> When I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a
> dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like “cultural
> appropriation” or “gendered” or “heteronormative.”
>
> Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you
> visit an elite university, you’ll find plenty of affluent people who will
> eagerly explain them to you.
I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author's examples for "luxury beliefs" would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook.
> But unlike luxury goods, luxury beliefs can have long term detrimental
> effects for the poor and working class. However costly these beliefs are
> for the rich, they often inflict even greater costs on everyone else.
This is certainly true for a high number of luxury beliefs, such as "trickle down economics", "small government" advocacy and "catallaxy", none of which come up often among dishwashers; and all of which freshman students at Yale, who just read their first essay on Friedrich Hayek, will gladly explain to you.
> I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author's examples for "luxury beliefs" would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook.
Isn't the author's point that the examples correlate very highly with affluence? The fact that it may/may not be correlated to something else might be relevant, but I'm not seeing the relevance.
Yes, the examples correlate with affluence, which is a necessary condition for them to be included in this article; but it is obviously not a sufficient condition, as all "luxury beliefs" from elsewhere on the political spectrum are excluded.
My point is that this is a bad faith argument. The author pretends to care about "luxury" beliefs, but in truth, all he cares about is finding a cheap shot against feminist positions. He intends to delegitimize these positions by painting them as an upper-class fringe ("luxury") concern. Once this angle of attack is found, the author never stops to see that the same attack could be levied against any number of political positions that he himself might agree with, because he was never interested in a real debate to begin with: he only wants to smear and ridicule.
The point is not that the examples are also "correlated" with something else, it's that they're carefully cherry-picked and made a target for an attack that would work against conservative positions, carefully excluded by the author, just as nicely as it does against liberal positions here.
I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.
> dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff
The fiercest culture warriors I know are working-class folk. They do in fact, give a shit about this stuff, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum. I blame the increased polarization.
The irony is that people who claim to be against culture wars - like the author - are they themselves actively engaging in a culture war while feigning neutrality. The truth is that they are simply against one perspective, which betrays either a lack of self-awareness, or bad faith.
I think once the idea of heteronormativity had percolated through all of society as a well understood concept, it would no longer be as pressing a concern. These concepts tend to be in vogue specifically because they are salient.
It is intellectually dangerous to read a piece like this "apolitically", precisely because a biased political agenda is wearing the garb of a much more universal observation. If the writer had mixed "luxury beliefs" from all over the political spectrum, then there would be a clear focus on what the title purports to concern. Instead, there is a second agenda that is being silently conflated without being acknowledged.
White working class people don’t, others definitely do. You can’t just generalize like that.
Working class people aren’t even inherently apolitical, they just don’t vote and aren’t taught that voting changes things like middle and upper class folks are
It's true that white working class people are the most likely to non engage politically for a variety of reasons, but it's also generalizing to say that working class PoC inherently care or adopt the same political ideas as the professional classes. Even among Black Southerners (who are very politically organized), whether someone agrees with modern social justice/intersectional frameworks is going to depend highly on other factors such as age and level of religiosity.
It’s wild that this whole piece is based on one response on one question in a poll.
The income bracket breakdown on that question is 22%/23%/32%. Which is significant but isn’t “they’re all top hat wearing elites just trying to impress each other”. “Defund the police” isn’t even the majority opinion of that income bracket.
This whole article is just an attempt to smear liberals. Even if you care about making the case that defund the police is a “luxury” to advance their social standing, then simply pointing to a slightly higher level of support in a higher income bracket is quite frankly stupid.
(As an aside, I don’t think they get the history of dueling right, either.)
The response proves his point too in a way, and something I've observed in my NYC left rich cohort.
Deflecting all criticism by knee jerk reaction of calling the questioner a racist. Disagreement over the magnitude of a problem, its relation to other problems, or the terms used for a problem makes you racist and therefore bad. Now we don't need to consider your opinion and can move on.
I did not call the author a racist, and to be quite honest, I fail to understand how one can reach that conclusion outside of a willful attempt to misrepresent my criticism.
> Is this so different? It's saying the thing without saying it.
This is reductive and only true in a binary world. If I question some anti-terrorism approaches, does that make me pro-terrorism? Of course not, but one could dishonestly accuse another of that to silence them or derail the conversation (see The Dixie Chicks). The world is hardly ever black and white.
My point was that their original comment about the article made was basically "I knew this person would be critical of blue coded luxury beliefs without being critical of red coded luxury beliefs!" without really arguing about the concept of luxury beliefs, or the examples being criticized.
It was shoot the messenger type stuff.
I recall when the Dixie Chicks criticized Dubya's invasion of Iraq.
The analogy here, to me, would be instead of arguing about whether Iraq invasion was a good idea, you said "aha! I knew the Dixie Chicks wouldn't have anything to say about Whitewater!" (or some similarly team blue scandal of similar vintage).
I hate tribalism, and I actually hate to see it even more on the side I vote with because it puts me in the position of being asked to defend things that I don't think make sense.
The latest topic of political discussion - Israel vs Palestine - is proving this. Not to derail the conversion about that topic itself, as it's highly contentious, but to point out that is a topic that is far from black and white, and both sides in our oversimplified two party system are finding out that there is nuance to be had on that topic, as they can't agree what the "right" stance is, though they can collectively agree that some ideas are stupid. To look at the other big topics of the past few, someone could be anti-mask and pro-vaccine, or anti-looting and vandalism but anti-police violence, neither of which wholly aligns with either party, but exists in the broader spectrum of what an individual believes in.
Yeah I think maybe we are making the same point in a way?
I felt the poster was discounting the article because the author had the opposite political preference on 2 topics. They lead with - "I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author's examples for "luxury beliefs" would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook."
To me reading the criticism of "my side" by reasonable writers from "the other side" is only additive. Also, logically that's exactly where I would expect the criticism to come from. You may even gain some perspective and re-evaluate your position or adjust your argument. This is how we grow.
As you point out, one can have a complex set of preferences/beliefs/things they support that do not fit directly into blue|red binary as a whole.
My problem with the argument is not that it's anti-feminist, it is that it's a broad-swath argument that could be levied against any number of beliefs, and the author deliberately chose to wield it only and exclusively against feminist and anti-racist positions.
I made that quite clear in my original comment by suggesting several conservative "luxury beliefs" that I believe the author would have to criticize on the same grounds, but failed to do so. This is not "deflection", it's showing that the article employs double standards and is thus intellectually dishonest.
The "predictable" part, in my estimation, is that this kind of argument would be used by a right-wing author. To be saying the thing by saying it, conservative cultural critics, when measuring liberal discourse, are incapable of coming up with a bar that they themselves don't trip over.
I think they do. It's just, it's so blatantly obvious that "single-payer healthcare is too expensive" and "there's no problem with police violence toward black people in particular" are "luxury beliefs" (in the sense that you can only afford to hold them if you're not directly affected by them) that there's no need to spell it out. (This point is sometimes spelled out when it comes to discussions on race and gender -- that's what "privilege" means. That "privilege" isn't brought up as much when it comes to economic/class issues speaks to the state of class warfare in the US.)
>Now we don't need to consider your opinion and can move on.
You can ignore anyone arguing from opinion, that's a given. "NYC left rich cohort" sounds like an absolute nightmare to try to figure out the truth with, given that they seem to think the character of a speaker has any bearing on the validity of their spoken words. Best not to engage with people like that, it's a waste of time.
Exactly, the deflections of 'racism' and 'sexism' are thought-terminating cliches bandied about in an act of pure class war. No need to listen to Trumpies talk about immigration and how it effects their community if they're all racists; that makes them the other and we can just pretend they don't exist.
I have genuinely never heard or read a Trump supporter discuss any practical effect of immigration, illegal or otherwise, on their actual communities. It's all very theoretical, based on hyperbolic and often false "news" items, and involves a heavy dose of borderline glee in being emotionally callous and selfish.
At beast, I have seen people misread statistics to support their position, but, again, that's not really "how it effects their community".
Okay, here's something written by Trump supporter and Cal State Fresno prof. Victor Davis Hanson discussing the effect of immigration on a community where he has lived since 1970:
That is a valuable perspective and all, and I don't discredit it (or concern for curbing illegal immigration as a top policy priority in general), but I'm not sure it's that persuasive for the point you are trying to make.
Let me put it this way: pointing to one cogent article by a non-representative Trump supporter (you won't find many of them in academia, and the college-educated skew liberal/Dem) doesn't really make me change my mind about writing most of them off as racists based on my personal experience and what most of them say (which is not as cogent and reasonable as this guy's article).
Couldn't your personal experience be a function of what Trump supporters make it through your filter bubble? We tend to see mostly the stupidest exemplars of our political opponents.
This article might be the single most vapid thing I've read all day, and I just read a Bari Weiss article for context.
Author leans in quite heavily to his own bonafides... somehow able to rise from foster homes to the military to graduate from Yale.
Neato.
And then he gets REALLY basic shit wrong.
"Working class" does not mean "lower middle class white folks." Go ask 10 "working class" black folks whether this country is racist. Then ask them whether it occurs at all levels of the country. They don't even need to know what the term "systemic racism" is to be able to describe it to you.
"Defund the police" had a pretty fucking specific meaning. It meant removing all the military surplus gear from police organizations in an attempt to reduce the amount of machismo and brutality from LEOs. Nobody should ever feel safe around a person who barely graduated from high school and yet has the authority to brutalize you and legally steal your shit. Go ask people if they think body cams on cops are important.
Is it now a "luxury belief" for women to be afraid that they live in a state that might attempt to jail them for the crime of having a failed pregnancy, or is that an actual valid concern? Don't want to do that? Okay, then let's look at the number of OBGYNs who are choosing to leave states with oppressive anti-female laws because THEY don't want to be prosecuted for the crime of providing healthcare, and follow that up by examining the cities in places like Texas that want to prosecute women for using state highways to LEAVE the state in order to receive proper reproductive healthcare.
Luxury beliefs my ass. It's only a luxury in his mind because these things don't impact him.
Painting your ideological opponents as "elite" and "out of touch" is a political trick as old as time, it encourages the listener not to engage the subject purportedly supported by the elite, but instead dismiss it out of hand as something no regular man should even bother themselves with.
Bonus points for making them elites in academia who apparently do not know how the "real word" works.
It is actually a means of pivoting to a different subject, and the next step is to make the subject the person doing the pivoting, and from there to change the entire scope of the discussion to the interpersonal dynamics of the parties involved in the discussion.
On the left (whom I would count myself among, even if I would hardly pass a purity test) there are many ways to do this, the key to all of them being that there's not a serious attempt to engage with the substance of the matter but simply to use an intersecting contextual facet as a means to collect the focus away from the topic and toward the discussant. Racism is probably the most straightforward path, or at least the most well-traveled (of the two mentioned in this thread, it would outrank abortion by being more generally applicable across age groups sexes religions etc) it goes "this isn't about x, x is really about racism. Your position on x implies you might be a racist. That position is personally offensive to me, who is directly or indirectly affected by racism." Done. conversation is now about people, and specifically two individual people, and specifically about the unfalsifiable statements about the feelings of one or both, and this is where it ends.
The right wing version of this trick, at least in the US, is much clumsier and ham-fisted but follows from the same motivation to replace the confrontation with an idea with a personal confrontation, though unlike the progressives they have only managed to devise one or two lasting variations of this same discussion-jamming measure: the pedophilia track and the socialist / communist sympathizer track.
I'm at a loss as to how to even attempt to have conversations in public about anything that matters due to the ever-present danger of one of these tactics surfacing and rendering the entire effort pointless. Perhaps we need to revive IRL coffee shop culture of small close circle debate from the 1800s, or import something like it from wherever a form of it still exists, maybe morocco or turkey.
Exactly. They certainly are not luxuries, and to some extent they’re not even beliefs - they’re acknowledgments about the way the world works, about modern systemic factors that impact the lives of historically oppressed populations.
Just because someone doesn’t recognize a word, doesn’t mean it’s some rarified hoity toity elitist folly - it’s ignorance; a lack of education or opportunity, nothing more.
There is not a state that will jail women for a failed pregnancy. Thank you for contributing to the ever-fucked up and misinformed conversation about abortion.
none of your links give any cases where a woman was prosecuted or jailed for a failed pregnancy.
The links did cite cases where medical practitioners did not do their job because they were worried about the government.
Texas law specifically states that abortions in the case of risk to the mother are ok and the medical practitioners felt the language wasnt clear enough.
As a european, I just can't wrap my head around this. How is it racist if I like a food of an other culture so much I cook it? Or I like a hairstyle of different culture so I also want to wear it. Or clothes. Or making music. Or....
I mean, I admire all that stuff so much that I want it to be part of my life. How is this racist?
As I remember it, this really took off in popular culture after native americans got sick of dude-bros/girls wearing war bonnets to music festivals. Around 2012-2014 it was a hugely popular piece. When 'cultural appropriation' came up then I mildly agreed with the sentiment because the look was pretty openly disrespectful.
And then it expanded like kudzu until digital hairstyles became off-limits:
as a native american myself, I have no recollection of anyone I know ever taking issue with this.
I don't doubt there was someone somewhere complaining, but similar to the rename of the washington redkins, most of us didn't give a shit.
The most grumbling I've ever heard around this is complaints that pow-wow's are too commercialized but, if anything, that was criticizing our own tribes.
The popular phrase was “my culture is not a costume” at the time. I also remember a bit of encouragement to distinguish between native and native-inspired fashion on the one hand and mimicry and stereotyping on the other.
I don't doubt there were people making noise, but I live in a state that's known for Native Americans (I'm sure you can guess) and it just wasn't a concern for anyone I know.
"Indians" were renamed "native americans" by white people against their will. Another act of imperialism by the "woke". Cultural appropriation is exactly the same.
Americans tied up so much of their image of a "good person" with not being racist, that when in environments with no way to demonstrate that they are not racist, they had to invent new racist things to oppose.
As a millennial, racism was taught to me in k-12 as being perhaps one of the fundamental forces of evil in the world; kind of an analog to what Christian students learn about Satan. As a result, people in my generation have moral codes that revolve around it, sometimes in twisted ways. Someone gets hit by a car but hey were racist? Had it coming.
This really hit it on the head. Racism was presented as the worst transgression anyone could make. Is it a surprise that when the generation raised in that environment reached adulthood - and realised that racism wasn't quite as dead as they thought, some of them would take their internalised morality to the extreme.
As a European, the closest you can usually get to this is when an American company decides to take your local custom or tradition and commercialize it without any understanding of its context. As a German the closest approximation is "Oktoberfest" which usually condenses all of Germany into an extremely tourist-y idea of Bavaria, but of course this is hard to even notice anymore because "we" are doing it to "ourselves": a lot of money is made by German companies selling "Oktoberfest" as a tourist-y fabrication.
Now compare that with Hawai'i: instead of locals profitting of the local culture, Hawai'i was a kingdom colonized by the US and most of the tourism is done by mainland US companies rather than locals. The locals stand by as not only their land is sold off to rich Americans piece by piece but so is their culture and heritage. Religious traditions become scenary, sacred symbols become decoration and so on.
It's not immoral to take inspiration from foreign food, music, architecture, dress or traditions and weave them into your own (or even lift them wholesale). But this isn't about an individual act, it's about something happening in a very one-sided power relation where the more powerful side not simply copies the original but replicates it out of context and then (intentionally or non) uses their power to popularize their hollow replica to the point that it replaces the authentic original and that original context is lost.
Much like "racist" it's really more about the predisposition of a system towards emergent outcomes than individual belief or intent.
Cultural appropriation is a very real thing, but the line between disrespectful/mocking and genuinely participating in a different culture can get gray. Unfortunately sometimes people take this understanding to the extreme.
No it's not. It's about as real of a thing as the miasma theory. It's a idea that's been laundered through academia, but that doesn't make it anything but "well researched" fiction.
Some of the comments I see kinda get to the point, but not all the way. I've grown up in a fairly liberal part of the southern US, with a high African American population so these are the kind of conversations I encounter fairly often.
Cultural appropriation is widely understood to be when someone in a position of power (most commonly a white person) utilizes something that is heavily related or socially seen as "part of" a minority community. For example, a white person wearing a Native American headdress. The issue that the minority community has with that is that they are routinely belittled or put down for participating in that part of their own community. For example, a white person wearing a Native American war bonnet to Coachella is appropriation, as war bonnets are culturally significant to Native Americans and you have to earn the ability to wear one. Meanwhile, many white Americans still put down Native American customs as "witchcraft".
When it comes to food, music, or clothing, you're pretty good there. It's primarily just avoiding things that are culturally or spiritually significant to a culture. I.E., don't wear a headdress if you're not Native American, don't act like you're the best rapper ever if you grew up on a farm in Kansas, or say you make the best gumbo in the world if you've never even been to New Orleans.
Seems like a fancy way to argue that it’s ethical to discriminate against white people because there is a historical debt to settle.
Laying claim to culture is dumb, but everyone wants to feel special. One’s culture is less at risk from appropriation than from extinction as the world continues to trend towards an internet transmitted monoculture.
Also, not sure what discrimination against white people over a historical debt you're referring to. The appropriation statement is specifically about how a significant aspects of certain cultures are repressed in modern American society, but when they are utilized by the majority (in America, white Americans), they're celebrated as fashionable or acceptable.
Laying claim to culture is dumb? That's kinda how things have been for the past thousands of years. A lot of these cultures have existed longer than many modern countries have. Yes, they do have risks from a cultural extinction, but watering a culture down or disconnecting it from it's roots doesn't save it from extinction. If anything, it advances that. Having people of that culture continue their cultural practices and protecting those practices, helps ensure that culture continues on.
Yes, there can be an internet monoculture, but everyone is part of some subculture. And the subculture is what is being protected. These cultures have existed for hundreds or thousands of years, and they carry historical importance in understanding history and the evolution of society.
Oh you are right I definitely over projected here and did not recognize the nuance in your argument. I do find in my experience, that most people do not restrict their definition as much as you have.
No worries, it's definitely something that can be very nuanced and it definitely has different meanings and interpretations depending on who you're asking. It's one of those societal things where no two people will say the same thing or have the same relationship with it. This is just the best way I've been able to explain it in a way that, in a way, brings it down to the meat and potatoes of the concept.
The term "cultural appropriation" has been widely misused and diluted by people who don't really understand it.
If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation. It refers to a dominant culture taking the trappings of a colonized or otherwise marginalized culture and using them for entertainment, for clout, or otherwise for our own purposes.
On the other hand, if I were to travel to Japan, stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), and wear the simple kimono they provide for guests, or go to a kimono rental shop and rent a kimono from them for the day, that would be cultural appreciation, because that is something that the Japanese offer openly as a way for foreigners to connect with and understand their culture.
In general, cooking and eating food of another culture in your own home cannot be cultural appropriation. (The only exception I can think of offhand is if the food is part of a closed religious practice of some sort.) Similarly with music—it's very unlikely to be cultural appropriation unless the music is part of a religious practice or being used disrespectfully. Hairstyles and clothing require a bit more nuance and can depend on the situation.
Among the people that care about cultural appropriation, there are so many different interpretations of which acts are offensive that it is a minefield of uncertainty. A lot of it feels to me like a vocal minority trying to railroad the discussion.
Maybe a better example would be if you donned that ritual gear and started a tourism company that taught traditional ceremonies to rich tourists. And having no idea what the actual ceremonies are you just copied it off a Hollywood movie.
Yes, I can see how that could be perceived as demeaning.
See also: Häagen-Dazs. Foreign people speak funny and can't write. Very funny.
> If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation.
This is insufficient to be cultural appropriation. The context in which you wear the ritual gear and do the dances matter, the same as with the Japanese example.
>If I, a white man living in upstate NY, were to don Haudenosaunee ritual gear and record myself performing a traditional dance of theirs, that would be cultural appropriation.
No it wouldn't. It wouldn't be because cultural appropriation doesn't exist. Culture is not a zero sum game. You doing that takes away nothing from the originating culture.
>It refers to a dominant culture taking the trappings of a colonized or otherwise marginalized culture and using them for entertainment, for clout, or otherwise for our own purposes.
Ah yes, White original sin and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion-tier rhetoric about the international White conspiracy. Conspiracy theories about some "dominance" and hierarchy of cultures on some fabricated scale is what the Nazis used to justify cleansing Europe of the Jews.
>On the other hand, if I were to travel to Japan, stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), and wear the simple kimono they provide for guests, or go to a kimono rental shop and rent a kimono from them for the day, that would be cultural appreciation, because that is something that the Japanese offer openly as a way for foreigners to connect with and understand their culture.
Japanese offer openly people to wear kimonos anywhere. It's often a gift given so others can wear them outside of Japan. You can appreciate culture anywhere.
>In general, cooking and eating food of another culture in your own home cannot be cultural appropriation. (The only exception I can think of offhand is if the food is part of a closed religious practice of some sort.) Similarly with music—it's very unlikely to be cultural appropriation unless the music is part of a religious practice or being used disrespectfully. Hairstyles and clothing require a bit more nuance and can depend on the situation.
Not in general, in totality: none of the aforementioned things are "cultural appropriation". The concept is an illusion.
Making fun of dominant religions, that are in no danger of being wiped out because people find them ridiculous, is fine.
Making fun of marginalized religions, which are already frequently ridiculed because they're different from what the dominant culture does, and which are under threat, either overall or within a given area, is a very different matter.
The problem with cultural appropriation is specifically that it exacerbates marginalization and discrimination against already-marginalized groups.
>Making fun of dominant religions, that are in no danger of being wiped out because people find them ridiculous, is fine.
Making fun of any religion is fine. No religion is above reproach, no religion is beyond mockery. None of them.
>Making fun of marginalized religions
Here's a newspeak term. There is no such thing as a "marginalized religion". This is a fictitious concept.
>which are already frequently ridiculed because they're different from what the dominant culture does, and which are under threat, either overall or within a given area, is a very different matter.
Good, every religion should be ridiculed. There's no culture that's beyond ridicule.
You're trying to create an illogical concept where hatred of White people is a reasonable thing. You can't come straight out and say it, so you launder the idea through a luxury belief and magically the hatred is tolerable.
>The problem with cultural appropriation is specifically that it exacerbates marginalization and discrimination against already-marginalized groups.
No it doesn't, because "cultural appropriation" doesn't exist. Upholding cultures even if they're backwards because it's politically fruitful breeds resentment. This is "baizou" behavior.
Thanks for making HN more entertaining. I do feel sorry for those cultures that didn't come up with computers, they can't read your comments, because that would be cultural appropriation.
That's not the point of cultural appropriation. The point is people in the dominant culture using symbols of other cultures in a way that is socially acceptable for them to use, but non-socially acceptable for them to use. It's kinda fucked up if I can't wear my natural hair style or I'll get fired from my minimum wage job, but that isn't the case for someone of the dominant cultural class wearing the same hairstyle.
If it's acceptable for everyone, then it isn't cultural appropriation, it's just culture sharing. It's when society takes it away from those who grew up with it but allow others to use it that it's cultural appropriation.
It's a problematic/flawed concept, but that's the core idea and it makes some sense.
The strongest form of that argument I know about is really about how capitalism is eating the world. It's a common refrain that "white people have no culture", but if you replace "white people" with "globalized capitalism" it starts making more sense.
Everyone drinks the same can of coke and eats the same grocery store sushi. If you look closer at the woke crowd you'll see that grocery store sushi is pretty "white".
One of the big things they're actually complaining about is enshittification of other cultures via capitalism.
So the idea is that cultural appropriation is a way to keep capitalism from eating the world, to keep shitty grocery store sushi from competing with people who actually know what they're doing. To try and keep capitalists from pillaging every developing economy.
1) It has nothing to do with racism but uses the accusation of someone being racist as a tool to push an agenda.
2) Japan still makes good sushi. Supermarket sushi has not destroyed japanese sushi culture
3) I'd argue that capitalism has made the world better in pretty much every aspect. You could argue that capitalism has destroyed the environment, but the fact is that leftist countries have a history of being even more destructive.
4) "white people have no culture"
But people all over the world drink coke, watch american movies, drink french wine, eat italian food, drive german cars and they seem to like their smartphones.
It's like goldilocks.. you can't like another cultural too much (cultural appropriation) or too little (racism). Often the statement is made by people who aren't even from the supposedly wronged culture. Please let me know how much and in what manner I am allowed to appreciate and participate in other cultures, Mr Cultural Gatekeeper.
America is great because people come here, participate in and enhance the existing culture.
My grandmother loved Chinese takeout cuz she was a Jew who grew up in NYC. My Southeast Asian in-laws love Italian food and always insist on taking us out to it. Also, hate to break it to people, but Southeast Asia has some really crazy localized Italian dishes involving ketchup & hot dogs.
Yesterday for breakfast I had greek yogurt.. from a company founded by a Greek! Last night I had leftover Thai (made by Thais!) and stopped by a Jewish bakery owned by Muslims for dessert. Had a black&white cookie with some baklava.
My parents who live outside of any big city, who have never been to Asia, now frequently go out for Pho. A couple generations ago Vietnam was synonymous with "bad war". For a GenZ American it's now synonymous with "good food".
> Japan still makes good sushi. Supermarket sushi has not destroyed japanese sushi culture
Japan and other Asian countries expressly push their food and culture as a component of political and economic diplomacy. Like, literally, that's a stated goal. Anime, the Hilux, and sushi have done more to ensure good will to Japan than any lame goodwill gesture.
cultural appropriation is related to colonialism and post-colonialism, its relation to racism as a concept is really a function of how racism relates to the other two fields.
I have a university degree and I know all the words but I don't understand what you are trying to say. I'd say colonialism - at least from a european perspective - has a lot more to do with subjugating the identity of the colonized. That's the opposite of "cultural appropriation".
I think Colonialism is more of a neologism for 'imperialism' since the US empire has a pretty different form from the old European empires. In US Parlance it seems to refer to a wealth pump moving resources from the undernourished colonies to a corpulent administrative center. Cultural artefacts could be an example, though of course this doesn't refer to physical artefacts that the original owners lose. It's a bit weird to me as well, though I can see how stealing a cultural artefact to put in a museum and copying a hairstyle could feel similar to someone living with inherited trauma.
Oh, no; it's absolutely part of it. Cultural appropriation involves the dominant culture taking practices (including things like clothing, music, dance, etc, especially if it's part of a religious practice) of a colonized or marginalized culture, removing them from their cultural context, and using them for their own purposes.
That's absolutely subjugating the identity of the colonized: it takes these parts of their identity and says "these are not yours; like everything else, they are ours, and we can do with them as we please."
As I said, the european/my german perspective does not see this - at least what I have learned. An essential motive of colonialism was the missionization and education of the "primitive, uncivilized race". The Germans saw it as their task to civilize the colonial population by introducing them to German culture and the Christian religion. Other colonial powers, such as Great Britain or France, also followed this ideological motive and tried to educate the "inferior race" in their sense.
Even if it would have been as you described: it would have nothing to do with me cooking african food because I love the taste. It's admiration, not theft.
For the food context, it'd be you opening an African food restaurant, that all the white people go to instead of an African food restaurant run by somebody from Africa. Meanwhile, Africans would be looked down on for making and eating said African food when they're supposed to be "integrating" to the local German food.
You're stripping the value of African food from African people, the same as colonialism stripped their resources from their land.
While it's certainly not an exclusively American phenomenon, cultural appropriation is vastly more likely to occur here than nearly anywhere else, both because we live on (recently-)colonized land, with the remnants of the people we stole it from still living among us, and because we are such a cultural melting pot, so people can much more easily come into contact with the cultural practices of marginalized cultures.
In most cases, Europeans don't live close to the people their countries colonized (though there are some exceptions, like the Basque and Catalonia regions), so there's less of a likelihood for people to want to appropriate them.
And no; cooking African food, no matter whether you belong to a culture that colonized that particular African culture, is not appropriation (unless, as I mentioned in another post, the food is part of a closed religious/ritual practice).
What's so special about food? Why is it cultural appropriation to wear African clothes, but not appropriation to cook African food? Both are important parts of their culture.
Well, for one thing, food is, for the most part, something you're doing purely for yourself, in the privacy of your own home.
Clothing is a much more visible identity marker: if you're dressed in clothing from particular African cultures, that's a strong signal that you belong to that culture—so if you do not, in fact, belong to it, that can cause a number of kinds of problems in the right (or wrong) circumstances.
Furthermore, for many cultures, the clothing that most recognizably signals membership is related to some form of cultural or religious ritual, and wearing it outside of that context can be very disrespectful.
Imagine if, for instance, you were in Nairobi (or Tokyo, or Mumbai) and saw someone wearing the traditional robes and cap of a Catholic cardinal—and you saw them partying, being vulgar, doing drugs, that sort of thing. Obviously, the connotations are not the same, because of the overall dominance of the Catholic Church and Western culture generally, but I hope that it gets across the general idea of why clothing can be more prone to appropriation, and why that's a problem.
So if I brought African food to work with me, and ate it during lunch with my co-workers, that would be cultural appropriation?
> Furthermore, for many cultures, the clothing that most recognizably signals membership is related to some form of cultural or religious ritual, and wearing it outside of that context can be very disrespectful
Fair enough; it would be wrong for me to wear a soldier's uniform if I've never served in the army.
Still, I can't help but feel that complaining about cultural appropriation is just a way to maintain USA's cultural dominance. The message seems to be: It's fine for Americans to spread their culture, but it's wrong for other countries to do the same.
It’s more cultural appropriation if you bring something in to the office and everyone is like “oh, that’s interesting, what is that, can I try it?” - while your coworker brings the same thing in and everyone’s reaction is different, “um, what is that, what is it, why don’t you just bring normal food” - followed by a passive aggressive note on the microwave not to reheat particular foods. You know?
It’s not just whether you’re ‘allowed’ to eat certain foods - it’s more whether your allowance for foods is different than someone else’s, because of your level of cultural status versus theirs. It’s about double standards.
well I mean that's cool that you have a different opinion of the meaning of the term, but the term was created as a critique of the effects of colonialism / post-colonialism and first use of the term comes here AFAIK https://www.archivesdelacritiquedart.org/wp-content/uploads/...
I guess I'm sort of old fashioned, when a concept is coined by some person I go with their definition and not what my feelings on it as a Dane might be.
cooking African food because you like the taste would probably not be cultural appropriation as the concept was originally defined, although I guess people may feel that is what it means now.
The food thing - and a lot of the other cultural appropriation touchstones - is more about double standards than anything else.
So if you’d be worried about hiring a black man with dreads, but you wouldn’t have the same hangups about a white woman with dreads, that’s an example. Or if when you make Foul Madras it’s very cultured and experimental and basically laudable of you - but if someone from Egypt brings it in, it’s more like a “oh isn’t your culture quaint” kind of situation, if not flat out “why did you make food that smells so bad.”
Like the enduring nonsensical racist gripe that people from indo/pak background smell like curry… while the UK had simultaneously made tika masala into a national dish. It’s brave and adventurous when white people do it, it’s separatist and foreign when brown people do it, even though it’s what brown people grew up with. That’s the angle.
It is exploitation of culture in the same way that natural resources of other countries were exploited: they were seen as something they could take and do what they wanted with it regardless of what the people that were already using it though.
Food is more of an edge case. I know there have been situations where someone who is white opened up a restaurant that sold food of a particular ethnicity. I'm not familiar with the specifics however. I would imagine that people debated whether or not that was cultural appropriation. Again, I don't know any specifics in that case.
I would say that cultural appropriation is less about individuals and more about the overall taking of something that means something to one culture and removing all that meaning. An example that comes to mind are things like turning Native American clothes into fashion or kids dressing as indians for Halloween.
> be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook.
Well.. it's not at all clear that those things he mention has anything to do with anti-racism and feminism. In fact, it seems quite clear they are the opposite of that.
The implication is clearly that "woke" is an effete privileged liberal attack on the poor and oppressed.
It's ridiculously transparent libertarian/conservative PR.
As others have said - far more directly abusive and entitled privileged beliefs are endemic among the very rich.
If they weren't they wouldn't spend so much time strike-breaking, stealing pay, flouting laws and regulations, buying politicians, and proselytising their messaging through think tanks, PR firms and captured media.
The fact is worrying and getting angry about things like cultural appropriation is something one can only do if they have the time and energy to.
Most laborers are too concerned about being able to pay their bills, provide for their dependents and too tired from difficult labor to get that upset about a Chinese Basketball player wearing dreads.
You are a part of the problem. You see the entire world as two camps: crazy woke and racist/imperialist. This is wrong.
I don't freak out over homosexuals. I see how "cultural appropriation" is bs. You can have those two ideas in your head at once. In fact, the vast majority do! Because it's the only sane position.
Sometimes one must examine the criticism of the "other side" rather than simply writing them off as "racist" or "heretic" (depending on the century).
It may turn out that there's some interesting points being made, and you almost walked into one yourself.
What if a lot of these luxury beliefs promulgated by the elite are really just conscience laundering / overt cover for all the bad things you point out they do covertly (strike breaking / bribery / fraud / etc)?
It's a thought worth examining and has non-zero merit.
Some of my trendiest, leftiest friends (hey and I vote all-dem, all the time myself) are actually far richer but come from family money. And many of them are less white/straight/male than me! And many of them have strongly ironic ideas about things..
Greta IG re-posting "climate change is an existential crisis", while owning big ICE SUVs and flying 10x/year. "Soak the rich" (because their dad bought their condo for them in cash and their lifestyle doesn't depend on the high income they believe should be taxed). SATs are racist (but THEIR kid got all the SAT prep / coaching / etc to ensure access to the best school). AOC good & "billionaires shouldn't exist", but happily spend summers crashing in their boarding school friends mansion whose father is a well known but politically quieter CEO.
And the author didn’t fail to deliver. The George Floyd protests in Portland Oregon were massive. I find it hard to square that with a yougov poll that says only upper middle class people were protesting to defund the police because the crowds were young people who aren’t even old enough to have achieved that economic status.
The author hilariously tries to paint small liberal movements as cultural capital, which is the same smear conservatives play when using “virtue signaling.” I’m sorry but 30 years ago Silence=Death fell under his category, and here we are today with overwhelming support nationwide for gay rights.
This paper is interesting but seems intentionally geared toward wrapping antiprogressive rhetoric as insight.
Yeah, it's also really funny because the data that the author uses about police reform also show the conservative luxury beliefs that is “police department don't need to be reformed”. (And the same data also shows that for every income class, the police is largely seen as dysfunctional needing either serious reform or complete defunding).
This post is basically conservative rambling disguised as sociology.
I am in no way conservative, but I think you are missing the point.
There are sets of liberal and conservative beliefs that are held by the wealthy and powerful that are detrimental to the powerless and poor.
He cites the liberal set, maybe he is a conservative and that’s his bias or maybe because there is an inbuilt hypocrisy in some of them, ultimately it doesn’t matter because the point stands on its own and one shouldn’t discount that.
I think you are the one missing the point: it's not that this post has a conservative bias (every text necessarily has these kinds of bias, and that's fine). The problem with this post is that it is only here as an argument against liberal ideas that he doesn't like, and as such it's entirely driven by bad faith.
Then sure there may be some elements of truth sprinkled every now and then, but every piece of propaganda always lies on some truth to be convincing, that doesn't make it legit.
You could break people up into political and wealth-based quadrants:
1. Conservative and rich
2. Conservative and poor
3. Liberal and rich
4. Liberal and poor
Consider the typical expressed beliefs of quadrants 1 and 2. Both advocate that individualism and an internal locus of control can help you succeed in life. The difference is whether they have "succeeded in life" (by socioeconomic measures/ whatever).
Consider the same for quadrants 3 and 4. They would typically be more likely to advocate for the idea that success is based on luck. Again, the difference between 3 and 4 is whether they have not "succeeded."
Of all the quadrants, quadrant number 3 (liberal and rich) has a unique cognitive dissonance between their lived reality and their stated moral position. They tend to believe that rich people have achieved their wealth largely through luck, and now have power and autonomy that others lack. They state that the rich should help the poor, and they are rich, so they continually must justify their own wealth. This type of cognitive dissonance does not exist in the same way for the other 3 quadrants. That's why TFA is inevitably critical of the left for its luxury beliefs moreso than the right.
I'm relatively affluent and I know that it's mostly the product of luck, I have no problem admitting that and that my salary is outrageous compared to the amount of work it requires (and required over my lifetime). I am also actively a militant in favor of an increase in taxes for the guys like me. I'd give away 80% of my capital instantly if it made all of my social class to the same because I know it would make life way better for most of us.
No, but if you disguise your criticism as sociological analysis while hiding under the rug the obvious parts of the analysis that wouldn't fit your narrative, then it's fair to say that's bad faith.
No, I actually read more conservatives than I do read from people who share my opinions because bad faith annoys me even more when it's done from my side.
And there are bunch of conservatives that are even pleasant to read even though I don't have much in common with them.
You can have different opinions and still argue in good faith.
David French is a compulsive contrarian and has ended up in a position where virtually all of his writing consists of attacks against conservatives written for liberal audiences. He’s not nearly as bad as Bill Kristol or Max Boot in this regard but he’s not taken seriously by other conservatives anymore.
Maybe you could evaluate the truth of something on its own merit, rather than sorting into "liberal vs conservative" first and letting truth be secondary to allegiance.
Part of evaluating truth these days is figuring out what information is being left out by the author. It’s hard to figure out the merits of an argument when only one side is presented or info is being hidden.
It's not about liberal vs conservative sorting, there are bad faith argument being raised by all political side.
They are equally bad, no matter where they come from, and they do not deserve anyone's attention, especially when it comes from grifters who live from the the confirmation bias of their followers/patrons.
(I don't even fit in the American political segmentation anyway)
> The problem with this post is that it is only here as an argument against liberal ideas that he doesn't like,
Where's the point of making an argument against liberal ideas you do like?
Unless you are arguing that anything painted "liberal" should never have arguments made against it? That anyone making an argument against a "liberal" position should have their motives questioned?
Yes, people are great fakers - we talk about things not because we believe them, but because we want others to think we do. That describes the great communication divide, where rich people, who rent out multiple apartments talk about housing is a human right, whereas the line cook at the local burger place couldn't be more excited to tell you about his crypto investment portfolio.
The phenomenon of the migration of upper-middle or middle class (that is, those on the margin of luxury) holders of the beliefs mentioned in TFA from blue to red states is strong evidence of his thesis.
Thanks for calling it out, pretty clear to me too that that’s where this article was headed. It sucks to see stuff like this posted on HN, feels like a let down.
ok - in that case: when I switched to a white collar job suddenly all the world's knowledge was unlocked in my brain, and I knew the meaning of all these terms that had heretofore been opaque to me.
Those with the capacity and inclination to learn such things (meaning academic theory and systems) who are born into working class communities or families are heavily encouraged to leave the working class behind and cut ties. The working class communities are intellectually strip mined, and the kids quickly learn their only chance at success relies very much on learning to hide where they came from unless they're trotting it out for sympathy points/scholarships, in which case you need to talk about your background but make clear that you've ~ transcended it. As a result the only people left in the working class as adults are those who couldn't learn academic theory.
Some exceptions I've seen are people like my mother who grew up higher-class but 'defected'. Another exception is occasional disabled members of the working class.
It has nothing to do with the intelligence or ability of the working class as a population and everything to do with the fact that people in that class who have certain abilities and types of intelligence are offered a way out that others aren't. (e.g. A mechanical genius is less likely to get this treatment than a kid reading several grades ahead ).
The author addresses this in the text. He claims the wealthy have the time (And I will add access to resources like the internet and books) to spend on learning esoteric knowledge. From my N=1 experience, that seems to be true. I don't really get why that offends you. Is it really hard to believe that people in different social classes prioritize learning different things?
well probably because I have learned more esoteric knowledge than almost anyone I know despite having come from poorer circumstances than anyone I know, and I learned it while being poor.
Pretty sure working class people suppress "fancy words". A fella could get mistaken for a "fairy" or maybe even get a beatin'.
It's like how mothers used to chip in to enforce gender inequality their daughters suffered. It is a defeatist mindset, that is culturally enforced and learned from bitter lessons of the reality of power balance and dynamics in society.
edit:
like many here at my development stage (middleclass, degreed parents, etc) there was significant positive feedback for displaying cognitive abilities.
So it is not a luxury, it is a privilege.
And that raises the question of whether it is in fact required (as a sort of petite-bourgois-oblige) for those of us who are comfortable with "fancy words" to do the talking for the otherwise encumbered oppressed?
> Pretty sure working class people suppress "fancy words". A fella could get mistaken for a "fairy" or maybe even get a beatin'.
> And that raises the question of whether it is in fact required (as a sort of petite-bourgois-oblige) for those of us who are comfortable with "fancy words" to do the talking for the otherwise encumbered oppressed?
I honestly cannot tell if this is a serious comment. I hope not.
