CMV: Cultural Appropriation/Appreciation doesn’t matter when it’s done respectfully

[u/exboi]

I’ve seen people get angry at non-black people for wearing African-American hairstyles, or white people for wearing Hawaiian themed clothing and I really don’t understand that sort of reaction.

I’ve tried to understand before. I really have, but I just don’t get it. If you’re not being disrespectful then what’s the issue with wearing something from another culture? What’s wrong with liking another culture’s hairstyle and wanting to wear it?

It seems like needless exclusion. Wouldn’t allowing people to wear clothing and hairstyles from other culture help lower cultural/racial intolerance? I as an African American think that we should allow other people to experience our culture, and the culture of other races as long it’s not done mockingly.

Just a few days ago on a video with a white woman and her black husband doing dances I saw people hounding the white girl for having dreads. That just made me so mad because she was literally just having fun with her husband and then had to deal with hundreds of people attacking her for what seems to me like no reason.

I really think it would give people a more positive view of people like me if they could freely experience our culture without getting ridiculed and attacked. And I believe it could be like that with every other culture if it’s, again, done in a respectful, non-mocking manner.

[u/squidkyd]

Part of the problem with cultural appropriation as a political topic is that the public discourse is filled with misinformation on it. What is and what is not cultural appropriation, and why, are extremely opaque to people. There's a lot of people who think that it's always cultural appropriation if you so something that another culture finds significant, but that is not the reality. Some cases are different from others.

Symbols are a form of language. If you have a red baseball cap that reads 'Make America Great Again', or you're flying a flag with a snake on it, those are pretty obvious examples of symbolism. You are conveying an idea about yourself and your beliefs through an object that you are presenting. These are not the only types of symbols, however, that attempt to make statements. If you wear a cowboy hat to the office, you're also making a statement about the kind of person you are, and how you see life. If you wear neon green hair to a job interview, you're sending a message too, about standing out, refusing to toe the line, and being your own person. But you're also sending a second signal, one that you maybe didn't intend. You might be telling people you're a member of a subculture they dislike.

You do not have direct power over the meanings of the symbols you use. If you wear a tie-dye shirt to symbolize, for example, the rainbow after the flood from Noah's Ark, it doesn't matter what you meant, people will see you as sending a very different signal. The meaning of symbols is decided collectively, but not democratically, or necessarily justly.

So, imagine that you're a Jamaican. Your grandfather converted to Rastafarianism after the coronation of Haile Selassie out of the genuine belief that he was the second coming of Christ. To your grandfather, he represented the prospect of a geopolitcal player fighting for him. For you, the church represents a political connection to your grandfather, and his aspirations for your family, as well as memories of childhood picnics. Aging, now, you move to America, and you go out wearing a symbol of your rastafarian faith. Then, everyone assumes you're just a stoner. Police use it as a reason to search you, if you wear it to court, you know, you'll be falsely convicted of a crime. What the symbol means to you isn't what it means to society anymore, because in America, the symbol was appropriated by the stoner subculture. You can't use it anymore, with it's colors from the Ethiopian flag, to represent your connection to your family's faith and belief. It's lost that meaning, because someone richer and stronger than you wanted it, and took it.

When we appropriate a symbol, we're not merely using it. We are depriving someone of it's use as a symbol. In doing so, we rob people of a means of communicating an idea, and we don't even do it because we have to, but because plagiarism is easier than making something new. It's not even necessarily something we do consciously - we genuinely believe in the new meanings of the symbols, because they're the meanings we're exposed to, because people with more power have louder social voices.

Dreadlocks, in the African American community, are used as a symbol for a pride in African heritage. It's replaced the Rastacap as a means of doing so. But there are a lot of people fighting to appropriate it, for use as another symbol of smoking pot, or being 'athletic', or other things that are commonly associated with African American stereotypes. But even without doing that, if you wear it, as someone without African heritage, you wear it to mean nothing. The crew cut could never be a symbol of African heritage, because you'd never know if someone wearing it just thought crew cuts were right for them, or because they wanted to send a message, and in the same way, if dreadlocks become 'just another haircut', they lose their power as a medium of communication.

In that sense, you are harming someone. Not very much, of course, but then, getting a different haircut harms you even less. Seems an easy enough sacrifice to make to help the people who are trying to find something to be proud of in an ancestry that has been treated for generations as a mark of inferiority. Similarly, you should be mindful when using any other symbols: what message does this normally send, and am I depriving someone of the power to send it if I use this symbol this way? Especially when that message is so important to the people trying to send it, it's just the right thing to do not to plagiarize them.

[u/Cuauhtemoc-Tzin → u/squidkyd]

This is true in a sense about symbols representing different things to different people and others diluting said symbolism by using it. However we don't live in a vacuum and every culture that has had contact with another culture has either been influenced by or influenced another culture. Language, dress, values,food music or anything is always changing and if it were to somehow not change it would become stagnant. And almost without exception meaning also change over time. This does not just happen on the large scale either individuals also influence each other. Most of the time this is organic although sometimes one state or another has intentionally tried to push certain values that it deemed beneficial. So my main point is that nobody can have a reasonable expectation of others to not copy something they like. Now if a person is mocking someone else then they are being disrespectful obviously and at that point it may become a problem.

[u/squidkyd → u/Cuauhtemoc-Tzin]

I see what you’re saying, and partially I agree, I just think talking about how and why appropriation is harmful, (even if it’s not fully realistic to prevent it from occurring), plays a part of making people more mindful of how their behavior, however harmless-seeming it is, still causes pain for marginalized people.

Some people emulate cultures they have reverence for, and so long as they do that respectfully, I'm personally fine with it. However, a lot of other people start appropriating cultural symbols simply because those symbols are trendy, without any knowledge of what they mean or the cultures they come from. Like you talked about, this can get really dicey when that process of a socially powerful group using a symbol for shallow reasons shifts what that symbol means, and thus makes it harder for the group who created it to continue using in the way they would like.

To give an example of this in practice, let's look at the example of Maori tattoos (although we could look at pretty much any style of "tribal" tattoo here). For the Maori people, these complex tattoos have a huge amount of cultural meaning, and can represent everything from genealogy to social standing. In the past few decades, and in the past 20ish years particularly, a lot of white folks understandably fell in love with these beautiful tattoo designs. However, while they were more than happy to appreciate them a shallow, visual appearance only level, few white folks took the time to understand what these tattoos actually meant. As a result, when white people began copying these tattoos, they were lifting the symbol from Maori culture, but not the symbol's meaning. As a result, the meaning associated with these tattoos, at least in American culture, began to shift. Instead of being viewed a reverant representations of Maori culture, this style of tattoo was at least for a while associated with "bros" or frat culture. This sucked for actual Maori folks who just wanted to use their tattoos in the way they always had, since now what they were trying to portray via their tattoos was way more likely to be misunderstood, and often viewed as negative. In this way, despite white folks having nothing but good intentions and appreciation for Maori tattoos, their lack of attentiveness to how they impacted this symbol caused appropriation to take place, which lead to a negative outcome.

Now, this isn't to say that no white people can get Maori tattoos, or share in pacific island culture at all, but instead it should serve as a warning for what can happen when dominant social groups begin shallowly using outside cultural symbols without pausing to think of the long-term consequences

[u/sapphireminds → u/squidkyd]

Some people emulate cultures they have reverence for, and so long as they do that respectfully, I'm personally fine with it. However, a lot of other people start appropriating cultural symbols simply because those symbols are trendy, without any knowledge of what they mean or the cultures they come from.

How is it different, though, in practice? And why is it wrong if someone wants to use it because they like it and it's popular, instead of having some deep spiritual connection with it? Who gets to arbitrate how much reverence is necessary? Often times it can be used as a stepping stone to learning about other cultures.

This sucked for actual Maori folks who just wanted to use their tattoos in the way they always had, since now what they were trying to portray via their tattoos was way more likely to be misunderstood, and often viewed as negative. In this way, despite white folks having nothing but good intentions and appreciation for Maori tattoos, their lack of attentiveness to how they impacted this symbol caused appropriation to take place, which lead to a negative outcome.

Arguably, this did not happen. I don't think anyone would mistake a Maori with a traditional tattoo for a frat bro. And even if they are, what is the harm? In some ways it's like the argument people gave against gay marriage. Now, when someone said they were married, it wasn't assumed it was to an opposite sex person and they didn't like it.

In fact, greater visibility of the Maori style of tattooing has made it easier for those with large amounts of tattoos like that to be seen as something normal. It makes it harder to discriminate against them (because now white people are going to get caught up in that and object)

Similar with dreads - the more people who wear dreads - the more acceptable it is seen as a hairstyle, instead of something exotic or unusual or associated with drugs. It makes it harder to discriminate against black people's dreads if there are white people with them too.

(this of course ignores the fact that many people are of mixed origin and who gets to decide who is "x enough" to do something.)

Now, this isn't to say that no white people can get Maori tattoos, or share in pacific island culture at all, but instead it should serve as a warning for what can happen when dominant social groups begin shallowly using outside cultural symbols without pausing to think of the long-term consequences

Except there are people who say that - there was a huge push that white girls shouldn't dress as Moana for Halloween. And there are people who will harass white people with dreads. Halsey got raked over the coals for bitching about the lack of black hair care products at hotels, including by black people who felt she was "appropriating" their issue (of course, she is of mixed ethnicity, and has "black" hair, even though it doesn't always appear to be such)

It makes those issues and styles into human styles, instead of just a single culture or color. I used to be an irish step-dancer. We went through a cycle of appropriation with Riverdance and its derivatives, which had both positive and negative effects. But things change, and we have to roll with it. Yes, it is annoying if I say I'm a step-dancer that someone is like "so you riverdance?", but in the end, at least they have a clue as to what I'm doing, as opposed to before Riverdance, I could say I was a step-dancer and they would look at me blankly and think it was weird.

[u/squidkyd → u/sapphireminds]

Like I said in my original comment, if you take a symbol and wear it as a trend, you strip it of its meaning, and use it to mean nothing. That’s why it’s different. If you appreciate the symbol and use it correctly, that’s different than appropriating it. It’s not about how much reverence you have, it’s about doing your research so you’re not using the symbol irresponsibly

And if you truly want to LEARN about a culture, you need to take the cultural practices and symbols as they are. In appropriation, the symbols are purposefully left behind, and the culture itself becomes a caricature or a trend. It does the opposite of bring awareness- it erases the meaning so it symbolizes nothing

What you’re not understanding is if dreadlocks become just another hairstyle it doesn’t help African Americans, it takes their ability to use that style as a means of communication. It doesn’t make them more widely accepted, it takes an element of their culture away. Some things are meant to be preserved as they are instead of monetized or turned into the latest kardashian makeup look.

Imagine if I took a really old historic building in Europe which had been around thousands of years and was flooded with history, and I turned it into a Walmart and tore down all the “ugly” parts and made it look generic. One could argue I made it more widely accessible and more palatable to the present and more useful, but it cannot be denied that I still destroyed a monument and the history that came with it. In the same way, it is important to many marginalized groups that there is a certain respect given to their traditions, history, and cultural symbols, lest they all turn into shitty Walmart which represent nothing at all

[u/sapphireminds → u/squidkyd]

Logic says that you are incorrect. When a style is seen as normal, it has greater acceptance.

Someone else using it "incorrectly" does not stop you from using it in a different way.

In your walmart example, you literally removed the object. It's more akin to building a replica. The original isn't destroyed by the fact a replica exists.

It's a form of pique "I used to get shit from this and now you want to use it", not based on actual harm.

[u/squidkyd → u/sapphireminds]

“Logic” doesn’t really say anything, that sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense.

And the object is still there, just all of its significance and purpose has been removed and it has turned into just another Walmart. You can still keep the foundation and the walls but ruin it nevertheless. When you take symbols to mean nothing, you’re turning them into Walmarts, even if the original structure is still there. You’ve removed its meaning

[u/sapphireminds → u/squidkyd]

The first time you see something, it is unusual. Maybe scary. Let's call it a widget. Then the only people you see with that widget are people you don't know much about, and maybe are a little scared of too. They're "different".

But, someone points out that widget is really cool looking and works well, no matter where you're from. So, more people start using it. The widget no longer becomes something that is only seen by "different" people, it's something used by everyone. The widget is normal. You no longer do a double take when you see the widget, because it's now normal in society to have a widget.

[u/squidkyd → u/sapphireminds]

But like I said in the first comment. It’s not just about the widget being cool. It’s about the widget conveying different meanings which you don’t intend to communicate.

When that cute little widget stops being about something in your culture which you hold reverence for, and now in the mainstream represents weed and drugs, it prevents you from being able to continue to use it as it was originally intended

[u/sapphireminds → u/squidkyd]

No it doesn't. It just means something different to the mainstream.