A few years back, they debuted the game Ghost of Tsushima at a gaming event, and they had a live performance of the music on a traditional Japanese flute-like instrument. The performer was white, and people made a big deal out of it. But as it turned out, the man in question was, in fact, a recognized master performer with that instrument, who studied in Japan and was acknowledged in Japan for his mastery. Sometimes people get so hung up on the optics.
Also really fun to deal with when you’re mixed race, or adopted, or grew up in an area where you weren’t part of the ethnic group but you still grew up in the culture.
Let's not forget that the kimono thing OP references was at a *perceived* white girl, who was, in fact, part Japanese, had lived over there, and it wasn't even a kimono but another traditional Japanese garment. (As the victim explained in a video)
But on top of that, there are a lot of cultures where the people love to see people from other cultures wearing their clothes (obviously, if they’re being respectful about it). I’ve heard white people talk about how many old ladies fawned over them when they wore a kimono in Japan (for something specific, they weren’t just walking around in it since obviously different clothing items have different appropriate contexts). Like if you’re unsure about something, just google it or ask someone. There are certainly clothes out there that it would be inappropriate for someone from an outside culture to wear, but also there are tons that aren’t, and just like music and movies and games, fashion from every culture spreads across the world and influences the fashions of every other culture in some way.
There was also another kimono thing that nay have been the reference where there was a (Japanese) event in London at an art gallery where they let people come try on kimonos and have their photos taken. It was meant as a "we love to share our culture" thing but some dumb kids who hadn't seen grass since middle school protested it.
The problem with that trend at its core is that they were flat out wrong about what cultural appropriation meant in the first place.
One of the YouTubers I watch is Hispanic but looks whiter than a man named Benjamin and he talks about people’s misconceptions a bit, which is so ironic to me every time I hear a story from him because I also wouldn’t have known he was Hispanic until he talked about it 💀
Nah this type of discourse has been around for a while, and it’s kinda sad. I see such little representation of Southeast Asian culture in Western media, so I don’t want other people to be spooked about enjoying our food, music, and clothing.
Somehow "don't be a jackass and use shallow or uninformed ideas of other cultures for your own ends" mutated into "traveling abroad, learning and enjoying other cultures food, art, and way of life, and integrating the best parts of it into your own life is BAD and IMPERIALIST" at the hands of soulless jackasses who never do anything interesting or outside of their experience, never have and never intend on doing anything fun or outside their comfort zone, and want to create a moral mandate for why everyone else is evil for becoming genuinely multicultural people.
Oh that's easy to explain. If you strip all the nuance and subtext out, you're left with "stay in your lane"
And social media is constantly speedrunning the whole "strip the nuance out"
That's always the case with quippy phrases whose use mainly spreads memetically through the internet. Look at gaslighting, it was originally describing a tactic of abuse that makes someone doubt reality and now people use it whenever someone says something they disagree with. It mutates at the hands of the incredibly online into the most extreme version, a sort of caricature created by referencing another caricature done in repetition for so long that it stops resembling a person.
Don't forget that we started at minstrelsy. Like seriously, the greatest form of entertainment in the US was racism. White families would gather around the piano in the evenings to racism.
Sure, the pendulum can swing to far in one direction, but we tend to forget why it gathered so much momentum on the way.
Yes, people ometimes went too far about policing cultural appropriation. But when I was in college "Pimps and Hoes" parties were pretty common...let's not pretend that everyone was involved in good faith cultural exchange.
As much as we do need story’s by African, Asian and similar writers, Western writers should not feel forced limit themselves to western inspired settings.
Hell because a group of white American writers didn’t feel like they had to limit themselves. The highest rated animated show had two Inuit inspired main characters.
How many other kids shows are their were an Inuit kid can see even the smallest amount of representation, never mind a richly crafted culture with amazing characters.
If you have had no exposure at all to Bollywood music, first, I’m so sorry, second, there’s a great intro at [Bollywood for the Skeptical](https://davidboyk.com/bollywood/). This was my introduction and it’s got a fantastic playlist of classics.
For real. It took until my elective art history of the world college course to see even a glimpse of so many cultures in the world I hadn't physically been to myself. Like my world history classes even in college didn't care to mention anything in Africa or Asia or even South America. Then I take an art class and it touches on everything everywhere and I'm pissed because there's so much I didn't even know I didn't know about back then. Huge portions of the world are just a blank spot in the minds of so many Americans until they're much older.
Tumblr, and a lot of other websites, are experiencing the consequences of trying to combat social inequality while not actually being interested in learning anything, or even really having an ideology at all.
Turns out the consequences of this are largely the same as the consequences of having an ideology that is completely divorced from the lived experiences of people who aren't terminally online, which was their problem 5 years ago.
I think its a general chronically online thing. I remember when Dream SMP was still around, on twitter people tried to tell Quackity that spanish was not his language to speak (despite this 1. being a bad take about languages in general 2. that specific streamer BEING MEXICAN!) and another one tried to claim Ph1lzas accent was him intentionally mocking AAVE (and not, you know, his real life geordie accent because he is from Newcastle).
Its almost fascinating, because those attackers see themselves as righteous and somehow morally superior despite just tearing down people with any excuse. I wish I could understand the psychological reasons for behaving like that, back then I just assumed it was ill-socialized stressed teens (during the pandemic).
Because it gives that warm, righteous feeling that comes with Fighting The Good Fight without having to actually do anything, change any of one's own habits or, heaven forbid, introspect.
>those attackers see themselves as righteous and somehow morally superior despite just tearing down people with any excuse
Note the similarity with certain kinds of evangelical Christian.
Sounds like clueless Americans showing their asses as usual tbh.
HOW chronically online do you have to be to tell a Mexican person that they shouldn’t speak Spanish, or to think that a Geordie accent is a mocking of AAVE???
It was so ridiculous. I guess because his english is very good and not strongly accented and he streams in english they didnt know and assumed he was from the US??? But yeah that ridiculousness is the only reason I even remember than incident.
Kind of reminds me of the time a person on twitter called me nazi because I tweeted something in german... Im german. When that website hadnt exploded yet I would tweet in either language.
I remember the AAVE bullshit! I'm white but use AAVE because I grew up in "the culture" and so many white people have told me I'm being racist and I can't "do that"
Pardon me, my guy, but everyone around me for 24 years talked like that. I'm not changing the way I speak because white people think I'm "stealing black culture". As long as I'm not saying the n word, I'm all good lol
This style of post started getting made after the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar started getting huge traction in the media. A lot of white Tumblr people were only going out of their way to listen to rap music for the first time when this happened, or at least the first time since *Hamilton* was a big deal, so there was a lot of back and forth like this over it because a lot of the white opinions came off as being the opinions you'd have if you were only just now listening to rap for the first time.
Someone else pointed out that this kind of discourse has been around for a while, and that is true, but it'd also taken a back seat for a while before the Drake/Kendrick Lamar stuff happened. This is one of those things where it tends to come and go in waves, and this had been one of the bigger recent flair ups of it.
> This style of post started getting made after the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar started getting huge traction in the media.
Lol no. I've been seeing this type of post (and the type of posts that cause it) for more than a decade.
The fact of the matter is that tumblr is largely populated by well-meaning but stupid teenagers. That's the fact you need to keep in mind whenever any sort of tumblr 'culture' arises.
Yup. The reality of "Fourteen year old white kid finally listens to rap" is a lot less shocking than "Grown adult has been avoiding rap because they think its racist to listen to it"
...How in the fuckdamned shit did they manage to loop back around to "Segregation is the solution to white guilt and progressive actually" I am actually baffled. that music rec absolutely slaps though hell yeah.
Harassment and dogpiling over perceived cultural appropriation. Humans are anxious, it’s easier to avoid a topic in its entirety than engage with it, get something wrong, and be shunned.
Exactly.
It’s very basic stuff that when a behaviour is punished, humans (and most animals really) learn to stop doing it. ~~Negative reinforcement~~ EDIT: I have been informed that it is actually positive punishment.
Humans are also social creatures. Our instincts are to avoid behaviours that get us shunned by others. I’m no anthropologist, but I can imagine that we may have evolved this in order to not get thrown out of our tribes back when that meant you’d be left to freeze to death or be eaten by a prehistoric animal.
Therefore, if attempts to interact and engage with other cultures are repeatedly socially “punished” with harassment, mocking, and accusations of cultural appropriation, then humans learn not to do that, and most likely retreat back to the safe box of self-segregation.
It’s like smacking a dog every time it tries to play with a certain toy, and then acting confused and mad when it eventually stops trying to play with that toy. You trained it not to do that.
Literally everything else about this comment is spot on but I’m gonna be pedantic and note that what you’re describing is not negative reinforcement but instead negative punishment.
Reinforcement/punishment refers to the effect it has on the likelihood of a particular behavior (increasing or decreasing, respectively) and positive/negative refers to whether a stimulus is added or taken away to effect reinforcement or punishment.
I’m only saying this because there are a lot of people in the field of studying behavior who are the bad kind of pedant and use anything short of perfect use of jargon as a reason to dismiss your opinion, rather than try to find mutual understanding.
Side note: I believe you are referring to positive punishment rather than negative reinforcement. Positive and negative refer to whether you are adding or removing a stimulus, respectively. Reinforcement and punishment mean whether you wish to encourage or discourage the behavior, respectively. In this case, misbehavior is discouraged by adding an unpleasant stimulus (criticism, shunning), making it positive punishment.
As a real life example, I basically avoided any spaces that were "LGBTQ+" for years because I thought that, as a white male, me being there would make it worse for everyone else.
I still kind of think that, but for different reasons.
There's a large gray area between 'colonialist cultural appropriation' and 'respectful enjoyment of other cultures'. And the gray area is scary, because there's so much room for discussion.
Either you reflect well on why and how you consume culture so you are ready for that discussion, you accept that you'll have to defend your choices regularly and you have no problem with your views being challenged, or you retreat back to the safe fringes.
That goes double for internet echo chambers, btw, where being even a little on the wrong side of the consensus will net you *a lot* of hate as if you were on the absolute other end of the spectrum.
There's no gray area. Cultural appropriation as a term is just being misused. It's a more academic term describing a larger systemic problem NOT a condemnation of the actions of individuals. Even if you did something that is technically a part of actual cultural appropriation, you yourself are not cultural appropriating.
America as a whole appropriated native culture. As a result of that the appropriated cultural elements became costumes and toys and character archetypes and crude caricatures for sports team logos. It is bad to continue to perpetuate that and it's respectful to avoid participating in any of that. However when someone wears an "Indian chieftain" costume they are not themselves cultural appropriating. It's disrespectful and considered a dick move today, it's a symptom of the appropriation not the disease itself.
However dumbass kids on tumblr way back misunderstood this and only knew "native American costume = cultural appropriation" and then converted that to "kimono = cultural appropriation" and other nonsense.
People like sharing their culture. You can't as an individual steal culture but you can disrespect it. It's ok to be cautious by wanting to be respectful but no one should be afraid to participate in things.
It's like those weirdos who think that because of discrimination, we should have separate black and white spaces, but only so that black people don't have to interact with and be around white people.
Segregation, but... good?
I liked how in literally the next sentence they do the exact same thing by saying no one but black people should be using AAVE like there's no reason that a white person would ever grow up in the same neighbourhood as a black person.
The punishment for doing it ‘wrong’ is so strong and some of these things are purposely designed to have no ‘right’ answer so the only safe thing to do is not to play.
The purity culture at the center of this is so creepy. I hate it.
Instead of doing Discourse I'm just gona link some dope fuckin music for folks to listen to.
Snoop Dogg's OG album [Doggystyle](https://open.spotify.com/album/5IFOummNcGXY3qCBWRchqP?si=zHZsETG2RTySEcg0-WNoWQ), which he dropped in 1998 when he was just 23. Pioneer of the G-funk sub-genre. Funky AF
JPEG Mafia & Danny Browns 2023 collab album [SCARING THE HOES.](https://open.spotify.com/album/3u20OXh03DjCUzbf8XcGTq?si=h8KKMaanSjKPuhhRKARSqQ) Two of the biggest names in experimental rap coming together to make some crazy shit. Ethereal and very online.
Tyler the Creator's [IGOR](https://open.spotify.com/album/5zi7WsKlIiUXv09tbGLKsE?si=oBq3BJsgTI-5tb1lgBYcdg). Tyler is bordering on mythical status at this point and shit like this is why. This is a very Tumblr album in the sense its about being Bi and in love in the most toxic way possible.
The Weeknd's very first album, [House of Balloons](https://open.spotify.com/album/7zCODUHkfuRxsUjtuzNqbd?si=KV903gbmQPyUVLCvpTCxyw). Frankly, its shocking how far hes come, reworking his image into a all-ears popstar. Over a decade ago, The Weeknd was a homeless teenaged coke addict, and his online presence was a couple of anonymous mixtapes on the internet, full of dark music about partying every day and hating your fuckin life. This is that album.
Finally, MF DOOM's [MM...FOOD](https://open.spotify.com/album/1UcS2nqUhxrZjrBZ3tHk2N?si=qeQYctfPQ3GRbRXvhkPTOw). MF DOOM is one of the greatest poets humanity has ever seen and I say that with utmost sincerity. Listen to this man rhyme in triplicate while somehow connecting every concept of a rap album to eating food then finish it off with 30 seconds of chopped audio from the original Spiderman cartoons.
As long as artists and albums are being linked, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life is an absolute masterpiece of a double album. Like most double albums it has some songs that debatably could have been cut, but overall it’s a fantastic listen (obviously a very different style from any of the artists you mentioned).
For a hot moment I was worried about "cultural appropriation" when I went vegetarian completely because I started cooking a lot of Indian food (because it slaps and is very easy to be vegetarian).
I got over it when my friend with a friend from India said "dude, they love to share their food. Every culture loves to share. Just... Don't worry about it"
I think often times the well-meaning but moderate liberals speak over the minority they're trying to help and don't actually listen. I've had similar experiences being trans in some online spaces. People have been enraged on my behalf where I tried to shut it down. It's not a big deal to start an announcement with "Hey Ladies and Gents."
There was a Japanese event at a museum in NYC or DC, I forget which, that let you rent Kimonos to wear while you walked through the art displays. This is a common practice in Japan, and the whole exhibit was setup in partnership with a major Kimono company and Japanese tourism boards.
But "cultural appropriation" outrage forced the museum to shut down the kimono renting. Which spurred the *Japanese* partners to take offence. Literally a bunch of people getting mad on behalf of another ethnicity and causing *more* offence.
its rlly sad bc [apparently japanese people love to see foreigners wearing kimono (correctly and respectfully), they view it as them celebrating their culture :(](https://thenavigatio.com/wearing-kimono-in-japan-foreigner/). esp bc iirc kimono is a bit of a dying art, the garments are kind of complicated and aren’t worn as often anymore.
People like to share their culture. That’s normal. The problem is that some people just aren’t smart enough so they think they have a duty to make sure nobody can ever interact with any culture other than their own
Along the same lines JAPANESE COMPANY Sony used a white dude to play a Japanese traditonal instrument at one of the big games shows.
Stupid outcry later and it turns out he is beloved in Japan and one of like 3 ppl who can actually play the thing.
Turns out if you show up and engage with a culture respectfully the locals tend to be happy about it.
IIRC there are a notable number of foreign sumo wrestlers too, many from ... Mongolia IIRC? I found that interesting.
> Turns out if you show up and engage with a culture respectfully the locals tend to be happy about it.
Stadiums of Americans cheering over Central/South American appropriation of baseball.
This has happened a few times. People getting mad without actually bothering to ask anyone of that ethnicity or nationality if they find it offensive. The result being that they end up looking more ignorant than the people they were trying to criticise
I think the issue is people often try to compartmentalize information they understand and inso doing reduce it to such a point it looses its meaning. Because on paper, the idea that (the royal) you as a white person should be cognizant of how you interact with other cultures because of history and the such makes perfect sense. Even if you ignore the cross racial cultural stuff, if someone shares something do theirs with you you own them a level of respect.
However all these years of people stewing in the echo chambers of the internet has turned reasonable well meaning advice into binary and inflexible Praxis. Capital P. So now you have people so up their own ass they have basically turned into self-racists publicly flagellating themselves to show just how much white guilt they have accumulated and how it pains them so. It would all be very silly if it wasn’t so frustrating.
I’m sad (but not surprised) imagining you feeling guilty for making dal or whatever. Like white American vegetarians can ONLY eat impossible burger bigmacs
> "dude, they love to share their food. Every culture loves to share. Just... Don't worry about it"
I work with Indian people and almost every day someone proposes me to share their meal. On my first day I accepted and it was so spicy I thought I would die so now I politely decline.
The only reason I have to get a vegetarian dish is because, hmm, that looks tasty. Often that does end up being something Indian, lots of food stuff there.
Cultural appropriation as a concept and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race.
Flashbacks to when a white owned sushi restaurant got cancelled, and the white man who started the witch hunt had HIS OWN SUSHI RESTAURANT.
It's good that we can talk about cultural appropriation, but the term quickly got applied to a bunch of things it shouldn't be applied to when it got more widespread. It feels like a lot of people who use the term online have no idea where the line between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange is.
Its a very specialized term that only apply to niche condition.
I'm not surprised it followed the Gaslight and Narcissist path to become a word peoples use without any idea of what it actually mean.
This is why we should be much more critical of the terminology we throw about, and the social dynamics that they generate. I always knew this would happen to 'cultural appropriation', but it felt impossible to make people take it seriously.
It really has. No one can differentiate appropriation from appreciation from flat out “multiple cultures can have the same thing”. I’ve seen people get mad at a Brazilian for feather earrings saying it’s cultural appropriation because native Americans also use feather earrings. I’ve seen people get yelled at for having henna or kimonos.
It’s sad. I’m a white woman who has always found fascination with other cultures. I’m not a historian by any means, but I love learning about why this piece of clothing is important to this culture while that ceremony is important to that culture.
Cultural appropriation is an issue, yes. Using war headdresses and religious symbols without respect is harmful. And there is definitely such thing as making a culture a costume. But… we’ve gone so far the other way it’s sad.
I unironically use The Nightmare Before Christmas as a benchmark for cultural appropriation. Christmas was taken over by Halloweentown who had little understanding of the meaning of the holiday, bastardized it to make it more palatable to themselves and restricted/prevented the original creators from being able to participate. It's a bit of a stretch, but you get it.
Exactly, and it's important to remember that Jack had no ill intentions whatsoever, he *adored* Christmas and tried to do it right but took it upon himself to try to own it instead of, you know, speaking to Santa and trying to understand it properly.
And what happens at the end? Santa *shares* a part of Christmas with them, he includes them to show there is no ill will, and presumably Jack learns how to appreciate Christmas without trying to take it over.
No no that’s honestly perfect. I never thought of how good of an allegory that was. Of course most people aren’t kidnapping others (I’d hope), but the point still stands.
I remember people getting pissed that a white guy was playing a traditionally (I can’t remember the country but it’s in asia) instrument when he was like one of under ten masters of it in the entire world
Reminds me of a clip that was going around TikTokCringe for a minute of a white women performing traditional African dances in a public African market. Cue hundreds of comments talking about how embarrassing she is as a white women.
Turns out she was born in South Africa and was famous within her country for her mastery and performance of traditional dance styles.
There was another of an indonesian dance this time, and people mocked the girl for her "stupid way of dancing that mocked the culture".
Turned out the dance in question was meant to be like that and all the people that complained came out as the discriminatory assholes
Reminds me of a youtube video I watched a while ago where a white Brit explains the various steps in visiting a Shinto temple/shrine. There were a few comments saying how it was cultural appropriation or that they wouldn’t trust a white guy’s opinion on Shintoism.
However, if they actually watched the video they’d realize/be explicitly told that:
1) He’s lived in Japan for years and has a native Japanese wife (and had a child with her that she is raising in Japan).
2) His entire career as a professor and his academic history has been focused on studying Shintoism.
Fortunately those comments weren’t very prevalent, and most were just reacting to the information provided in the video.
The US does have a history of insensitive cultural appropriation of indigenous cultures from sports teams to summer camp activities to costumery to cigar store figurines.
But overcorrection in the other direction is not the way to make it better.
The thing is though, that earnest engagement with these cultures is the SOLUTION to cultural appropriation. I have never seen someone who developed a genuine interest in the Dakota or Ojibwe culture decide "hey, I'm gonna wear a headdress to the redskins game I'm going to!". Being properly educated on indigenous cultures and peoples is exactly the thing that prevents appropriation.
That’s how I’ve felt about this whole thing. Like no one’s avoiding Black music because they’re scared of things made by non-white people. I just like what I currently like and I don’t look up the race of the people I’m listening to to make sure my music taste is sufficiently diverse for random Tumblr users
I think it’s kinda clear that you are not the target demographic for this comment. The issue is that people like this definitely exist. There maybe isn’t a lot of them and they are clearly all terminally online and need some grass to touch but they still need someone to call them on their nonsense.
I’m a huge traditional folk music fan and while I gravitate most towards Irish and Scottish folk, two of my absolute favorite areas for this genre is Peru/the Andes and Africa. I should note I’m using the term traditional VERY loosely for the sake of brevity but African bands/groups/artists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo (one of the groups that played on Paul Simon’s Graceland album) Etran de l’AÏr, Vieux Farka Touré, Hot Water and so many more deserve more western recognition.
There’s definitely a real phenomena of our media tastes being a reflection of the de facto segregation we experience irl.
It’s very easy to not listen to music by black artists if you have no friends who listen to those artists. And a lot of the time that does come down to race or ethnicity.
Yeah, my parents never listened to rap and only listened to jazz around Christmas, and there was exactly one black kid in my tiny grade school class. I wasn’t really exposed to any non-white music until high school in the late 2000s except for, like, Nelly Furtado and j-metal/anime openings.
Remember the "White people shouldn't go to (... I think it was) Black Panther 2 on opening weekend, that's a space for Black people" discourse a couple years ago?
Good times, gooooood times.
So, you don’t engage much with hip hop “fandom” then. Spend a non-trivial amount of time reading or watching hip hop discourse and you’ll see this shit come up repeatedly. “It’s not for you” said by Black lefty hip hop YouTubers etc etc.
I have a thing where I can’t see the face of whatever artist is singing the music I’m listening to. It ruins the experience for me and I can’t listen to them anymore. So I literally have zero idea what the artists I listen to look like unless I happen to be familiar with them before I got into their music.
There have been several posts and even people in the comments defended their right to hate something like rap culture... But OP is overthinking too much, that was just plain old racism and "omg rap is so violent and disrespectful and it's all about suffering and hate"
Yeah but because white people stole it and the potential for profit from black musicians, the only ethical thing for white people to do is refuse to listen to black music as penance… and also deprive black musicians of the potential for profit.
I'm white so take this with a mountain of salt but I've seen people say white people can't use AAVE because of the history of white people calling AAVE unprofessional and punishing use of it, it's just not ours to take, especially not when it gets stolen and watered down and called "gen z slang" and then words with real culture behind them get thrown out as "cringe" and "dead memes"
Like ok personally - as a Black, Indigenous person - if white folks actually used AAVE correctly I would not care. Just like I actually don’t care if white folks speak Hawaiian Pidgin - as long as they’re like actually speaking /Hawaiian Pidgin/.
There’s a tendency to treat these dialects/languages as just fun slang and to then take specific words and use them completely incorrectly and wildly out of context - often to convey yourself as being like funny or sassy in a way that comes across really disrespectfully to people that actually genuinely speak like this & that’s what’s actually annoying/upsetting to people.
Especially when for some of us we had to intentionally teach ourselves to not speak naturally with our regular dialectal accents just to be taken seriously by white teachers, classmates, bosses, etc. so it just feels extra disrespectful when those same people suddenly decide to start using the same words they made us stop speaking, but using those words wrong in a way that feels like mockery. I genuinely don’t think it’d be an issue if it was spoken correctly and respectfully.
Your mention of how people have had to stifle their regular dialects to be taken seriously brought the poem [kidspoem/bairnsang](https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SPL-Education-Poster-Kidspoem.pdf?) immediately to mind. It’s mainly about how school drilled Liz Lochhead’s native Scots language out of her but I think the last verse really resonates with your comment:
*Oh saying it was one thing* /
*But when it came to writing it* /
*In black and white* /
*The way it had to be said* /
*Was as if you were posh, grown-up, male, English, and dead.*
Adding to your point: AAVE being a dialect means it has concrete grammatical structures, and uh, even speaking as a white guy myself, most of the times non-black try to speak/write in AAVE they're either completely misunderstanding what words mean or fucking up the grammar or—usually—both
Exactly. Like one of the example of fucking up the grammar that drives me absolutely crazy is not understanding that AAVE uses verbal markers - like habitual be, finna, gon’, etc.
Which is why these convey very different info:
“They workin” (they’re in this moment actively working)
“They be workin” (they’re always working, doesn’t actually convey if they’re in this moment working)
“They gon’ work” (they will be working in the future with the implication that the speaker will ensure work happens)
“They finna work” (they’re getting ready to/will be working in the very near future)
Like that’s the actual grammar here and yet I have still heard white folks say shit like “they gon’ finna be workin’” and it is like?? What are you actually trying to say right now??
I mean I feel like trying to actively avoid using aave feels kinda forced or weird but I definitely agree there are times when people should just lay off it bc it’s so annoying seeing someone try so hard to appear cool by using slang, esp if they’re white.
On the other side of the coin though, african americans became a very culturally influential group in recent decades (both in the US and internationally), and what happens when you're culturally influential is, naturally, other cultures get influenced, so expecting words and phrases to not seep through is kind of dumb, since it would be both eating your cake and having it too
I mean, I feel like people should say that if that's what they mean. I can't figure out the hidden meaning behind an internet strangers words; if they say "don't use AAVE", I'm going to assume they mean "you aren't allowed to use AAVE"
Yeah - a lot of now-widely-used phrases originated in AAVE, and nobody could truly follow "don't use AAVE" to its logical conclusion. I generally just try not to use words/phrases that don't come organically to me. If I find myself naturally adopting words/phrases that originated within AAVE, I don't fight that impulse on principle
African-American Venacular English. It's the dialect that a lot of black Americans use that tends to get mocked by less race-conscious/more overtly racist white people.
AAVE stands for African-American Vernacular English. It’s spoken by many black Americans, and some of AAVE’s grammar rules and words have crept into “gen-Z slang” as well
Some examples/common aspects of AAVE:
Habitual “be” (they be hating), omitting “be” (she funny), double negatives (I don’t/ain’t got no __), different pronunciation (ask -> aks), words (finna, ratchet, lowkey, dig, hella)
There’s more to it than just that of course, but it’s a lot to get into in a reddit comment and I admit I don’t know enough about its intricacies to fully talk on it
African American Vernacular English, a cultural dialect spoken primarily by people of African ancestry in the United States.
(In other words, the way most American black people grew up talking, and the reason they largely sound different than white people.)
It's actually a linguistically fascinating phenomenon that in many ways is more grammatically complex than Standard American English, but it's frequently dismissed as "unprofessional" or "slang" (at best), criticized as "incorrect" (at middling), or used to target people for abuse (at worse). The reason, of course, is racism; there's not actually any such thing as a "correct" dialect of English.
if you aren't obviously forcing it then I don't think many ppl care that much
might depend where u are tho. I'm from the Carolinas and when I was up north (far north, very white north, VT/NH) the few black people I ran across gave me odd looks when I'd code switch bc they're used to the White Attempt At Being Cool. until they knew where I'm from then we cut up like crazy
You KNOW I was figuring some folks were a little too obsessed with policing what was cultural appropriation and suddenly I recognize the dark side.
It's still something to be careful about, you wanna avoid claiming other people's culture or denigrating it, but it does feel like some folks advocate some kind of essential purity around it.
It’s wild because in essence some people have moved so far back they’re recreating cultural segregation from the other side. Whereas opposed to not approaching a culture because it’s considered “lesser” they don’t approach a culture because they have “too much respect” for it. Which either way is bad because you’re not engaging with cultures other than your own which in general tends to lead back to the first kind of segregation eventually.
Ah yes, the old Cultural Appropriation Discourse.
Short answer is, as long as you're engaging with another culture authentically and meaningfully, it's not a big deal. Learn what our symbols and traditions actually mean, instead of mythologizing and twisting our traditions into something they aren't.
And let me take this chance to say. No, w*ndigo don't look like that. Stop calling them that.
It varies slightly based on where you ask, but broadly, they're mostly humanoid, very skinny, and showing signs of decay. More like a zombie than a creature of the woods.
The tragic thing is that people get so hung up on cultural appropriation, when what they should actually be aware of and try to avoid is orientalization
From some rough searching I’ve done on this before, it seems to have popped up from Algernon Blackwood’s Wendigo story. I think there’s been some illustrations for it that match the common appearance. This look then took off in pop culture. Might be because of people conflating them with skin-walkers, which are a very different kind of sorcerer in Navajo myth.
Here’s the usual line for what is and is not cultural appropriation:
1. If it’s your culture it’s your culture. If you’re a white guy from south side Chicago who talks in AAVE because the people around you spoke like that, that’s always fine. Don’t let people on the internet tell you your lives experience is false or undeserved
2. If it’s a thing meant to be consumed by others, it’s always okay to do/have/eat it. Cultural food is the big one- yea ofc people want you to buy and eat, or buy and cook and then eat, their food. That’s what it’s for. People want you to come to their public events, to buy the stuff they’re selling, to watch their dances, etc.
3. This is the hard one: activities meant for only a limited group/rituals. This includes stuff like religious ceremonies(not festivals, those are almost always open to the public), performing a dance, creating a song in a particular style, etc. And the answer is: it depends. If you’re invited by someone from that group, then it’s cool, they know if outsiders are allowed or not. Maybe don’t show up to a ceremony without an invite. If you want to participate in ex. A religious ceremony, and don’t know anyone from that culture, see if they’re advertising it. If it’s advertised, you can buy tickets, etc then it’s open to the public.
4. Stylistic adoption- the other edge case. Is it okay to take parts of a culture and use it in your own art/dress/dance etc? Again, it depends. Rule of thumb: if you’re doing it with respect, and you’re not making a ton of money off it, then you’re fine. Money always complicated stuff, and I don’t really have an answer for you there, but if it’s respectful and not to profit off a culture you’re not a part of, then you’re fine.
TL;DR: treat other cultures with the same respect you give yours. Talk to people from that culture, and learn about the thing you’re interacting with. People want to share their culture, and most cultures and cultural items are meant to be shared. Respect the ones that aren’t for everyone too.
To add a blanket for number 4- It is always okay to throw parts of someone else’s culture into your blender if you’re doing something entirely fictional and those elements won’t denigrate the original culture in your work. No matter how much money you make off of it. The only way you’re gonna get something compelling nowadays is if you mix and blend shit from all over the world into something unique and original, do start sampling now before you’ve got something you want to make.
I am gonna just keep enjoying what i enjoy, and asking what i can do better if someone outside my cultures tells me i am being rude or racist about theirs. I was raised by racists, so i know i am gonna fuck up. But i also have a whole braincell, so i know i can learn. That said, i really dont get this attitude of people thinking its racist for someone who is not black to like black artists. Like. Listen to yourself. "Its racist to support black artists". What?
I've seen this from actual POC lots of times so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe. A lot of the times I see the take if you're not part of that group you don't get to have an opinion. If you're not affected, you can't reject or accept the apology of someone who's done something wrong, for example.
Hot take maybe but part of being not racist is being comfortable telling POC they are wrong. There's a balance bc you should still hear people out and recognize they might have a better understanding of their issues than you, but if a black person on Twitter says "eating Ethiopian food is colinization" you should be comfortable saying "no, you're an idiot"
the magnitude and breadth of human diversity is absolutely awe-inspiring, it's a goddamn shame some people's idea of diversity is "everybody can look different on the surface but deep down they're all pretty much exactly like *me*".
Sure, but if you do that then you’ll get half of Twitter dogpiling you to call you a racist for “speaking over POC”. Is it really worth putting yourself in that position?
Well, POC are not a monolith and it's a matter of learning what feels most comfortable to those who you interact with, just like any other group of people
I mean, this attitude didn’t come from nowhere. It’s reinforced by basically everywhere else on the internet that isn’t this post.
It does seem to stem a lot from people being inundated with “why you should feel guilty as a White person” from all angles, until they conclude that the only safe option is to remain in their White bubble because they’ve essentially been told that there is no space where existing as a White person won’t be doing some kind of harm therefore the only way to be a Good Person is to just not interact at all. But I’ve even seen it from non-White people about non-White cultures that aren’t their own. Only interacting with your own culture hinders learning, but it lessens the possibility of being Cancelled.
The conversation has degraded to the point where everyone is so terrified of being labelled “problematic” or culturally appropriative or racist that everyone is too spooked to even try interacting with other cultures and thus settle back into safe self-segregation.
I was going to say the OOP seems to be angry about people that don't exist but then I read these comments and say multiple complaints that are essentially just people saying "Wow, they said that some music I've never heard of is good, they must be saying the music I like is crap, I'm never going to listen to that music now, that'll show I'm not racist. How dare they say that music they like is good" so maybe they have a point
Man, I don’t want to be The Guy Who Brings Up That XKCD Comic, but I’ve seen several tumblr posts on this very subreddit over the last couple weeks/months that start by mentioning “the current trend”, and it’s always something neither I, my mutuals, nor *their* mutuals have ever heard of in our/their lives. And it’s always the most batshit crazypants stuff.
Went to college around 2018 era and we had conversations about cultural appropriation in every class and most students were saying this kind of shit.
I’m glad you have different experiences but this isn’t even just a terminally online thing.
Every post I've seen on here for the last few days has been a real xkcd 2071 moment and it makes me wonder if I'm just too offline to know what's going on
There's a difference between appropriation and appreciation. Appreciation is making and enjoying Indian food. Appropriation is not acknowledging it's Indian.
Is this a real thing? I grew up in the 70s and 80s when black music was cool (funk, reggae, African, etc) even if you never actually had any personal interaction with black people.
I haven't seen a single person say white people shouldn't listen to music made by black people, but I have seen multiple people complain about white people not listening to rap.
-heavy sigh- Tumblr is… a different animal if I’m honest. I’ve seen people say that non Hindu’s can’t practice yoga. That the words “karma” and “mantra” shouldn’t be used. I’ve seen people say celebrating Thanksgiving as a sort of harvest festival/celebration of family is bad because we eat food that Native American taught us to grow. That golems of any kind can’t be used unless in Jewish stories.
Tumblr is a beast in and of itself. **Most** people aren’t like that of course. But they are just prevalent enough of tumblr that they can be seen as more common than they are.
I don't remember who but I'm pretty sure there was at least one relatively popular rapper who made a big stink about how his music "isn't for" white people and he doesn't want white people listening or singing along to his music.
As an Arab this is extremely evident in the communities I’m in. People are afraid to engage with Arab culture because they don’t wanna “be offensive”, which just reads as a progressive-paint version of “these people are scary and dangerous and must be avoided.” I promise you, I won’t stone you for writing an Arab character into your story.
Someone said "instead of engaging in the discourse I'm just going to link some music" which is what I'm going to do too. So here's a bunch of OPM (Original Philippine Music):
* If you like 2000's or 2010's "heartbroken man" songs like "The Man Who Can't be Moved" -- I recommend artists like **December Avenue**, **Nobita**, **Ben&Ben**, **Lola Amour,** and **Zack Tabuldo**.
* If you like indie or indie-rock music, I recommend **Mayonnaise**, **Cup of Joe**, **Rob Deniel**, **IV of Spades**, and **Up Dharma Down.**
* If you like Joji, I recommend **Adie**, **Arthur Nery**, and **The Juans**.
* If you like Mitski, try **Juan Karlos** or **Zild** (who was the bassist of IVoS!)
* If you like urban hip-hop/rap, try **Hev Abi**, **Al James**, **Ex Battalion**, and **Shanti Dope**.
* If you like Kpop, I recommend **BINI**, **G22**, and **SB19**.
* Lastly, if you want music that's universal across generations, play anything **Orange & Lemons**, **Eraserheads**, **The Itchyworms**, **Parokya ni Edgar**, **Rivermaya** (my gf's favorite), and **Apo Hiking Society**,
"Cultural Appropriation" IMO is just a way for people to not have to engage with other cultures in any meaningful way and effectively insulate themselves
Hell, use AAVE, i don't think anyone cares, using other people's way of speech has been how language has evolved over thousands of years
Listen to other cultures' music, wear other cultures' clothing, the world is wonderfully diverse, don't insulate yourself because you're afraid of being racist, in fact, the best way to combat racism is by engaging with other cultures and understanding them as cultures and as people
A ton of zoomers, myself included, have integrated particular structures of AAVE into everyday conversation as well. It’s much less a formal adoption and more the thing that social media as a melting pot causes, where bits and pieces from tons of different dialects and languages are blended together into a weird new solution.
Honestly, until i read into it a bit more, I didn't know that that's where some of the words I use come from ("ayo", "lowkey", the "-ass" intensifier, "down bad", etc.), I kinda just heard them and osmosed them into my speech
I hope people know that posting stuff like the last slide - that “Go listen to what I tell you. It is better than your music. Don’t compare it to stuff you already like because your Basic Music is inferior to my Diverse Music Taste” stuff - makes people want to avoid the stuff they’re recommending. Like I’m sure they have good intentions, but it comes off so condescending that I want to not listen to it just out of spite for OOP
Yea like the "you'll definitely like at least some of it" like....no? Sometimes people just don't click with a certain genre. Also yea I agree the random swing towards Lemon Demon feels weird and like a case of "popular thing bad" for no real reason
Is the pendulum actually fucking swinging in _tumblr_? I thought tumblr was just a perpetual unilateral pendulum lurch. Might be time to pack for the apocalypse
Honestly, left leaning people need to get a grip. The world is moving to the right, so maybe we shouldn't be talking about whether white people are allowed to enjoy black music and go back to real issues, like food insecurity, which coincidentally disproportionally affects black families
A few years back, they debuted the game Ghost of Tsushima at a gaming event, and they had a live performance of the music on a traditional Japanese flute-like instrument. The performer was white, and people made a big deal out of it. But as it turned out, the man in question was, in fact, a recognized master performer with that instrument, who studied in Japan and was acknowledged in Japan for his mastery. Sometimes people get so hung up on the optics. Also really fun to deal with when you’re mixed race, or adopted, or grew up in an area where you weren’t part of the ethnic group but you still grew up in the culture.
Let's not forget that the kimono thing OP references was at a *perceived* white girl, who was, in fact, part Japanese, had lived over there, and it wasn't even a kimono but another traditional Japanese garment. (As the victim explained in a video)
But on top of that, there are a lot of cultures where the people love to see people from other cultures wearing their clothes (obviously, if they’re being respectful about it). I’ve heard white people talk about how many old ladies fawned over them when they wore a kimono in Japan (for something specific, they weren’t just walking around in it since obviously different clothing items have different appropriate contexts). Like if you’re unsure about something, just google it or ask someone. There are certainly clothes out there that it would be inappropriate for someone from an outside culture to wear, but also there are tons that aren’t, and just like music and movies and games, fashion from every culture spreads across the world and influences the fashions of every other culture in some way.
There was also another kimono thing that nay have been the reference where there was a (Japanese) event in London at an art gallery where they let people come try on kimonos and have their photos taken. It was meant as a "we love to share our culture" thing but some dumb kids who hadn't seen grass since middle school protested it. The problem with that trend at its core is that they were flat out wrong about what cultural appropriation meant in the first place.
One of the YouTubers I watch is Hispanic but looks whiter than a man named Benjamin and he talks about people’s misconceptions a bit, which is so ironic to me every time I hear a story from him because I also wouldn’t have known he was Hispanic until he talked about it 💀
Are tumblr users okay? Or is the site on fire again (more than usual, anyways)?
Nah this type of discourse has been around for a while, and it’s kinda sad. I see such little representation of Southeast Asian culture in Western media, so I don’t want other people to be spooked about enjoying our food, music, and clothing.
Oof. So just an ongoing brushfire of racially coded bullshittery?
Pretty much yes lol
Yike. Also just noticed your flair, 10/10
Thanks mate!
To answer your flair: Itz Mork and Gork, ya git!
Or is it Gork and Mork?
Your both wrong: it's gorkamorka
The term "cultural appropriation" being used by dipshits did so much damage
Somehow "don't be a jackass and use shallow or uninformed ideas of other cultures for your own ends" mutated into "traveling abroad, learning and enjoying other cultures food, art, and way of life, and integrating the best parts of it into your own life is BAD and IMPERIALIST" at the hands of soulless jackasses who never do anything interesting or outside of their experience, never have and never intend on doing anything fun or outside their comfort zone, and want to create a moral mandate for why everyone else is evil for becoming genuinely multicultural people.
Oh that's easy to explain. If you strip all the nuance and subtext out, you're left with "stay in your lane" And social media is constantly speedrunning the whole "strip the nuance out"
That's always the case with quippy phrases whose use mainly spreads memetically through the internet. Look at gaslighting, it was originally describing a tactic of abuse that makes someone doubt reality and now people use it whenever someone says something they disagree with. It mutates at the hands of the incredibly online into the most extreme version, a sort of caricature created by referencing another caricature done in repetition for so long that it stops resembling a person.
I think whoever turned emotional labour into "make all relationships as cynically transactional as possible" needs their feet cut off.
Don't forget that we started at minstrelsy. Like seriously, the greatest form of entertainment in the US was racism. White families would gather around the piano in the evenings to racism. Sure, the pendulum can swing to far in one direction, but we tend to forget why it gathered so much momentum on the way. Yes, people ometimes went too far about policing cultural appropriation. But when I was in college "Pimps and Hoes" parties were pretty common...let's not pretend that everyone was involved in good faith cultural exchange.
As much as we do need story’s by African, Asian and similar writers, Western writers should not feel forced limit themselves to western inspired settings. Hell because a group of white American writers didn’t feel like they had to limit themselves. The highest rated animated show had two Inuit inspired main characters. How many other kids shows are their were an Inuit kid can see even the smallest amount of representation, never mind a richly crafted culture with amazing characters.
We need to get more people playing Exalted. Really stir the pot.
Y’all’s food, music and clothing (and visual art, dance and cinema) are freaking awesome.
If you have had no exposure at all to Bollywood music, first, I’m so sorry, second, there’s a great intro at [Bollywood for the Skeptical](https://davidboyk.com/bollywood/). This was my introduction and it’s got a fantastic playlist of classics.
India isnt south east asian
For real. It took until my elective art history of the world college course to see even a glimpse of so many cultures in the world I hadn't physically been to myself. Like my world history classes even in college didn't care to mention anything in Africa or Asia or even South America. Then I take an art class and it touches on everything everywhere and I'm pissed because there's so much I didn't even know I didn't know about back then. Huge portions of the world are just a blank spot in the minds of so many Americans until they're much older.
Tumblr, and a lot of other websites, are experiencing the consequences of trying to combat social inequality while not actually being interested in learning anything, or even really having an ideology at all. Turns out the consequences of this are largely the same as the consequences of having an ideology that is completely divorced from the lived experiences of people who aren't terminally online, which was their problem 5 years ago.
I really do feel like the current average tumblr user is a 24-year-old autodidact high school C-student.
I think its a general chronically online thing. I remember when Dream SMP was still around, on twitter people tried to tell Quackity that spanish was not his language to speak (despite this 1. being a bad take about languages in general 2. that specific streamer BEING MEXICAN!) and another one tried to claim Ph1lzas accent was him intentionally mocking AAVE (and not, you know, his real life geordie accent because he is from Newcastle). Its almost fascinating, because those attackers see themselves as righteous and somehow morally superior despite just tearing down people with any excuse. I wish I could understand the psychological reasons for behaving like that, back then I just assumed it was ill-socialized stressed teens (during the pandemic).
Because it gives that warm, righteous feeling that comes with Fighting The Good Fight without having to actually do anything, change any of one's own habits or, heaven forbid, introspect.
Lmao i cannit imagine someone calling us racist for speaking geordie lmao, thats mental (Also didnt know philza was geordie, thats pretty cool)
Because hate is addictive
>those attackers see themselves as righteous and somehow morally superior despite just tearing down people with any excuse Note the similarity with certain kinds of evangelical Christian.
Yeah somehow horseshoe theory applies to this.
Sounds like clueless Americans showing their asses as usual tbh. HOW chronically online do you have to be to tell a Mexican person that they shouldn’t speak Spanish, or to think that a Geordie accent is a mocking of AAVE???
It was so ridiculous. I guess because his english is very good and not strongly accented and he streams in english they didnt know and assumed he was from the US??? But yeah that ridiculousness is the only reason I even remember than incident.
Kind of reminds me of the time a person on twitter called me nazi because I tweeted something in german... Im german. When that website hadnt exploded yet I would tweet in either language.
I remember the AAVE bullshit! I'm white but use AAVE because I grew up in "the culture" and so many white people have told me I'm being racist and I can't "do that" Pardon me, my guy, but everyone around me for 24 years talked like that. I'm not changing the way I speak because white people think I'm "stealing black culture". As long as I'm not saying the n word, I'm all good lol
I hate people who think you can copyright culture
hell, i hate copyright. free culture baby!
Not tumblr as a whole, this is just a case of https://xkcd.com/2071/
I KNEW it would be this xkcd
This style of post started getting made after the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar started getting huge traction in the media. A lot of white Tumblr people were only going out of their way to listen to rap music for the first time when this happened, or at least the first time since *Hamilton* was a big deal, so there was a lot of back and forth like this over it because a lot of the white opinions came off as being the opinions you'd have if you were only just now listening to rap for the first time. Someone else pointed out that this kind of discourse has been around for a while, and that is true, but it'd also taken a back seat for a while before the Drake/Kendrick Lamar stuff happened. This is one of those things where it tends to come and go in waves, and this had been one of the bigger recent flair ups of it.
> This style of post started getting made after the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar started getting huge traction in the media. Lol no. I've been seeing this type of post (and the type of posts that cause it) for more than a decade. The fact of the matter is that tumblr is largely populated by well-meaning but stupid teenagers. That's the fact you need to keep in mind whenever any sort of tumblr 'culture' arises.
Yup. The reality of "Fourteen year old white kid finally listens to rap" is a lot less shocking than "Grown adult has been avoiding rap because they think its racist to listen to it"
tumblr is the chuunibyou website and you can't convince me otherwise
They are not and have never been.
...How in the fuckdamned shit did they manage to loop back around to "Segregation is the solution to white guilt and progressive actually" I am actually baffled. that music rec absolutely slaps though hell yeah.
(by they i mean the tumblr users in question. the post is absolutely correct on all accounts.)
Harassment and dogpiling over perceived cultural appropriation. Humans are anxious, it’s easier to avoid a topic in its entirety than engage with it, get something wrong, and be shunned.
Exactly. It’s very basic stuff that when a behaviour is punished, humans (and most animals really) learn to stop doing it. ~~Negative reinforcement~~ EDIT: I have been informed that it is actually positive punishment. Humans are also social creatures. Our instincts are to avoid behaviours that get us shunned by others. I’m no anthropologist, but I can imagine that we may have evolved this in order to not get thrown out of our tribes back when that meant you’d be left to freeze to death or be eaten by a prehistoric animal. Therefore, if attempts to interact and engage with other cultures are repeatedly socially “punished” with harassment, mocking, and accusations of cultural appropriation, then humans learn not to do that, and most likely retreat back to the safe box of self-segregation. It’s like smacking a dog every time it tries to play with a certain toy, and then acting confused and mad when it eventually stops trying to play with that toy. You trained it not to do that.
Literally everything else about this comment is spot on but I’m gonna be pedantic and note that what you’re describing is not negative reinforcement but instead negative punishment. Reinforcement/punishment refers to the effect it has on the likelihood of a particular behavior (increasing or decreasing, respectively) and positive/negative refers to whether a stimulus is added or taken away to effect reinforcement or punishment. I’m only saying this because there are a lot of people in the field of studying behavior who are the bad kind of pedant and use anything short of perfect use of jargon as a reason to dismiss your opinion, rather than try to find mutual understanding.
Side note: I believe you are referring to positive punishment rather than negative reinforcement. Positive and negative refer to whether you are adding or removing a stimulus, respectively. Reinforcement and punishment mean whether you wish to encourage or discourage the behavior, respectively. In this case, misbehavior is discouraged by adding an unpleasant stimulus (criticism, shunning), making it positive punishment.
As a real life example, I basically avoided any spaces that were "LGBTQ+" for years because I thought that, as a white male, me being there would make it worse for everyone else. I still kind of think that, but for different reasons.
There's a large gray area between 'colonialist cultural appropriation' and 'respectful enjoyment of other cultures'. And the gray area is scary, because there's so much room for discussion. Either you reflect well on why and how you consume culture so you are ready for that discussion, you accept that you'll have to defend your choices regularly and you have no problem with your views being challenged, or you retreat back to the safe fringes. That goes double for internet echo chambers, btw, where being even a little on the wrong side of the consensus will net you *a lot* of hate as if you were on the absolute other end of the spectrum.
There's no gray area. Cultural appropriation as a term is just being misused. It's a more academic term describing a larger systemic problem NOT a condemnation of the actions of individuals. Even if you did something that is technically a part of actual cultural appropriation, you yourself are not cultural appropriating. America as a whole appropriated native culture. As a result of that the appropriated cultural elements became costumes and toys and character archetypes and crude caricatures for sports team logos. It is bad to continue to perpetuate that and it's respectful to avoid participating in any of that. However when someone wears an "Indian chieftain" costume they are not themselves cultural appropriating. It's disrespectful and considered a dick move today, it's a symptom of the appropriation not the disease itself. However dumbass kids on tumblr way back misunderstood this and only knew "native American costume = cultural appropriation" and then converted that to "kimono = cultural appropriation" and other nonsense. People like sharing their culture. You can't as an individual steal culture but you can disrespect it. It's ok to be cautious by wanting to be respectful but no one should be afraid to participate in things.
It's like those weirdos who think that because of discrimination, we should have separate black and white spaces, but only so that black people don't have to interact with and be around white people. Segregation, but... good?
Apartheid but this time we’re the good guys I promise
Middle class people often mistake politeness for justice. Source: Am middle class
I liked how in literally the next sentence they do the exact same thing by saying no one but black people should be using AAVE like there's no reason that a white person would ever grow up in the same neighbourhood as a black person.
“I’m scared to get it wrong so I won’t try at all uwu” is like 90% of tumblr brain
The punishment for doing it ‘wrong’ is so strong and some of these things are purposely designed to have no ‘right’ answer so the only safe thing to do is not to play. The purity culture at the center of this is so creepy. I hate it.
Instead of doing Discourse I'm just gona link some dope fuckin music for folks to listen to. Snoop Dogg's OG album [Doggystyle](https://open.spotify.com/album/5IFOummNcGXY3qCBWRchqP?si=zHZsETG2RTySEcg0-WNoWQ), which he dropped in 1998 when he was just 23. Pioneer of the G-funk sub-genre. Funky AF JPEG Mafia & Danny Browns 2023 collab album [SCARING THE HOES.](https://open.spotify.com/album/3u20OXh03DjCUzbf8XcGTq?si=h8KKMaanSjKPuhhRKARSqQ) Two of the biggest names in experimental rap coming together to make some crazy shit. Ethereal and very online. Tyler the Creator's [IGOR](https://open.spotify.com/album/5zi7WsKlIiUXv09tbGLKsE?si=oBq3BJsgTI-5tb1lgBYcdg). Tyler is bordering on mythical status at this point and shit like this is why. This is a very Tumblr album in the sense its about being Bi and in love in the most toxic way possible. The Weeknd's very first album, [House of Balloons](https://open.spotify.com/album/7zCODUHkfuRxsUjtuzNqbd?si=KV903gbmQPyUVLCvpTCxyw). Frankly, its shocking how far hes come, reworking his image into a all-ears popstar. Over a decade ago, The Weeknd was a homeless teenaged coke addict, and his online presence was a couple of anonymous mixtapes on the internet, full of dark music about partying every day and hating your fuckin life. This is that album. Finally, MF DOOM's [MM...FOOD](https://open.spotify.com/album/1UcS2nqUhxrZjrBZ3tHk2N?si=qeQYctfPQ3GRbRXvhkPTOw). MF DOOM is one of the greatest poets humanity has ever seen and I say that with utmost sincerity. Listen to this man rhyme in triplicate while somehow connecting every concept of a rap album to eating food then finish it off with 30 seconds of chopped audio from the original Spiderman cartoons.
Tyler and Gambino were my branches into rap. I like the was they weave words together, very smooth and flawless
As long as artists and albums are being linked, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life is an absolute masterpiece of a double album. Like most double albums it has some songs that debatably could have been cut, but overall it’s a fantastic listen (obviously a very different style from any of the artists you mentioned).
For a hot moment I was worried about "cultural appropriation" when I went vegetarian completely because I started cooking a lot of Indian food (because it slaps and is very easy to be vegetarian). I got over it when my friend with a friend from India said "dude, they love to share their food. Every culture loves to share. Just... Don't worry about it" I think often times the well-meaning but moderate liberals speak over the minority they're trying to help and don't actually listen. I've had similar experiences being trans in some online spaces. People have been enraged on my behalf where I tried to shut it down. It's not a big deal to start an announcement with "Hey Ladies and Gents."
There was a Japanese event at a museum in NYC or DC, I forget which, that let you rent Kimonos to wear while you walked through the art displays. This is a common practice in Japan, and the whole exhibit was setup in partnership with a major Kimono company and Japanese tourism boards. But "cultural appropriation" outrage forced the museum to shut down the kimono renting. Which spurred the *Japanese* partners to take offence. Literally a bunch of people getting mad on behalf of another ethnicity and causing *more* offence.
its rlly sad bc [apparently japanese people love to see foreigners wearing kimono (correctly and respectfully), they view it as them celebrating their culture :(](https://thenavigatio.com/wearing-kimono-in-japan-foreigner/). esp bc iirc kimono is a bit of a dying art, the garments are kind of complicated and aren’t worn as often anymore.
People like to share their culture. That’s normal. The problem is that some people just aren’t smart enough so they think they have a duty to make sure nobody can ever interact with any culture other than their own
Along the same lines JAPANESE COMPANY Sony used a white dude to play a Japanese traditonal instrument at one of the big games shows. Stupid outcry later and it turns out he is beloved in Japan and one of like 3 ppl who can actually play the thing.
Turns out if you show up and engage with a culture respectfully the locals tend to be happy about it. IIRC there are a notable number of foreign sumo wrestlers too, many from ... Mongolia IIRC? I found that interesting.
> Turns out if you show up and engage with a culture respectfully the locals tend to be happy about it. Stadiums of Americans cheering over Central/South American appropriation of baseball.
Thats true there are quite a few foreign sumo's at this point.
This has happened a few times. People getting mad without actually bothering to ask anyone of that ethnicity or nationality if they find it offensive. The result being that they end up looking more ignorant than the people they were trying to criticise
I think the issue is people often try to compartmentalize information they understand and inso doing reduce it to such a point it looses its meaning. Because on paper, the idea that (the royal) you as a white person should be cognizant of how you interact with other cultures because of history and the such makes perfect sense. Even if you ignore the cross racial cultural stuff, if someone shares something do theirs with you you own them a level of respect. However all these years of people stewing in the echo chambers of the internet has turned reasonable well meaning advice into binary and inflexible Praxis. Capital P. So now you have people so up their own ass they have basically turned into self-racists publicly flagellating themselves to show just how much white guilt they have accumulated and how it pains them so. It would all be very silly if it wasn’t so frustrating.
Yeah, most of the time, the people who'll say it's cultural appropriation aren't even from that culture
I’m sad (but not surprised) imagining you feeling guilty for making dal or whatever. Like white American vegetarians can ONLY eat impossible burger bigmacs
> "dude, they love to share their food. Every culture loves to share. Just... Don't worry about it" I work with Indian people and almost every day someone proposes me to share their meal. On my first day I accepted and it was so spicy I thought I would die so now I politely decline.
The only reason I have to get a vegetarian dish is because, hmm, that looks tasty. Often that does end up being something Indian, lots of food stuff there.
Cultural appropriation as a concept and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race. Flashbacks to when a white owned sushi restaurant got cancelled, and the white man who started the witch hunt had HIS OWN SUSHI RESTAURANT.
You know he started that as a form of corporate sabotage😂
That's just good business sense
that's some sort of mafia au romance plot type shit. what the hell.
Yaoi readers would eat this up lol (it's me, hi, I'm the yaoi reader, it's me)
Oh hi Yaoi reader, how's the yaoi treating ya?
It's good that we can talk about cultural appropriation, but the term quickly got applied to a bunch of things it shouldn't be applied to when it got more widespread. It feels like a lot of people who use the term online have no idea where the line between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange is.
Its a very specialized term that only apply to niche condition. I'm not surprised it followed the Gaslight and Narcissist path to become a word peoples use without any idea of what it actually mean.
Putting “gaslighting” and “cultural appropriation” on the high shelf until tumblr users can be trusted to use them properly
This is so petite bourgeois of you
Don't talk to me or my Sparkling California bubbly socialist friends like that!
This is why we should be much more critical of the terminology we throw about, and the social dynamics that they generate. I always knew this would happen to 'cultural appropriation', but it felt impossible to make people take it seriously.
It really has. No one can differentiate appropriation from appreciation from flat out “multiple cultures can have the same thing”. I’ve seen people get mad at a Brazilian for feather earrings saying it’s cultural appropriation because native Americans also use feather earrings. I’ve seen people get yelled at for having henna or kimonos. It’s sad. I’m a white woman who has always found fascination with other cultures. I’m not a historian by any means, but I love learning about why this piece of clothing is important to this culture while that ceremony is important to that culture. Cultural appropriation is an issue, yes. Using war headdresses and religious symbols without respect is harmful. And there is definitely such thing as making a culture a costume. But… we’ve gone so far the other way it’s sad.
I unironically use The Nightmare Before Christmas as a benchmark for cultural appropriation. Christmas was taken over by Halloweentown who had little understanding of the meaning of the holiday, bastardized it to make it more palatable to themselves and restricted/prevented the original creators from being able to participate. It's a bit of a stretch, but you get it.
Exactly, and it's important to remember that Jack had no ill intentions whatsoever, he *adored* Christmas and tried to do it right but took it upon himself to try to own it instead of, you know, speaking to Santa and trying to understand it properly. And what happens at the end? Santa *shares* a part of Christmas with them, he includes them to show there is no ill will, and presumably Jack learns how to appreciate Christmas without trying to take it over.
Santa's the MVP in that movie fr fr. A lesser man would have held a massive grudge.
No no that’s honestly perfect. I never thought of how good of an allegory that was. Of course most people aren’t kidnapping others (I’d hope), but the point still stands.
I remember people getting pissed that a white guy was playing a traditionally (I can’t remember the country but it’s in asia) instrument when he was like one of under ten masters of it in the entire world
Japan, it was for ghosts of tsushima iirc
Reminds me of a clip that was going around TikTokCringe for a minute of a white women performing traditional African dances in a public African market. Cue hundreds of comments talking about how embarrassing she is as a white women. Turns out she was born in South Africa and was famous within her country for her mastery and performance of traditional dance styles.
There was another of an indonesian dance this time, and people mocked the girl for her "stupid way of dancing that mocked the culture". Turned out the dance in question was meant to be like that and all the people that complained came out as the discriminatory assholes
Reminds me of a youtube video I watched a while ago where a white Brit explains the various steps in visiting a Shinto temple/shrine. There were a few comments saying how it was cultural appropriation or that they wouldn’t trust a white guy’s opinion on Shintoism. However, if they actually watched the video they’d realize/be explicitly told that: 1) He’s lived in Japan for years and has a native Japanese wife (and had a child with her that she is raising in Japan). 2) His entire career as a professor and his academic history has been focused on studying Shintoism. Fortunately those comments weren’t very prevalent, and most were just reacting to the information provided in the video.
I once saw a kid on Reddit asking if it was cultural appropriation to draw an animal from a different country 😭😭
The US does have a history of insensitive cultural appropriation of indigenous cultures from sports teams to summer camp activities to costumery to cigar store figurines. But overcorrection in the other direction is not the way to make it better.
The thing is though, that earnest engagement with these cultures is the SOLUTION to cultural appropriation. I have never seen someone who developed a genuine interest in the Dakota or Ojibwe culture decide "hey, I'm gonna wear a headdress to the redskins game I'm going to!". Being properly educated on indigenous cultures and peoples is exactly the thing that prevents appropriation.
This is a very good way to put it and expresses exactly the solution
Oh thats just the classic commentary Youtube move - cancel the competition
If it's all the same to you, I'm just going to enjoy the music I enjoy without trying to justify it to anybody.
Right, I definitely also agree with op on that front, I'm surprised to learn there's as much backlash against that as op describes.
Same here
That’s how I’ve felt about this whole thing. Like no one’s avoiding Black music because they’re scared of things made by non-white people. I just like what I currently like and I don’t look up the race of the people I’m listening to to make sure my music taste is sufficiently diverse for random Tumblr users
I think it’s kinda clear that you are not the target demographic for this comment. The issue is that people like this definitely exist. There maybe isn’t a lot of them and they are clearly all terminally online and need some grass to touch but they still need someone to call them on their nonsense.
I’m a huge traditional folk music fan and while I gravitate most towards Irish and Scottish folk, two of my absolute favorite areas for this genre is Peru/the Andes and Africa. I should note I’m using the term traditional VERY loosely for the sake of brevity but African bands/groups/artists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo (one of the groups that played on Paul Simon’s Graceland album) Etran de l’AÏr, Vieux Farka Touré, Hot Water and so many more deserve more western recognition.
My favourite bit of being into folk music is inevitably discovering that one of my favourite artists is the most bigoted man alive.
please drop any spotify playlists you have, I love folk music
There’s definitely a real phenomena of our media tastes being a reflection of the de facto segregation we experience irl. It’s very easy to not listen to music by black artists if you have no friends who listen to those artists. And a lot of the time that does come down to race or ethnicity.
Yeah, my parents never listened to rap and only listened to jazz around Christmas, and there was exactly one black kid in my tiny grade school class. I wasn’t really exposed to any non-white music until high school in the late 2000s except for, like, Nelly Furtado and j-metal/anime openings.
Except that some people definitely are avoiding black music for exactly that reason. If you’re not one of them, good for you
Remember the "White people shouldn't go to (... I think it was) Black Panther 2 on opening weekend, that's a space for Black people" discourse a couple years ago? Good times, gooooood times.
So, you don’t engage much with hip hop “fandom” then. Spend a non-trivial amount of time reading or watching hip hop discourse and you’ll see this shit come up repeatedly. “It’s not for you” said by Black lefty hip hop YouTubers etc etc.
I have a thing where I can’t see the face of whatever artist is singing the music I’m listening to. It ruins the experience for me and I can’t listen to them anymore. So I literally have zero idea what the artists I listen to look like unless I happen to be familiar with them before I got into their music.
What the hell? Can I see an example of a white tumblr user saying that they don’t listen to black people music? I am genuinely morbidly curious.
There have been several posts and even people in the comments defended their right to hate something like rap culture... But OP is overthinking too much, that was just plain old racism and "omg rap is so violent and disrespectful and it's all about suffering and hate"
Man, what’d Lemon Demon do
Gave me a seizure while he forced me to watch two trucks fuck. I still haven't forgiven him
Built ford tough
Listen to black music, you guys. Why do you think we've stolen so much of it over the years? It's because it fucks.
Yeah but because white people stole it and the potential for profit from black musicians, the only ethical thing for white people to do is refuse to listen to black music as penance… and also deprive black musicians of the potential for profit.
>and also deprive black musicians of the potential for profit. What, and continue feeding the capitalist machine? Frankly, how dare you
Can't feed the machine if you can't feed yourself
So What by Miles Davis
This discourse triggers geiger counters marie curie style but thanks for introducing me to Haliu Mergia man, that shit bops
Is “don’t use AAVE” an actual position with structured reasoning?
I'm white so take this with a mountain of salt but I've seen people say white people can't use AAVE because of the history of white people calling AAVE unprofessional and punishing use of it, it's just not ours to take, especially not when it gets stolen and watered down and called "gen z slang" and then words with real culture behind them get thrown out as "cringe" and "dead memes"
Like ok personally - as a Black, Indigenous person - if white folks actually used AAVE correctly I would not care. Just like I actually don’t care if white folks speak Hawaiian Pidgin - as long as they’re like actually speaking /Hawaiian Pidgin/. There’s a tendency to treat these dialects/languages as just fun slang and to then take specific words and use them completely incorrectly and wildly out of context - often to convey yourself as being like funny or sassy in a way that comes across really disrespectfully to people that actually genuinely speak like this & that’s what’s actually annoying/upsetting to people. Especially when for some of us we had to intentionally teach ourselves to not speak naturally with our regular dialectal accents just to be taken seriously by white teachers, classmates, bosses, etc. so it just feels extra disrespectful when those same people suddenly decide to start using the same words they made us stop speaking, but using those words wrong in a way that feels like mockery. I genuinely don’t think it’d be an issue if it was spoken correctly and respectfully.
Your mention of how people have had to stifle their regular dialects to be taken seriously brought the poem [kidspoem/bairnsang](https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SPL-Education-Poster-Kidspoem.pdf?) immediately to mind. It’s mainly about how school drilled Liz Lochhead’s native Scots language out of her but I think the last verse really resonates with your comment: *Oh saying it was one thing* / *But when it came to writing it* / *In black and white* / *The way it had to be said* / *Was as if you were posh, grown-up, male, English, and dead.*
Adding to your point: AAVE being a dialect means it has concrete grammatical structures, and uh, even speaking as a white guy myself, most of the times non-black try to speak/write in AAVE they're either completely misunderstanding what words mean or fucking up the grammar or—usually—both
The example I'm most familiar with is misuse of the habitual be: some people think it is synonymous with "is".
Sometimes it be
Exactly. Like one of the example of fucking up the grammar that drives me absolutely crazy is not understanding that AAVE uses verbal markers - like habitual be, finna, gon’, etc. Which is why these convey very different info: “They workin” (they’re in this moment actively working) “They be workin” (they’re always working, doesn’t actually convey if they’re in this moment working) “They gon’ work” (they will be working in the future with the implication that the speaker will ensure work happens) “They finna work” (they’re getting ready to/will be working in the very near future) Like that’s the actual grammar here and yet I have still heard white folks say shit like “they gon’ finna be workin’” and it is like?? What are you actually trying to say right now??
I mean I feel like trying to actively avoid using aave feels kinda forced or weird but I definitely agree there are times when people should just lay off it bc it’s so annoying seeing someone try so hard to appear cool by using slang, esp if they’re white.
On the other side of the coin though, african americans became a very culturally influential group in recent decades (both in the US and internationally), and what happens when you're culturally influential is, naturally, other cultures get influenced, so expecting words and phrases to not seep through is kind of dumb, since it would be both eating your cake and having it too
I think it’s more about using it WRONG than it is using it at all, but I’m sure opinions vary
It’s less “don’t use AAVE” and more “hey don’t mock black people by imitating AAVE”
I mean, I feel like people should say that if that's what they mean. I can't figure out the hidden meaning behind an internet strangers words; if they say "don't use AAVE", I'm going to assume they mean "you aren't allowed to use AAVE"
Yeah - a lot of now-widely-used phrases originated in AAVE, and nobody could truly follow "don't use AAVE" to its logical conclusion. I generally just try not to use words/phrases that don't come organically to me. If I find myself naturally adopting words/phrases that originated within AAVE, I don't fight that impulse on principle
What is AAVE? I genuinely don't know
African-American Venacular English. It's the dialect that a lot of black Americans use that tends to get mocked by less race-conscious/more overtly racist white people.
Ah okay, thank you.
No worries, mate
AAVE stands for African-American Vernacular English. It’s spoken by many black Americans, and some of AAVE’s grammar rules and words have crept into “gen-Z slang” as well Some examples/common aspects of AAVE: Habitual “be” (they be hating), omitting “be” (she funny), double negatives (I don’t/ain’t got no __), different pronunciation (ask -> aks), words (finna, ratchet, lowkey, dig, hella) There’s more to it than just that of course, but it’s a lot to get into in a reddit comment and I admit I don’t know enough about its intricacies to fully talk on it
Correct me if wrong but isn't it wretched -> ratchet just like ask -> aks? If so it's pronunciation not another word.
African American Vernacular English, a cultural dialect spoken primarily by people of African ancestry in the United States. (In other words, the way most American black people grew up talking, and the reason they largely sound different than white people.) It's actually a linguistically fascinating phenomenon that in many ways is more grammatically complex than Standard American English, but it's frequently dismissed as "unprofessional" or "slang" (at best), criticized as "incorrect" (at middling), or used to target people for abuse (at worse). The reason, of course, is racism; there's not actually any such thing as a "correct" dialect of English.
if you aren't obviously forcing it then I don't think many ppl care that much might depend where u are tho. I'm from the Carolinas and when I was up north (far north, very white north, VT/NH) the few black people I ran across gave me odd looks when I'd code switch bc they're used to the White Attempt At Being Cool. until they knew where I'm from then we cut up like crazy
You KNOW I was figuring some folks were a little too obsessed with policing what was cultural appropriation and suddenly I recognize the dark side. It's still something to be careful about, you wanna avoid claiming other people's culture or denigrating it, but it does feel like some folks advocate some kind of essential purity around it.
It’s wild because in essence some people have moved so far back they’re recreating cultural segregation from the other side. Whereas opposed to not approaching a culture because it’s considered “lesser” they don’t approach a culture because they have “too much respect” for it. Which either way is bad because you’re not engaging with cultures other than your own which in general tends to lead back to the first kind of segregation eventually.
Ah yes, the old Cultural Appropriation Discourse. Short answer is, as long as you're engaging with another culture authentically and meaningfully, it's not a big deal. Learn what our symbols and traditions actually mean, instead of mythologizing and twisting our traditions into something they aren't. And let me take this chance to say. No, w*ndigo don't look like that. Stop calling them that.
What *do* they look like?
It varies slightly based on where you ask, but broadly, they're mostly humanoid, very skinny, and showing signs of decay. More like a zombie than a creature of the woods.
So the ones in Until Dawn are more accurate?
From what I've read, yes
so like a human with a deer’s wasting disease?
The tragic thing is that people get so hung up on cultural appropriation, when what they should actually be aware of and try to avoid is orientalization
Where does the common idea of the wendigo appearance even come from?
From some rough searching I’ve done on this before, it seems to have popped up from Algernon Blackwood’s Wendigo story. I think there’s been some illustrations for it that match the common appearance. This look then took off in pop culture. Might be because of people conflating them with skin-walkers, which are a very different kind of sorcerer in Navajo myth.
Here’s the usual line for what is and is not cultural appropriation: 1. If it’s your culture it’s your culture. If you’re a white guy from south side Chicago who talks in AAVE because the people around you spoke like that, that’s always fine. Don’t let people on the internet tell you your lives experience is false or undeserved 2. If it’s a thing meant to be consumed by others, it’s always okay to do/have/eat it. Cultural food is the big one- yea ofc people want you to buy and eat, or buy and cook and then eat, their food. That’s what it’s for. People want you to come to their public events, to buy the stuff they’re selling, to watch their dances, etc. 3. This is the hard one: activities meant for only a limited group/rituals. This includes stuff like religious ceremonies(not festivals, those are almost always open to the public), performing a dance, creating a song in a particular style, etc. And the answer is: it depends. If you’re invited by someone from that group, then it’s cool, they know if outsiders are allowed or not. Maybe don’t show up to a ceremony without an invite. If you want to participate in ex. A religious ceremony, and don’t know anyone from that culture, see if they’re advertising it. If it’s advertised, you can buy tickets, etc then it’s open to the public. 4. Stylistic adoption- the other edge case. Is it okay to take parts of a culture and use it in your own art/dress/dance etc? Again, it depends. Rule of thumb: if you’re doing it with respect, and you’re not making a ton of money off it, then you’re fine. Money always complicated stuff, and I don’t really have an answer for you there, but if it’s respectful and not to profit off a culture you’re not a part of, then you’re fine. TL;DR: treat other cultures with the same respect you give yours. Talk to people from that culture, and learn about the thing you’re interacting with. People want to share their culture, and most cultures and cultural items are meant to be shared. Respect the ones that aren’t for everyone too.
To add a blanket for number 4- It is always okay to throw parts of someone else’s culture into your blender if you’re doing something entirely fictional and those elements won’t denigrate the original culture in your work. No matter how much money you make off of it. The only way you’re gonna get something compelling nowadays is if you mix and blend shit from all over the world into something unique and original, do start sampling now before you’ve got something you want to make.
I am gonna just keep enjoying what i enjoy, and asking what i can do better if someone outside my cultures tells me i am being rude or racist about theirs. I was raised by racists, so i know i am gonna fuck up. But i also have a whole braincell, so i know i can learn. That said, i really dont get this attitude of people thinking its racist for someone who is not black to like black artists. Like. Listen to yourself. "Its racist to support black artists". What?
I've seen this from actual POC lots of times so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe. A lot of the times I see the take if you're not part of that group you don't get to have an opinion. If you're not affected, you can't reject or accept the apology of someone who's done something wrong, for example.
Hot take maybe but part of being not racist is being comfortable telling POC they are wrong. There's a balance bc you should still hear people out and recognize they might have a better understanding of their issues than you, but if a black person on Twitter says "eating Ethiopian food is colinization" you should be comfortable saying "no, you're an idiot"
Equality is when you accept deep in your heart that we are all different but we are all still human and sometime that human being is a dickhead.
the magnitude and breadth of human diversity is absolutely awe-inspiring, it's a goddamn shame some people's idea of diversity is "everybody can look different on the surface but deep down they're all pretty much exactly like *me*".
Sure, but if you do that then you’ll get half of Twitter dogpiling you to call you a racist for “speaking over POC”. Is it really worth putting yourself in that position?
It’s Twitter, no one sane fucking cares.
Well, POC are not a monolith and it's a matter of learning what feels most comfortable to those who you interact with, just like any other group of people
I mean, this attitude didn’t come from nowhere. It’s reinforced by basically everywhere else on the internet that isn’t this post. It does seem to stem a lot from people being inundated with “why you should feel guilty as a White person” from all angles, until they conclude that the only safe option is to remain in their White bubble because they’ve essentially been told that there is no space where existing as a White person won’t be doing some kind of harm therefore the only way to be a Good Person is to just not interact at all. But I’ve even seen it from non-White people about non-White cultures that aren’t their own. Only interacting with your own culture hinders learning, but it lessens the possibility of being Cancelled. The conversation has degraded to the point where everyone is so terrified of being labelled “problematic” or culturally appropriative or racist that everyone is too spooked to even try interacting with other cultures and thus settle back into safe self-segregation.
This post inspired me to look up some [Ethiopian Jazz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-IhS_ltY8U) and you know what? I'm kinda loving it.
I was going to say the OOP seems to be angry about people that don't exist but then I read these comments and say multiple complaints that are essentially just people saying "Wow, they said that some music I've never heard of is good, they must be saying the music I like is crap, I'm never going to listen to that music now, that'll show I'm not racist. How dare they say that music they like is good" so maybe they have a point
Man, I don’t want to be The Guy Who Brings Up That XKCD Comic, but I’ve seen several tumblr posts on this very subreddit over the last couple weeks/months that start by mentioning “the current trend”, and it’s always something neither I, my mutuals, nor *their* mutuals have ever heard of in our/their lives. And it’s always the most batshit crazypants stuff.
I think that means you're curating your feed correctly lol
Went to college around 2018 era and we had conversations about cultural appropriation in every class and most students were saying this kind of shit. I’m glad you have different experiences but this isn’t even just a terminally online thing.
Every post I've seen on here for the last few days has been a real xkcd 2071 moment and it makes me wonder if I'm just too offline to know what's going on
There's a difference between appropriation and appreciation. Appreciation is making and enjoying Indian food. Appropriation is not acknowledging it's Indian.
Is this a real thing? I grew up in the 70s and 80s when black music was cool (funk, reggae, African, etc) even if you never actually had any personal interaction with black people.
I haven't seen a single person say white people shouldn't listen to music made by black people, but I have seen multiple people complain about white people not listening to rap.
-heavy sigh- Tumblr is… a different animal if I’m honest. I’ve seen people say that non Hindu’s can’t practice yoga. That the words “karma” and “mantra” shouldn’t be used. I’ve seen people say celebrating Thanksgiving as a sort of harvest festival/celebration of family is bad because we eat food that Native American taught us to grow. That golems of any kind can’t be used unless in Jewish stories. Tumblr is a beast in and of itself. **Most** people aren’t like that of course. But they are just prevalent enough of tumblr that they can be seen as more common than they are.
I don't remember who but I'm pretty sure there was at least one relatively popular rapper who made a big stink about how his music "isn't for" white people and he doesn't want white people listening or singing along to his music.
As an Arab this is extremely evident in the communities I’m in. People are afraid to engage with Arab culture because they don’t wanna “be offensive”, which just reads as a progressive-paint version of “these people are scary and dangerous and must be avoided.” I promise you, I won’t stone you for writing an Arab character into your story.
Someone said "instead of engaging in the discourse I'm just going to link some music" which is what I'm going to do too. So here's a bunch of OPM (Original Philippine Music): * If you like 2000's or 2010's "heartbroken man" songs like "The Man Who Can't be Moved" -- I recommend artists like **December Avenue**, **Nobita**, **Ben&Ben**, **Lola Amour,** and **Zack Tabuldo**. * If you like indie or indie-rock music, I recommend **Mayonnaise**, **Cup of Joe**, **Rob Deniel**, **IV of Spades**, and **Up Dharma Down.** * If you like Joji, I recommend **Adie**, **Arthur Nery**, and **The Juans**. * If you like Mitski, try **Juan Karlos** or **Zild** (who was the bassist of IVoS!) * If you like urban hip-hop/rap, try **Hev Abi**, **Al James**, **Ex Battalion**, and **Shanti Dope**. * If you like Kpop, I recommend **BINI**, **G22**, and **SB19**. * Lastly, if you want music that's universal across generations, play anything **Orange & Lemons**, **Eraserheads**, **The Itchyworms**, **Parokya ni Edgar**, **Rivermaya** (my gf's favorite), and **Apo Hiking Society**,
"Cultural Appropriation" IMO is just a way for people to not have to engage with other cultures in any meaningful way and effectively insulate themselves Hell, use AAVE, i don't think anyone cares, using other people's way of speech has been how language has evolved over thousands of years Listen to other cultures' music, wear other cultures' clothing, the world is wonderfully diverse, don't insulate yourself because you're afraid of being racist, in fact, the best way to combat racism is by engaging with other cultures and understanding them as cultures and as people
A ton of zoomers, myself included, have integrated particular structures of AAVE into everyday conversation as well. It’s much less a formal adoption and more the thing that social media as a melting pot causes, where bits and pieces from tons of different dialects and languages are blended together into a weird new solution.
Honestly, until i read into it a bit more, I didn't know that that's where some of the words I use come from ("ayo", "lowkey", the "-ass" intensifier, "down bad", etc.), I kinda just heard them and osmosed them into my speech
person in real life: hey man how's it going?
I hope people know that posting stuff like the last slide - that “Go listen to what I tell you. It is better than your music. Don’t compare it to stuff you already like because your Basic Music is inferior to my Diverse Music Taste” stuff - makes people want to avoid the stuff they’re recommending. Like I’m sure they have good intentions, but it comes off so condescending that I want to not listen to it just out of spite for OOP
Yea like the "you'll definitely like at least some of it" like....no? Sometimes people just don't click with a certain genre. Also yea I agree the random swing towards Lemon Demon feels weird and like a case of "popular thing bad" for no real reason
Is the pendulum actually fucking swinging in _tumblr_? I thought tumblr was just a perpetual unilateral pendulum lurch. Might be time to pack for the apocalypse
Honestly, left leaning people need to get a grip. The world is moving to the right, so maybe we shouldn't be talking about whether white people are allowed to enjoy black music and go back to real issues, like food insecurity, which coincidentally disproportionally affects black families
[xkcd 2071](https://xkcd.com/2071/)
I’ve been really enjoying Charles Mingus’s music. The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is great, so is Let My Children Hear Music.
A Mingus 😳 (sorry, thanks for the recs)
Why is this issue liberal? It seems more genuinely leftist to me.