OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
Friday’s Forum
11
Comments
Categories
Tags
11 responses to “Friday’s Forum”
-
Here in Baltimore we have a kinda unique institution, BROS, the Baltimore Rock Opera Society, which serves to support and stage locally written rock operas. It finds itself in a media blowup here as the recently hired leader, a white woman, went to burning man and posted pictures of herself with cornrows, and then when she returned, attended an event still sporting those cornrows. She was then fired, apparently for this act of “cultural appropriation”. There was an article yesterday and I was heartened to see that most of the many comments were negative about the firing, regardless of the race of the poster. One of the main opinion writers, a black woman who is not afraid to call out racist or thoughtless behavior in no uncertain terms, has a column up today, and she also thinks the firing was inappropriate
-
I’m heartened to see that at least a few people are prepared now to stand up against this kind of nonsense. Cultural appropriation is a cause championed by people who generally have no fucking idea what culture is, or how it works, how it evolves. There are very few pure cultural strands that don’t weave through other cultures. The more you know, the less impressed you are by claims of cultural appropriation.
-
FWIW, here’s the comment I added to the column:
There is a certain type of person that gets their only meager pleasure from slamming and demeaning others. Some of them attach themselves to a group and become the Purity Police, because they get a certain amount of justification and approval for their behavior. They latch onto the real goals and values of the group as a kind of mask, but in the process demean those goals and values. And it doesn’t matter the group – liberal, conservative, religious or lay. Every group larger than a handful of people is likely to have one or more in their midst. Platforming them marks an inevitable spiral downward as the people who were there for the original aims of the group quietly walk away, one by one, leaving only negativity.
-
This type of thing is precisely what has the typical voter scratching their heads. She was fired over a hairstyle. Not reprimanded, not asked to reconsider, but FIRED.
Where the whole cultural appropriation thing drives me craziest is with food. Historically, food has been heavily influenced by trade, colonization, and migration.
-
My 29 year old daughter is a pretty practical person, but she is an absolutist on this stuff. No white person should ever wear something “black”. One sad outcome of this, entirely specific to me: When I was in the Peace Corps in Ghana in the late 80’s living in a tiny remote village, I had a funeral cloth (a very long piece of cloth, black or red or a combo, 2 yards wide that was worn wrapped like a dress or toga) that I wore to funerals because it was expected as a sign of respect. And when I left, the village gave me a beautiful Jeremy cloth and long strips of Kente (strips, because they knew that in the US, people who knew what Kente was didn’t wear it as a cloth, but instead had it sewn into shirts or dresses). Some years later I was invited to a function where I could have worn these, but the cultural appropriation thing had started and I decided not to. I thought it would die down, but it has only gotten worse and worse. Finally, in my last move, I thought that someone should get some use out of these things that had been in my closet for 30 years and donated them to a high school.
Not a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things, but sad to me nonetheless
-
-
-
The “cornrows cultural appropriation” panic is a rather daft American thing, considering plaited and braided hairstyles are quite common traditions in parts of Europe.
It’s rather amusing that no brickbats are ever slung about the adoption of European or American derived dress styles or whatever by persons of other heritages.
-
-
-
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Latest Posts
-
Checking on the Economics President’s Economy
-
Many Surgeries Are Unnecessary and Unhelpful
-
Israel’s Flight 93 Moment
-
No Fatties, Trannies, Beardos, Weirdos, or Wimps
-
SCOTUS: Cruelty Without Due Process to Continue
-
Deeply Unserious People
-
More Than Three-Quarters of Senators Agree On Something!
-
I Chose to Listen to “Choosin’ Texas”