One of my favorite Hobby Horses -- Who Owns Culture and What Does "Cultural Appropriation" Mean?

[osewalrus]

 It's the dress that broke the Interent, kinda.
https://www.todayonline.com/world/teenagers-prom-dress-stirs-furore-us-not-china

Well, not the famous The Dress (which actually provided the first new thing for neuroscientists specializing in color perception to debate in years). This involves Ms. Keziah Daum of Utah's decision to wear a cheongsam (also called a qipao) to her prom. For those who have never heard of it, it's dress popular in China from the 1920s into the mid-1960s. Like everything else, it has had a bit of a revival recently, including in China. Critically for the conversation, it is not a dress of any particular cultural, religious or ethnic significance. It's roughly the equivalent of someone in Beijing deciding to wear a Jackie Kennedy-style knock-off complete with 1960s style hat or, God help us, one of those awful corduroy suits that were popular in the U.S. in the early 1980s (please do not ask to see my Bar Mitzvah picture).

As the article notes, a number of Asian Americans got upset on Twitter when Ms. Daum's instagram picture began to circulate. They Tweeted quite angrily about "cultural appropriation" and the inappropriateness of a white teen wearing a Chinese-style dress. OTOH, when news of this reached China (and the rest of Asia), many there viewed this with pride. Their opinion was "look, we are a big deal. Even some white girl in Utah wants to wear our stuff."  A number of others also noted that Asians have picked up a number of European cultural things (like celebrating Christmas as a secular holiday -- something I saw in Dubai as well).

All of which raises several questions that really are deserving of discussion. The problem, of course, is that no one ever actually wants to "discuss" anything these days. People generally prefer to start with either a very passionate opinion, or a thorough disinterest/aversion to any topic that will bring out all the people with strong opinions. 

But in any event, the questions are fun for people who actually care to discuss and debate such things. For me, his raises the following:

1. What the heck do we actually mean by "cultural appropriation?"

2. Who gets to define culture? 

3. How do people of immigrant ancestry -- particularly non-white immigrant ancestry -- define their connection to their culture while also remaining firmly American?

Since Dreamwidth has the annoying tendency to lose my drafts and make me start from scratch, I'll have to dig into the answers in a follow up post.

Comments

[alexxkay]

That's why I never write more than a paragraph or two online. Longer pieces get written in a proper word processor, then cut-and-pasted.

[vettecat]

It all seems so absurd. Do we now need to close all the restaurants that serve food from other countries? Whatever happened to the melting pot?

[magid]

My (fuzzy) impression of problematic cultural appropriation is when someone not of $culture exploits aspects of $culture for gain (dollars, fame, whatever) when someone of that $culture could not.

Related tangent: I have a beautiful embroidered dress I bought in the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem. I haven't yet been comfortable wearing it outside the house, mostly due to cultural appropriation concerns, and a little about potential misidentification (which feels uncomfortable in itself. It's not that I mind being mislabeled a Muslim; it's more that I mind being mislabeled at all. Or perhaps that is just internal dialogue to keep me from going out in the current political climate looking more Muslim than the average pedestrian. And then there's the potential misread to other Muslims as well. (I, um, might think about this too much.).).

[osewalrus]

Your understanding is, indeed, how the term "cultural appropriation" came to be, and why it is "appropriation." The term was initially coined to describe white musicians taking music developed in the African American community (first Jazz, then Rock and Roll) and covering it themselves without giving credit to the original artists. It was a *literal* appropriation. Similarly, the term was applied to individuals who took designs, artifacts, symbols, what-have-you from isolated communities and appropriated them for themselves for money.

Over time, the term has evolved, but its evolution has made it fuzzier, especially as when you move away from very specific things to broader and more general things. Sometimes it is a matter of profanation. For example, there has been a trend for "Faux Mitzvahs" (this was actually a subplot in the first episode of "Black-ish"). Because Jews have a formal ceremony to move from boyhood to manhood, and modern secular society lacks such a thing, non-Jewish kids started to want one. (The Wall St. J. some years back ran an article on this and other fun bar mitzvah inspired parties such a "car mitzvah" (thrown by a man particularly fond of his sports car) and even a "dog mitzvah.") Similarly, back in the 1990s, you had lots of white people deciding that various Native American practices were cool and going off to "lodges" and "swet baths" and so forth).

More recently, the term has become expanded to the idea that a white person doing something traditionally associated with a non-white culture is engaged in "cultural appropriation." You will often hear people say that it is OK if done "respectfully," but it is generally difficult to get consensus among the 350+ million Internet users of teh United States what "respectful" means in any specific case.

But i digress to the subject of the longer article. But your personal case illustrates some of the problems with the expanded conceptual definition.

As someone Jewish, I identify with Jewish culture broadly. That doesn't just mean European Ashkenazic any more than my identifying as an American limits me exclusively to Massachusetts, Maryland or even New England and the Mid-Atlantic seaboard. I am not from Texas or Colorado, but I don't feel any particular cultural appropriation in wearing cowboy boots or a string tie.

In the Jewish context, it encompasses some very broad geography (and time). I have stocked my home with cookbooks of Jewish communities from Spain, North Africa, and Yemen and consider them part of my Jewish heritage. I might not feel comfortable walking around looking like Ovadia Yosef, but not for reasons of cultural appropriation.

So you have a dress you bought in the "Arab Quarter" which would be perfectly acceptable for woman from Syria or Jordan or Egypt -- even if she happened to be Jewish? Or even Christian for that matter? What about the dress says "Muslm" rather than "Middle Eastern"?

[magid]

(to address only your last point)

I think the dress reads as Middle Eastern, but I also think that there are a lot of USians who don't disambiguate Middle Eastern and Muslim....

re: Cultural Appropriation

[etherial]

I would begin by watching "Cultural Appropriation: The Musical", AKA The Nightmare Before Christmas.

You know, I think this Christmas thing
It's not as tricky as it seems
And why should they have all the fun?
It should belong to anyone
Not anyone, in fact, but me
Why, I could make a Christmas tree

The thing about Cultural Appropriation is that it's when the Majority Culture takes away something from a Minority Culture. One of the reasons that Asians loved the dress and Asian Americans hated it is because Asians don't have to put up with white people "ching-chong"ing and "flied lice"ing at them all the time.

Or when African Americans are routinely fired for wearing their hair in tight braids or dreads (AKA styles that are natural to their hair) but white people are praised for being "edgy" when they do all sorts of horrible things to their hair in order to get them to look like that.

Or when white people open up ethnic restaurants and ethnic dance studios and leverage their white privilege economically to put their non-white competitors out of business.

But mostly it's about stealing other people's stuff and shitting all over it.

And there's no reason I can find
I couldn't handle Christmas time
I bet I could improve it too
And that's exactly what I'll do

Re: Cultural Appropriation

[osewalrus]

Ah, but this response contains lots and lots and lots of implicit assumptions. Particularly this part:
"But mostly it's about stealing other people's stuff and shitting all over it."

But in this case, the :shitting all over it" is the simple act of wearing it when not from one of the target cultures. So "shitting all over it" is something of a null, because there is no act of use that does not constitute "Shitting all over it."

Which brings us to the other more interesting point -- you are defining all "cultural appropriation" as, basically, "fuck you for making me conform to your majority culture!!" Which is certainly part of what animates it, but then it isn't really about cultural appropriation, it's about being pissed off at the majority culture.

Nor are you factoring in something else, because you are entirely focused on this being about oppression. But there is a more interesting element: what constitutes "your culture."

Chinese people living in China do not have to worry about defining themselves as Chinese and connected to Chinese culture. they live in China. Whatever they do is "Chinese culture."

But it is a standard problem of second and third generation immigrants as to how they define their membership in both the "parent" culture and the surrounding majority culture.

Those who live entirely cut off from the majority culture -- usually first generation who often do not even speak English, generally do not care what other people of the surrounding culture wear and eat of their culture. they don't need to worry about it. First generation immigrants from China are Chinese. They have no problem defining themselves as Chinese. It's who they are. This doesn't mean they won't get upset about someone profaning some important symbol or showing disrespect. But they generally do not display nearly the need to define themselves in terms of is and isn't permissible to themselves or others.

Again, the key flaw in your Nightmare Before Christmas analogy is that Jack Skellington *literally* appropriates Christmas by kidnapping Santa and holding him prisoner. He takes all the symbols of Christmas and "improves" them by incorporating Halloween twists. But that is totally absent here. The woman in question wore a dress. She did not in any way seek to change it. She did not steal it from someone else. No one else anywhere is short a qipao.

For your analogy to hold, the mere act of wearing it by specifically a caucasian person (or anyone non-Asian?) is "shitting all over it." It takes no negative action or intent. It is the mere use of an item from another culture that constitutes an "appropriation."

I agree that there seems to be a sizable portion of folks who use it this way, but you still don't answer the question of "who decides?" Also, what items? Chopsticks? Decorated silk scarves? Wax parasols? All are cultural artifacts that have at various times been associated with Chinese culture and crossed over into European or American fashion from time to time. And who decides? If something is the product of multiple cultures, such as certain styles of dress that are common in Japan, China and S. Korea, who decides? What about martial arts? Is the wearing of a martial arts uniform associated with a particular form (in my case, Aikido, which is very definitely a Japanese martial art) allowable? Why? Because it is "sport" rather than "culture?"

The answer is usually to avoid the question because it basically boils down to "I know it when I see it." Which is essentially a form of heckler's veto. The other answer is to usually cite all sorts of extremes where it is clearly actual appropriation (taking one thing from another and they don't have it left) or actual sign of disrespect.

Again, to engage in the discussion is to generally be assigned a side. But the concept is sufficiently nebulous as to warrant serious debate -- as well as to ask the fundamental question: why do you (for whatever value of 'you') care? My answer to the later is that those who have the most tenuous connection to their "native culture" tend to be the most vigorous in defending their cultural prerogative. Which becomes problematic, because the natural response of the majority is to simply exclude all non-safe things entirely.

[cellio]

"Appropriation" is an important word. If the girl in Utah wearing that dress is like somebody in China wearing a corduroy suit, then I don't see *appropriation* but, rather, *copying*. People do that all the time. In a Jewish context, that's like non-Jews eating bagels and lox; there's an association but it's hardly "ours alone", and who can really get bent out of shape over a freaking *bagel*? (Don't answer that.)

On the other hand, if somebody takes something from another culture to *make fun of it* in some way, as has been done to blacks and native Americans in our history, that's not ok. And if somebody takes something from another culture for *fraudulent* use, that's clearly wrong. ("Jews (sic) for Jesus" I mean you.)

There's an intent component, which we can't know if it's not shared, and there's also a "really? you should have known better regardless of your intent" component. I don't see anything that shows bad intent from the girl in Utah, and I also don't see anything from the people quoted in that news story that suggests there's a real problem she blundered into. It sounds like the Chinese people they talked to didn't have a problem and were even happy, while the Chinese-Americans, who by trying to live in two worlds probably feel more pressure to assert their origins, are the ones doing the complaining. There might be a real issue there, and if so we should try to understand it -- or there might be one blowhard on Twitter, and life is too short to worry about that.

Just some poorly-organized thoughts...

[osewalrus]

Indeed. Which is where it gets interesting. My theory is that for those whom the cultural connection is more tenuous (2nd or 3rd generation immigrants, or even further back), it is much more important to clearly define "culture" and set barriers around it. The Chinese person living in China does not feel threatened by white people wearing a qipao. It in no way diminishes their connection with their own culture because for native Chinese it is just a dress. For some Chinese Americans, anything which blurs the line between Chinese and mainstream caucasian culture is a blurring of their own cultural identity.

[avram]

One aspect that I find interesting about this topic is that western nations also try to prevent their culturally-beloved icons from being appropriated by other cultures, but they use different language and back it up with the force of law. Try starting up a bourbon distillery outside of the US, or a champagne vineyard outside of that one region of France.

Another aspect is the difference between what a culture considers symbolic of itself, and the things that other cultures consider symbolic of it. For instance, if I asked a bunch of Americans to list American cultural touchstones, they’d probably list hot dogs, apple pie, blue jeans, cowboy hats, jazz music, rock & roll. It probably wouldn’t occur to many actual Americans to list red Solo cups. And yet, in Europe, red Solo cups are a symbol of America.

[osewalrus]

This confuses geographic origin, which is an economic term, with cultural appropriation. The EU has a fairly complicated system, but they are hardly unique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union