With all the recent news stories regarding offensive incidents on college campuses as well as in society at large, I figured it could be interesting to hear you guys discuss the topic of cultural appropriation.

Is it a natural next step in society's growing understanding and tolerance of different people and cultures?

Or is it a step too far that is rooted in meaningless political correctness and demagoguery?

While this story is neither exceptional, nor unique, some students were recently punished at Bowdoin College for their involvement in a theme party that involved wearing mini sombreros. Perhaps it's easier to discuss a topic like this with the center piece being a bit less sensitive to most people than if they had worn black face, kkk outfits, or whatever else with a more strong negative connotation. Is there a significant difference to you between sombreros and these more sensitive things? Does intent matter when representing other people or cultures or do you think it's wrong on it's face?

Finally, if you think an event like the sombrero night is in poor taste and offensive, do you think it should be punished or should it be tolerated in an environment that promotes free speech with dissent coming in the form of protest to their actions and not their right to do them?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...571_story.html

I assume Bowdoin College is a private school and from reading the article about this event it appears it happened on campus. Looks to be a heavy handed action but if it is a private school and it is their property well it is their show. We don't know the whole story either, just one columnist's account.

I am strongly in favor of cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is a nonsense concept. All human culture is the common legacy of mankind. However, promoting negative ethnic stereotypes is never OK, even if it's done in the guise of cultural exploration.

From the article, it's not clear what aspect of the mini-sombrero party, if any, was really offensive.

The real question here is, why does the WaPo have a paywall which can be defeated by simply hammering the Escape key immediately after the initial page load?

It's a genuine issue, but one that's sometimes inappropriately moralised and where blame is occasionally pointed in the wrong direction. Whether that's because of an innate problem with its conception or perception, or a distortion operating on some other level, I dunno.

An illustration: the foofarah over Iggy Azalea. To my knowledge, I've never heard an Iggy Azalea song (she's one of those rap singers, Stew, you've seen them) but I have heard about some degree of controversy about her career. Specifically, some row on Twitter with another rap singer, Azealia Banks. The feud was not about who stole whose name, but apparently mostly about the fact that Iggy Azalea is white and Australian and was nominated for a Grammy for being a rap singer or something.

Banks makes the point that success is easier for Azalea because Azalea is white and blonde and whatnot. And I've no doubt that's true, but the blame for that fact, imo, isn't to be laid at Azalea's door. Like, let's extend Azalea the modicum of charity required to stipulate that there's some genuine artistic impulse driving her career. She's not responsible for the fact that she benefits from white privilege in this specific regard - is she? That's on society, that's on the culture as a whole. The fact that Azalea is easier to point at and elicit a response from doesn't really change that, imo. Presumably the idea isn't that she should forego her actual career because of the unfairness represented by her success. So what is it?

And the whole vein that Banks gets into about 'the message sent' by Azalea's Grammy opens up into more weirdness: When they give these Grammys out, all it says to white kids is: 'Oh yeah, you're great, you're amazing, you can do whatever you put your mind to.' And it says to black kids: 'You don't have sh*t. You don't own ****, not even the sh*t you created for yourself,'. And this is at the core of the matter, in some sense. I forget the exact fallacy (composition?) but the fact that hip-hop was invented by black people doesn't incline me to suppose that all black people have some unique claim on hip-hop. The kids Banks is referring to didn't invent hip-hop; hip-hop was invented by specific individual people who were black - right?

I get it, I suppose - we talk loosely, symbolically, culturally. Hip-hop is imbued with blackness in the eyes of society. The disparate success rates of white versus black hip-hop artists reflects continuing structural racial bias in society. That bias is objectionable and should be opposed, and, if possible, ended. I don't think calling white hip-hop artists out on Twitter is the best way to go about it, either morally or practically.

I understand there's more to the feud than that, criticism about Azalea not speaking up in favour of BLM and also something about some of her lyrics etc, but my points stand, such as they are.

The whole idea of cultural appropriation is the most stunning idiocy yet invented by the college Left, which is really saying something.

That should really be /thread.

White people dressing up as ethnic groups is almost always a bit weird at least. Kinda feel like sombreos is okay, but we're walking a fine line.

It's a real phenomenon, but when it's detrimental is a lot more limited than when white people want to have chips and salsa. It's critique drift.

Wearing a sombrero may be the world's whitest activity.

Context matters. If you're dressing up just all like "lol look at this crazy ethnic **** I'm wearing!" then I can get the annoyance. Having a party where people wear sombreros is quite clearly an act of friendliness to Mexican culture and should be interpreted as such. The problem here, as elsewhere with the extreme Left, is that as soon as a single person from a minority says they are offended by anything (or even if they don't but people think they might) it's all hands on deck, gotta shut everything down. There's always a tension between a) catering to the emotional needs of the easily upset and b) telling people to get over themselves, I'm fine with the idea that we need more a) than b) when it comes to minorities, but the extreme Left idea that we need exclusively a) and no b) at all is an invitation for lunatics to run society.

Actually the world's whitest activity is probably a toss up between wearing a sombrero and drinking gold tequila with salt and a lime wedge chaser. What is up with that?

I mean, maybe, it could be. You might be overestimating the magnanimity of US college students and their parties though.

Overestimating?

The modern college Left kinda reminds me of libertarianism/ACism. Just gotta get those few simple moral rules hammered out and a whole moral universe will fall neatly out. Unfortunately the real world involves subjectivity and judgement calls and tradeoffs.

College students have a trend to have stereotype parties. "Thug night" aka dress like a black gangster "Mexican tequila night" aka dress what is thought to be like a stereotypical Mexican etc, basically white kids dressing up as gross stereotypes. Of course college is more than just frat parties, but you get the idea.

Link

This article from "everyday feminism" is posted a lot on my facebook and always makes me lol

says all these things and then basically says "anyway keep eating mexican food or whatever, just think about it"

there is a really good korean taco place by my house and i have heard complaints about it. it's incredible

anyway i don't think wearing sombreros is bad but parties where you can show up as some sort of "lazy mexican" or "thug black" with a gun and a grill are bad because they give in to stereotypes. the food criticisms slays me though

The food ones are the best. Oberlin College incident was funny. It was claimed that Chinese food was appropriating Chinese culture. The problem was the food they used as emblematic of Chinese people was Chinese American food which Chinese foreign exchange students would have little to no experience with, also that Bánh mì appropriating Vietnamese students but someone else pointed out that Bánh mì was a fusion of French and Vietnamese cuisine during the French occupation of Vietnam and could 'trigger' Vietnamese students. It goes on and on.

I mostly agree with this, especially when "cultural appropriation" is used to describe informal and mostly harmless borrowing of cultural symbols, foods, dress, and that sort of thing.

On the other hand, there are some examples of more commercially exploitative appropriation which might be more ethically complex, for example in "data mining" (so to speak) native people for information on medicinal plants in the Amazon. I haven't read the whole thing, but Who Owns Native Culture? is a good book on this subject. The amazon summary reflects my opinion from what I've read:

You could say it's that kind of logic (plus the moralization) that seems out of place in some of these campus reactions.

These people are idiots.

Sombrero parties are appropriation? I thought that was just crude stereotyping.

Cultural borrowing is generally good, but when white rockers get rich while the black bluesmen who invented the genre are left out, that's appropriation.

The Rolling Stones did it right when they insisted that in order to appear on Shindig in 1965, Howling Wolf had to play also. A number of other old bluesmen (Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker) got second careers with help from white stars who understood their debt.

Similarly, Paul Simon gave writers credit to South Africans who helped create his Graceland album, and the association helped Ladysmith Black Mambazo get an international audience.

That's how you turn cultural appropriation into collaboration.

Cultural Appropriation is just another pseudo issue invented by the nutcase left because they have run out of things to complain about.

And they'll keep doing it. It's in their nature to always have something that they have to protest about. As they keep running out of issues what they'll decide to create an issue about will just become more and more ridiculous.

You wait, eventually they will start complaining about animal appropriation and how we shouldn't dress up as animals for halloween, etc because it hurts their feelings.

If these people don't have some new cause to complain about or get upset about they aren't happy. It will never end.

So it was fine when radio stations would play Elvis but not Little Richard.

You don't get it.

You don't either.

60 years ago???????????????????