Nothing wrong with decorative totem poles-people who like them use them. Indians that like them, use them. Indians have never given themselves tribal mascots when playing lacrosse, I don't consider that any part of the "cultural appropriation" issue. Just like lawn jockeys. Lawn jockeys are white culture. Does it mock blacks? No, it mocks white culture. Growing up in the suburban midwest, I saw both white and black lawn jockeys. It's about as offensive as garden gnomes. (Pretty offensive).
Lawn jockeys mock white culture how exactly? They're racist caricatures same as the fat mammy or the wide-smiling manservant, created at a time when jockeys were overwhelmingly black because they were the stable hands.
That white ones have started to be produced doesn't obviate the history and imagery of the black ones. If anything it underscores it because the white ones aren't caricatures at all. The ones I've seen have a lithe, elegant British groom look. There's no comparison between that and the wide red-lipped grins, boot black faces and bright white eyeballs of the originals.
Last edited by livius drusus; 07-08-2013 at 11:34 PM.
Well, I've never seen the type of negro lawn jockey as lisarea showed in that photo, I've only seen this type:
But, as to why it's not cultural appropriation? Easy, blacks, African Americans, Africans, etc, don't portray themselves in this manner, only white people do. It's straight up offensive racism, no cultural appropriation at all. In fact, it's white culture.
And it's mockery because to use it now is to mock the time when displaying it meant being friendly and hospitable, since such depictions in this age are known by reasonably normal people to be offensive.
Maybe I have the mockery wrong, but I can't imagine using one because it's attractive (in whatever color). So what would be a reasonable use? Mocking the whites who put on airs.
People use them because they think the little darkies are cute, a la garden gnome, or because they enjoy causing offense in that "look how not PC I am" style. I would be stunned if even a single person who puts out a lawn jockey is doing so to mock white snobbery.
I believe cultural appropriation is not ever a bad thing in and of itself. It's only bad when, like other actions, it HURTS someone. Nobody has a right to not be offended. What we have is a right to live in a society where it's not considered good to offend someone. That takes work on the part of both parties, offended and offenders alike. So, I think focusing on the offense being one of cultural appropriation is focusing on the wrong issue.
The only people I've ever seen come close to saying they have a right not to be offended are US Christians and religious leaders in theocracies.
As far as the work, though: No. If you do something that insults someone, they're allowed to just tell you it's insulting without having to give you some comprehensive explanation as to why.
Yes, of course. But it's really hard to create a society of "being nice to others" if one isn't in the habit of explaining why it's a good idea. If you come up to me and tell me my dashiki's offensive on me, I'm going to ask you why, since I have no reference as to whether it's just you, or some concept I missed in my admiration of the clothing. If it's just you, well, pfft.
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Every hipster walking around wearing a headdress is not entitled to personal instruction on exactly why what they're doing is offensive to people. It's really easy to look up on the internet if they're interested, and if they're not interested in the explanation, it's enough that they know it's offensive.
I'm fine with that.
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Besides, that's a really common derailment tactic, where some privileged person will demand an explanation of something, but they always seem to just be trying to start an argument, as though they're entitled to a vote on what someone else finds insulting.
Sure. And I'm going to still do yoga. And I'm an atheist. I decided long ago the most rational course of action was to appropriate bits of all cultures I admire. No culture gets everything right. We all have to look around us and see if there is something better somewhere else, especially if we are dissatisfied with our our culture or our understanding of it.
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Some people seem to think their validation is super-important, like they decide whether someone is allowed to be offended based on whether or not they can empathize with it. Hell, I don't personally identify with most spiritual or religious beliefs, and I probably wouldn't be offended if people were digging up my dead ancestors' bones. I know other people do care about those things, though, and I believe people when they say that something offends or bothers them.
It's like the people who say that thing about nobody having a right to not be offended think they have a right to not have people think they're assholes.
And that's really all that's at stake here--nobody's trying to make it illegal to offend people. If I do or say something that people find offensive, I want them to tell me. Then, I can research if necessary and decide whether I want to keep doing it anyway. I don't like to offend people unintentionally, so I appreciate someone telling me if something is offensive. Then, if I continue to do it, they are allowed to think I'm an asshole.
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Nothing wrong with decorative totem poles-people who like them use them. Indians that like them, use them. Indians have never given themselves tribal mascots when playing lacrosse, I don't consider that any part of the "cultural appropriation" issue. Just like lawn jockeys. Lawn jockeys are white culture. Does it mock blacks? No, it mocks white culture. Growing up in the suburban midwest, I saw both white and black lawn jockeys. It's about as offensive as garden gnomes. (Pretty offensive).
Those aren't even mocking black culture, though. They're straight up mocking black people.
I've never seen those. But still not black culture appropriation. Just racism there.
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So (and I really don't want to put words in your mouth!) are you saying that profiting off the images and ideas another culture has developed, while oppressing that specific culture, is what is so wrong? Not so much because of cultural appropriation, but for the fact that there is ongoing oppression of the culture that created the things to be appropriated?
Well, that's not the opposite of what I said. What I said was that there is a huge range of different types of appropriation and that a whole lot of different factors, including the relative social status of the appropriated and appropriator, are some of those that can affect how OK something is in context.
It doesn't mean it's all completely unacceptable. It's not. But that context does make an offensive appropriation worse.
Would it not be better to say that context makes an appropriation offensive? That way, appropriation is neutral, and it's the surrounding of the appropriation that are offensive?
Or do you really think any white person liking and displaying something like a totem pole is automatically offensive to that religion's people? Because of .... what? Certainly not disrespect. Because they don't display a totem of their own, but take another's to look at? Or is it the way it's displayed, like tiki statues, swizzle sticks, lights and mugs in a tiki bar? I'm pretty sure that could well be offensive to some Polynesians, simply because the context is one of "look at these neat carven figurines from the Pacific" and not "this is a wonderful carving of "The First Man" in Polynesian mythology".
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So there's a whole range and variety of appropriations, and like I said, I'm not the boss of this. That's just how I decide what is acceptable for me.
That's cool. I just think there is too much emphasis on the offensiveness of cultural appropriation, and that's pretty much coming at the issue backwards.
No culture lives in a vacuum, and no culture disdains from stealing aspects of other cultures. This is how the world works. Reducing potential damage from misguided appropriations seems like the thing to focus on. Yet that can't be resolved by simply saying "That's offensive" without other explanation.
I don't think lawn jockeys are generally used to mock white culture, at least not by any white people. If a black person had one in his lawn, I might believe that that's how it was being used.
If someone had an ugly caricature of a white person as their lawn jockey, I could believe that as well.
But anyway, I agree they're not cultural appropriation. They're racist, but not they're an original form of racism invented by white people, not borrowed.
Just for the record, I did bring up lawn jockeys, but only as a contrast to the appropriation of warrior imagery in sports mascots. You can see that the "Jocko" style lawn jockeys* are offensive racial caricatures, and no reasonable person would argue otherwise; and yet, the logos or mascots or whatever for the Atlanta Braves or the Cleveland Indians or any number of other sports teams is just as much a racist caricature, just with some thin appropriative backstory attached, as though that gives it credence. Which is on the pretty far end of inappropriate appropriation, IMO.
* Having read part of the Wikipedia page on "lawn jockeys" today, I am now a prominent expert or aficionado or something of lawn jockey imagery.
I may have to revoke my Texan card after this post.
What do you call a cowboy hat and a pair of cowboy boots?
A Texan with the shit kicked of him.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
It occurs to me that I may have missed the trees for the forest. Is "cultural appropriation" like the term "judicial activism" in that it's a neutral term* used solely to indicate opprobrium on the part of the speaker?
I can get behind that. It's just that I don't pick up on that stuff until some long time after I've been introduced to the term.
* a term/phrase containing no negative or positive connotations in itself, just descriptive.
Cultural appropriation often has negative connotations, since appropriate can have a meaning of taking without permission or stealing. While you can use it in a neutral sense, I think cultural borrowing or exchange is a better way of saying it if you want to ensure it's taken as neutral or positive.
Plenty forms of cultural borrowing are fine and not exploitative. The spread of hip hop across the world, for example, I don't think of as being cultural appropriation (in the negative sense). Particularly since the hip hop community in the US is in favor of it.
The term does tend to have a negative connotation, but it's a complicated thing, and the negative aspects can be complex and subject to interpretation. Which isn't exactly the same thing as simply indicating opprobrium on the part of the speaker.
I wasn't good at explaining my point with the mascots and lawn jockeys, so I'll take another shot at that.
Human cultures are enormously complex and interwoven, like pretty much any natural system is. The dynamics cannot be clearly and consistently articulated. They exist, but they're too complicated to write down in the form of simple rules. There are a whole bunch of different human cultures and societies, and they are all each individually complex. They overlap and interact with other cultures depending on a bunch of weird contexts and dynamics. So in terms of cultural appropriations, there's this huge, multidimensional spectrum that comes into play, with a whole bunch of relevant factors. There is no clear set of rules and guidelines that apply to every situation, and individual interpretations are pretty significant when you get into the gray areas.
Food is almost always OK. Virtually nobody takes offense at someone eating foods from different cultures, or even to someone adapting different cuisines in the context of other cultures. (People might criticize the quality of the results, but it's not based on taking actual offense.) Food is so non-problematic that even when you add in the normally fraught religious factor, it's not much of a problem. You can eat kosher or halal regardless of your religious perspective, and it's almost never considered offensive. So making and eating and adapting foods from cultures not your own is really really close to 100% socially acceptable cultural appropriation.
That's the closest thing to a clear guideline that I can think of, and there are probably exceptions even to that.
Other things are varying degrees of OK to really really not OK, depending on a bunch of different factors. Some inherent, and some relational. So appropriating something a culture considers sacred, whether it's religious or secular, can be problematic. That depends on your personal relationship to that culture, your attitude and expressions, and that culture's position in the kyriarchy.
So the best way, IMO, to approach it is to simply take each case individually.
Some cases are really egregious. Like sports mascots, which is where I get to the lawn jockey clarification. These are at the extreme offensive end of 'cultural appropriation,' to the point that they're almost entirely just mockery. You've got imagery that's on par with those lawn jockeys or blackface or other racist caricatures of black people, with a little minstrelry, like "woo woo"s and the tomahawk chop, tossed in as a bonus. It's pure mockery, on the very far end of the offensiveness spectrum of cultural appropriation. It betrays no real understanding of or respect for the culture, but relies entirely on ignorant misunderstandings and generalizations.
Here's another really bad one. Headdresses are very significant in the cultures that use them, and here they're being worn by a white lady to accessorize her underwear. Pretty bad. Worse in that it's occurring in a culture in which those racial caricatures up there () take place all the time. (See this post for more on that context, and also on the hilarious argument that women wearing headdresses is somehow 'reclaiming' them, like this is speaking truth to power or some shit. Anyone who seriously claims that has crossed the line from disingenuous to straight up big fat liar.)
Other things aren't as easy. Is it OK to incorporate music? Various types of design? Is it OK to wear jewelry? That depends! It depends on who is doing it, where they're doing it, what "it" is, lots of stuff. Everyone really has to make their own decisions, and everyone's will be different.
So like I said, I really like the aesthetics of certain types of religious imagery, especially Catholic and Hindu, but others as well. And a lot of the art I like also borrows from that. (Like esp. Pierre et Gilles--I have a fair lot of their stuff, some with overt religious themes.) So I have a lot of that stuff in my house. I don't go out in public with it, though. For unrelated reasons, I almost never wear anything with like stuff on it, but even if I did, I wouldn't wear my Krishna t-shirt in public. Which I have. A t-shirt with Krishna on it. Also, I try not to tell too many Bhagavad Gita themed jokes, but don't totally abstain.
Pretty bad, I'm sure. But I like that stuff enough that I can't quite give it up. And I will cop to that being pretty bad. I do not have the same type of hesitation with Catholic culture, because Catholics dunked me when I was a baby and I have personal and familial beefs with them. I would have more hesitation to coopt native American religious symbols, due to the fact that I am a white person whose family has been in this country a long time and has probably done some pretty heinous shit, and because that variety of racism remains extremely virulent in this culture today.
So there are actually reasons that those sports mascots are more generally offensive than, say, caricatures of Italian pizza guys, and that has to do with their place in the culture. And that's also why the Fighting Whities is funny and inoffensive. Due to the cultural context--and this is pretty much universal--insults and stereotypes against white people don't have much sting. White people have never been systematically oppressed anywhere in the world just for being white. And it's that cultural context that really gives racism its teeth.
Human culture is no less quantifiable and articulable than human biology or any other natural system. Natural systems are always complex and context dependent and dynamic, and really really difficult to understand fully. That doesn't mean they're made up, it just means they're hard.
I always have mixed emotions about people wearing dreadlocks, a religious symbol for the rastafarians. It's a bit like wearing skull caps if you're not Jewish.
We call them waspafarians and trustafarians around here. I've known hundreds of people with them and still haven't figured out what they think that they have in common with the religion of an oppressed people in Jamaica other than that they like Bob Marley and pot. People sell fake dreadlock hair extensions on Etsy for those that want to play weekend rasta and still go to work on Monday looking normal.
The trustafarians and waspafarians are almost certainly less likely to homophobic than an actual rasta.
Cultural appropriation often has negative connotations, since appropriate can have a meaning of taking without permission or stealing. While you can use it in a neutral sense, I think cultural borrowing or exchange is a better way of saying it if you want to ensure it's taken as neutral or positive.
Plenty forms of cultural borrowing are fine and not exploitative. The spread of hip hop across the world, for example, I don't think of as being cultural appropriation (in the negative sense). Particularly since the hip hop community in the US is in favor of it.
I come at the term from an artist's viewpoint, where the word is often used with homage, to indicate an artist has taken something from another artist/style, and it's vital to the interpretation of the new art piece that you recognize the appropriation of some piece/style of the the original art piece. So to me I don't see the word as often negative, because my experience is either neutral (i.e. my "Tuft of Grass" a la Durer) or even complimentary (my series "Mathematics of Life" homage to the style of scientific illustration).
The trustafarians and waspafarians are almost certainly less likely to homophobic than an actual rasta.
I don't really know very much about rasta culture other than that I like to smoke pot and listen to reggae too but my impression from my limited exposure was that they were incredibly sexist about the role of women. That's right about when I got annoyed and stopped listening so if he got to the homophobic part I must have been daydreaming. TBH I have no idea what our waspafarians would say when confronted with the contradiction in their beliefs but I think that I'm going to have to try it just to see one of their little heads explode.
Trustafarians are white guys with trust funds and dreads.
They usually marry Wasbians (women who are lesbians only during college) and drive Volvos. Pretty much the definition of cultural appropriators. Adopting the trappings without ever understanding why things are the way they are in Jamaica, just you know Weed, brah.
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Lada Gaga is here to demonstrate Appropriation, Ugh... Gaga go!
Listen (or just read, it's kinda bad) the lyrics to her possible new song Burqa!
This song and attached antics tick off the appropriation boxes so well I don't know whether I should be sad this still flies as 'edgy pop' or to be impressed at just how methodical it all is.
I find it amusing she's wearing American burqas under the heathen garb, wouldn't want to offend with nudity or anything.
ZviDance, a New York based dance company founded by Israeli-born dancer and choreographer Zvi Gotheiner, has appropriated Dabke and added it to their repertoire, performing at multiple venues and most recently, as part of Lincoln Center's Out of Doors festival. Although ZviDance acknowledges that Dabke's roots are in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, the Company fails to realize that by performing Dabke and labeling it Israeli, they are engaging in cultural appropriation. We acknowledge that culture is fluid but so long as there is inequality, there can be no cultural exchange.
There's cultural exchange with Kurds though. Here's Omar Souleiman, a Syrian Kurd who has become famous in the West after joining the Sublime Frequencies label, playing a dabke.
Souleiman was refused entry into Sweden where he was to perform this week, because the Swedes refuse Syrians in general, apparently out of fear they will apply for asylum.
When we were kids, my sister and I both had cast iron 'piggy banks'. They were branded 'Jolly Nigger'. You put the coins on the hand, pressed the lever behind the opposite shoulder and the money was 'eaten' into the storage compartment, while the eyes rolled.
I think my parents realized, even back in those less aware times, that these weren't really appropriate items to have around the house and they were given away. They seem to be selling well on eBay though now, so perhaps we should have kept them as an investment.
Also, around the same time, pots of jam branded "Robertson's" came with a small paper golliwog voucher pushed behind the label. We collected these and when you had enough, you could post them off and get a golliwog broach or ornament.
I remember there was a set where the golliwogs were all band members - we eventually collected the whole set - we must have eaten a lot of jam and marmalade in those days.
I don't remember whether those got thrown away or broken (they were painted plaster of paris, only a few inches tall) - or maybe my sister still has them, but I've not seen them for many years now.
This was in the 60s and 70s. The money boxes were already old, so they were probably hand-me-downs from grandparents, great aunts and uncles or other older friends of my parents.
The Robertson's golliwogs were a real thing though, right up until 2002. Lots of people collect the enameled golly badges especially - try a web search to find loads of sites about them.
Here's a TV ad from 1983
We also had the Black and White Minstrel Show on British TV (BBC). Here is part of the last show that was broadcast - in 1978. The show had been running for over twenty years by then; the format was always the same with white singer dudes in black face but the women were nearly always white. The show gradually became less racist over the years so this clip is *very* politically correct - in Black and White Minstrel terms. Here the white guys are pretending to be black guys who are pretending to be Mexicans and Brazilians.
Did anyone else notice that about 2/3 of the way through the Black and White Minstrels clip they are singing our favorite Russian Mr Trololololol's song, but for some reason they are singing it to a stuffed pantomime horse wearing a fancy hat?
Re: Cultural Appropriation and You
) take place all the time. (See 
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