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]

Thank you very much for asking!

that to many Euro-Americans, any person of Asian descent who is born in the U.S. is perceived at an instinctive level as WHITE.

Er... Asian? Really?

I suspect that some people do, but for many others (and now, I veer off into the land of anecdote, apologies), I was the token Asian. And when people looked at the Asians all sitting together in the cafeteria, it was very clear that they were looking at them as Asians and asking why all the Asians had to sit together. 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.

And thank you for talking about the subconscious misapprehension. I am by no means saying that people who look like the majority culture of a place don't have their own experiences of oppression and discrimination, because they do. But I think that entire visual cue can make a big difference, because even if it's a language thing or a behavior thing, it takes a little more time for that to come out, while looks are instantaneous. Again, not saying that one is worse than the other, but that they are different, though they are all forms of discrimination.

[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.

[oyceter]

It's funny -- no one quite notices if the Asian kids don't sit together, but they do if they sit together. Whereas if all the white kids sit together, that's not remarkable, but if they don't sit together, that's odd.

I always have problems, because on one hand, when people say that Asians are not seen as a minority, it almost feels as though there's a hidden sentence tacked to the end: "So stop talking about being a minority." Then there's the whole lovely Pandora's box of assimilation and losing culture and knowing that no matter which way you choose to go, someone will question it.

[shati.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even really thought about the first aspect, that "it almost feels as though there's a hidden sentence tacked to the end," and you're right.

I was thinking about how thinking "Asian people are white" is different from thinking, "Asian people and white people are both [spot midway between]." It's not neutral ground.

And that -- in my experience -- it was a way of thinking that went along with the awareness of a very drunk toadstool. The more space that knowledge of the size and the history and the complexity of SE Asia took up in my mind, the more I was aware of Asian people as -- existing? In various contexts? or independent from white people, or agh! Something! Ditto for Asian-America. As opposed to the "you have to be black or white, you have to be Christian or Jewish" mindset that came with elementary school.

I am having so much trouble wording things, which is not really a surprise, but leads to great respect for all you who are writing clearly and rationally.

[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...."

[oyceter]

Hee! Your last paragraph rocks.

And thank you for explaining!

I'm so sorry, I keep wanting to say more about how cool it is that you are explaining, except everything I want to say ends up being a rant on unfairness and etc. (not a rant about you, but just the situation in general and how difficult it has been to get explanations that don't feel like brushing off the entire matter at hand all together, or so I feel).

[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.

[rosefox]

Fourthed to an extent. I went to a high school in New York with a fairly racially diverse population and a great many school clubs for every conceivable affiliation. I ended up mostly having Chinese friends, and was much more aware of them being Christian and me being Jewish than of them being Asian and me being Caucasian.

I also almost never used the term "Asian". The lines between Chinese and Japanese and Korean were very clearly drawn. People associated across them, somewhat, but even us white kids picked up on them and observed them. Interracial dating was so common that the default assumption about a Chinese guy dating a Chinese girl was that they were doing so under pressure from at least one set of parents; but you never ever saw an African/Asian couple. That line was drawn much more firmly than all the rest. Black kids and white kids hung out, and white kids (mostly the Jewish ones, now that I think about it) and Asian kids hung out, but rarely the twain did meet. The black and Latino populations were pretty tiny, though, which further contributed to the sense of Asians being more part of my sense of "us" than the rest.

I remember my mother offering to take me and my friend Olivia out to lunch one day after a parent-teacher conference. I suggested Chinese food and then said, "Oh, but you must eat that at home a lot." My mother was scandalized. I couldn't manage to explain (or at least not without further embarrassing myself) that it wasn't that Olivia was Chinese full stop, but that I knew she lived in Chinatown and had parents who had grown up in China. If I lived in Chinatown and had Chinese parents, I figured I would eat Chinese food a lot too. It was very much about culture, but not at all about race.