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

[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.

[oyceter]

I want to preface this (probably extremely flameworthy) comment with the note that I am not talking about you, ckd, the individual, nor am I making any sort of a value judgment on any cultural borrowing/trading/whatnot.

(also, I am thinking out loud)

I seem to be coming to the conclusion that cultural appropriation consists of any time a dominant culture uses the culture of a minority culture. And I'm not going to say that "appropriation" is a neutral term, because it isn't. Obviously, there is lots of discussion in what counts as dominant and what counts as minority, and how much is using a culture and how long the minority culture remains a minority culture before assimilation and etc. And that I come to this definition because of assorted historical events that have current bearing on the social class and economic privileges (or lack of) that different ethnicities/races/cultures have.

And here's the part where it sucks: maybe no matter what you do, you may be culturally appropriating. But! What you do with it, the choices you make from it, that's open, and your intentions are your own. Unfortunately, that's probably not going to change what other people think, but you never know.

(man, I'm sorry, I hate putting you on the spot like this and I honestly do not mean it as a finger-wagging exercise because it's not like you chose to be any particular sex or race any more than I did)

For me, personally, cultural appropriation comes in when I geek out about Korean manhwa or wear Indian clothes (I'm not saying Chinese is dominant to Indian or Korean culture, but that because I spent a large portion of life in America, I have adopted the white paradigm in that respect). I worry about assimilation when I realize my Chinese gets worse every month, when I read manga, when I decided to focus on Japan instead of China in college. Unfortunately, what I do isn't going to change how other people think of me either.

And these issues, they're just not going to go away =(. And I'm not saying this as a "Look! Mine sucks more than yours!" but as a way of saying, anything that fights the current racial paradigm sucks rocks and that no one is free of difficult choices. Also, I want to say that the right choice is engagement, but I don't know if it is for you, and I am so far from the Stamp of Racial Approval figure that it's not funny. What I personally think is that thinking about these issues while appropriation goes on, questioning things, it's a good thing. (but then, see above re: Stamp of Racial Approval)

Sorry, this isn't just a response to you, but to many of the people who've been asking, "So what to do now that there's this damned if you do, damned if you don't thing?" And I guess what I keep wanting to say is, welcome to the life of the damned! I am here too, and even though it sucks to be here, I'm glad you're standing here with me and trying to talk about it.

Woe, I'm sorry, I hope that made some bit of sense?

[ckd]

It made sense to me, and rivka's post makes sense to me, and much of what's been said by everyone, each from their perspective, has made me think.

And, y'know, that's the first step in anything...recognizing that there is something there to be examined, even when you can't see a next step.

In this case, for me, the next step is listening. (That, and being open to having people I know, or associate with online, be able to tell me "hey, it bothers me when you do/say thing, can we talk about it?")

[oyceter]

*hugs* Ok, this is the dorkiest thing ever, but I read your response and nearly cried.

So just... thank you, and it means so much to me that people are thinking, and thank you so much for your gracious response to this twisty issue.