"Cultural Appropriation"

[Rev. Rye]

I figure I may as well put my two cents into this issue, and here's a post I did over a year ago:

I can understand where a lot of the outcry about it comes from, but, quite frankly I don't buy into the assumption that it's inherently wrong.

Here's one clip from Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes" that may be relevant. In this segment, Steve Buscemi plays an Elvis-loving waiter in Memphis. Joie and Cinque Lee play twins who hate Elvis for reasons that boil down to concerns about cultural appropriation.





One major point they raised was that Elvis took most of his most famous early songs from marginalised black musicians, buying their rights for a song (pun intended) and getting rich off the profits that should have belonged to them. Fair enough; granted, given Col. Tom Parker's very unscrupulous business dealings, that part of the transaction may be his fault, but that's not my big problem with this line of logic. Simply put: without Elvis making their songs, and, by extension, their music popular with White people, do you really think those artists would be enough of a blip on the musical radar to justify all the complaining about how they got a raw deal?

Also, the Elvis quote they mentioned isn't real.

Really, the whole furor is counterproductive. I remember reading an article (I think this was it) written by a black woman complaining about the fact that, while people did not approve of her putting her hair in cornrows, it was seen as okay for her white coworkers to do. This would be a legitimate complaint, except she decided to focus her anger not on the people in power who stigmatised her hair, but the white people who liked it enough to want to copy it.

Really, people have been pretty much lifting aspects of other cultures they find appealing for as long as people have been aware of other cultures. It's pretty much inevitable. And given that some Tumblrinas consider virtually everything from another culture to be cultural appropriation, it becomes counterproductive to the point that at times, one seriously wonders if, from their point of view, there's any point in trying to NOT be racist. Especially not helped by this incident or Tumblrinas like CurvesinColor, who has reached the point where she allies herself with white supremacists.

The solution: like whatever you want to like and don't let some jackass who's offended by everything under the sun stop you.

Honestly, I do believe there is a vocal minority of leftists who have become such crybabies that they've soured a lot of people on the whole concepts of social justice or basic human decency. And quite frankly, I don't even consider them as progressive as they may say they are. They may share their sympathies with progressives, but their mindset is really no different than any of the other reactionary types.


Of course, they haven't really taken over the left, because, if they did, they wouldn't have stood behind someone as right-wing as Hilary Clinton.