I want to agree SO MUCH with everything sca-nerd is saying here and also add: It is completely okay to have a 15th century African persona as a white person. I know and respect people who have done this.
We aren't putting on costumes that reduce an entire race or country of people to a cartoon stereotype. People meticulously research their clothing and - this is really important - are specific about it.
Dressing as "an African" is pretty offensive because you're treating the entire of Africa like it can be reduced to one outfit. The way that a ancient Middle Kingdom Egyptian warrior might have dressed would be totally different to the way that a 15th century Andalusian refugee in Morocco might have dressed, or a 14th century musician in Great Zimbabwe, or a 10th century farm worker in the Malindi Kingdom. Collapsing all of that diversity into "African" is deeply ignorant, and wouldn't be ok in the SCA. (You wouldn't dress up as "a European" - you'd be "a 12th century Viking" or "a Renaissance Italian" or something.)
Dressing as a 14th century Great Zimbabwe musician doesn't work as one of those offensive-stereotype Halloween costumes. Almost nobody who sees you is going to recognise exactly what you're supposed to be - especially because the past is strange, and historically accurate costumes often don't match what people expect. It only works within the context of the SCA, where we're an educational charity, and the entire point of the outfit is for someone to ask you about it so that you can excitedly tell them about the 200 hours of research you put into learning from 14th century Zimbabwe fabric arts.
Also: Putting pressure on people to only portray their own race is, in itself, creating a racist environment.
Unfortunately, when white people are too scared of "cultural appropriation" to do African personas and African research, what that tends to create is an unfair amount of pressure on our newcomers of colour to do all their own research and all their own work - and that, in itself, is a form of racism that keeps people of colour excluded from the Society.
As someone doing Scotland in the SCA, there are SO MANY resources for me. People will show me their Scottish garb and explain to me how to make garb like it, teach classes about ancient British food and brewing methods, make and sell appropriate armour/items for my persona, and sing Scottish songs that I can learn. It's easy. The path is laid out and paved for me.
If I wanted to do Great Zimbabwe? Man, I don't even know where I'd start. There are very few class offerings, I can think of almost nobody I could copy garb from, I would have to do deep-dives into foreign-language texts to even begin picking up some documentable historical songs of the appropriate period.
So our newcomers of African heritage are left with a choice: either just be Vikings and Italians like all the white people do, or set out on the incredibly difficult journey of doing all their own research & all their own crafting & all their own documentation. That is unfair to them. We cannot become more diverse & less white as a Society without encouraging, supporting, and giving material help to newcomers of colour who want to portray African/Asian/Native/etc personas, and the only way we can give them adequate support is if our existing experts are willing to make African garb, research African topics, sing African songs, teach about African history, and create that environment where it is just as easy for someone to do a Malindi persona as it is for someone to be a Roman.
Wearing a Halloween costume isn't being a good ally, because it's not actually doing anything to help support people of colour & it's not giving you anything like the experience of actually being a person of colour. Doing an African persona is allyship, if you do it correctly, because you're supposed to be doing research and education. You're going out there and creating the garb and items, writing the papers, teaching the classes and advancing knowledge about Africa. You're putting in the work so that someday, hopefully, a young Black newcomer in the Society will find it just as easy to do 1400s Oyo Empire, and has just as many resources and classes and role models, as a young white newcomer who wants to be a 1400s Agincourt archer.
It makes me immensely sad when someone says, "oh, I got a 23 & me genetic test and it says I'm 30% Norwegian, so I'm going to be a Viking". Thinking your genes define who you are is racism, pure and simple. Racists want us to define ourselves that way. Hitler would be fucking thrilled to hear us discussing whether we have enough blood quantum to be allowed to research the topics we want to research. It's a particularly American vice I've noticed since moving here; everyone's obsessed with their ancestors, where they come from, and their "real" roots/heritage/culture - and that creates this tendency to say things like "I'm Polish" as someone who's never been to Poland, doesn't speak Polish or engage in Polish religion or culture, and so may believe a bunch of offensive oversimplifications/stereotypes about what Polish culture is actually like. Being "40% Irish" according to a gene test does not mean you know more about Ireland, or are more authentically Irish, or have more right to Irish culture, than a person of colour who is 0% genetically Irish but actually lives in Ireland.
It's still extremely important to have humility about the extent of our research. If you say "this phrase means this" and then an actual native speaker of the language says "you're wrong", you should probably accept that you're wrong. Luckily SCAdians are pretty good about understanding that; doing a SWANA persona doesn't make you Arab, any more than a Roman persona makes you Italian, or my research into Dark Ages Scotland makes me actually from the Dark Ages.
To treat African and Asian cultures as off-limits for research & teaching doesn't send the message that we're being respectful. It makes it seem as though we think those cultures aren't worthy of research, aren't interesting enough to teach about, didn't have cool enough achievements to want to emulate them, didn't make technological contributions that are necessary to a full understanding of history, and shouldn't be represented - unless people of colour do all the work by themselves with no help, in which case we'll grudgingly accept them. Fuck that noise! As a student of history, you must study Africa and Asia and indigenous Americans and indigenous Australians and the Pacific Islands. Your understanding of the world will be fundamentally impoverished if you treat Europe as the only place you need to know about.
jbbartram-illu
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
annaxmalina
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
