"Cultural Appropriation"

[bennyboy]

Define "whiteness."

"Whiteness" means having little melanin in one's skin, and/or exemplifying the cultures of geographic regions inhabited primarily by people having little melanin in one's skin.

Explain if there's such a thing as "blackness,"

Like whiteness, but with way more melanin in the skin.

Define "cultural appropriation."

Provide a real world example of cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is the adopting of customs, fashions, beliefs, or symbolic artifacts from one culture in an attempt to minimize its uniqueness or to redefine it int eh terms of the oppressor's world view.

An example of cultural appropriation would be the Christians adopting December 25 as Jesus' birthday (winter solstice--pagan culture), the Christmas tree (winter protection against death--pagan culture), and the Easter bunny (symbol of spring fertility and reproduction-- pagan culture), to draw pagans to the Christian religion, while actively persecuting the pagans, and ensuring that they did not hold office or have an active role in the operations of the culture which subsumed theirs.


You should consider learning how google works. Many of your questions could have been answered with about 10 seconds of searching.

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Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with you here. Every race has been enslaved and oppressed at some point or another. I'm a little tired of playing the "who deserves our pity and who doesn't get to have an opinion because they're not one of the chosen oppressed races" game. I don't understand why white men get it more, either, is it because women are historically oppressed?

My race and gender have been brought up several times in this thread as an example of why my opinion should be mocked or discarded. If that's the case, then the white males who are doing the mocking and discarding can go ahead and do the same. They are white males and therefore cannot speak for the oppressed, obviously. Fucking hypocrites.

I don't think that historical "me too" claim works, when you are not currently being culturally oppressed individually, but at least one person in this thread very likely is.

As for your race and gender. . . Your gender doesn't matter, because nobody is accusing women of oppressing non-women. However, your race IS relevant, because in Tizheruk's case, we were talking about the insensitivity of white people in particular to his culture in general, and the sacred symbol of the dream catcher, in particular. You pretty clearly discarded his own feelings about the issue, and I implied that if you were white, your unwillingness to try and see his point of view might be a pretty good case in point. (please read 2nd paragraph before you melt down)

That being said, I also said that while I recognize there may be cultural appropriation there, I'm not bothered by it for several reasons: I'm not (very) native, so I don't have spiritual associations with dream catchers; I'm not spiritual, so the spirituality of this or that symbol is irrelevant to me and a very poor basis for protection in my eyes; hippie girls with dream catcher decorations are often super-cute, and I like super-cute girls more than I dislike people who copy fashion styles from an oppressed cultural group.


This is why I've argued in favor of bigotry: I think everyone's a bigot in some sense. I'm for sure one in some ways. However, with almost 8 billion people bouncing around the world, if we can simply do it without actively abusing each other's persons or rights, then I think that's enough.

Also, please keep in mind that I started this thread, and that it was very much because I'm also tired of having to answer for all white people and all white cultures whenever I engage in a discussion about things. I'm trying to address things rationally which I know I as a person don't much give a shit about practically.