Continued: (Ed) Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

Stout said:
What is being bastardized here ?
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Well, I'd say, for example, that this is pretty cheap and tacky, wouldn't you?

Are you suggesting that I shouldn't study karate because a few disgruntled Japanese people might want to keep that art form for their own or consider the style I'm most comfortable with as being not traditional enough ?
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Yes. You can tell I think that by all my previous posts on this subject over the last couple of days.
 
Dissolution said:
By someone who appears to be claiming that they're of Native American descent, unless I'm mistaken.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/people/promisespromises?ref=owner_profile_leftnav
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You're right, I'd misunderstood how the site links around and, rather than being the produce of the page that I was on, that was something favourited (or whatever) by the person whose page I was on. Just goes to show that cheap and tacky are not the exclusive domain of non-natives (indeed, have you seen the beaded sunglasses that the initial blog-writer sells?).

But you don't have to try very hard to find cheap and tacky pseudo Native American items sold by non-natives.

Like this, or this beautiful number, or this, or this work of art.
 
When Suzuki Shunryuu brought Soto Zen to America, he kept many of the traditions and language of Japanese Soto Zen, which are continued today by, I am assuming, white males. Wait, Japanese Soto Zen was brought to Japan by some guy who went on a tour in China and borrowed their traditions with a Japanese spin. Wait, those Chinese traditions probably came from appropriation too. When the Theravada Buddhists from Sri Lanka near me come and spread their tradition, also self-exploiting appropriation.

So, like, is appropriation bad karma? 'Cause I am screwed.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Yes. You can tell I think that by all my previous posts on this subject over the last couple of days.
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Yet you state there's a difference based on who's doing the appropriating. Sort of like only white people can be racist simply because there's more of them.
 
Stout said:
Yet you state there's a difference based on who's doing the appropriating.
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I said there's a difference between bastardising things which are important to a marginalised cultural minority and people from a marginalised minority assimilating into the dominant culture.

Sort of like only white people can be racist simply because there's more of them.
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That's not my claim, no.

I might as well say that your stance is reminiscent of people asking "but why isn't there White History Month?" But it's probably more productive for each of us to address what the other person has actually said, rather than ascribing opinions to each other and arguing against those.
 
My girlfriend had this to say, and I found it thought provoking. While she was writing this regarding the headdress, keep in mind this is also in the backdrop of growing up in Hawaii where extreme racism against "whites" is not only tolerated, but encouraged

"No one is going to read this because it doesn't contain a picture of a cat, so I can speak my mind. All day, I have been besieged with stereotypes about the Irish. They are lazy drunkards who like potatoes and the Pogues. The reality is actually kind of ugly - the practice of dyeing foods green is a reference to the Irish resorting to eat grass in order to survive because they were literally starving to death during the famine in the 1850s. Food was actually shipped to England while the native people were starving. 1/3 of the population died, 1/3 immigrated and 1/3 stayed. Because of the land tenure and inheritance issues, combined with the lack of opportunities and foreign ownership of the land. "That was a million years ago, get over it!" Nope - up until the 1950s, Gaelic speaking peoples were forced to use English and punished for speaking Gaelic - our native tongue (starting to sound familiar?). People were removed from their homes in the West, most notably the Blasket Islands and Galway. The 1980s brought sectarian violence again to this country that hasn't historically allowed to govern itself. St. Patrick, a slave of the Romans, went to Ireland to spread Christianity. Which is fine. But they took the art and sacred symbols and repurposed them (kind of like Easter, Christmas, etc.) for their own reasons. As Desmond Tutu says, "when the missionaries came, we had the land and they had the bible. By the time we left, they had the land and we had the bible." So go out tonight, dye your hair green, sing Danny Boy and get drunk on Guinness. If you really want to be authentic, you should read Ulysses by James Joyce, know who Maud Gonne and Percy Shelley were, throw back some Laphroaig, write a check to Sinn Feinn and watch The Field. And if you don't know the meaning of U2s Sunday Bloody Sunday, look it up. In the meantime, don't denigrate other people's cultures with stereotypes. Can you imagine a parade not far in the future where we make fun of the Inuit. We can all wear parkas, eat seal blubber and live in igloos. Or watch Real Housewives of New Jersey or Jersey Shore to celebrate Italian Americans. Slainte."
 
Nice post even without any cats. I’ve often been told the tale of how if my great grandparents had missed the boat to America my grandfather would have been born in Ireland instead of the U.S.. Left in orphanage in around 1882 (if I recall correctly) to hopefully make a better way in the world for himself and us. The lesson I still take from that is that when the current culture is turning to (or basically has been) crap (for whatever reason) it might be time to appropriate (or be appropriated by) a new one (your mileage may vary).
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I said there's a difference between bastardising things which are important to a marginalised cultural minority and people from a marginalised minority assimilating into the dominant culture.
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it's the word bastardizing that's causing the problem. How, for instance, would someone know that the whitey sporting that dreamcatcher tattoo doesn't know the cultural significance of the image ?

I will agree that there is a difference, now that you put it the way you did above.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
When the Theravada Buddhists from Sri Lanka near me come and spread their tradition, also self-exploiting appropriation.
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My position is that there's nothing wrong with anyone learning a cultural tradition, but that it's important that people actually study the tradition rather than imitate what they think it is.

And that unstudied appropriation, while more common in dominant cultures, can be done by anyone.
 
Stout said:
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I said there's a difference between bastardising things which are important to a marginalised cultural minority and people from a marginalised minority assimilating into the dominant culture.
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it's the word bastardizing that's causing the problem. How, for instance, would someone know that the whitey sporting that dreamcatcher tattoo doesn't know the cultural significance of the image ?

I will agree that there is a difference, now that you put it the way you did above.
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To Squeegee Beckenheim: Unfortunately that is part of the process of assimilation to a new culture. That you can’t hold as dear some of the aspects of your previous culture as you might have before. You have to bastardize them (to at least some degree) yourself (incorporate them into the new culture) if you want to keep them in some way or another.

To Stout: Well at least someone reading a Chinese character tattoo might know that instead of ‘strength and courage’ it actually just says ‘goat on roof’.
 
This talk about cultural appropriation misses the fact that cultures are really only the best-practices of a given people at a given time.

If their culture doesn't fit the new circumstances, then it needs scraped, if it has good parts then it need appropriated.

It is the marketplace of ideas and who cares if a backwards culture gets thrown away? Are you interested in forcing ethnic groups to be cultural re-en actors of an obsolete culture? That too me that is the really raced point of view.
 
Stout said:
Are you suggesting that I shouldn't study karate because a few disgruntled Japanese people might want to keep that art form for their own or consider the style I'm most comfortable with as being not traditional enough ?
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You best way to honor them through karate is to remember to look eye. Always look eye.
 
adamwho said:
This talk about cultural appropriation misses the fact that cultures are really only the best-practices of a given people at a given time.

If their culture doesn't fit the new circumstances, then it needs scraped, if it has good parts then it need appropriated.

It is the marketplace of ideas and who cares if a backwards culture gets thrown away? Are you interested in forcing ethnic groups to be cultural re-en actors of an obsolete culture? That too me that is the really raced point of view.
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No, cultures aren't "really only the best-practices of a given people at a given time". As you seem to note, they are all the practices even the bad ones. Which is one of the reasons some aspects need to be scraped.

The thing is that culture should be a evolving concept. It is when one tries to cling to historical culture that things just can't change, while things are, well, always changing.


"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana). In a static culture you not only remember the past but you do it specifically to repeat it.
 
The Man said:
To Squeegee Beckenheim: Unfortunately that is part of the process of assimilation to a new culture. That you can’t hold as dear some of the aspects of your previous culture as you might have before. You have to bastardize them (to at least some degree) yourself (incorporate them into the new culture) if you want to keep them in some way or another.
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And you can understand why that might be galling if, for example, the dominant culture became the dominant culture by invading your country, stealing your land and committing genocide against your people under the banner of friendship.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
And you can understand why that might be galling if, for example, the dominant culture became the dominant culture by invading your country, stealing your land and committing genocide against your people under the banner of friendship.
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Oh, I can certainly understand why it might be galling even without the aspects of invasion, theft of land and genocide. It may even be more distressing when the impetus comes from within rather than without. Whether one rejects aspects of their own culture or others reject some aspects, perhaps even the entire culture, doesn't change the need and desire to have aspects (hopefully the more desirable ones) of that older culture integrated into a new culture. In the case of genocide it becomes a manifest necessity as the destruction of an entire culture is the result if not a goal.
 
Mr. Scott said:
Practically all the Japanese-themed restaurants near me are owned and operated by Chinese. I assume it's OK for non-whites to appropriated any culture they like, including any of the dozens of white cultures, but white cultures may not appropriate any non-white culture. Am I catching on?
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Interestingly enough that stalwart of Chinese restaurants, the fortune cookie, is actually an introduction by Japanese immigrants living in the Western United States. They ran the Chinese restaurant industry despite not being Chinese and introduced a traditional Japanese dish which is now so ingrained in the imagination of Westerners as being Chinese that a Chinese meal is remiss without the presence of an item that, in China, does not even exist!

Stout said:
Oh, and during their thread on white people and dreadlocks, I actually asked a black person if, should I join something like Hair Club For Men and actually get hair, would it be "OK" for me to get dreads? He said "no problem" . I have permission so white SJW's will just have to suck it up.
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I believe the SJW answer would be that the POC who told you that doesn't know that he is being oppressed and should be re-educated by a white middle class college educated person better versed in Social Justice to know just how beastly you were.
 
squealpiggy said:
I believe the SJW answer would be that the POC who told you that doesn't know that he is being oppressed and should be re-educated by a white middle class college educated person better versed in Social Justice to know just how beastly you were.
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The funny thing is it wasn't just one black person, it was a whole bunch of them. I was in down in the Caribbean when I read that thread and has easy access to lots of black people so I asked this question frequently. Once they stopped laughing and stopped looking at me like I was some sort of space alien nobody claimed that dreads were a black thing at all. A Rasta thing sure but Rastas are a very small percentage of Jamaicans so equating dreads as a black thing is the same as considering lederhosen a white thing.

I do find myself faced with a conundrum though. Should I take down that dreamcatcher that's made of purple plastic, fishing line and dyed feathers ( read: bastardized ) that I have hanging from my rearview mirror and, if I do, what should I tell the native woman who gave it to me if she asks me where it went?
 
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