Comic Strips

Snowflakes: "It is offensive for a westerner to wear a Japanese kimono. You are not Japanese!"

Native Japanese: "We insist you wear this kimono so you feel like part of the group."

Based on a true story.

Cultural appropriation is when you take something sacred or special and don't treat it with respect. Sombreros and parkas are just clothes.

Literally no Latin American is going to be bothered Or annoyed in any way whatsoever if you don typical dresses of their culture.

We love our culture and love it even more when we influence gringos to dress as our ancestors did.

The joy is palpable. It makes you part of the family. And that's plenty

Besides, no one here knows what the deal is with getting offended on behalf of someone else. If anyone has a problem, they speak up their minds.

Slurs? Motherfückêr, that's half our language.

Lol, reminds me of one of the Mario games a while back - no idea what the context was, but Mario took on different personas, which I'm assuming gave him abilities specific to whatever 'form' he took kinda like Kirby.

Anywho, one of them was a Mexican theme, which made Mario don a sombrero and poncho. Lots of touchy white people on the internet were PISSED cuz how could Nintendo be so insensitive to the Mexican culture?!

...meanwhile, Mexican gamers were fucking ecstatic cuz HOLY SHIT MARIO'S WEARING A SOMBRERO! LET'S GOOOOOO!!!

Good times.

Cultural appropriation is a broad enough term to functionally be meaningless, but I've found it helpful to think through 4 distinct interests at play, that I think are legitimate:

Proper attribution/credit. We don't like plagiarism or unattributed copying in most art. Remixes, homages, reinterpretations, and even satire/parody are acceptable but we expect proper treatment of the original author and the original work. Some accusations of cultural appropriation take on this flavor, where there's a perceived unfairness in how the originator of an idea is ignored and some copier is given credit. For a real world example of this, think of the times the fans of a particular musical artist get annoyed when a cover of one of that artist's song becomes bigger than the original.

Proper labeling/consumer disclosure/trademark. Some people don't like taking an established name and applying it outside of that original context. European nations can be pretty aggressive at preserving the names of certain wines (champagne versus sparkling wine) or cheeses (parmigiano reggiano versus parmesan) or other products. American producers are less aggressive about those types of geographic protected labels but have a much more aggressive system of trademarks generally: Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks. In a sense, there's literal ownership of a name and the owner should be entitled to decide what does or doesn't get the label.

Cheapening of something special or disrespect for something sacred. For certain types of ceremonial clothing, wearing that clothing outside of the context of that ceremony seems disrespectful. Military types sometimes get offended by stolen valor when people wear ranks/ribbons/uniforms they haven't personally earned, and want to gatekeep who gets to wear those things. In Wedding Crashers there's a scene where Will Ferrell puts on a fake purple heart to try to get laid, and it's widely understood by the audience to be a scummy move. Or, one could imagine the backlash if someone were to host some kind of drinking contest styled after some Christian communion rituals, complete with a host wearing stuff that looks like clergy attire.

Mockery of a group. Blackface, fake accents, and things of that nature are often in bad taste when used to mock people. It's hard to pull this off without a lot of people catching strays, so it's best to just avoid these practices. With costumes in general, there are things to look out for, especially if you're going out and getting smashed.

Using "cultural appropriation" to drag down regular people is kind of pointless, like freaking out at someone for putting the wrong recyclable type of plastic trash in the garbage.

Cultural appropriation matters at the corporate level, where media shapes what regular people do. Do you want to talk about cultural appropriation? Talk about Disney, talk about Hollywood, talk about Jeep Cherokee, and Decathlon Quechua. To keep with the recycling analogy: your problem shouldn't be ordinary people messing up their trash sorting, it should be vendors mass producing plastic trash for everything.

Culture is meant to be shared, as long as you're respectful and you're not caricaturing or mocking the culture you're trying to portray, most people from said culture would be flattered.

The concept of cultural appropriation seems to be pretty useless in practice.

The cases I've encountered where it makes some bit of sense fit better under the concepts of racism or exploitation. The complaints about cultural appropriation online seem to more often attack innocent behaviour or someone genuinely appreciating another culture.

Drink tea, make tacos, wear a kimono, don't be an asshole

Complaining about sharing cultures IS racism. These idiots complaining about cultural appropriation have gone too far up their own ass.

Melding, sharing food clothing and customs makes everyone better! These bullshit micro divisions need to stop.

It's real simple; is the group in general okay with you wearing doing thwir traditions? If yes, then it's okay.

So Kimonos, mostly okay, Native American Headdresses, mostly not okay.

It's called White Savior Complex.

At my wedding reception, my wife’s cousins plopped a giant black and gold sombrero on my head to welcome me to the family. I’m expected to bring said sombrero to family get togethers and smash beers con mi familia

Case in point: Mexicans loved Speedy Gonzalez.

I don’t think it’s offensive, but if you’re wearing that just to make a point then maybe you’re just looking to offend people. This is less directed to the comic and more directed to the YouTube clips I have seen of similar scenario.

Usually it is the Yankees who take offense at the expense of us Latinos. We will always love to see others enjoy a part of our culture (as long as it is not in an exploitative and fetishistic way).

I've had so many people claim I'm racist online for saying stuff about China. Even after I point out that I'm Chinese, it still doesn't help for some reason.

I've never heard about "cultural appropriation" outside of jokes making fun of it. And it's one of the right's favourite strawmen. Maybe it's time to let it go?

I got some Malian clothes. Beautiful patterns on them. They were tailor made for me as a birthday gift from my roommate who was Malian, who's family in Mali owns a textile business.

I've received some... interesting reactions to me wearing that clothes.

Telling someone that something they are doing may be considered offensive to a different group sure seems to be offensive to some people...

The way I tend to feel about this is that it's a jerk move if you're mocking some other group, or reasonably could be seen as mocking them, or try to claim that you/your group invented the thing you're using, but otherwise, borrowing stuff people like from other cultures is just one of the ways cultures evolve.

I can see some people objecting on the grounds that imitating something distinctive makes that thing less unique to the original group, or that an imitation by outsiders won't include some aspect important to the original and then that people that see the imitation won't get that aspect.

I can certainly understand why those feelings could lead to frustration, but applied strictly, the idea that certain things belong exclusively to the cultures that invented them both requires forcing people into precise boxes as to which culture they belong to, and sort of resembles a type of socially enforced intellectual property, which, being against IP as a concept, is something I feel like I'd be hypocritical agreeing with.

I remember seeing a child have a japanese themed birthday. Some white person was giving off to her parents for cultural appropriation while Japanese people were flattered

20 years ago I had white-boy dreadlocks. African-American Christians told me it was cultural appropriation. Jamaican Rastafarians would stop me in the street to share their weed and offer me a ride.

This is an exact copy of a YouTube video from years ago