who talk about “cultural appropriation” usually locate the issue in the usage of the culture no matter what and see isolationism as the solution, rather than locating the issue in the power dynamics and the patterns of commodification or the exploitation for capital consumption in the usage. Basically when “stop wearing [x] if you’re not [x]” is presented as the solution, and it very commonly is, I can’t get behind it. I do think that telling people to stop interacting with a culture altogether because of issues of racism is sort of like a cry of exhaustion and I think that anger and emotional response is ultimately understandable. Most people have a rightful anger about what they’re trying to critique, but they’re arriving at the least constructive conclusions for changing the issues they’re identifying!