this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
1577 points (98.3% liked)
Memes
45753 readers
1288 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Racism from the left is just so unexpected, but here we are
Overprotectiveness. It's irritating and misguided, but it isn't bigotry.
It is. I'll elaborate. The neonazis in France, Germany, Hungary, and other places with a growing nazi problem are calling for ethnostates. One country per ethnicity. No cultural exchange, no learning from other cultures, no exchange and most of all absolutely no exchange of people.
Now if you take the idiotic idea of "cultural appropriation" to its natural conclusion, you arrive at very nearly the same idea. Hermetically closed cultures separate from each other, no exchange. Everyone only gets to enjoy the culture they happen to be born in.
This is why it is racist. Because the separation of peoples and cultures is a racist idea.
Humanity absolutely thrives when cultures mix. The whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. Racism and bigotry cease to exist the more cultures and peoples mix. And I mean mix, not live separate lives that just happen to be in the same geographic location, just to be clear.
Fixed that for you.
Opposition to cultural insensitivity and reducing cultures to exploitable stereotypes ≠ advocating for segregation and only idiots and people arguing in bad faith would ever claim anything of the sort.
I mean, is it cultural insensitivity or exploiting stereotypes for a white teenager to wear a kimono? Because one got sent home for doing so around here because it was "cultural appropriation and inappropriate"...
In the end the people who see cultural appropriation everywhere might not be advocating for each culture to have their own country (they'll never tell anyone to move back to their country), but what they're advocating for is for each cultures to live in the same place and to not exchange anything...
Yeah, I'm going to need a source on that incident.. I bet there was a lot more to it than just "wearing a kimono".
Even if there wasn't, one example of overzealousness doesn't mean that the entire concept of cultural appropriation is invalid. That's not how anything works.
Are these people in the room right now? Or do you only imagine them when you're actively making fallacious arguments to support your ridiculous claims that cultural sensitivity is the same thing as demanding segregation?
She really did "just wear a kimono":
https://www.glamour.com/story/qipao-prom-dress-controversy-response
It literally says in the very headline that it's a lot more complicated than you think and that's your "slam dunk" example? 🤦
Also, wasn't even a kimono, which is revealed in the very first paragraph of the article itself.
If you're going to deliberately lie and distort to fit reality around your claims, at least make a fucking effort!
Yeah, the complicated nature is that Chinese people weren't offended, and white people were.
Yes, it was a kimono. A qinao is a type of kimono. As it says in the article.
I'm not lying, and I haven't made any claims other than that this incident was a false alarm. Don't confuse me for the other user.
For the record, my view is that cultural appropriation is a real and serious issue, but some people are quick to jump the gun with such accusations, out of a misplaced (and potentially racist) paternalistic need to "defend" marginalised people, as if they themselves can't call people out, especially when said people are saying such a thing isn't even offensive, just like the OP.
See? That's the complicated part. I can actually describe it. You didn't even try. Just waved at the word as if it made your point for you.
Fair enough.
There was this white singer that got uninvited by fff here in Germany because she wore dreadlocks. Cant have that when you are white it seems. No logical reason necessary, too. Can just brand it "cultural appropriation" and you're good. Oh shit, there is prove that greeks or wikings had dreadlocks? Nae, just gonna ignore that cause it doesnt fit my stereotypical views of the world.
The argument might seem overstreched, but shit like this happens.
and yet Carola Rackete was a welcomed visitor of fff. i didn't understand the reasoning behind the singer thing.
There is none, it's all signal politics, shibboleth juggling. The same people also unironically use the term "BIPOC" in a German context without realising that it means Black and say Vietnamese Germans, includes organic potatoes, but excludes e.g. Turkish or Italian-Germans as they're neither black, indigenous, or "of colour".
They simply heard that term online used by their ingroup and now parrot it to signal that they're part of that ingroup.
My take here is that people eager to get angry at something without a proper academic background shouldn't use academic terms such as cultural appropriation, because the popular understanding of the term is definitely what @crispy_[email protected] is referring to, and has led the first person at the OP to take an absurdly oversensitive position.
"humanity absolutely thrives when cultures mix".
Yea, this part is correct.
The rest, not so much.
I'm interested in your opinion. Do you care to elaborate?
I'm not OP but I would say one difference is the fact that they don't mind that people of different ethnicity live in the same country, but they don't want them to mix what's part of their culture... Or if we're honest, in most cases they want the majority to not adopt things that are associated to other cultures because they assume that it's done with bad intentions or that's it's a form of theft, but I'm sure they wouldn't say a thing if a minority did the same...
So they're in favor of a world where whites are exposed to everyone else (contrary to the right) but don't mix up with them, not as a way to keep them "pure" (contrary to the right), but as a way to stop them from "stealing" from other cultures what makes them unique...
Either way, it's stupid 🤷
It's not possible to steal culture, this is ridiculous
You wouldn't download a culture...
Hence the quotation marks, telling someone they're doing cultural appropriation is basically accusing them of stealing something that's unique to another culture and that can't be replicated by someone who isn't part of it.
Oh fuck, how dare you ask someone on here to actually give reason, facts or prove of anything they make up in their heads! Here, take my downvotes, there is no need to argue if I can just ramble and feel superior to you that way!
/s , obvioisly.
Sorry for the delay, I am actually right in the middle of celebrating the lunar New Year!
I do agree with what you're trying to say, but I don't think you're going about it in the right way, and I have enough time to complain(sorry, your heart's on the right place).
Your comment has two main problems, 1) hat on a hat and 2) unsubstantiated equivocation
Agreeing with the sentiment is fine, but you go out of your way to re-explain their perfect rebuttal in a less accurate and more pedantic way.
You're making unsubstantiated assumptions on the "natural conclusion" of well-intentioned, though misguided protectiveness.
You maintain, without proof or sound logical argument, that the natural conclusion of protecting the cultural practices of others is the intentional separation of all ethnicities, and the implied sterilization of "lesser" ethnicities.
I don't mind the sentiment of your argument so much as the inaccurate and harmful logical process that equivocates irritating do-gooders with murderous bigots.
It's also big on assumptions to
A problem society has is often making assumptions about something rather than getting information from a direct source for example getting information from the actual people they are making assumptions about instead of making assumptions about them
People really misunderstood what cultural appropriation is, because it's a nuanced and complex thing, and most people, even on "the left," are actually quite stupid. That's why bumper sticker politics is so effective.
Assumptions made about people instead of information coming from the people they are talking about
Whrn I was on reddit I saw this alot on reddit with foreign companies and was reading a thread where someone asked if people in Japan where racist
It was filled with people saying yes but something about the thread felt ungeniune so I went on the japanlife subreddit about this topic and they haven't experienced racism and that most of it is misunderstandings and not understanding the people
I also went to watch those videos on YouTube where people from Japan interview Japanese people and most Japanese people where not racist and it was only the rare occasional one that was but they where older people and they where in the single digits range so japan just has a few racist people like every other country and most people are open
Its typically the younger generations that are more open and I tend to see that it's the younger generations that are open in every country so I think we are just waiting for the old bigots to turn over and die
It's best just to get information about a people from the people itself instead of looking at random people's opinions online