"Cultural Appropriation"

[The Grand Nudger]

@Thump and Khemical

Let me say that for me, the term cultural appropriation is pretty new.  I've only ever really heard the words used over the past year or so in the context I was complaining about.  It seems to be one of those pop-culture terms that just take off suddenly, and whatever it meant when nobody was really using it that much doesn't matter.

It seems to me that the term is a battleground word-- i.e. that people are pushing to redefine it to strengthen their own positions.  Type "cultural appropriation" into Youtube, for example, and you'll get a huge range of uses, rants, and moderate discussion.  Interestingly, the division does NOT seem to be along race.  There seem to be as many black posters who think crying about cultural appropriation is dumb as white people.

I can say that as a middle-aged white man with a pretty tough background, I haven't taken anything from anyone, and I don't associate enough with any aspect of Canadian or American culture to feel guilty about what has happened before me.  However, I recognize the problem in all of us just shaking the dust off our hands and saying "That was in the past, and we're a whole new generation of people now, living whole new lives."  But the truth is that there are a million issues, and the top of the list for me is feeding the kids and relaxing after work.

I understand, the cacophony of gibbon chatter back and forth between, for example...internet sjws and alt-white trolls confuses the issue.  You, personally, could not possibly be guilty of an offense that takes an entire society to accomplish.  I don't know what canada is up to at present, but we here in the us -are- doing it again, so on top of the nuts giving the historic examples new life and tension it serves to minimize and diminish the reality of it's present incarnation...which is awfully convenient for one half of that nutball argument.  

I get that crazy sjws try to beat people over the head with the term, but consider that their zealotry comes from a solid place.  The misery that the actions called cultural appropriation..or, if you prefer cultural misappropriation incurred are nearly incalculable - throughout all of history, and yes...to any culture which was subjected to it.  Whereas their denier counterparts are using both the confused zealotry of the sjws set and the misunderstanding they've both actively helped to cultivate in others towards the end of ignoring those historic and present examples.  To perpetuate that misery and exacerbate it with the -help- of people who would otherwise oppose it.  I specifically pointed out holocasut denial laws in my sideline with shell for that reason., That's sjw stuff, right there, and it's awfully heavy handed since it's coming from the state..but still less onerous and from a better place than the holocaust deniers constant ramblings. If we ignored the holocaust and framed the issue as a free speech issue, it would be easy to control the narrative and manipulate people into opposing a fundamentally good intentioned bit of authoritarianism. Here, framing the issue as the blacks just trying to get their mules and white genocide america isn't just similar, it's the same thing...and we don't even have the laws.

It's a shitty, shitty piece of work.  

I'm just saying that the use of two different understandings of the term makes the discussion that much more difficult. I think it's okay to simply address the OP's conception on its own terms (which in my mind is not appropriation at all). It's not that your points are wrong so far as I see, but rather that they address the issue of cultural genocide more aptly than appropriation -- after all, exterminating the natives here in America to the 90th percentile is much more serious than dressing up like them, it seems to me.

It does, but addressing the OPs conception on it;s own terms is simply talking about a misunderstanding.  Benny, for example..would have never known what they were attempting to make reference to (and apparently failing) or why they were failing.  

Cultural genocide is distinct in that it is an attempt to -eradicate- a culture, to wipe it from the face of the earth, not assume it for themselves. Cultural purity laws, not cultural appropriation. That's exactly the point the term being used as such hopes to address. That things like cultural genocide and cultural appropriation refer to distinct societal activities and motivations, and are not the same, themselves, as other forms of transfer. For a long time it all got lumped together as "the same thing" - along with learning a language and working salsa into ones diet.

That's a profoundly dangerous way to conceptualize those very different things, in the opinion of the people who argued for a distinct classification...and I agree wholeheartedly with them.