Cultural appropriation, pt. 2

[oyceter]

Or, in which I make myself extremely unpopular and get flamed through the roof.

I am limiting this to America because I live here now and because the majority of people who've been commenting seem to be from there. This isn't because I think America is most important (because I don't), but because I need to limit the scope of this somehow. I apologize to those living elsewhere, and I really want to make a more global post about this later, unless people are absolutely sick of me going on and on and on about this.

1. There has been much discussion of cultural authenticity and the problems of cultural authenticity in the comments of my previous post, yhlee's post, cofax7's post, and rilina's post. I feel conflicted about this -- discussion of cultural authenticity is by necessity related to cultural appropriation, but I am very uneasy as to how it has somewhat usurped the discussion of appropriation. This uneasiness is further cemented by the fact that a lot of discussion of cultural authenticity has to do with minority cultures adopting the dominant culture, or questions along the line of "If I can only write about my own culture/race/ethnicity without cultural appropriation, what can I write about?" And from the comments, it does seem like a majority of the people asking these questions are from European/American descent. I am not finger pointing, I swear. I know that's a horribly passive-aggressive way to say it, but I really don't want to call people out because I think it's unproductive, and because I am reading through all four threads and trying to suss out common themes.
   
   Which leads to...


2. Even if there is no such thing as cultural authenticity, the question of cultural appropriation is still present. Furthermore, I am not saying that you can only write about what culture/race/ethnicity that you belong to. Instead, I am saying that the problems inherent in cultural appropriation exist and will very likely exist for many, many decades to come. Also, the very act of writing about another culture, particularly one in which you are a part of the dominant culture that has a history of subjugating minority cultures, that very act is problematic.
   
   It is even more problematic when you look at means of colonization in the past and how much of colonization involves language and schooling and learning the mythos and culture of the colonizers.
   
   This is not limited to white American and/or European culture (see: Japanese culture with regard to Korean culture), but because white American and/or European culture was so often the colonizer in the past few centuries, I think deflecting the issue back to minority cultures avoids the larger issue.
   
   Does this suck? Yes.
   
   Is this fair? No.
   
   Does this mean you shouldn't write about it? No.
   
   Does this mean you have to think about it? No. Feel free to ignore it if you want.
   
   But even if you think you're writing in a vacuum, your readers are not reading in a vacuum. People read in historical context. I read Naomi Novik's Throne of Jade as a third culture kid with the (slight) knowledge of Qing Dynasty China and what happened to Qing Dynasty China, and even if Novik wrote without that in mind (which I don't think she did), that still doesn't make my reading experience any different.


3. And because rilina says it better than me and because I think it bears repeating many times:
   
   "It's very hard for a minority culture to "coopt" something from a dominant culture. I'm sorry if this doesn't seem fair to dominant culture folks (and I'm not saying it's impossible), but I think this is true. When cultural things flow in that direction, it's usually less appropriation and more assimilation." [emphasis in the original]


4. Unpopular thought about assimilation: I think if you are a hyphenated American or an American of color, claiming American culture as your own is problematic. I wish this weren't so, and I struggled against this in college. But the fact is, if your skin color is different from that of people around you, no matter what you think you are, people will very often treat you differently. They may be well-meaning and be very cautious about the subject of race, or they could just say incredibly stupid things, but the issue of race is always there.
   
   We aren't at the point where things are colorblind, and as such, cultural assimilation is problematic. No, I don't think this is fair, and yes, I think it is limiting, particularly when you don't want to feel different and are made to feel different. But again, sadly, things don't exist in a vacuum.


5. As an addendum to this: no, it isn't fair that minority authors are often corralled into minority fiction and said to write about the minority experience. On the other hand, since so few other people are writing about the minority experience, it's a lose-lose situation. I do think that limiting minority authors to the minority experience is very much like limiting female authors to the female experience, but... BUT! seeing the minority experience as a limiting factor can very much be as denigrating as the whole "OMG women writing about female things, the horror!"


6. Of course, if you look like the dominant culture but aren't from that culture, the issues are very different. But since there is much discussion about hyphenated Americans in the other comment threads, I would very much like to leave it out of this particular post and the comments to this post.


7. And now, look, even this post has become about minorities writing about minorities and not about dominant cultures writing about minorities and the inherent problems therein.
   
   I'm sorry, I'm really angry about this, and like rilina says, I think many of the issues here are like feminist issues, in which all discussions seem to go back to the men and femininsts must continue to argue why feminism is still relevant. I know this is a horribly uncomfortable topic, probably more so than feminism on LJ, because most of the people I know on LJ are female, whereas most of the people I know on LJ are not minorities in terms of skin color.
   
   I am highlighting this not because I want to call out people, but because I think discussion of cultural appropriation keeps skirting around this fact. I am highlighting skin color because despite what I'd like the world to be like, it is still a very important factor and one that can divide people at first glance.


8. In conclusion, no one is ever going to tell you that cultural appropriation is ok or that there is a way for a dominant culture to write about a minority culture without these problems rising up. If they do say that, I'm sorry, they're lying or they're from the far future, in which there is no race disparity, no racism, and all nations are on equal economic, political and cultural standing.
   
   This does not mean you shouldn't write about it. Nor does it mean you should write about it. I mean, I personally wish everyone would write about it, or include minority characters, or do something to change things so that the default of a character is not white male. But in the end, it means that even though you may think you're writing in a vacuum, you aren't, and, more importantly, no one is reading in a vacuum. So no matter how you think you should deal with this issue or disengage from it, writing another Euro-centric fantasy is still contributing to the mass of Euro-centric, non-ethnic fantasies out there, and writing a non-Euro-centric fantasy will by necessity run up against these issues.
   
   I wish there were an easier way, but I don't think there is.

Also, does anyone know about critical theory regarding race like Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing?

Ok, um, flame away.

ETA: yhlee responds

ETA 2: Most recent link round up that I know of

Also, I am going to answer comments. I just need time to think and time to stop being overwhelmed.

ETA 3: ladyjax on discourse on race

Comments

[oyceter]

No, no need to delete!

[shati.livejournal.com]

Er... Asian? Really?

I don't know how pervasive it is, but I remember noticing this in myself in middle school. I think it's problematic, at least as it worked with me, and possibly as much as considering American-born Asians "foreign."

Whereas, as Yoon said somewhere else, no one ever, ever asked why all the white kids (to use white to group all people who look like it, no matter what they self-identify as) sat together.

One of the best things to come out of a high school assembly on race was a black girl who pointed this out. "A lot of white kids keep asking why all the black kids sit together in the cafeteria -- well, how come the white kids sit together?"

Sidenote: the white kids did sit together in my high school's cafeteria, but the Asian kids didn't.

[the_rck]

That's the list. I recognize it. Though I thought it was longer...

It might not fly anywhere but WisCon, but I think it's the sort of thing that's helpful to have around because some people-- maybe not many-- will read it and *think*. Privilege is generally a silent thing, unrecognized by those who have it. It's also something that can be hard for those who have it to look at because looking can make a person feel quite guilty.

(That guilt feels rather a lot like how I feel when I consider how healthy my daughter is when I'm talking to my sister-in-law about her children's illnesses. I don't want my niece and nephew to be sick, but I'm also very glad that my daughter doesn't have the problems that they do.)

*intensely frustrated*

[(Anonymous)]

I find this problematic to the point of not being able to continue - or, hell, even enter the discussion.

(I spend my entire life being ordered not to judge other people by the color of their skin, and now it's the most important thing about me? Thank you, no.)

(Maybe tommorrow, after I've cooled off a bit. I do look forward to your comments on what exactly is cultural appropriation.)

- hg

And that comment would have been...

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

me. Sorry 'bout that.

- hg

Re: *intensely frustrated*

[oyceter]

I'm very sorry you find it problematic. I do as well, and I'm not saying that it is a fair definition. But I think that that is how many people judge other people, and that while it isn't the most important thing about you, it's something that has been shown to be important societally and culturally.

Again, I'm not arguing that it is a right or a fair definition. But then again, neither is the fact that being born with skin of a different color means that you are treated differently, whether it's having more privileges or less.

Re: And that comment would have been...

[oyceter]

Yup, got that and replied!

all i do is dash around saying 'thank you' but...

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

Also, saying it while saying that you're a mix of "Anglo, German, Irish, etc." makes it feel like you're trying to say that you, too, are racially diverse (which you are), but ignoring the fact of skin color and racism and things people can tell without even having to say anything.

THANK you.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Er... Asian? Really?

Yes. Really.

To continue getting anecdotal, In my high school, the Asian students *didn't* sit together. I grew up in a wealthy school district in a mid-sized Midwestern city. If I recall correctly, our school had a couple Chinese families, a couple Japanese, a couple Indian, one Thai, and one Indonesian. The parents were all professionals, just like most of the white kids' parents, and the kids had all the same hobbies and interests as everyone else. Their identities were obviously *somewhat* marked, otherwise I wouldn't be able to remember how many there were from different countries, but to most of us, they were unquestionably part of the majority culture, and nearly all of them were part of the high-status, popular crowd... except for the family who had just moved from China, were not wealthy yet, and didn't speak English well. Every so often one did hear about someone making an ethnic slur against one of the Asian kids, so obviously *someone* perceived them as different, but the most common reaction to hearing about an incident like that was "WTF?? That makes about as much sense as an ethnic slur against redheads."

And I know I'm not the only American who grew up in that sort of middle ground where there were enough Asian-Americans around to make them seem not exotic or foreign, but not enough of them for them to be perceived as a separate social group. And those of us who came from that kind of background find it easy to forget that (a) there are parts of the country where being Asian is a much more marked identity than it was in our circumstances, and (b) the rare ethnic joke or insult that we brushed off with a "huh?" probably loomed MUCH MUCH LARGER to the actual kid it was directed against. I'm sure the kids of Asian background in my school perceived themselves as having a much more marked identity than most of the rest of us perceived them as having.

So my point in bringing this up is not so much that "whites of non-majority cultures can experience oppression, too." It's that, having myself grown up feeling culturally distinct, but NOT particularly oppressed or discriminated against, I tend to assume that all people from non-black, non-Latino immigrant backgrounds feel similarly unoppressed. I *routinely* underestimate the importance of the visual cue of ethnic difference, because it's a cue that signals pretty much nothing in my own implicit categorization of people.

In other words, if this were gender & feminism, you'd be the woman saying, "Okay, guys, can we for once stop talking about men, and actually focus on feminism and WOMEN?" and there'd be some percentage of your audience with their mental gears grinding, going "But, wait -- you're a man, I'm a man, we're all men... why isn't talking about *my* personal experience of feminism EXACTLY the same as talking about *yours*?" And then they go, "Oh, um, that's right: you kind of have tits, don't you? And a functioning uterus. And... okay, forget I said anything...."

cultural appropriation readings.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

posts at sex_and_race on cultural appropriation are tagged here: http://community.livejournal.com/sex_and_race/tag/cultural+appropriation, this one has a lot of online resources: http://community.livejournal.com/sex_and_race/167998.html

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I also grew up thinking of Asians as "white." Just a slightly different looking brand of white, like a slightly different brand of bread. I remember seeing a special on South Africa in the days of apartheid, and there was a set of segregated bathrooms; the Asians used the one for whites, while Indians were expected to use the one for blacks. Based on my experience, I thought, well, yeah, 'cause Asians are white.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

And I'll third that. There weren't many Asian students at my Catholic convent school, but when one of the teachers said something that implied that our class' one Chinese-Canadian student had a different background from the rest of us, we all went blink-blink-blink But why? Same when work specifically wanted to hire a person of colour, and ended up with a Filipino. I felt that was cheating somehow, but no one else agreed.

[ckd]

First, a note on the cultural appropriation issue as seen from my POV, which will not be about writing because I'm not a writer. (And will, because of the need to establish my POV, start with some musings about my own culture.)

By appearance, I'm about as Whitey McMale as it gets. By culture? I went to school in a small town (~120 people in my HS graduating class), which in most places would be pretty homogeneous...but it was a small town next to Ft. Lewis and McChord AFB, so it was very mixed. White kids, Black kids, plenty of half-Korean or half-German Third Culture kids, you name it. Because it was as small as it was, there seemed (to me) to be less self-segregation than often happens. Classes were mixed, athletic teams were mixed...no, it wasn't Shangri-La of No Racism or anything, but overall we got along.

So (and here's where the appropriation comes in) I was listening to Run-DMC before "Walk This Way", because I was managing the track team and it'd get played on the way to meets. I was eating bulgogi (or whatever the new transliteration would call it), because I liked the taste, and my dad had done his tours in Korea and liked it too. (Kimchi not so much, but my brother liked it, and always thought that his friend Robert's mom made it best.) We'd get pfeffernüsse at Christmas time, though that's not necessarily appropriation given the Fisher (formerly Fischer) side of the family.

On the other hand I never had anything with hangul on it "because it looked neat". I actively tried to learn a little Korean at one point to help a new student adjust, even though his English was far, far better than any Korean I managed; at this point I think I might be able to say "good afternoon" without being laughed at (to my face anyway), but nothing more. I never assumed that liking Run-DMC made me "Black" in any meaningful way, especially when I was also listening to Peter Gabriel, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and the Beatles.

I don't know. I hope I've been, through my life, respectful of the cultures I've encountered, willing to learn about them, and when bringing foods or objects or music or ideas from them into my experience, recognizing that this is a borrowing and not a transfer of ownership. But I can't ever really know.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I think the issue is that of exploration versus exploitation.

In other words, are you a visitor, or are you a tourist?

[shati.livejournal.com]

I think that's an issue, but I agree with the main post's argument that both are appropriation. So I'm curious about your reasoning, if you're saying that exploration isn't, or that appropriation isn't -- well, isn't "the issue."

Basically, your comment strikes me as surprisingly short for one that looks to be disagreeing with the OP/declaring it irrelevant, and now I'm not sure I read you right. :)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I actually think appropriation is a nonissue. Or, it's a shadow issue.

...I need to lay down some background to make this make sense. I was raised in a lesbian separatist community. As a direct result, I tend to find that othering--whether one is othering one's self, or somebody else--is counterproductive. Separatism is all about Men As Other. There is a category of fiction (Heart of Darkness, anyone?) that is about non-white as Other. There is a buttload of work out there in which women or queers or non-Christians are the Other.

You know what?

I think all this fucking Othering is counterproductive. I'm all for sitting down and talking and finding out what we have in common, rather than exoticising the ways in which we are different.

Which is not to say that we aren't different, or that unique cultures should be assimilated into the dominant paradigm. Because cultural imperialism is, well, cultural imperialism.

What I'm saying is that an honest attempt to undertand and connect with each other as human beings and individuals is a hell of a lot more productive than most of the other options. What I'm saying is that I have friends and acquaintances and ex-lovers and potential lovers who are Korean and Chinese and Japanese and Creole and West Indian and African-American and of the American First Peoples and Peruvian and....

...and when I read, I do not differentiate between stories of Anansi and stories of Thor. They are all part of my mythology as a human being, and it does not matter in terms of that myth that I am a blue-eyed gringo.

...and you will get me to stop putting those people into my books when you break my keyboard and take my fingers away.

Because my books would be lies without them.

...and if that seems like appropriation, then I will live with the label. Because I am the color I am by an accident of birth. And as for the rest, I can only quote Yevtushenko.

I am
each old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead. (http://boppin.com/poets/yy_babiyar.htm)

I can't help being white. I can't help what people who happen to share my accident of melanin did, or do.

But I don't have to identify with them, or justify them, or agree with them.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

OMG I got all the way through the thread and nobody mentioned Franz Fanon? Okay, heavy reading. Even heavier is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and her famous (but nigh impenetrable) essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

Seconded the nomination of Said, whom I find much more readable (and I always liked him when he popped up on PBS). Ngugi is occasionally difficult for me, but, I like his trucculence. (The book of his I read was Moving the Centre.)

[ckd]

What I'm saying is that an honest attempt to undertand and connect with each other as human beings and individuals is a hell of a lot more productive than most of the other options.

Yeah, that. (It's so nice knowing people who can express themselves effectively in writing; it saves me a heck of a lot of effort when I can just say "yeah, that". Unless that's appropriation, of course....)

[shati.livejournal.com]

I don't think oyceter was arguing that white people shouldn't write about nonwhite people, actually. Nor am I.

Okay, found quotes:

Also, the very act of writing about another culture, particularly one in which you are a part of the dominant culture that has a history of subjugating minority cultures, that very act is problematic.

And then:

Does this mean you shouldn't write about it? No.

So -- I'm mostly seeing a straw man, here. I don't think anyone here is against connecting as human beings, and I haven't seen anyone tell you not to write about races, nationalities, or ethnicities you aren't a member of. I don't think oyceter is Othering herself.

But I do think the way you choose to represent the world in fiction has consequences, and it has a context, and thinking about that is entirely pointy productive.

I can't help being white.

I honestly see no blame in this post. I see no one being attacked for being white, nor even for being white and writing about nonwhite people. Just the idea that awareness of the historic context, the power dynamics, the larger patterns, the effect your writing can have, that that's a good thing to have; or maybe just the idea that they'll exist whether or not you're aware. And that as long as there are problems with culture and race, there will be problems with representing culture and race.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm thinking more about this -- the production of culture -- and wondering, why when we say "culture" do we mean "mass-produced objects"? That's a weirdly modern perspective on culture, and the mode of culture-transmission may have an effect on how "cultural appropriation" has meaning in this discussion.

I bring this up because, I have come to a recent realization in my own life that learning a culture from television (my main mode of cultural learning) is kind of foolish and shallow. Yes, it took me this long to figure that out.

We are going to get the bland, PC-but-not-always-thoughtful, inclusive-but-not-diverse perspective out of mass-produced culture. Because, that's kind of its raison d'etre: please enough people enough of the time that they will buy toothpaste. Publishers pray for their books to be the one that gets on the mass-market rack in the supermarket checkout aisle. Pop-culture magazines roll over and play fetch with whatever major social trend seems to be in the news. (How headspinny was it one day to see James Dobson, of fundamentalist craxxy fame, suddenly being taken seriously in the pages of Entertainment Weekly?)

When we talk about local productions of culture, high school poetry readings and book groups and community theatre, I think we might have a different kettle of fish. I mean, if you live in Whiteytown, maybe not, but having outright conversations, with people you run into at the Dairy Queen, is a lot better as a method for the give-and-take of representation and power.

I wonder, if they'd had the theoretical tools we all have, whether random guys in a bar in Tashkent 600 years ago had this kind of conversation? I think, because their culture was a lot less mass-produced, they probably didn't.

(It would be interesting if they had done, because (a) I would want to read it and (b) Tashkent was kind of in the middle of a lot of "You conquer me? Shut up! I conquer you!" stuff at that time. Good material for discussions of the social outcomes of empire.)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I think you're reading a defensiveness and a level of argument with oyceter into my posts that isn't there.

I am (largely) agreeing, rather.

[shati.livejournal.com]

Okay, and quite likely -- I wasn't sure how much of what you said was in argument.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

;-)

The internet is for miscommunication.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Russ did a bit more homework for What Are We Fighting For? Sex, Race, Class and the Future of Feminism.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to think of something specific to say, but I think I'll mostly wait until you do a non-US-specific version. I've got tons to say on the subject, but most of it is very UK-specific, and we have a whole raft of different issues.

Using the icon because I also have a whole raft of issues about the casting of Sayid, no matter how much I love both the character and Naveen Andrews (did he get much exposure in the US prior to Lost, because it might just be me associating him with his other roles a little too strongly?)