The conversation surrounding cultural appropriation has been so severely mutilated by white “allies” that the original intention behind that conversation has become almost unrecognizable in most social contexts.
To explain what I mean, the conversation around cultural appropriation was started by black and native people to discuss the frustrations we feel at being punished socially and financially for partaking in our cultural heritage while white people could take, I.e. appropriate, aspects of our culture that we are actively shamed for and be heralded as innovators. It was about the frustrations we feel when the same white people who shamed us would take our culture and wear it as if they were the ones who created it while still actively shaming us for doing the same.
The original push behind naming cultural appropriation and having these conversations were so that we as a society could evaluate why we were punished for our heritage while white People were not. It was supposed to be about seeking solutions. The idea was to create a society where we could celebrate our cultures with impunity. It was never about telling white people that they “weren’t allowed” to do certain things. We did ask that white People stop doing certain things because they weren’t doing them respectfully and were not invited to do them, but the primary reason we asked them to desist was to reclaim the things they had stolen and to reassign them culturally back where they belonged.
White “allies” saw these conversations happening and instead of trying to aplify our own voices or even try to learn about the complexities behind why we were saying what we were saying, they instead began screaming over us and creating a narrative that was hardly even the bones of what we originally set out to say. It was like they took the conversation we were trying to have, completely decontextualized it, and stripped it of all it’s nuance in order to gain social currency by seeming progressive.
So the conversation around cultural appropriation went from “This aspect of our heritage belongs to us and we find it egregious that we are shamed for it. What steps can we take to address the racism that’s creating this situation as well as rehome the things that have been stolen” to “you’re not allowed to do that because if you do that you’re racist, we don’t really understand why that’s racist but you’re not allowed to do that and if you do that you’re a klansman no exceptions. So you’re not allowed because because”
At the end of the day, did I like the fact that sally was wearing dreads? No. But my primary concern was not that sally was wearing dreads but rather that sally could wear dreads and I couldn’t. THAT was the intended focus of those conversations. It was about addressing the inequality. It was about us. Now the conversation is just about sally and were completely forgotten.
White People are always asking me what they can do to help. You want to know? Stop talking. Aplify our voices and shut the fuck up because you all have pretty much derailed this conversation and many more like it to the point that we no longer are trying to make steps to understand and dismantle the racism around cultural appropriation and instead are just using it as social shaming tactics.
TL;DR: read my post. Most things worth learning about can’t be summarized in the bullet points of a buzfeed article. Don’t come into academic circles and complain because everything hasn’t been conviently summarized for you. Stop pretending that things aren’t accessible to you because you refuse to do the intellectual labor that is learning.
saying the democratic primary is now down to two white men implies bernie sanders and joe biden come from the same background as every other non-obama president and pretends that bernie sanders’ lifelong commitment to civil justice doesn’t come from growing up learning about the suffering his family underwent during the holocaust.
it’s fucking insane someone could look at him and decide his being jewish, which would make him the first jewish president in the history of this country, isn’t important enough of a ‘diversity win’ to care about because he’s not elizabeth warren, a white woman who lied about being an indigenous american for decades to boost her chances of being diversity hired
if you want to rail against the type of man who dominates american politics in order to advocate for more diverse leadership, take aim at joe biden, the white man who pushed the racist crime bill through the legislature that directly led to the mass incarceration of black people in this country for drug offenses
hey, just so you know? this shit is so fucking serious.
someone in the crowd at his rally tonight (march 5, 2020) unfurled a massive nazi flag behind him, and since then photos of trump supporters protesting against him as recently as last year with swastikas on their posters have started making the rounds again.
when the media boils bernie sanders down to ‘just another white man’ they are intentionally burying his lived experience as a jewish person because they do not want to acknowledge the discrimination he has faced that has made him the staunch advocate for civil justice for all people that he has always been
bering-strait-deactivated202005:
fuck close platonic male friendships everyone gay now
Humans are cool and good actually it’s just colonialism and capitalism that you’re mad at
We’re made to tell stories and braid each other’s hair and build things and fucking help people and we’re just as much part of the earth as all the other living organisms on this bitch y'all just made guns and money and decided the world is something to conquer welcome to my tedtalk