• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Cultural Appropriation.

TheGoverness

Little Miss Sunshine
DP Veteran
Joined
Mar 29, 2016
Messages
40,805
Reaction score
54,567
Location
Houston Area, TX
Gender
Female
Political Leaning
Liberal
So, the recent debacle with the whole Moana costume stuff, has got me interested in talking about the concept of cultural appropriation in general. Now, for those that have no idea what the **** I'm talking about, cultural appropriation is the "adoption of the elements of one culture by members of another culture". Some people, view this as a negative thing.

My question is: why is it a bad thing? "Cultural appropriation" has been doing since societies arose. Throughout our history, we've mingled and co-existed. And we'v borrowed plenty of elements of each others cultures, and morphed it into our own. For the most part, Humans don't just mingle in our own separate enclaves and keep to ourselves; we interact with one another. I think the United States is a great example of this. Just look at how ****ing diverse this country is. That diversity, is due to different cultures coming together (people coming from all over the world), and sharing and implementing ideas. There are endless examples of this: food, movies, folk tales, clothes, hairstyles, religious traditions, etc, etc. There's too many to list.

And then you have all of the people that say it's "racist" for a white person to wear a Moana costume, or have dreads or whatever. Now, if someone is wearing a costume, simply for the purposes of making fun of another culture, then yeah, I could see how that is racist. But if someone just wants to wear a costume of a character they like, or they want to wear dreads, or have hoop earrings, that's shouldn't be a problem. If someone (of whatever skin color) wants to wear something from a character, of culture that they enjoy, then who gives a ****?

And to anyone that has a problem with that, you need to rethink your life choices. Lots of actual problems to be worried about, than whether or not it's okay for a white girl (or boy?) to wear a Moana costume.

/END RANT
 
Last edited:
So, the recent debacle with the whole Moana costume stuff, has got me interested in talking about the concept of cultural appropriation in general. Now, for those that have no idea what the **** I'm talking about, cultural appropriation is the "adoption of the elements of one culture by members of another culture". Some people, view this as a negative thing.

My question is: why is it a bad thing? "Cultural appropriation" has been doing since societies arose. Throughout our history, we've mingled and co-existed. And we'v borrowed plenty of elements of each others cultures, and morphed it into our own. For the most part, Humans don't just mingle in our own separate enclaves and keep to ourselves; we interact with one another. I think the United States is a great example of this. Just look at how ****ing diverse this country is. That diversity, is due to different cultures coming together (people coming from all over the world), and sharing and implementing ideas. There are endless examples of this: food, movies, folk tales, clothes, hairstyles, religious traditions, etc, etc. There's too many to list.

And then you have all of the people that say it's "racist" for a white person to wear a Moana costume, or have dreads or whatever. Now, if someone is wearing a costume, simply for the purposes of making fun of another culture, then yeah, that's racist. But if someone just wants to wear a costume of a character they like, or they want to wear dreads, or have hoop earrings, that's shouldn't be a problem. If someone wants to wear something from a character, of culture that they enjoy, then who gives a ****? And to anyone that has a problem with that, you need to rethink your life choices. Lots of actual problems to be worried about, than whether or not it's okay for a white girl (or boy?) to wear a Moana costume.

/END RANT
How many people do you think that is? I agree with your overall point, but I have never met anyone in real life that cared that much about it. It seems like most of the time that I hear about this stuff is from some right wing rag online.
 
How many people do you think that is? I agree with your overall point, but I have never met anyone in real life that cared that much about it. It seems like most of the time that I hear about this stuff is from some right wing rag online.

I haven't met anyone myself that thinks this way either. I've only read articles people have wrote about it, usually from websites like the Salon, or the Cosmopolitan. And then you all those people on Twitter that complain about it. I think it's a very annoying vocal minority of left-wing people that think this way.
 
Cultural appropriation is idiotic, as is anyone who cares about it one bit. People need to grow up.
 
Bottom line, there are some people that are so internally focused that they find any opinion contrary to their own to be a threat. Such people live in a defensive mindset and constantly seek out stuff to be pissed off about. Your best bet is to ignore them.
 
I haven't met anyone myself that thinks this way either. I've only read articles people have wrote about it, usually from websites like the Salon, or the Cosmopolitan. And then you all those people on Twitter that complain about it. I think it's a very annoying vocal minority of left-wing people that think this way.

Multiculturalism is a good idea in concept, but has some issues in execution.
It is a good idea to look at how other cultures do things, and pick and choose the best approaches from everywhere.
As to people being offended, The phrase "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" is very real.
 
Cultural appropriation is idiotic, as is anyone who cares about it one bit. People need to grow up.

Following the development of political correctness it seems the logical progression.
 
I haven't met anyone myself that thinks this way either. I've only read articles people have wrote about it, usually from websites like the Salon, or the Cosmopolitan. And then you all those people on Twitter that complain about it. I think it's a very annoying vocal minority of left-wing people that think this way.

That is kinda the thing. We live in an era where there are so many TV shows, so many blogs and online and offline magazines, so many websites, all desperate for content. So they look for that nutty person that used to be ignored as just a nutty person, and manufacture some outrage that they said something nutty. 99.99999999 % of Americans don't care about the whole Moana thing.

Oh, and anime Halloween costumes...appropriate all the culture you want. I recommend this one, as both great, and a cultural appropriation of a cultural appropriation: https://www.amazon.com/COCONEEN-Cosplay-Costume-French-Halloween/dp/B00ZI8GTTU/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1508949550&sr=8-24&keywords=anime+halloween+costume
 
So, the recent debacle with the whole Moana costume stuff, has got me interested in talking about the concept of cultural appropriation in general. Now, for those that have no idea what the **** I'm talking about, cultural appropriation is the "adoption of the elements of one culture by members of another culture". Some people, view this as a negative thing.

My question is: why is it a bad thing? "Cultural appropriation" has been doing since societies arose. Throughout our history, we've mingled and co-existed. And we'v borrowed plenty of elements of each others cultures, and morphed it into our own. For the most part, Humans don't just mingle in our own separate enclaves and keep to ourselves; we interact with one another. I think the United States is a great example of this. Just look at how ****ing diverse this country is. That diversity, is due to different cultures coming together (people coming from all over the world), and sharing and implementing ideas. There are endless examples of this: food, movies, folk tales, clothes, hairstyles, religious traditions, etc, etc. There's too many to list.

And then you have all of the people that say it's "racist" for a white person to wear a Moana costume, or have dreads or whatever. Now, if someone is wearing a costume, simply for the purposes of making fun of another culture, then yeah, I could see how that is racist. But if someone just wants to wear a costume of a character they like, or they want to wear dreads, or have hoop earrings, that's shouldn't be a problem. If someone (of whatever skin color) wants to wear something from a character, of culture that they enjoy, then who gives a ****?

And to anyone that has a problem with that, you need to rethink your life choices. Lots of actual problems to be worried about, than whether or not it's okay for a white girl (or boy?) to wear a Moana costume.

/END RANT

Totally agree. We are better as a melting pot of cultures. As long as you aren't (example off the top of my head) a white person doing a black-face act to mock blacks or something.

This is one way art evolves and improves.
 
Totally agree. We are better as a melting pot of cultures. As long as you aren't (example off the top of my head) a white person doing a black-face act to mock blacks or something.

This is one way art evolves and improves.

Yeah. Like I mentioned, if you're just doing it to mock the culture or a particular race, then yeah, that would be wrong.
 
Yeah. Like I mentioned, if you're just doing it to mock the culture or a particular race, then yeah, that would be wrong.

I saw that in your OP - should have mentioned it.

Captain Adverse has another thread about this. I think there are forces in the media that are intent on repeating the views of fringe extremists and then trying to cast the half or more of society that they disagree with as holding that view. I view what the media is doing as an attempt to manufacture outrage, and I would hope that most would :roll: and carry on.
 
Following the development of political correctness it seems the logical progression.

Screw political correctness and all of its advocates.
 
So, the recent debacle with the whole Moana costume stuff, has got me interested in talking about the concept of cultural appropriation in general. Now, for those that have no idea what the **** I'm talking about, cultural appropriation is the "adoption of the elements of one culture by members of another culture". Some people, view this as a negative thing.

My question is: why is it a bad thing? "Cultural appropriation" has been doing since societies arose. Throughout our history, we've mingled and co-existed. And we'v borrowed plenty of elements of each others cultures, and morphed it into our own. For the most part, Humans don't just mingle in our own separate enclaves and keep to ourselves; we interact with one another. I think the United States is a great example of this. Just look at how ****ing diverse this country is. That diversity, is due to different cultures coming together (people coming from all over the world), and sharing and implementing ideas. There are endless examples of this: food, movies, folk tales, clothes, hairstyles, religious traditions, etc, etc. There's too many to list.

And then you have all of the people that say it's "racist" for a white person to wear a Moana costume, or have dreads or whatever. Now, if someone is wearing a costume, simply for the purposes of making fun of another culture, then yeah, I could see how that is racist. But if someone just wants to wear a costume of a character they like, or they want to wear dreads, or have hoop earrings, that's shouldn't be a problem. If someone (of whatever skin color) wants to wear something from a character, of culture that they enjoy, then who gives a ****?

And to anyone that has a problem with that, you need to rethink your life choices. Lots of actual problems to be worried about, than whether or not it's okay for a white girl (or boy?) to wear a Moana costume.

/END RANT

hehe...so, not wanting to dragged into a beating...as it would appear this thread is shaping up in a rather specific direction...but since you asked, I think it boils down to the respect shown. As with anything, some people are going to have a point, others are going to take it too far, which is why, as with anything, you need to look at each as a separate incident and decide which side you fall on.

Here's a couple articles, since you asked...

https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-appropriation-and-why-iits-wrong-2834561

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-africa/cultural-appropriation-wh_b_10585184.html
 
So, the recent debacle with the whole Moana costume stuff, has got me interested in talking about the concept of cultural appropriation in general. Now, for those that have no idea what the **** I'm talking about, cultural appropriation is the "adoption of the elements of one culture by members of another culture". Some people, view this as a negative thing.

My question is: why is it a bad thing? "Cultural appropriation" has been doing since societies arose. Throughout our history, we've mingled and co-existed. And we'v borrowed plenty of elements of each others cultures, and morphed it into our own. For the most part, Humans don't just mingle in our own separate enclaves and keep to ourselves; we interact with one another. I think the United States is a great example of this. Just look at how ****ing diverse this country is. That diversity, is due to different cultures coming together (people coming from all over the world), and sharing and implementing ideas. There are endless examples of this: food, movies, folk tales, clothes, hairstyles, religious traditions, etc, etc. There's too many to list.

And then you have all of the people that say it's "racist" for a white person to wear a Moana costume, or have dreads or whatever. Now, if someone is wearing a costume, simply for the purposes of making fun of another culture, then yeah, I could see how that is racist. But if someone just wants to wear a costume of a character they like, or they want to wear dreads, or have hoop earrings, that's shouldn't be a problem. If someone (of whatever skin color) wants to wear something from a character, of culture that they enjoy, then who gives a ****?

And to anyone that has a problem with that, you need to rethink your life choices. Lots of actual problems to be worried about, than whether or not it's okay for a white girl (or boy?) to wear a Moana costume.

/END RANT

In historical context, the answer becomes obvious.

We trampled on blacks, giving black roles to white men in black face who portrayed humiliating stereotypes of blacks.

We drove the native american population to near extinction, reneging our own agreements over and over again to take more from them. We humiliated them with stereotypes as well, many of which aren't even really accurate.

In historical context, it makes sense to be aware of these controversies, to be considerate of the racial stereotypes and potential harm that reinforcing them can cause.

A 6 year old kid isn't expected to know the context, but college-age adults should generally be aware of the context.

Now another example of how we culturally appropriate: characters of other ethnic backgrounds going to whites.

The problem here is when the majority power group, which for the US is whites, is disrespectful toward a minority group by reinforcing racial stereotypes. In isolation, a single incident is meaningless. However, our actions are NEVER in isolation, they always exist within a scope so broad that it is beyond our comprehension. Hundreds of millions of lifetimes is simply beyond our ability to understand, and whites, as a group, don't know their own strength.
 
Bottom line, there are some people that are so internally focused that they find any opinion contrary to their own to be a threat. Such people live in a defensive mindset and constantly seek out stuff to be pissed off about. Your best bet is to ignore them.

So we should ignore the people who complain about people who complain about cultural appropriation?
 


I came across this video last week randomly and this Japanese guy does a great job talking about how bogus Cultural Appropriation is and even towards the end mentions that's it's invented SPECIFICALLY to bully white people. No one gives a crap if a minority culturally appropriates.
 
How many people do you think that is? I agree with your overall point, but I have never met anyone in real life that cared that much about it. It seems like most of the time that I hear about this stuff is from some right wing rag online.

It's certainly being taught in college, I took a woman's studies course that had a whole quarter on it.... And there are quite a few universities setting out Halloween costume guidelines, etc. There are hundreds of examples online From People violently assaulting a white guy because he's wearing dreads to University classes dedicated to this sort of things.

As far as personal experience, I see it all the time on social media such as buzzfeed, youtube, facebook status's on my own and gfs wall of people I went to college with and forums, but I personally do not associate myself with a lot of extreme leftists...
 
That is kinda the thing. We live in an era where there are so many TV shows, so many blogs and online and offline magazines, so many websites, all desperate for content. So they look for that nutty person that used to be ignored as just a nutty person, and manufacture some outrage that they said something nutty. 99.99999999 % of Americans don't care about the whole Moana thing.

Here's the one thing I'll say on that though...

My sad guess is there are more nutters out there all over the place then I think we all fully realize. The reality is that all these blogs, forums, social media, and other forms of communication has not just given voice to such people but allowed them to actually congregate and realize that they're not quite so alone. I'll take something that's actually not political but more up your alley perhaps...

Bronies.

Go back to the 90's and something like Bronies is not a word that would make it into the lexicon. It would be a crazy, shameful, laughable thing that people would never dream of sharing with most anyone, and if they did its probably because the person in question is a leper within society anyways. Now? Now you can get 8 to 10 thousand of them congregating yearly for a freaking convention while hosting large online gathering places.

But here's a bigger issue. It's not simply the realm of crazy out there blogs or some guys rambling Geocities page anymore. Thanks to social media, where I think you have a higher saturation of nutters than you normally run into in the "real world", these kind of things gain steam and a following. Then you have the marketing and decision making portions of more mainstream businesses seeing it and thinking "this is what people want now, we need to get on board". Suddenly, the reach and scope that the nutters have to get their message out expands massively. And this is how things that seem out there begin to slowly become more mainstream.

Think I'm crazy?

Look at anime now. Look at comic books. Look at Dungeons and Dragons. Recognize that all these things have FAR less stigma now than they did 20 or 30 years ago. Why? These kind of "nutters" were able to band together more online, found that they weren't as rare and isolated as they used to be, started to get recognition in various places that led others to look at it and go "maybe there's something there", major companies and entities decided to grasp ahold of them as a means of touching into some new audience, and slowly they become part of the normal culture as opposed to a strange thing you used to point and laugh at the nerds about.

So while yes, I think people freak out FAR too easily with some random person saying some random stupid thing...and I think the broad attacks to large groups based on a nutter who identifies with a far smaller segment of a segment within that larger group are horribly dumb...I think there's a big difference between someone complaining about something crazy written by a majorly distributed magazine or on a widely watched TV show or something compared to some random guys blog that gets 500 clicks a day prior to someone making a big deal about its content.
 
Imulation is the highest form of flattery.
 
hehe...so, not wanting to dragged into a beating...as it would appear this thread is shaping up in a rather specific direction...but since you asked, I think it boils down to the respect shown. As with anything, some people are going to have a point, others are going to take it too far, which is why, as with anything, you need to look at each as a separate incident and decide which side you fall on.

Here's a couple articles, since you asked...

https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-appropriation-and-why-iits-wrong-2834561

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-africa/cultural-appropriation-wh_b_10585184.html

Both of those articles are pure bull****.
 
It's certainly being taught in college, I took a woman's studies course that had a whole quarter on it.... And there are quite a few universities setting out Halloween costume guidelines, etc. There are hundreds of examples online From People violently assaulting a white guy because he's wearing dreads to University classes dedicated to this sort of things.

As far as personal experience, I see it all the time on social media such as buzzfeed, youtube, facebook status's on my own and gfs wall of people I went to college with and forums, but I personally do not associate myself with a lot of extreme leftists...

Personal experience doesn't include the internet. It maximizes everything. Where did you go to college? I've been hearing about this kind of thing a lot, but I haven't experienced any of it. I'm not from a particularly left area though so maybe that is a big factor.
 
Personal experience doesn't include the internet. It maximizes everything. Where did you go to college? I've been hearing about this kind of thing a lot, but I haven't experienced any of it. I'm not from a particularly left area though so maybe that is a big factor.

I've come across PC professors. I took a class on multiculturalism, and there was definitely a sense of shaming for stepping out of line with the profs' ethics. But it was the profs' choice, not a forced political movement.

And, for course, PC BS goes both way. Nothing more PC than demanding people stand for a national anthem at a sporting event.
 
I came across this video last week randomly and this Japanese guy does a great job talking about how bogus Cultural Appropriation is and even towards the end mentions that's it's invented SPECIFICALLY to bully white people. No one gives a crap if a minority culturally appropriates.

It's virtue signalling from people who have absolutely no virtues.
 
The problem is people who believe they can simultaneously integrate into a society while claiming a monopoly on cultural elements.
 
Back
Top Bottom