this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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Cultural appropriation is when you take something sacred or special and don't treat it with respect. Sombreros and parkas are just clothes.
Thanks for explaining. I never understood the American outrage about cultural appropriation but it's just about respecting sacred symbols from other cultures? Sounds about right, please feel free to dress as a Frenchman with beret and baguette as long as you respect our no-tipping policy.
Next item to discover on my list: why are Americans so upset about "black face". And that's what I witnessed in Sevilla (Spain) recently which did not seem racist to me at all: https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2023/01/05/polemica-espana-blackface-reyes-magos-trax/
That's because of minstrel shows. They were American comedy acts where actors would paint their faces black and act out racist stereotypes. The premise was "look at me! I'm a black person!" and then they'd do something stupid and everyone would laugh. Note that black people were slaves at the time. When slavery was (mostly) abolished after the civil war, the shows and makeup became symbols of racism.
It's kind of like how a swastika in a Buddhist temple is fine but a swastika tattoo on a white American isn't. The swastika doesn't have to be racist symbol, but there are few places you could display one without it being interpreted as a racist symbol.
Great explanation, thank you very much!
The other comment explains most of it, but when it comes to acting specifically there’s also some level of “why didn’t you just get an actual black person”
Fair enough!
I’m a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!
To add to that explanation, dressing as a French person in a mocking way is not the same because the French were not enslaved people in the Americas. In fact, they were taking part in the enslaving. It is basically continuing to show that you are the superior party in the power dynamic in an extremely hurtful way.
I may be mistaken but I don't think I've ever seen a French guy painted in black. However I don't think it's in anyway related to historical reasons, it's mostly because it looks dumb and out of place.
Transferring your argument to the Sevilla parade where black faces were the norm last week, I believe they played a relatively minor role in the slave trade. And I have not seen a single black guy in the street the duration I was there, apart from one frenchman.
Are you fucking kidding me?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Cuba
Only abolished by Spanish royal decree in 1887. One of the last European colonies in the Americas to abolish slavery. Only Brazil came afterward two years later.
Well I can be quite clueless you know 😂 No need for hyperbole there, we're not on Twitter
To an extent, like (as a Mexican) I don't give a shit if people wear sombreros or ponchos as a form of clothing, but I see them wearing specifically as a costume especially on days like Cinco de Mayo (which is not a sacred holiday) and it pisses me right off.
My culture is not a costume, and that's where I draw the line at appropriation. If you want to wear a sombrero or poncho cause you think it looks cool and you wear it as a part of your daily wear, that's fuckin weird bro, but you do you.
It’s also when someone takes from other cultures and then claim it as their own without acknowledging the origin. Like how Elvis covered songs from black artists and didn’t credited the original artists and now white people think they solely invented rock n roll.
He didn't credit the white artists he covered either. But the fact that he gets the credit for inventing rock and roll when you had black people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe doing the crazy shit with guitar that Chuck Berry would later emulate all the way back in the 1930s. By the 1940s, she was playing what I think you could arguably say was as much rock and roll as what Elvis was doing.
Here in the Netherlands it was brown immigrants from the former Dutch Indies who introduced rock n roll to the Dutch audience. Like the Blue Diamonds And at the time people, even politicians, would call them heathens and such. But now that historic fact is mostly forgotten. And people think it was British bands like the Beatles who brought rock to the Netherlands, even though these immigrant bands paved the way for rock acceptance and for bands like the Beatles.
This kind of erasure happens everywhere.
I'd say this goes a little deeper than that, because American black people literally invented the art form while being actively segregated from white audiences (and much of society in general) and then all the credit goes to a white Southerner.
I wouldn't say it offends me, but it is a bit annoying when someone wears a weirdly modernized/made-sexy version of the traditional clothes of my region, when they're from somewhere else and don't give a shit about the history. Like, it's not problematic or anything, like it would be with religious items or clothing of marginalized groups, but I'd still prefer they don't.
According to you.
I think the more important factor is taking ownership over something that originated elsewhere.
Even though it isn’t sacred, I would argue that the association between Great Britain and tea comes from appropriation. It wasn’t necessarily appropriation for the Portuguese to bring tea back to Europe, but it certainly was when the British used Chinese seeds and cultivation techniques in India to push China out of the trade.
This describes virtually every tool, food, piece of clothing, etc you have ever used that was invented before the 20th century. Most of them originating somewhere else and being copied, rebranded, and modified over and over for decades or centuries until they reached their current forms. The only real difference is how recently it happened and if you can wedge it into a power hierarchy in such a way as to be able to blame someone who's an acceptable target for that blame.
Yeah this comic is just for snowflakes trying to feel better.