10 ms·

Of kimono and cultural appropriation

102 points by nkurz 11y ago

Alosio 11y ago
An author I like has a good post that clarified cultural appropriation to me. http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/131242817286/ive-noticed-that-youve-been-talking-a-bit-about http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/131242817286/ive-noti...
kiproping 11y ago
Cultural appropriation is one of the many words coming out of the far left. I never thought that the left could be radical. I guess that's why it's important to have neither the right nor the left take the hold on power for too long.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  You generally need population with critical thinking capabilities. Modern world does its best to prevent that. And social media is awesome at putting S in SNR to zero.
- kagamine 11y ago
  It has nothing to do with the left and everything to to with ignorance.
- pluma 11y ago
  I'm not sure who said it but there's a witticism that goes something like "You have to have gone to university to be this stupid". If you look at anything closely enough, everything becomes problematic. But of course the correct conclusion is that if you define everything as problematic, the term "problematic" ceases to be a useful distinction, so you should dial back a notch and figure out what problems actually matter.
arm 11y ago
“Sorry, but your browser needs Javascript to use this site.” Wow, seriously? I enable JavaScript just to see what exactly on the page requires JavaScript so badly that they have to replace all the content with this message, and what do I see? A completely text-based article.
- pmontra 11y ago
  Or open your dev tools and set .no-js .single .main_content #no_js_blocker to display:none; and remove the max-height:400px from .no-js .single .main_content That's all is needed to read the article. What the JavaScript is for? Who knows.
  - Anthony-G 11y ago
    I use Firefox (with NoScript) and an even quicker/easier solution is to use the Reader View feature. Some web pages look great in their original design and some don't look any worse in Reader View but there are many more where Reader View is a big improvement.
cthalupa 11y ago
The fact that there are a not-insignificant number of Americans who feel like any sort of cultural exchange is an appropriation that promotes division bewilders me. The idea that this cross pollination of culture, art, fashion, etc. somehow drives these cultures apart rather than bringing them together doesn't seem to be any sort of logical sense. Honestly, in this sort of situation, it seems racist on the part of the people protesting. Outside of the outright division it promotes, it assumes a patriarchal arrogance, that they (Middle class Americans in America) know better than the Japanese in Japan. Are the Japanese so dumb as to be "duped" by these museums? Is the rich history of the kimono actually so weak that it will be destroyed by non-Japanese wearing them? Of course, they, as Americans, understand the dangers of American culture and the effects it has on the world, so they must protect other countries that don't understand American culture and the danger it poses! They'll look out for you, <Insert Other Country X That They Are Not From>, so don't you worry your pretty little head about this. They know best. What a bizarre and hypocritical stance to take.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  There is a zealotry strain in the american psyche. Zealotry as a word is also cultural appropriation. I have not died on Masada so freely expect SJW to storm me. So when diversity and political sensitivity becomes religion - we get zealots. I am actually all for cultural appropriation for couple of reasons. 1) Even if it is just dumb fun for the masses, some people of the other culture want to get the real deal and genuinely help in developing and preserving. 2) Even if your culture is appropriated - you have insane amounts of culture to appropriate yourself. 3) People are not easily offended - no matter what the twitter age shows, so most of the time you don't care 4) Sometimes you strike gold - like with blues/hard-rock/heavy-metal (politely leaving hair metal out). We have something that traversed the world, left deep cultural marks everywhere and helped bring the iron curtain down.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  The closest I've come to an explanation that makes sense (though it is full of flawed assumptions) is the following: 1) Dreadlocks are a natural hairstyle for black people. Black people are not allowed to have dreadlocks for most types of jobs, since that is simply not considered an appropriate hairstyle for a bank cashier or what ever. 2) when a white celebrity gets dreadlocks she is rubbing it in, so to say, that inherently white-privilege of said celebrity. That is "I can wear your culture because I'm white, you can't wear yours because you are black" The flaws are plenty of course. White middle class can't get white collar jobs wearing dreadlocks, either. The fact that any celebrity can wear funky hairstyles and get away with it isn't attributed to their race, but to their celebrity status. A further argument for cultural appropriation is that the hairstyles required for white-collar jobs are based on "natural white" hairstyles, though I hardly find that to be true either. That is as far as I can extract something resembling a logical argument, I hope this has helped you understand what is going on in the minds of these anti-appropriators. I of course don't expect you to be anymore convinced by their stance.
quaunaut 11y ago
Cultural appropriation is one hell of an issue. I've never seen it defined in a way that doesn't seem ripe for this kind of abuse. Some define it as someone of one culture adopting qualities of another culture wholesale- which begs the question then, what's the difference between that and appreciating another culture? Others define it as adopting said culture in a disrespectful way. This ends up closer to a mark I could understand and be on board with- but then you get situations like that defined in this article, where so much of the complaints seem to be on another's behalf. In general, I'm not sure how the concept of cultural appropriation lasts into the future as anything more than a way to steer people away from letting their ignorance walk over another culture's traditions. Considering how quickly sacred cows are slaughtered in modern pop culture, in nearly every technologically-engaged culture on earth, it seems just so difficult to not have the phrase lose what little meaning it might have. Then again, I know that I'm ignorant on many pieces of this subject, despite dozens of hours reading and trying to educate myself on it. If anything, that in itself is my biggest frustration with identity politics- there's no easy path to learning it or being pointed to the right resources, and yet it seems like my own ignorance hurts others gravely. It's troubling.
- deciplex 11y ago
  > I've never seen it defined in a way that doesn't seem ripe for this kind of abuse. That's because any definition of it is ripe for abuse, because out of a very specific context it's a dumb idea with no basis in fact or culture. Said's thesis mentioned in the article is more about appropriation as a symptom of wider oppression and prejudice, and more importantly it is more about incorrect, or exaggerated, perceptions of foreign cultures. The Japanese do wear kimonos, mainly in August. At worst, cultural appropriation reinforces existing prejudices - deal with the prejudice, and cultural appropriation is a non-issue - but you can't eliminate prejudice just by forbidding any cultural exchange at all.
fenomas 11y ago
Cultural appropriation is one of those notions I've never quite been able to grasp. Are there notable cases where it causes people real, tangible harm?
- Zikes 11y ago
  There is little that could be said about cultural appropriation that could not also be said about interracial marriage. It's good that you can't grasp the notion, because it is based in irrational thinking.
  - StudyAnimal 11y ago
    Very good analogy! Actually it isn't even an analogy its more like the hard science.
- forgingahead 11y ago
  Of course not. "Harm" doesn't come into it, it is always about manufactured outrage and the money that can be generated from such manufactured outrage.
- tomlock 11y ago
  Depends on what you consider tangible harm. It came close recently in this instance: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-20/australian-couple-mobbed-in-india-over-hindu-deity-tattoo/6867722 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-20/australian-couple-mobb...
  - cthalupa 11y ago
    I imagine he was asking for tangible harm to the culture being appropriated, and not tangible harm coming to someone doing the appropriation because people were offended.
- Alosio 11y ago
  I think examples of harm, would be how like in the 20th century African American musicians had a much more difficult time selling their music, but the same music would garner a much larger audience if played by white musicians. Its not simply white people performing black music, that is wrong, but rather that the white people filled a demand for black music that could have been supplied by the original culture were the market not racist. Its like, no direct racism, but making racism easier? If those white people had said "No I will not play this music", then the market would either have had to listen to black muscians or not get the music at all.
StudyAnimal 11y ago
Appropriation is bullshit, cultures should be allowed to freely copy from and imitate each other without restriction.
- SSLy 11y ago
  Everything aside, this is how humanity works for 4000 years at least. I think we just have a case of spoiled Americans that want to be the world's police.
  - techterrier 11y ago
    oh we have these 'morality of thought police' in England too!
    - StavrosK 11y ago
      I've noticed that, oddly, England follows the US pretty closely in culture. Does anyone know why that is? It seems to me like any crazy concept that springs up to the US reaches England very soon. Is it the shared language and the ease of communication?
      - vlehto 11y ago
        All of Europe follows US to some extent. There is Hollywood and most of stuff in internet in English is written by people form the states. But then there is also the U.S. geopolitical and economical hegemony. People copycat everything american hoping that magically some of that success would stick too. Results are weird. Some people advocate saving tap water here in Finland. Despite our country having very large number of lakes and swamps and no foreseeable shortage of water.
- exogen 11y ago
  It's very tempting to say that, but that's a bit of a privileged stance. ("I wouldn't mind, so nobody else should mind either!") Analogy: Let's say you take a free intro taekwondo class. They outfit you with a white belt, obviously. But you think the red/black belt looks cool, so you start wearing that instead - maybe not in the dojang even, but just around town. You don't think martial artists should have a problem with that, maybe even challenge you to a fight? And even non-martial-artists shouldn't think you're kind of a poser?
chroma 11y ago
I'm pretty sure the concept of appropriation is the end result of signalling games. As racism waned in popularity, racists were forced to conceal their racism with euphemisms and dog whistles[1]. Non-racists eventually figured this out and increased the sensitivity of their racism detectors. Racists concealed their racism even more. Repeat. Eventually you get to today. Almost nobody is racist, but everyone's on a hair trigger when it comes to racist language or behavior. And otherwise sane and good people get angry about white people wearing kimonos. The process is described much better by this blog post: http://blog.jaibot.com/outcast-arms-race/ http://blog.jaibot.com/outcast-arms-race/ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics Edit: When I say "racist", I mean consciously so. We're all prone to unconscious biases, and it's good that we try to discover and correct for them. But the signalling game I'm talking about? That happens with beliefs that people are themselves aware of.
- dasil003 11y ago
  Eventually almost no one is (or at least believes themselves to be) racist, but systemic inequality is deeply ingrained and ensures that minorities will feel the effects of racism even with entirely well-intentioned liberal actors. This is where you get white people shouting "I am not and have never been a racist!" and black people shouting "Check your privilege!", and then people get wrapped up in polarized ideology and defensiveness. I think we're at a point with racism where it can only improve by empathy and communication, by real integration at the individual level, and actually talking and listening to each other. The utopian ideal of the internet that we had in the 70s and 80s was that it would facilitate this kind of dialog and allow the best information to spread; but instead what social media has proven is the anonymity and borderlessness of the internet allows everyone to find their own little micro-group of like-minded people and never have to speak to their neighbors again.
  - vlehto 11y ago
    Everybody is little bit racist. It's about how much you act on it. It's awfully like with Christian morals. Everybody is a sinner. Everybody pretends to be Zealous. And everybody mocks everybody else for being sinners. Donate money/buy indulgence, what's the difference? Just remember to be ashamed of yourself. I'm not sure if this is Christian cultural undertones finding a new way to surface. Or did church just capture something very integral of human psyche with their rhetoric. Hopefully this bullshit is eradicated if the idea of "thought crime" becomes unpopular enough.
HaloZero 11y ago
I was actually having a discussion about this recently with a friend and honestly I'm never sure where the line is and how to clearly define it. I imagine it's dependent on the cultural tradition and context of what that tradition is. The most clear example of cultural appropriation that most people agree is inappropriate is headdresses. Many cultures view the headdress as a sign of respect but it's been used as a for musical festivals across the United States. So I think that is cited as the most common cultural appropriation. Where the lines draw would be something like a Kimono, where if you wear it and use it then are you paying homage or respect if you use it correctly within the culture? Can't you innovate and improve it? The example that I was using that was I thought was odd was Yoga. It's originally a very long tradition in India with a complicated history but it's usually considered a religious and spiritual experience. In the West many view it only for the physical and health benefits though and do not consider the spiritual parts of it. The question is that appropriation?
- vidarh 11y ago
  Yoga was introduced to the west by Indian yogi's. It would seem to be the exact opposite of "appropriation": it was actively pushed upon the west in multiple "waves" punctuated by periods of backlash against it.
mirimir 11y ago
It's arguable that just about any sort of clothing has (or has had) some significance for some culture.
PlzSnow 11y ago
In this example, it seems that Indian/Chinese people told Japanese people that other people are not allowed to wear Japanese clothes. Unfortunately the protestors names are logged forever online, so their stupidity will follow them for their entire lives. I almost think that it is worth creating a disposable username for use in real-life and not just online.
ericdykstra 11y ago
I think the last line is the key quote of the article: Kaori Nakano, a professor of fashion history at Meiji University put it to me this way: “Cultural appropriation is the beginning of new creativity. Even if it includes some misunderstanding, it creates something new.” It may be the key to the future of kimono fashion. "Cultural Appropriation" seems to be oft-used in a negative term, but it's just the spread of cultural ideas, traditions, fashions, etc. We're all just individual humans, we're born without culture and we adopt the culture of those we're raised by and those we surround ourselves with. Is it "whiteface" cultural appropriation when Japanese baseball players wear American-style uniforms with their names written out in Romaji on back instead of Kanji? This kind of protest seems like the latest in outrage culture over something that, in the end, is just human nature. Who gets to decide what is your culture and what culture you choose is appropriation? If I'm 1/16 Japanese and nobody in my family has been to Japan in 2 generations, can I wear a kimono? If my parents are both Indian but I was born and raised in Japan, can I wear a kimono? What if I'm white, born in America, but was adopted by Japanese parents at age 8? Professor Nakano has it right. Cultural appropriation should not be a dirty word, it should be a sign of mixing of ideas to create new ones, and bringing people together over something that they didn't know they had in common.
- jboynyc 11y ago
  In his book Hyperculturality (2005), the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han distinguishes between "cultural appropriation" and "cultural exploitation." He argues that appropriation per se is not a problem (because culture, after all, is generally not diminished by being appropriated), but exploitation is. Exploitation occurs when there is a clear power differential between appropriator and expropriated (think whites poking fun at blacks in a society that used to be based on the slave labor of black people), but there are plenty of examples where processes of appropriation do in fact lead to "new creativity" (think Korean tacos).
  - vlehto 11y ago
    In your example, cultural appropriation is bad when it happens to be racism at the same time. (Not to mention that making fun of someone can be asshole thing to do in it's own right.) Could you give example when cultural appropriation is bad without something obviously bad shit being bundled with it?
Luc 11y ago
My theory is that people are learning this stuff at Liberal Arts colleges. They're operating within an intellectual framework (perhaps applying it badly) that allows them to feel justified and rational. It happens on Metafilter quite often. Someone posts a funny video and the comments go on about intersectionality, cisgendered cissexual and heteronormativity.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Well, if the video's "humour" rests on making fun of gay or trans people, of course that will happen.
  - pluma 11y ago
    I'm still waiting for some rabid liberal arts types to point out how sexist and racist Back to the Future is.
    - pluma 11y ago
      Just for the record: I'm not really kidding. The first film only had a black mayor (who used to be a cleaner) and a group of black musicians (who smoke weed out back during the break). Their entire purpose, for the most part, is to serve as the butt of several jokes (e.g. the cleaner being overly excited that he's going to become the mayor in the future, the musicians scaring the ruffians by outnumbering them) and Marty directly gets credit for the achievements of at least two black men (the cleaner getting the idea and confidence to enter politics and run for mayor, one of the black musicians calling Chuck Berry, giving him the idea for Johnny B Goode when Marty is performing). Martys girlfriend is left out of the majority of the first film's plot, spends the majority of the second's film knocked out (both initially and again later) -- pretty much only serving as an excuse to distract Marty and Emmet long enough that bad things can happen, and then only returns at the very end of the third film. The only strong female character is the teacher in the third film, whose first appearance is literally as a damsel in distress and who again ends up in distress during the film's climax (so Emmet can save her). Heck, a lot of the plot of all three movies is built around saving damsels in distress. Don't get me wrong. Personally I think the three films make an awesome trilogy and I understand why they have become the pop culture icon they are, but they make incredibly easy targets if you want to call out racist/sexist stereotypes in popular media.
techterrier 11y ago
As an aside, it's extremely sad that this art is in danger of being lost. It seems comparable to how London's Saville Row became (an to an extend still is) imperilled. Fingers crossed they manage to hang on in there until the fashion winds change.
Animats 11y ago
This is likely to upset few people in Japan. Japan has a long history of borrowing from other cultures, as shopping in Tokyo makes obvious.
- cthalupa 11y ago
  There's also such things as kanji being pretty much a direct lift and shift of Chinese hanzi as well ;)
smtddr 11y ago
So... I can't speak directly to the issue discussed in the article, but I am reading a lot of HN comments that seem not to understand the term "cultural appropriation", think it's a non-existent problem and anyone complaining about it is crazy. I just want to let people know that while there are a bunch of "Social Justice Warriors" running around complaining about anything and everything, the issue isn't just fiction on the part of the offended, particularly when it's erases, dillutes or mocks the actual source of the art while celebrating their own rendition. 1. http://www.refinery29.com/cornrows-cultural-appropriation http://www.refinery29.com/cornrows-cultural-appropriation To the point, it's this kind of thing that annoying:"It seems the more popular cornrows have become among white women, the more they are drained of their history. “Sometimes editors see something that someone pseudo-popular does and they say it’s new, fresh, or edgy,” says India Jewel Jackson, an editor at Hearst Publications. “But, when it was us doing it, it was ghetto. Now that it’s someone blonde and blue doing it, it’s fresh." 2. http://jezebel.com/what-the-hustle-looks-like-on-etsy-in-2015-1726192097 http://jezebel.com/what-the-hustle-looks-like-on-etsy-in-201... "“Hustling” as it presents itself in the 2015 economy erases the barriers posed to wealth acquisition by sexism, classism, racism, cissexism and ableism, instead chalking up a lack of financial success to a lack of entrepreneurial spirit. It makes no acknowledgement that some people have to hustle much, much harder than others. This one isn't exactly cultural per se, but it erases the message the word use to carry. Now I can no longer use the word "hustle" in tech circles because I don't think it means the same thing to them as it does to me. When my parents came to America from Nigeria, their stories of things they did and things they saw in Oakland carry the definition of "hustle" that I know. While I'm sure starting up a company is very hard work, it doesn't in general contain all the facets of the historical hustle. Where one is constantly walking the tightrope between homelessness and not eating for 2 days while playing a game that seems pretty rigged against them. You certainly didn't have extra money to be buying fancy pencils and coffee mugs with the word "hustle" printed on them. Btw, this is extremely similar to the #AllLivesMatter hashtag that washes away the original message. http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-these-5-paragraphs/ http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-al... --- "Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-@$$ comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!"
a_bonobo 11y ago
I think what most comments in this thread (and the protesters) oversee is that "cultural appropriation" usually happens in a setting of oppression. The most common example is white Americans taking from black or native Americans. The exchange isn't "open culture" as other comments express, it's too one-sided, like Stockholm Syndrome. The hostage can only give. You can see how some members of the "taken from" group take this in a bad light, they've already had so much taken from them, and now to top it off there's somebody who takes and ingests what made the "taken from" group unique in the first place. It's not a far step from there to have people in the "taken by" group try to make that stop, and in some cases these people go way too far. In OP's link this doesn't happen - Americans and the Japanese really don't have much history of oppression (except for WW2 internment), so I'd say it "doesn't count" as cultural appropriation. Edit: I should say that there's not much history of systematic oppression between Japanese and Americans, that would exclude your day-to-day racism
- chroma 11y ago
  > Americans and the Japanese really don't have much history of oppression (except for WW2 internment), so I'd say it "doesn't count" as cultural appropriation. Yes, except for that time when the US forced Japan into treaties at gunpoint.[1] And that time when they put everyone of Japanese ancestry into prison camps. And the time they firebombed Japanese cities. And the time they nuked Japan twice. And the time they occupied Japan and executed civilian politicians.[2] Except for those things, there's not much history of oppression. I apologize for the snark, but your comment is completely disconnected from reality. Cries of "appropriation" are only tenuously correlated with oppression. For example: the French never oppressed the Maori, but people got angry when a French ad used their facial tattoos.[3] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dki_Hirota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dki_Hirota 3. http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/fashion/44467 http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/fashion/44467
  - woah 11y ago
    WWII was a war of American oppression?
archemike_ 11y ago
http://nakedandfamousdenim.com/type/kimono-shirt/ http://nakedandfamousdenim.com/type/kimono-shirt/ kimonos are fashionable. I'm sure denim heads here will agree I have a few from Quebec :)
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
While it would appear that the protestors were misguided in this instance (though perhaps they weren't, I only know what the article tells me), the near-fetishisation of Japanese culture in the West does bother me. Japan's status in the West does seem to be different to that of other Asian nations, probably because it's a 'developed' country. But then, isn't that only because in the Meiji era, it rapidly 'Westernised' itself to appeal more to Western tastes and be taken seriously?
- krapp 11y ago
  Does the degree to which Japan consumes Western culture bother you as well? Have you ever seen the amount of English they'll put on products because it's cool, regardless of whether or not the words actually make sense? If anything, Japan and the West (the US particularly) have a mutual fetish for each other.
  - deleted 11y ago
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pluma 11y ago
Oh, come on. Everybody knows you can only be racist against brown people.
deleted 11y ago
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RUG3Y 11y ago
People are walking around with a hair trigger, just waiting for a reason to be offended. As a society we've tolerated these agitators too long.

102 points by nkurz 11y ago

An author I like has a good post that clarified cultural appropriation to me. http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/131242817286/ive-noticed-that-youve-been-talking-a-bit-about http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/131242817286/ive-noti...

kiproping 11y ago

Cultural appropriation is one of the many words coming out of the far left. I never thought that the left could be radical. I guess that's why it's important to have neither the right nor the left take the hold on power for too long.

venomsnake 11y ago
You generally need population with critical thinking capabilities. Modern world does its best to prevent that. And social media is awesome at putting S in SNR to zero.
kagamine 11y ago
It has nothing to do with the left and everything to to with ignorance.
pluma 11y ago
I'm not sure who said it but there's a witticism that goes something like "You have to have gone to university to be this stupid". If you look at anything closely enough, everything becomes problematic. But of course the correct conclusion is that if you define everything as problematic, the term "problematic" ceases to be a useful distinction, so you should dial back a notch and figure out what problems actually matter.

arm 11y ago

“Sorry, but your browser needs Javascript to use this site.” Wow, seriously? I enable JavaScript just to see what exactly on the page requires JavaScript so badly that they have to replace all the content with this message, and what do I see? A completely text-based article.

pmontra 11y ago
Or open your dev tools and set .no-js .single .main_content #no_js_blocker to display:none; and remove the max-height:400px from .no-js .single .main_content That's all is needed to read the article. What the JavaScript is for? Who knows.
- Anthony-G 11y ago
  I use Firefox (with NoScript) and an even quicker/easier solution is to use the Reader View feature. Some web pages look great in their original design and some don't look any worse in Reader View but there are many more where Reader View is a big improvement.

cthalupa 11y ago

The fact that there are a not-insignificant number of Americans who feel like any sort of cultural exchange is an appropriation that promotes division bewilders me. The idea that this cross pollination of culture, art, fashion, etc. somehow drives these cultures apart rather than bringing them together doesn't seem to be any sort of logical sense. Honestly, in this sort of situation, it seems racist on the part of the people protesting. Outside of the outright division it promotes, it assumes a patriarchal arrogance, that they (Middle class Americans in America) know better than the Japanese in Japan. Are the Japanese so dumb as to be "duped" by these museums? Is the rich history of the kimono actually so weak that it will be destroyed by non-Japanese wearing them? Of course, they, as Americans, understand the dangers of American culture and the effects it has on the world, so they must protect other countries that don't understand American culture and the danger it poses! They'll look out for you, <Insert Other Country X That They Are Not From>, so don't you worry your pretty little head about this. They know best. What a bizarre and hypocritical stance to take.

venomsnake 11y ago
There is a zealotry strain in the american psyche. Zealotry as a word is also cultural appropriation. I have not died on Masada so freely expect SJW to storm me. So when diversity and political sensitivity becomes religion - we get zealots. I am actually all for cultural appropriation for couple of reasons. 1) Even if it is just dumb fun for the masses, some people of the other culture want to get the real deal and genuinely help in developing and preserving. 2) Even if your culture is appropriated - you have insane amounts of culture to appropriate yourself. 3) People are not easily offended - no matter what the twitter age shows, so most of the time you don't care 4) Sometimes you strike gold - like with blues/hard-rock/heavy-metal (politely leaving hair metal out). We have something that traversed the world, left deep cultural marks everywhere and helped bring the iron curtain down.
wodenokoto 11y ago
The closest I've come to an explanation that makes sense (though it is full of flawed assumptions) is the following: 1) Dreadlocks are a natural hairstyle for black people. Black people are not allowed to have dreadlocks for most types of jobs, since that is simply not considered an appropriate hairstyle for a bank cashier or what ever. 2) when a white celebrity gets dreadlocks she is rubbing it in, so to say, that inherently white-privilege of said celebrity. That is "I can wear your culture because I'm white, you can't wear yours because you are black" The flaws are plenty of course. White middle class can't get white collar jobs wearing dreadlocks, either. The fact that any celebrity can wear funky hairstyles and get away with it isn't attributed to their race, but to their celebrity status. A further argument for cultural appropriation is that the hairstyles required for white-collar jobs are based on "natural white" hairstyles, though I hardly find that to be true either. That is as far as I can extract something resembling a logical argument, I hope this has helped you understand what is going on in the minds of these anti-appropriators. I of course don't expect you to be anymore convinced by their stance.

quaunaut 11y ago

Cultural appropriation is one hell of an issue. I've never seen it defined in a way that doesn't seem ripe for this kind of abuse. Some define it as someone of one culture adopting qualities of another culture wholesale- which begs the question then, what's the difference between that and appreciating another culture? Others define it as adopting said culture in a disrespectful way. This ends up closer to a mark I could understand and be on board with- but then you get situations like that defined in this article, where so much of the complaints seem to be on another's behalf. In general, I'm not sure how the concept of cultural appropriation lasts into the future as anything more than a way to steer people away from letting their ignorance walk over another culture's traditions. Considering how quickly sacred cows are slaughtered in modern pop culture, in nearly every technologically-engaged culture on earth, it seems just so difficult to not have the phrase lose what little meaning it might have. Then again, I know that I'm ignorant on many pieces of this subject, despite dozens of hours reading and trying to educate myself on it. If anything, that in itself is my biggest frustration with identity politics- there's no easy path to learning it or being pointed to the right resources, and yet it seems like my own ignorance hurts others gravely. It's troubling.

deciplex 11y ago
> I've never seen it defined in a way that doesn't seem ripe for this kind of abuse. That's because any definition of it is ripe for abuse, because out of a very specific context it's a dumb idea with no basis in fact or culture. Said's thesis mentioned in the article is more about appropriation as a symptom of wider oppression and prejudice, and more importantly it is more about incorrect, or exaggerated, perceptions of foreign cultures. The Japanese do wear kimonos, mainly in August. At worst, cultural appropriation reinforces existing prejudices - deal with the prejudice, and cultural appropriation is a non-issue - but you can't eliminate prejudice just by forbidding any cultural exchange at all.

fenomas 11y ago

Cultural appropriation is one of those notions I've never quite been able to grasp. Are there notable cases where it causes people real, tangible harm?

Zikes 11y ago
There is little that could be said about cultural appropriation that could not also be said about interracial marriage. It's good that you can't grasp the notion, because it is based in irrational thinking.
- StudyAnimal 11y ago
  Very good analogy! Actually it isn't even an analogy its more like the hard science.
forgingahead 11y ago
Of course not. "Harm" doesn't come into it, it is always about manufactured outrage and the money that can be generated from such manufactured outrage.
tomlock 11y ago
Depends on what you consider tangible harm. It came close recently in this instance: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-20/australian-couple-mobbed-in-india-over-hindu-deity-tattoo/6867722 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-20/australian-couple-mobb...
- cthalupa 11y ago
  I imagine he was asking for tangible harm to the culture being appropriated, and not tangible harm coming to someone doing the appropriation because people were offended.
Alosio 11y ago
I think examples of harm, would be how like in the 20th century African American musicians had a much more difficult time selling their music, but the same music would garner a much larger audience if played by white musicians. Its not simply white people performing black music, that is wrong, but rather that the white people filled a demand for black music that could have been supplied by the original culture were the market not racist. Its like, no direct racism, but making racism easier? If those white people had said "No I will not play this music", then the market would either have had to listen to black muscians or not get the music at all.

StudyAnimal 11y ago

Appropriation is bullshit, cultures should be allowed to freely copy from and imitate each other without restriction.

SSLy 11y ago
Everything aside, this is how humanity works for 4000 years at least. I think we just have a case of spoiled Americans that want to be the world's police.
- techterrier 11y ago
  oh we have these 'morality of thought police' in England too!
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    I've noticed that, oddly, England follows the US pretty closely in culture. Does anyone know why that is? It seems to me like any crazy concept that springs up to the US reaches England very soon. Is it the shared language and the ease of communication?
    - vlehto 11y ago
      All of Europe follows US to some extent. There is Hollywood and most of stuff in internet in English is written by people form the states. But then there is also the U.S. geopolitical and economical hegemony. People copycat everything american hoping that magically some of that success would stick too. Results are weird. Some people advocate saving tap water here in Finland. Despite our country having very large number of lakes and swamps and no foreseeable shortage of water.
exogen 11y ago
It's very tempting to say that, but that's a bit of a privileged stance. ("I wouldn't mind, so nobody else should mind either!") Analogy: Let's say you take a free intro taekwondo class. They outfit you with a white belt, obviously. But you think the red/black belt looks cool, so you start wearing that instead - maybe not in the dojang even, but just around town. You don't think martial artists should have a problem with that, maybe even challenge you to a fight? And even non-martial-artists shouldn't think you're kind of a poser?

chroma 11y ago

I'm pretty sure the concept of appropriation is the end result of signalling games. As racism waned in popularity, racists were forced to conceal their racism with euphemisms and dog whistles[1]. Non-racists eventually figured this out and increased the sensitivity of their racism detectors. Racists concealed their racism even more. Repeat. Eventually you get to today. Almost nobody is racist, but everyone's on a hair trigger when it comes to racist language or behavior. And otherwise sane and good people get angry about white people wearing kimonos. The process is described much better by this blog post: http://blog.jaibot.com/outcast-arms-race/ http://blog.jaibot.com/outcast-arms-race/ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics Edit: When I say "racist", I mean consciously so. We're all prone to unconscious biases, and it's good that we try to discover and correct for them. But the signalling game I'm talking about? That happens with beliefs that people are themselves aware of.

dasil003 11y ago
Eventually almost no one is (or at least believes themselves to be) racist, but systemic inequality is deeply ingrained and ensures that minorities will feel the effects of racism even with entirely well-intentioned liberal actors. This is where you get white people shouting "I am not and have never been a racist!" and black people shouting "Check your privilege!", and then people get wrapped up in polarized ideology and defensiveness. I think we're at a point with racism where it can only improve by empathy and communication, by real integration at the individual level, and actually talking and listening to each other. The utopian ideal of the internet that we had in the 70s and 80s was that it would facilitate this kind of dialog and allow the best information to spread; but instead what social media has proven is the anonymity and borderlessness of the internet allows everyone to find their own little micro-group of like-minded people and never have to speak to their neighbors again.
- vlehto 11y ago
  Everybody is little bit racist. It's about how much you act on it. It's awfully like with Christian morals. Everybody is a sinner. Everybody pretends to be Zealous. And everybody mocks everybody else for being sinners. Donate money/buy indulgence, what's the difference? Just remember to be ashamed of yourself. I'm not sure if this is Christian cultural undertones finding a new way to surface. Or did church just capture something very integral of human psyche with their rhetoric. Hopefully this bullshit is eradicated if the idea of "thought crime" becomes unpopular enough.

HaloZero 11y ago

I was actually having a discussion about this recently with a friend and honestly I'm never sure where the line is and how to clearly define it. I imagine it's dependent on the cultural tradition and context of what that tradition is. The most clear example of cultural appropriation that most people agree is inappropriate is headdresses. Many cultures view the headdress as a sign of respect but it's been used as a for musical festivals across the United States. So I think that is cited as the most common cultural appropriation. Where the lines draw would be something like a Kimono, where if you wear it and use it then are you paying homage or respect if you use it correctly within the culture? Can't you innovate and improve it? The example that I was using that was I thought was odd was Yoga. It's originally a very long tradition in India with a complicated history but it's usually considered a religious and spiritual experience. In the West many view it only for the physical and health benefits though and do not consider the spiritual parts of it. The question is that appropriation?

vidarh 11y ago
Yoga was introduced to the west by Indian yogi's. It would seem to be the exact opposite of "appropriation": it was actively pushed upon the west in multiple "waves" punctuated by periods of backlash against it.

mirimir 11y ago

It's arguable that just about any sort of clothing has (or has had) some significance for some culture.

PlzSnow 11y ago

In this example, it seems that Indian/Chinese people told Japanese people that other people are not allowed to wear Japanese clothes. Unfortunately the protestors names are logged forever online, so their stupidity will follow them for their entire lives. I almost think that it is worth creating a disposable username for use in real-life and not just online.

ericdykstra 11y ago

I think the last line is the key quote of the article: Kaori Nakano, a professor of fashion history at Meiji University put it to me this way: “Cultural appropriation is the beginning of new creativity. Even if it includes some misunderstanding, it creates something new.” It may be the key to the future of kimono fashion. "Cultural Appropriation" seems to be oft-used in a negative term, but it's just the spread of cultural ideas, traditions, fashions, etc. We're all just individual humans, we're born without culture and we adopt the culture of those we're raised by and those we surround ourselves with. Is it "whiteface" cultural appropriation when Japanese baseball players wear American-style uniforms with their names written out in Romaji on back instead of Kanji? This kind of protest seems like the latest in outrage culture over something that, in the end, is just human nature. Who gets to decide what is your culture and what culture you choose is appropriation? If I'm 1/16 Japanese and nobody in my family has been to Japan in 2 generations, can I wear a kimono? If my parents are both Indian but I was born and raised in Japan, can I wear a kimono? What if I'm white, born in America, but was adopted by Japanese parents at age 8? Professor Nakano has it right. Cultural appropriation should not be a dirty word, it should be a sign of mixing of ideas to create new ones, and bringing people together over something that they didn't know they had in common.

jboynyc 11y ago
In his book Hyperculturality (2005), the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han distinguishes between "cultural appropriation" and "cultural exploitation." He argues that appropriation per se is not a problem (because culture, after all, is generally not diminished by being appropriated), but exploitation is. Exploitation occurs when there is a clear power differential between appropriator and expropriated (think whites poking fun at blacks in a society that used to be based on the slave labor of black people), but there are plenty of examples where processes of appropriation do in fact lead to "new creativity" (think Korean tacos).
- vlehto 11y ago
  In your example, cultural appropriation is bad when it happens to be racism at the same time. (Not to mention that making fun of someone can be asshole thing to do in it's own right.) Could you give example when cultural appropriation is bad without something obviously bad shit being bundled with it?

Luc 11y ago

My theory is that people are learning this stuff at Liberal Arts colleges. They're operating within an intellectual framework (perhaps applying it badly) that allows them to feel justified and rational. It happens on Metafilter quite often. Someone posts a funny video and the comments go on about intersectionality, cisgendered cissexual and heteronormativity.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Well, if the video's "humour" rests on making fun of gay or trans people, of course that will happen.
- pluma 11y ago
  I'm still waiting for some rabid liberal arts types to point out how sexist and racist Back to the Future is.
  - pluma 11y ago
    Just for the record: I'm not really kidding. The first film only had a black mayor (who used to be a cleaner) and a group of black musicians (who smoke weed out back during the break). Their entire purpose, for the most part, is to serve as the butt of several jokes (e.g. the cleaner being overly excited that he's going to become the mayor in the future, the musicians scaring the ruffians by outnumbering them) and Marty directly gets credit for the achievements of at least two black men (the cleaner getting the idea and confidence to enter politics and run for mayor, one of the black musicians calling Chuck Berry, giving him the idea for Johnny B Goode when Marty is performing). Martys girlfriend is left out of the majority of the first film's plot, spends the majority of the second's film knocked out (both initially and again later) -- pretty much only serving as an excuse to distract Marty and Emmet long enough that bad things can happen, and then only returns at the very end of the third film. The only strong female character is the teacher in the third film, whose first appearance is literally as a damsel in distress and who again ends up in distress during the film's climax (so Emmet can save her). Heck, a lot of the plot of all three movies is built around saving damsels in distress. Don't get me wrong. Personally I think the three films make an awesome trilogy and I understand why they have become the pop culture icon they are, but they make incredibly easy targets if you want to call out racist/sexist stereotypes in popular media.

techterrier 11y ago

As an aside, it's extremely sad that this art is in danger of being lost. It seems comparable to how London's Saville Row became (an to an extend still is) imperilled. Fingers crossed they manage to hang on in there until the fashion winds change.

Animats 11y ago

This is likely to upset few people in Japan. Japan has a long history of borrowing from other cultures, as shopping in Tokyo makes obvious.

cthalupa 11y ago
There's also such things as kanji being pretty much a direct lift and shift of Chinese hanzi as well ;)

smtddr 11y ago

So... I can't speak directly to the issue discussed in the article, but I am reading a lot of HN comments that seem not to understand the term "cultural appropriation", think it's a non-existent problem and anyone complaining about it is crazy. I just want to let people know that while there are a bunch of "Social Justice Warriors" running around complaining about anything and everything, the issue isn't just fiction on the part of the offended, particularly when it's erases, dillutes or mocks the actual source of the art while celebrating their own rendition. 1. http://www.refinery29.com/cornrows-cultural-appropriation http://www.refinery29.com/cornrows-cultural-appropriation To the point, it's this kind of thing that annoying:"It seems the more popular cornrows have become among white women, the more they are drained of their history. “Sometimes editors see something that someone pseudo-popular does and they say it’s new, fresh, or edgy,” says India Jewel Jackson, an editor at Hearst Publications. “But, when it was us doing it, it was ghetto. Now that it’s someone blonde and blue doing it, it’s fresh." 2. http://jezebel.com/what-the-hustle-looks-like-on-etsy-in-2015-1726192097 http://jezebel.com/what-the-hustle-looks-like-on-etsy-in-201... "“Hustling” as it presents itself in the 2015 economy erases the barriers posed to wealth acquisition by sexism, classism, racism, cissexism and ableism, instead chalking up a lack of financial success to a lack of entrepreneurial spirit. It makes no acknowledgement that some people have to hustle much, much harder than others. This one isn't exactly cultural per se, but it erases the message the word use to carry. Now I can no longer use the word "hustle" in tech circles because I don't think it means the same thing to them as it does to me. When my parents came to America from Nigeria, their stories of things they did and things they saw in Oakland carry the definition of "hustle" that I know. While I'm sure starting up a company is very hard work, it doesn't in general contain all the facets of the historical hustle. Where one is constantly walking the tightrope between homelessness and not eating for 2 days while playing a game that seems pretty rigged against them. You certainly didn't have extra money to be buying fancy pencils and coffee mugs with the word "hustle" printed on them. Btw, this is extremely similar to the #AllLivesMatter hashtag that washes away the original message. http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-these-5-paragraphs/ http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-al... --- "Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-@$$ comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!"

a_bonobo 11y ago

I think what most comments in this thread (and the protesters) oversee is that "cultural appropriation" usually happens in a setting of oppression. The most common example is white Americans taking from black or native Americans. The exchange isn't "open culture" as other comments express, it's too one-sided, like Stockholm Syndrome. The hostage can only give. You can see how some members of the "taken from" group take this in a bad light, they've already had so much taken from them, and now to top it off there's somebody who takes and ingests what made the "taken from" group unique in the first place. It's not a far step from there to have people in the "taken by" group try to make that stop, and in some cases these people go way too far. In OP's link this doesn't happen - Americans and the Japanese really don't have much history of oppression (except for WW2 internment), so I'd say it "doesn't count" as cultural appropriation. Edit: I should say that there's not much history of systematic oppression between Japanese and Americans, that would exclude your day-to-day racism

chroma 11y ago
> Americans and the Japanese really don't have much history of oppression (except for WW2 internment), so I'd say it "doesn't count" as cultural appropriation. Yes, except for that time when the US forced Japan into treaties at gunpoint.[1] And that time when they put everyone of Japanese ancestry into prison camps. And the time they firebombed Japanese cities. And the time they nuked Japan twice. And the time they occupied Japan and executed civilian politicians.[2] Except for those things, there's not much history of oppression. I apologize for the snark, but your comment is completely disconnected from reality. Cries of "appropriation" are only tenuously correlated with oppression. For example: the French never oppressed the Maori, but people got angry when a French ad used their facial tattoos.[3] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dki_Hirota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dki_Hirota 3. http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/fashion/44467 http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/fashion/44467
- woah 11y ago
  WWII was a war of American oppression?

archemike_ 11y ago

http://nakedandfamousdenim.com/type/kimono-shirt/ http://nakedandfamousdenim.com/type/kimono-shirt/ kimonos are fashionable. I'm sure denim heads here will agree I have a few from Quebec :)

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

While it would appear that the protestors were misguided in this instance (though perhaps they weren't, I only know what the article tells me), the near-fetishisation of Japanese culture in the West does bother me. Japan's status in the West does seem to be different to that of other Asian nations, probably because it's a 'developed' country. But then, isn't that only because in the Meiji era, it rapidly 'Westernised' itself to appeal more to Western tastes and be taken seriously?

krapp 11y ago
Does the degree to which Japan consumes Western culture bother you as well? Have you ever seen the amount of English they'll put on products because it's cool, regardless of whether or not the words actually make sense? If anything, Japan and the West (the US particularly) have a mutual fetish for each other.
- deleted 11y ago
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pluma 11y ago

Oh, come on. Everybody knows you can only be racist against brown people.

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RUG3Y 11y ago

People are walking around with a hair trigger, just waiting for a reason to be offended. As a society we've tolerated these agitators too long.