"Cultural Appropriation"

[bennyboy]

The position that cultural appropriation occurred is entrenched in fact.  We've got a bunch of usual suspects here (and online, and on the teevees) who feel compelled to be clowns about it...but I actually reckon that you;re not one of them, Benny, lol.  I'm just suggesting that you might have been had, by them.

The problem isn't so much the idea-- of cultural appropriation or anything else. It's watching good positions become dogmatized and then turned against the same liberties they were originally meant to espouse that is the problem.

If refusing to say nice things to or about bigots and the genteel racism they do is facism, you can hand me my arm band.

Ironically, the definition of bigotry is essentially the same one I give for fascism: "a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions." My view is that white, heterosexual bigotry is now being matched by black, LBGTQ bigotry. I fully support and embrace every black person's efforts to find happiness and betterment in life. I fully support people in their efforts to define various parts of their humanity, including their sexuality or their gender roles. However, making their lives and views the new "right. . . just fucking right so shut up about it" isn't the right path, IMO.

As for me not being a bigot-- I always just thought bigot meant "racist" until I just looked it up. But I AM racist, and sexist, and homophobe, and all those other things to various degrees. I know that many of the things I think are true are expressly racist-- like, I think black people on the whole are naturally more athletically gifted than white people are, and that Asians really are naturally bright. I find it gross when two bearded men kiss in public; frankly, it makes me kind of queasy. And yet-- I would fight to the death for a black kid who wants to study math, or an Asian with athletic dreams, or for the gay guys, to follow their own definitions of life and liberty.

I would also fight to the death for my right to TALK about any of those things, or anything else, if I felt I had something others should consider. I'd rather be free than right, because I know for sure what freedom is, and I don't pretend to know what is "right."