Up until recently, I’ve just been laughing along at these idiot internet warriors, but this cultural appropriation bullshit really needs to stop. If you have a friend or someone you know ranting on about cultural appropriation, I hope you can share what I’m going to tell you with them:
About a year ago, I moved across the country to around Santa Fe. This area is home to the Pueblo people and moving here has really been a learning experience for me and has really changed how I view the sharing of different cultures. I realized it was really important for our cultures to be shared, and not segregated, because peoples’ lives really depend on the sharing and openness of culture out here. The Pueblo and Navajo have been having problems with selling their goods lately because they “don’t look native enough” or “don’t seem authentic enough” and white people have been afraid to even touch their products on grounds of this cultural appropriation bullshit.
I’m friends with this girl who is really into social justice concerning racism. Her parents came from Ecuador and english is her second language, so I’m definitely sure she’s faced a lot of hardship growing up and facing racism. Actually, most of the time I agree with her, but something she said the other day kind of was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. We got started talking about cultural appropriation and fashion (she was scared of buying these shoes with the yin-yang symbol or something), and I said:
“Well, what if it was the artist’s intention to share their culture through fashion? Around here, people’s lives depend on the exchanging of other cultures. This is how people make their living out here.”
To which she responded: “Well, it sucks that people out there have to sell out their culture.”
This was probably the most condescending thing I have ever heard, and this mindset is very dangerous. Like, excuse me, do you want me to tell that to Patricia Michaels, a pueblo woman from my town who couldn’t make money from her clothing? She went on project runway and was in the top 3 contestants, and showed on New York fashion week, but I guess she was just selling out, wasn’t she? I saw her at the local burger restaurant the other day. Want me to tell her what you said for you?
I understand that because of the history of america, native peoples have been forced into poverty, and being exploited is a huge problem. However, if this attitude keeps up, this fighting “cultural appropriation” will only make the problem worse. These people need to feed their families, and a lot of them like Patricia, really WANT to share their culture. Besides, if we harbor this idea of segregation, won’t people just become more ignorant about these native cultures?
Has anybody else around the world on here, or anyone from reservations seen how this trend can be so harmful? Desi people, romani, east asian cultures- this all seems like it could potentially be really harmful to these cultures and their people since the mindset is already taking root out here to the point where it’s affecting the native population.
I’m kind of worked up about this, so I hope this made sense. It just really angered me to realize how condescending these SJWs are being to other cultures and how prevalent this mindset is in their community.
This is from a reddit thread that has an ACTUAL DISCUSSION, civilly, about cultural appropriation and why the idea of it is fairly flawed. the conversation goes on for quite a few posts, almost all add insight and interesting thoughts to the topic as well as the fact that almost every comment is from someone who is not “white”.
due to the culture of OP, a fair amount of the responses are from native american/american indian folks who are actually negatively effected by the idea that having something from a culture other than your own is somehow very racist and not a desirable thing to do. pretty much every response tells in different ways how sharing culture is not only incredibly normal, but very desirable.
if you have a little time, its most definitely worth reading through the thread. redditers, at least on this thread, happen to do what tumblr SJWs fail to do and that is have an honest discussion about something and how it affects them without throwing bile around like ranting children. they actually talk about points that they agree on and points that they disagree on, even within the same culture, and they dont attack each other, they simply talk.
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