The Concept of “Cultural Appropriation” | Hacker News Reader

The Concept of “Cultural Appropriation”

stallman.org

94 pointsleephillips65 comments

'Cultural Appropriation' is supposed to be about how the 'in group' in a culture takes and rebrands a cultural practice of the 'out group'. Where the rebranded version is the socially acceptable version of it and the original is still seen as a negative outside the cultural norm. People shaming others for the original version is the part that is offensive, not the fact people have learned, enjoyed and adapted the original practice.

Black drag queens came up with a numerous amount of make-up techniques and styles used by women today, like contouring. Shaming them for loving the art of make-up applied to the hyper exaggeration and depictions of femininity, while contouring yourself while outside that community is an example of this.

These leftist philosophies/ideas aren't the problem, it's the lack of education in what a subject actually means with lack of understanding of the nuance of the core subject and then applying it with an authoritarian lens is the problem. Which is the problem with all politically charged ideas regardless of their origins.

It's not even about ownership, it's about the power structures applied to each version or fork of the idea itself

Really happy to read this accurate comment.

Also, I appreciate how this scholar rebrands "cultural appropriation" to "racial plagiarism" so the term is more precise: https://twitter.com/minh81/status/950892912866406400

Thanks! That description and the excerpt with it also helps explain the huge part of why it's offensive. It's not about one's feelings, it's about dynamics of how that shame effects the market. The 'in group' have a much easier time to monetize their version and when they do, it is in ways that end up hurting or killing 'out groups' ability to do so.

You can use anyone's ideas you want and not be plagiarizing, as long as you give proper credit. But with cultural appropriation, you're not allowed to use anything from other cultures at all: the Twitter mobs will cancel you for it even if you do give credit.

twitter mobs also cancel people for saying the wrong thing about a kpop star. Doesn't mean they are right or taken seriously, just means a large group of people can bully you.

If you're not doing anything actually racist or offensive, they will be seen as they are bullies. People cancled or have seen real life consequences have been people learning what is offensive/racist publicly when we should be way more forgiving since most of these concepts are snippets taken from university level courses than described again in 30s chunks. Those people deserve education of why people are upset and why what they said is a problem not cancellation

I don't know, if a huge amount of people misunderstand or now define something in the same way, does it really matter how nuanced the original intent of the terms was? What I see in public conversations and the media pretty much distills cultural appropriation down to "Did some non-white non-cis group do something first or value it first? Then white/cis people shouldn't do it or express thoughts about it." Maybe there's marginally more nuance shown here and there, but I don't usually see it. At best there's an attempt to hold individuals accountable for what are large scale dynamics within a social graph that expresses the segregation and biases within our culture and society.

I don't think the problem is so much a problem with all politically charged ideas. It seems like there's something specific about ideas with a sort of left-ish academic origin that makes them almost intentionally designed to be distorted or misunderstood by people who aren't deeply a part of the group already. I sometimes think they might even be intended to provoke that kind of reaction and misunderstanding as a form of validation.

I don't think politically charged idea are the issue at all! I just think the way people end up using them waters down the original concepts, then people use it incorrectly/creates a new concept that is divorced from its original meaning. Where it also allows bad actors to use them for authoritarian or selfish means to further their agenda whether it's a politician or someone trying to boost their ego

>distills cultural appropriation down to "Did some non-white non-cis group do something first or value it first? Then white/cis people shouldn't do it or express thoughts about it."

That's my ultimate problem is that news and media regardless of their biases are financially motivated to water down those concepts. Mostly because they can't survive otherwise, it's more about the entertaining version of the news/topic and not the accurate probably boring complicated hard to digest content.

> I don't think politically charged idea are the issue at all! I just think the way people end up using them waters down the original concepts, then people use it incorrectly/creates a new concept that is divorced from its original meaning

See, this just goes to prove that leftish Twitter slacktivists engage in cultural appropriation, too.

I don't think that is technically culture appropriation, but yes they also participate in regardless. I don't disagree that the self-proclaimed activists usually are doing more harm than good when it comes to the causes they're fighting for.

Like body positivity movement often leaves men behind, where just because it isn't as often tied to their value in society like women doesn't mean they should be shamed or feel shame for aspects of their body they can't change. Where looping back to the watered-down version of the main concept, where they are using it as an excuse to stay an unhealthy level of obese. When the goal was more about you shouldn't have to battle a deep shame for being obese as well as the extremely hard habit changes to get out of obesity. Where it should only be optionally brought on yourself it helps you move forward

> I don't think the problem is so much a problem with all politically charged ideas. It seems like there's something specific about ideas with a sort of left-ish academic origin that makes them almost intentionally designed to be distorted or misunderstood by people who aren't deeply a part of the group already. I sometimes think they might even be intended to provoke that kind of reaction and misunderstanding as a form of validation.

Another way of looking at this is that these ideas have little-to-no intellectual content (just some mumbling about "power structures"). They are pure resentment given an intellectual gloss. When the ideas come in contact with the real world, away from academia, that quickly becomes clear.

Black drag queens are “ingroup”. There are not signs, advertisements, months, czars, rules, titles, regulations and funded bureaucracies urging their charges to respect “European men” but black drag queens have many of those and more.

Currently, that is what the default is though for a western perspective. Most products are designed to hit that market because that demographic has the most resources, for a lot of complicated socio-economic reasons that I'm not qualified to really describe in a way that they deserve.

Those structures were designed around that default demographic, where those extra products and incentives are attempts to take what is working for the default and allow others to enjoy the benefits that was only afforded to the default.

For example: I as a trans woman, even with those extra supports and incentives to help me, I find that when presented as man or now when I don't tell people I'm trans it is easier to operate in society/organizations in general. The incentives don't help or make things so much easier or a comparison to how much easier it was traversing as a default demographic.

Would European men need it?

How would these signs, ... in favor of European men change society, in the best case?

I am not advocating for any signs or rules, simply reporting what I witness.

The fact that people need to be told to respect a group is a sign that this group is not respected by default and is, in-fact, an out-group.

> These leftist philosophies/ideas aren't the problem, it's the lack of education in what a subject actually means with lack of understanding of the nuance of the core subject and then applying it with an authoritarian lens is the problem. Which is the problem with all politically charged ideas regardless of their origins.

If the masses have taken a term and decided what it means, then fighting against by claiming they are wrong it is just pissing into the wind.

At this point cultural appropriation isn’t used the way you are trying to define it so you are just going to need to come up with another term for your nuanced take if you want it to succeed in the marketplace of ideas.

I don’t think it’s the masses. I think it’s a very small minority stuck in a feedback loop of always needing to be more woke than the other person. The social media in itself is an echo chamber: most people even in the US are unlikely to feel strongly about this and it’s a complete non-issue everywhere else. An average steel worker, truck driver or even software dev does not care and thus can’t be part of the masses actively distorting the meaning of popular terms.

Don't get me wrong I understand the population at large have a rebranded version a lot of these terms, and it is futile to try and take them back. However, a lot of academics and people subscribing to that idea aren't going to change. So understanding how different groups use the term and what concept they're trying to describe, helps with they are actually trying to say.

Personally I have been digging into the 'why' behind people still argue something that to my understanding has no rational basis, found these disconnects between the use and what it was supposed to mean very interesting. Really just has shown me all news media regardless of bias has created a problem having to water down or modify a concept/story to be entertaining or click-able has distorted so much information

CA, like many concepts of analysis that have entered popular conciousness (structual racism, patriarchy, ...), have been vulgarized beyond making sense, yet people on both sides of the discussion act as though whatever these theories were reduced to are of actual interest.

It's so interesting to see how, in modern left-wing movements, concern on behalf of groups like "black drag queens" has supplanted concern for working class people. I suppose it's because the former group is much more glamorous.

No we do just our arguments for solving issues for working-class people involve unions, and adopting more democratic socialist approaches. Which over all hurt a corporation's owner's large profits usually based on surplus labour value, and be forced to have that go back to the people producing the corporation's value. So that is an uphill battle fighting 1%s advertising power. Convincing people that it is a system that works and can still be profitable to corporations just means they can't see the massive returns they do currently while contributing to healthy economic environment is extremely difficult. The fact you don't hear more about us advocating for it, is an example of the cultural hold the 1% has on the populous where the ideas aren't covered or are covered as a strawman pie in the sky ideology.

Which compared to social issues of bringing a group of people and their culture as part of a norm happens to also brings in more to the labour force. Corporations and the people that own them can immediately start using their labour value surplus for profits just as they do with other demographics.

So you are saying all modern rock music from Elvis to Black Sabbath to Metallica should not exist as it is the “in” group taking the music of the “out” group, in this case the blues? People don’t work like that, culture doesn’t work like that. It’s constant borrowing, development, abandonment, rediscovery and remixing with very little regard as to what groups some people would consider “in” or “out” from their perspectives.

The irony there is that drag queens are appropriating womanhood for the purposes of mockery. They don't really have much ground to complain if women then appropriate a few make-up styles back.

This, and the few lines that Stallman writes should be instructive to many users here. RMS and Free Software is actually very radical. Much much more radical than any popular open source coder or progressive corporation can be. But the key thing is that this difference has been hidden. It's not a Silicon Valley libertarian optimism either (which we've seen challenged and wither in recent years). It's deeper. Not many of us really notices, and hardly anyone else outside does too!

It's something we don't encounter much as we are used to consuming software, or just doing open source, but Free Software is *philosophical* first and foremost. It's a fundamental different way of looking at and understanding the world.

I find it fascinating, and posts like this really enhance this difference between the worlds we are living in.

Odd, Stallman disavowing the radical concept of "cultural appropriation" is supposed to be proof of him being "very radical"? The opposite is true, Stallman's thoughts on this subject are rational, not radical.

radical is not the opposite of rational, and the comment you replied to in no way suggested it's not rational.

Rational does not need to be the opposite of radical, nor does the parent comment need to imply Stallman did not react rationally. The parent does see his comment as proof of his radicalism which is, as said, a strange statement given that Stallman decries the radical concept of cultural appropriation - a rational statement. Decrying radical statements is not a radical act.

Decrying the concept of "intellectual property" entirely, as he does, is a pretty radical position nowadays, so yes, that comment is proof of a radical position.

> Imagine how an Orthodox Jewish rabbi would feel if a gentile pop-music multimillionaire made a music video in which he used the Kaddish to mourn a Maserati he’d totaled. The offense isn’t appropriation; it’s the insult entailed by trivializing something another group holds sacred.

Interesting hypothetical, if unrealistic. See for example "the best Christmas songs" [1], which teach us that Christmas is mostly about red-nosed reindeer (invented by the song-writer's brother-in-law), snow, chestnuts, marshmallows, and silver bells, rather than having anything to do with any Christian or earlier pagan festivals.

[1] The Best Christmas Songs Were Actually Written By Jews - https://www.newsweek.com/best-christmas-songs-were-actually-...

Those songs are not religious and actually demonstrate how Christian feasts have been appropriated by secularism/consumerism. Same with Easter. Same with all sorts of Christian symbols.

So why should anyone care about anyone else's cultural and religious symbols and traditions if those that are Christian are fair game?

I also don't like the relativism involved in appealing to the feelings of other people. People have all sorts of feelings.

> Those songs are not religious

Yes, that was my point. Non-religious songs about a religious holiday.

> Imagine how an Orthodox Jewish rabbi would feel…

You don't have to imagine, the Vulcan salute was lifted (granted by a Jewish actor) straight out of an orthodox ceremony into a very secular film franchise.

50 odd years later, most Jewish folk are fine with this.

Not everyone treats being offended as a competitive sport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_salute

> granted by a Jewish actor

He appropriated his own culture? Shall we then count everything inspired by other European cultures, that is present in pop culture, as "appropriated", regardless of who introduced it to pop culture?

I agree the idea of cultural appropriation is absurd, but so was his (and yours) example.

John McWhorter⁰:

> To wit, the more common usage of “discrimination” has semantically narrowed — in usage — regardless of what the facelessness of dictionary definitions, often initially penned eons ago, might indicate.

This is also true of “cultural appropriation.” I find it almost poignant to see how commonly people dismiss the concept by saying that without it, we wouldn’t have tomatoes (from South America), or that the alphabetical writing system that emerged in Egypt wouldn’t have spread to most of the world, etc. But what these people are missing is that this term is used in a semantically narrower fashion than these objections apply to.

It refers to appropriation by those on top¹ from those below, especially where doing so involved profiting in a way that the latter was not able to.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/language-race-sem....

1: [Link in the original] https://www.theweek.co.uk/cultural-appropriation

I got soured on cultural appropriation when I read about a museum exhibit allowing guests to try on a traditional Japanese kimono being shut down by the usual suspects, those being Asian-American busybodies with nothing better to do than to ruin Westerners' fun. (Japanese in Japan tend to enjoy seeing the spread of their culture across the world.) As long as the garment wasn't ceremonial, or reserved for a specific cultural class like the imperial family, it's fine, and it helps people understand finer details of traditional Japanese clothing like all the intricate steps and multiple people it took to put on a fine kimono. Because, after all, modern Japanese society is built on a foundation of Western cultural appropriation, right down to wearing Western or Western styled clothing in certain contexts.

Surprised it was Asians and not the usual woke whites that objected. Never actually ran into anyone that cared about their own culture being appropriated.

If you go to a heavily left-wing indoctrinated area that happens to have minorities, you will find the ones that care there.

I guess that is cultural appropriation of white wokism.

Wokism itself (at least the thing that was criticized on the Left before the Right picked it up and used the label to criticize everything they don't like indiscriminately, so that the term has lost any coherent meaning) is a white bourgeios appropriation [0] of proletarian minority solidarity politics.

[0] In exactly the sense of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28739266

No, cultural colonialism. White wokesters impose their norms on minority communities. I guess we can call non-white wokesters Uncle Toms.

In the Swing dancing scene there was a prominent "scandal" where a dance instructor had gone to a dance workshop in Senegal (as a participant) and befriended local dancers.

Those Senegalese women braided her hair in their traditional style, which said instructor posted on social media.

After that she lost several high-profile workshop appearances in America (because of massive boycotting demands by American dancers), because obviously that's cultural appropriation.

That hair style is African-American. How dare Senegalese women use it themselves and decide who gets to wear it?

I'm a west African who's frequently bemused by the small but very strident minority of African-Americans who get to decide who's "black enough" or not black enough or who gets to appropriate what culture. The whole notion is ridiculous to me. Rappers name themselves after mafiosi, italian handbags and swiss luxury watches. We all wear western style clothes and speak European languages, not to mention writing in Arabic numerals, worshipping middle eastern deities and what not. On the other side I'm always annoyed when I see snarky comments from cultural snobs on youtube when some new classical musician from Asia comes up about how they can't possibly really understand the music because they're not European enough and it's not 'their' music.

I don't think it was actual Japanese Americans who shut down the kimono exhibit, but woke people intervening.

The Japanese diaspora is very sharing, and I've always felt welcomed into events like the Obon summer festivals in the US by my wife's Japanese American family. They love to dress up an English guy in a happi coat and make me join in the crowd dances with my hapa daughter.

We all really missed Obon this year.

I think cultural appropriation is more a matter of having manners and considering the feelings of others. If you take something that is a meaningful to another culture and treat it as a novelty or turn it into a fashion statement you are doing cultural appropriation. You can avoid cultural appropriation simply by having respect for and learning about the culture/tradition you’re borrowing from.

Maybe, but surely you would agree it should be up to the appropriated culture to decide what is appropriate?

If a historically marginalized group feels that you are appropriating their culture, the proper response is not to learn their history and then tell them that since you read a book it's now OK. It's to stop.

Most cultures have a wide variety of opinions. If someone wants to wear clothing associated with another culture, should they listen to the people saying "no, that's just for us", or the ones saying "we like seeing our ideas spread", or "of course, I'm happy to sell you this hat that I made in the traditional style"? In my experience, there will always be voices across that entire spectrum. If one always listens to the most restrictive ones, then it just makes everyone more isolated in their own bubbles.

I do think there are some areas where most people can agree that use of another culture's artifacts is in poor taste and not generally acceptable. A very specific example would be that members of a culture that conquered another culture shouldn't wear clothing or jewelry that was looted from the conquered people. I think most people would agree that that crosses a line. Same for costumes that trivialize or mock another culture, like children playing cowboys and "Indians" in the 20th century, or minstrel shows. But outside of that core, I think it turns into a grey area very quickly.

It's a really tough problem to find a good answer to, and IMO it's impossible to find one that makes everyone happy because of that diversity of opinions in nearly every culture.

Children laying cowboys and "indians" is to trivialize and to mock ?!

I agree that it should be up to the appropriated culture. I’m not saying all you have to do is read a book. If you want to participate in another culture it takes a lot of work to learn and participate respectfully. And you’d probably have to do it up front rather than after the fact to justify yourself.

For example: Eminem is respected as a rap artist because he apprenticed himself to the culture and celebrates it. He didn’t just try to make money off rap and learn a bit of history about it to justify doing so.

The problem isn't "appropriation" so must as "appropriation without appreciation." In the context of Black America, the taking began with bodies and labor and has continued and expanded right up to present day. Language, food (aka "southern food"), political contributions, music. People the world over take, imitate and benefit from these things and more. Yet viewing and treating Black Americans as inferior is widespread. Why take from those you consider inferior? Who's the real dummy in that situation. Probably the most in-your-face example would white supremacist rock and rap musicians.

Can you please provide some examples of white supremacist rock and rap musicians?

As in they don't exit or you haven't heard of them?

> Probably the most in-your-face example would white supremacist rock and rap musicians.

I don't know how they define the term, so I'm looking for examples. I don't know of any popular rock or rap musicians that are openly white supremacist.

Burzum [1] comes to mind, and certainly a lot of British bands from the 1980s right-wing Oi! scene like Skrewdriver [2]. There are a few rappers in Germany who are open white supremacists like MaKss Damage [3]. The entire idea of white supremacist rap/hip hop seems quite absurd to me given the genre's Afro-American heritage, but I guess that I'm putting too much thought into that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrewdriver

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaKss_Damage (German)

They said "the most in-your-face example", which does not mean niche 80s bands. Furthermore Varg Vikernes (Burzum) is not a white supremacist and he has explained why [1].

The reality is that in popular culture, 'nationalism' is seen as a dirty word, let alone 'white nationalism' (which is often conflated with 'white supremacism'). I don't know of any well-known self-proclaimed white supremacists.

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=JiTnc5tCZ5o

Stallman: "cultural appropriation" as a form of racist censorship

Appaih: the very idea of ownership is the wrong model

Stallman: he [Appaih] shares this view

my take: Stallman is doing some motivated reasoning. Appiah doesn't say what Stallman thinks he does.

  Appiah, like almost everyone nowadays, takes the concept of "intellectual property" to be valid and meaningful description of a coherent thing, and disputes whether it is a good thing or a bad one. I argue that it fails to refer to any coherent thing; that it is an misleading overgeneralization about unrelated laws, so we should reject the concept entirely.

This is a fair gist of Stallman's overall message. It is attractive as a consumer of intelligence but frightening as a producer of it.

In his linked writings, it becomes clear that he’s not necessarily rejecting copyright, patents, and trademarks, but instead pointing out that generalizing these three things under the term “IP” distorts their legal meanings and histories. (He might reject aspects of these three things elsewhere, but that’s a different issue.)

Great analysis.

In short, to more accurately name the harm in some specific cases, don't name property appropriation, just name [and/or make a case for] obvious disrespect.

Stallman, naturally, uses the occasion to help question the notion or applicability of "IP" in the first place.

tl;dr Cultural appropriation implies an ownership of art and tradition, and is akin to intellectual property. Stallman is skeptical of the validity of IP, and hence also the concept of cultural appropriation.

I do not understand why people obsess about this

I do agree that people obsess over it to the point where the conversation becomes an annoyance to some. But I also think it’s important to understand the things like this that divide “tribes” when society seems to be getting more tribalistic.

Do you want to understand?

Or is saying "I do not understand" a way of saying "I do understand, I just disagree that people are interested in it" ?

I ask both questions, often in different orders when I see such a statement. Most of the time the user does not answer me, but when they do it's clear that they just disagree with others. This leads me to think the question "i do not understand" is dishonest. I'd love and am still open to be corrected though.

I do not understand these neo-tribalistic people.

It's 21st century, a man flew to space, set foot on the moon, and there is a global communist domination coming in a decade, or so, and these people can't care about something other than burritos.

It's so dumb.

I don’t eat at restaurants for fear that my enjoyment of ethnic cuisine will prompt ridicule and outrage. Who am I to understand the cultural nuance and meaning behind these dishes? So cavalier and insensitive to think I’m entitled to appreciate food as simply that. And I wouldn’t dare reproduce any of it in my kitchen at home unless it’s under the careful supervision and guidance of a real cultural authority.

It's clear that cultural appropriation is, itself, an appropriation of the military concept of 'stolen valor.' It is therefore inextricably tied to colonialism and should be avoided.

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