oyceter | Cultural appropriation, pt. 2

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Cultural appropriation, pt. 2

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.

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...

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.

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]

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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

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Re: the last question, Greg Tate's Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture might be a good place to start.

The lurkers support you in e-mail! Er, I mean, this non-lurker supports you in comments!

Seriously, I'd like to respond at length; can't do so at the moment because am at work. But so much of what you've written resonates to me, especially, "But even if you think you're writing in a vacuum, your readers are not reading in a vacuum. People read in historical context."

More anon.

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.

I actually think--and I am not saying you should feel obligated to do it!--but I actually think calling people out might very well be helpful. From my European-American perspective--and yes, I'm aware that means I'm speaking from a position of privilege--specifics are helpful. Saying "here's something to worry about, that you may well have no visceral understanding of because of your position of privilege--okay, go worry now!" sends me straight down the road to "well, fuck it then, I can't do anything right, so I won't bother," and I know that's not where you want the conversation to go. Whereas saying "look, here's something bad, right here," that helps.

I'm not saying you have to do this. I'm certainly not saying that you have an obligation to become LJ Queen Educator On Cultural Issues. But I wanted to respond to what I read as concern that people will feel attacked if you get into specifics, because I'm not sure that that's true. Certainly I feel much more comfortable with specifics than I do with what can feel like a kind of nebulous "hey, there are monsters in the forest there, so... be careful! But totally go in the forest anyway!" Does that make sense?

This is totally tangential, but this reminds me of when we were in Mariposa and you remarked that you were probably the only Asian in the county and I said, "Well, I think my Dad and I are the only Jews in the county." But of course, there's a big difference between not being from the dominant culture but looking like you do (that is, in an area that does have a lot of Jews, like New York City, I would guess that random passers-by probably know what group I belong to, but in Mariposa, I would guess that people would just think I'm white (Are Jews white? I would say socially yes, culturally no)) and having everyone in the restaurant being able to see that you're a minority.

Which is something I haven't experienced in a real way since I was a kid in India-- really, if you pretty much look like the dominant group in the country you live in, you do not get the experience of being a minority just because you, say, spend a couple of days being the only person of your ethnicity in the vicinity.

Sorry, total tangent! I would be a horrible participant on one of those panels because I would keep getting tangled up in my own and rather unusual experience of race and being a minority and not being a minority. I think I was trying to say that I am finding this discussion thought-provoking.

I'm at work too (and just did a huge post) so no time to respond in detail. But I do not feel threatened or attacked, and I am grateful to you for making this post.

Some problems don't HAVE solutions.

I think if you are a hyphenated American or an American of color, claiming American culture as your own is problematic.

I can sort of see this, but as an Irish emigrant I have huge problems with nth generation Irish-Americans claiming to be Irish without the first clue of what they are talking about, that doesn't work either.

I never feel comfortable talking about race in a NorAm context, as I spent the first twenty years of my life in a country with essentially no non-Caucasians [ nobody in their right mind would have immigrated to Ireland then, for economic reasons alone ], and with its own set of rigid pigeonholes as to whether one was Catholic or Protestant [ and I still have perfect radar for which one would be perceived as in Ireland, though almost all the US Catholics I know read as Protestants on that ] and as the way things work in Montreal appears to not map onto US perceptions at all. [ In that, for example, when Chinese community leaders talk about "the two cultures", they mean Montreal's Anglophone Chinese and Montreal's Francophone Chinese. And that one is rarely on a full Metro car or a bus of which more than a third of the people are any single distinct ethnicity. And that couples both of whom are from the same ethnic group seem quaintly old-fashioned. ]

I've been here closing on four and a half years, and now seem to have reached the point where once I open my mouth and start talking French I'm not immediately given away as Anglophone, which is nice. The unexamined default is "functionally bilingual". Not that there's much fuss about Anglo/Franco here, but what fuss there is seems to have largely subsumed any other distinction as an issue for making a fuss about.

Point fingers. We should have this discussion.

I understand where you are coming from; some of my childhood included growing up in a predominantly white suburb, in my pre-New York days (I shudder to think of them).

But my POV is colored by the fact that I am New Yorker, and my experience is influenced by what New York City is. Would anyone honestly believe you if you said that New York City is not American (especially after 9/11)?

But guess what? This quintesstially American city is also Chinatown in Lower Manhattan, Dominican-dominated Washington Heights - Manhattan, the black and Puerto-Rican Bronx, Hasidic Jewish Williamsburg - Brooklyn, Indian and Pakistani Jackson Heights - Queens, Polish Greenpoint - Brooklyn, Irish Woodside - Queens. And in all of these neighborhoods, you'll find hard-working Spanish, Irish, Russian, Chinese immigrants working low-paying jobs driven around by turban-wearing taxi drivers whose passenger dividers are covered with American flags. All of them come from different places, with different customs, and different cultures, but all are just as equally New York, and hence equally American. Take the minorities out of NYC, and guess what, you've just taken out the very heart of the city that represents America to much of the world.

Yes, I know, New York City is a singular example, and in a category of its own. But then again, really, if New York City is not American, then what is?

Good post; we need more discussions like this in fantasy and science fiction.

# 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!"

There's an essay in Amy Tan's "The Opposite of Fate" writing memoir about whether she considers herself a minority writer and what that entails, especially as far as her responsibility for portraying Asians in a positive light goes. Of course, I can't think of the title of the essay now, but it's in the last section of the book if you're interested.

Have you looked at

deadbrowalking? It's focused more on TV/movie fandoms, but the people there do discuss issues that I think relate to your points.

I'm white, so the world around me doesn't make me pay attention to these issues. I do try to remember to look around and try to see the privileges that I've got, but I'm sure I miss many of them. Something that helped with that came from an anthropology class I took several years ago-- The instructor found a long, detailed list that someone had put together of specific aspects of white privilege. Some of the students weren't pleased to be told that things like not being shadowed in a store by security or not having people assume that they couldn't speak English were privileges coming from the color of their skin. I still have the list somewhere in storage with the other handouts from that class.

At any rate, I was thinking that a similar list of what white privilege means for attending SF/fantasy conventions, for reading and writing SF/fantasy and so on might help those of us who have privilege to see it. A list like that isn't meant to address why things are the way they are or how to fix them but rather to give simple, concrete examples that define how things are. Maybe it's a bad idea... It'd certainly be a lot of work.

Well, I'm not at all clear on where you would like this comment to go, but I'll try it here: possibly one reason that your Euro-American commenters keep dragging the discussion over to what you're calling "cultural authenticity" is 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.

I will bite the bullet and publicly admit that I am one of those people. I remember my freshman year of college we did one of those mandatory diversity workshops on our hall, and the moderator asked for everyone who perceived themselves as "a person of color" to go to one side of the room, and I was *very* surprised when all the U.S.-born students of East Asian heritage went over there, and even more surprised when the U.S.-born guy who was half Italian, half Bengali went over there.

Obviously, it was really an instructive exercise for me. I learned that my own gut-level categorization of people depends heavily on the presence of lengthy and ongoing political and economic conflict *here in the U.S.*. In other words, you're white unless you're black. Or, secondarily, Latino or Native American. My gut sense of who's "us" and who's "them" pays no attention to appearance. It also pays no attention to historical struggles of colonization or to discrimination experienced in other Anglo countries.

I also learned, obviously, that my instinctive categorization IN NO WAY RESEMBLES THE PERSONAL OR SOCIETAL CATEGORIZATION PERCEIVED BY MANY ETHNIC MINORITIES. But even though I *know* that intellectually, and get reminded of it every time discussions like this one come up, I still can't get my instincts to change. I'm still surprised, every time.

I grew up in a tightly-knit immigrant community with tons of pressure to maintain the culture and language of "The Fatherland" (since the Soviets were systematically destroying it back home in Latvia). I grew up with all the immigrant stories of cultural misunderstandings (like the time my grandparents got thrown out of a restaurant for giving their six year-old daughter a taste of their beer) and economic discrimination against people who can't speak unaccented English. To me this *feels like* the same sort of experience that an immigrant family from China or Cambodia or India would have. And given the number of times that people from visibly different ethnic minorities have told me that it's REALLY NOT, I ought to believe them. But my subconscious still isn't convinced. And I'm willing to bet I'm not the only person with this subconscious misapprehension.

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.

Yes, exactly. And the whole "but white people are oppressed too/I suffer from pink-hair discrimination/etc. etc." thing! *bangs head*

I'm really shocked @ how people @ the panel (judging from what you've said) didn't seem to get that minority cultures taking from dominant cultures is not @ all the same as the reverse. It's not that hard to figure out. Augh. Especially given that the level of critical understanding of "-isms" seems generally high @ WisCon.

Re: you feeling like you're calling people out & being nervous b/c most people you talk to on LJ are white--meh. I totally understand your nerves (I don't write about race on my LJ as much as I'd like because I get tired of the white defensive knee-jerk reaction), but... in my (admittedly limited!) experience, I see a lot more POCs getting apologetic/nervous for bringing up race than I see women (for example) getting apologetic/nervous for bringing up gender. And that... kinda sucks.

(& I too am boggling about the Asian=white experience--I've never had that in my life. Mind you I'm half-Asian, half-white, so most people give me the "WTF are you?" thing anyway...)

Anyway--so glad this conversation is happening, & big kudos to you for steering people away from shifting the focus back to whiteness over & over. I'll sit back & read & think about the rest of the posts now. Thanks!

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.

I think the issue is that of exploration versus exploitation.

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

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?)

I am Asian, born and raised in San Francisco, a city in which there are many minority groups, but population-wise, dominated by whites and Asians; the issues of racial identity are complicated, and yes, there is a tendency to group American-assimilated, US-born Asians as white. Or semi-white; we're different, but not that different from the mainstream, and we're differentiated from the Asians who consciously put on cultural identifiers as Asian Americans, who have certain ways of dressing, wearing their hair, souping up their cars, etc. It's the difference between cultural and ethnic, I think. We're all ethnically Asian, but we broadcast our cultural identity in a certain way.

I feel... conflicted about this inside. On the one hand, it's marvelously convenient to be accepted in mainstream culture without cavil -- it's so routine it almost doesn't feel like cheating -- but at the same time, I'm practicing cultural appropriation of mainstream culture of my own. My friends totally tease me about how I'm the least Asian-seeming person they know; I'm an English major, geek out over high-art books and low-art movies (Buffy, comic books and science fiction movies), remember none of my native language, dress like a hippie-influenced hipster style... It makes me cringe inside because the kernal of ugliness in their teasing is the accusation of someone non-white dressing up in the clothes of the cultural overlords, and I don't want to be perceived that way. Of course, balanced against that is the reality, that in San Francisco, most US-born Asians are perceived as sort-of whites. We're not really categorized as WHITE but we're not really put in the ethnic minority box either. It's an interesting place to be.

Just this evening, riding home from the movies with two friends and we got a little bit into a discussion of racial identity and language. My other Asian friend and I both admitted we no could longer speak the native tongue of our immigrant parents -- we were born in the US and English and acculturation had killed that dead. While my other friend, who looks on the surface as white and American as apple pie, was born in Russia, came to this country at 6, speaks perfect English and imperfect Russian. In San Francisco, none of us are perceived as minorities, but inside each of us is a different story. I know my Asian friend moves easily in mainstream culture, but has deeply held views about Asians not fitting in perfectly with the mainstream. My Russian American friend slips easily and unself-consciously between her perfectly white American identity and her ethnic Russian identity, with an ease I envy. As for me, I'm a cultural appropriator and mostly chill about it, which on of days, worries me, but mostly, it comes so naturally I don't think of it consciously. I'm so much more aware of my gender and gender issues, it's not even funny how much the subtleties of racial/ethnic issues pass over my head.

Really, not funny.

I want to thank you for this post and your previous one with the panel wrap-up, both of which are amazing.

Re: #3, I feel like this is spot-on, and also I'm wondering if you think there is a connection in terms of the way the panel (reflecting a very prevalent perspective, I think) set up a divide between "bad" cultural appropriation and "good"/no cultural appropriation: (speaking in the NorAm context with which I am familiar) white writers who appropriate and do not proceed in such a blundering way as to set off the "bad" cultural appropriation warning bells are praised for being sensitive/embracing/"creative"/"brave"/good researchers, whereas non-white writers who assimilate aspects of cultures not their own into their work are seen more as "showing they have 'mainstream' appeal," if that. It strikes me that there is this sort of disproportionate reward/back-patting which in many cases gives white writers a gold star for doing stuff they should be doing anyway (like reflecting reality by including non-white characters) and which is expected as a matter of course of non-white writers and also reinforces the idea that we don't need to approach the concept of "good" versus "bad" cultural appropriations as problematic.

I'd like to preface this with commentary with the simple idea that until we start seeing people as people and not just the color of their skin, flavor of their religion, cut of their jib, etc., then we can never hope to end what appears to be the liberal version of blatant racism. Asian? You're a human being. Muslim? Human too. We try so hard to *appreciate* the differences we forget that in most ways we're all alike -- stupid, self-important, and worthy.

Now that's I've prefaced this with idealism, let me explain that there is no such thing as White America. We have Catholics and Jews, Mormons and Scientologists. We have southerners and northerners -- and if you don't think the culture to be entirely different, then you've never been to both. I grew up as an Irish Jew in Boston, and my culture was so different from the Italians that also lived in the neighborhoods that there were literally race riots in my high school. Between 'whites' and 'whites.' Have you ever met someone who is well and truly rich? Their lifestyle is so different from mine that I can't comprehend their manner of thought. New Jersey is so different from Seattle that the culture shock from one to the other is incredible. The same from South Carolina to Texas to Chicago to San Francisco to San Diego. There is no white culture, and 'white' is not a race. Or if you deem it a race, then you must understand that there are a million and one ethnicities and cultures that make it up. Real life is not the movies of television. American Pop Culture is just as absurd to me as a white American man, as it is to anyone, anywhere. To somehow lump me in with the same race that houses skinheads who hate me for my ethnicity and refuse to acknowledge me as white is absurd. It's all absurd. It's bloody exasperating. Complaining that so-called 'white culture' does not respect 'your' culture is the pot calling the kettle black.

But I digress. Refer back to my first paragraph.

I'm not sure that is exactly what you're going for, but reading this I ended up with a post on the validity of "minority writing" and self-identifying your culture (http://runefallstar.livejournal.com/163926.html).

As a bi-racial writer, born in the US but well in touch with her own Mexican heritage, the question of appropriation and the "appropriateness" of my claim on my identity have always hit very close to home.

*laughs* But I won't get into it here, that post is more than long enough all on it's own.

There has been quite a lot done in the States, Canada, UK on theorizing race and racism. In the States and Canada, the field of "critical race theory" (and "critical whiteness studies")--lots of anthologies for both--have made some important contributions to this discussion. In the UK, loosely speaking, "black" cultural studies has had a fair amount to say about the politics and the theorizing of race.

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Critical theory