4 ms·

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 perspectiv

by JanSt 3y ago

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".

danaris 3y ago
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."
- JanSt 3y ago
  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.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    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/2016/04/AICA76-Com-Kenneth-Coutts-Smith.pdf 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.
    - thrway63245 3y ago
      [dead]
  - danaris 3y ago
    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).
    - someuser2345 3y ago
      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.
      - danaris 3y ago
        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.
  - 8note 3y ago
    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.
    - JanSt 3y ago
      To me, this argument makes no sense at all. Opening restaurants with food from your culture is pretty much the standard way of doing it and certainly not looked down upon. All of this sounds racist to me. People are now forbidden to do things if they have the wrong skin color.
  - jccalhoun 3y ago
    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. So eat what you want to eat.
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    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.
- pipes 3y ago
  You are saying this like it's a fact. It's just your opinion on something.
suoduandao3 3y ago
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.

by JanSt 3y ago

danaris 3y ago

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."

JanSt 3y ago
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.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  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/2016/04/AICA76-Com-Kenneth-Coutts-Smith.pdf 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.
  - thrway63245 3y ago
    [dead]
- danaris 3y ago
  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).
  - someuser2345 3y ago
    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.
    - danaris 3y ago
      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.
- 8note 3y ago
  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.
  - JanSt 3y ago
    To me, this argument makes no sense at all. Opening restaurants with food from your culture is pretty much the standard way of doing it and certainly not looked down upon. All of this sounds racist to me. People are now forbidden to do things if they have the wrong skin color.
- jccalhoun 3y ago
  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. So eat what you want to eat.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  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.
pipes 3y ago
You are saying this like it's a fact. It's just your opinion on something.

suoduandao3 3y ago

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.