Racists don’t like cultural appropriation
Here are a few thoughts on cultural appropriation:
1. Racists don’t like cultural appropriation.
Racist prefer their own culture, and don’t wish to appropriate ideas and styles from other cultures.
Note that by ‘cultural appropriation’ I mean appropriation motivated by respect for the other culture. I’m not referring to cultural ridicule, which racists might well be interested in doing.
2. Collectivists don’t like cultural appropriation.
Here’s Brian Morton:
Susan Scafidi, a professor of law at Fordham and the author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, defines it as “Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”
Obviously, it’s infeasible for entire cultures to give permission to individual people. Even worse, opponents of cultural appropriation don’t care about the views of the “victimized” culture. When told the Japanese are not at all upset when Westerners wear kimonos (just as we don’t care when they wear business suits), they respond that this fact doesn’t matter. All that matters is the feelings of ethnic Japanese people living in the West with post-graduate degrees. In other words, the feelings of people who have appropriated Western culture.
3. Economic nationalists are hypocrites on cultural appropriation.
Western life has been immeasurably enriched by the importation of Asian cuisines, which are vastly superior to the “meat and potatoes” cuisine that boomers like me grew up with. This cuisine was stolen from Asia with no compensation. And yet economic nationalists moan and complain that Chinese theme parks use women dressed up vaguely like Snow White, with no compensation to the Disney Corporation (which of course stole Snow White for its films, with no compensation to the country that first produced the charming character.)
Indeed the key inventions that allowed Europe to rise to a position of supremacy in the world (gunpowder, the compass, paper and printing) were all stolen from China with no compensation, and Western economic nationalists feel no sense of shame over that fact.
But Snow White? Those evil Chinese are stealing our property! Cultural appropriation! Unfair!
PS. I recommend Morton’s essay.
HT: Gordon Hanson
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13. December 2020 at 12:25
Do most economic nationalists even know much history? My impression is that they don’t.
13. December 2020 at 14:13
I love ‘meat and potatoes’ food. A German restaurant nearby to me changed its menu last year to be less actual-German ‘meat and potatoes’ style food and more American bar/pub fare and I was devastated by the change. Even the actual breakfast potatoes became more an exercise in sodium consumption rather than the delicious potato dish they had been before.
They went out of business because of the pandemic and I can’t help but feel a little bit of schadenfreude about it.
Cultural appropriation makes us all richer, though. People who are against it are just insane.
13. December 2020 at 14:35
Michael, I agree with you both (except about meat and potatoes.)
13. December 2020 at 15:25
“This cuisine was stolen from Asia with no compensation.”
On the contrary! The vast majority of meals I’ve eaten at Asian cuisine restaurants in the USA and Europe (and that’s a lot of meals spanning a wide range of Asian cuisines) have be prepared and served by Asians, in restaurants owned by Asians.
Do you think the popularity of “Friends” around the world means the rest of the world is “stealing from the USA with no compensation”?
Intellectual property theft is something entirely different. (Though, honestly, I’ve heard nothing of the Snow White kerfuffle and have no idea if it’s cultural appropriation or intellectual property theft or neither.)
13. December 2020 at 16:39
I have long puzzled over the success of (uncomfortable) Western-style business suits in the Far East and now even in communist China.
A large gathering of Japanese businessmen (and often nearly all men) will feature hundreds of black business suits, and the occasional daring dark blue.
The one gift of Chairman Mao was the sensible Mao jacket and pants.
Instead, Xi Jinping toadies about in expensive Western suits. Maybe Xi knows that is good PR, and makes him look civilized.
13. December 2020 at 17:21
@Ted Durant
I think Scott was talking about cuisine in general not just restaurants.
You’re right about restaurants. I would criticize though that there’s not enough cultural appopration going on here, or in the wrong direction: the restaurants in the countries of origin are often much better, while in Europe and the US you can hardly get authentic food in many regions.
The restaurants may call themselves Asian cuisine, but in reality it’s often just very Western cuisine with a bit of an Asian touch,
I don’t know why that happens all the time and everywhere: Do restaurants cater too much to regional requests, is it a price issue, does one not get the raw materials needed, do they have amateur chefs? What is it?
I’ve also been to “German” restaurants in the US. It has nothing to do with German cuisine, it’s American cuisine with a hardly recognizable German touch.
Same goes for Italian restaurants.
Same goes for quite some, if not most, Italian restaurants in Germany, even though Italy is not that far way.
However, distance may play a role after all. The Italian restaurants in southern Germany were more authentic than in the north. The same was true in Austria the further south you go, until eventually, at some point you really are in Italy.
You can see that even with espresso. You don’t get authentic espresso unless you cross a certain imaginary border on the highway from Austria to Italy, and then suddenly, in one swoop, there’s good, drinkable espresso everywhere. Is that magic? What is it? I hope I’m not crazy.
13. December 2020 at 17:43
This reminds me of an episode where a woman got attacked on Tumblr for a harmless picture in which she wore a “kimono”.
The attacker wrote (and I leave out the f-words here): “why are you and that other white chic wearing kimonos you white people need to stop taking japanese culture also you two look horrible in the kimonos it doesnt even match you.”
And the woman replied with:
“First of all, it’s a yukata not a kimono.”
Followed by a photograph showing her Japanese passport.
😂
I think that sums it up pretty well: the privileged, mostly white, upper classes of Western nations attack other people for wearing the “wrong” clothes and for eating the “wrong” food. Even if it’s Japanese women wearing a yukata. It doesn’t matter.
She didn’t look Japanese enough, so she shouldn’t have worn it, even if she’s Japanese and even if the Japanese are thrilled by any foreigner wearing their clothes.
13. December 2020 at 17:59
Scott,
couldn’t agree more. Human life wouldn’t be possible without society, and societies are defined by their culture. Cultural appropriation may be one of the most important forms of learning there is. BTW just reading Joseph Henrich’s “The secret of our success”, which is all about culture driving everything else.
There are one or two instances though where I am also having trouble with cultural imitation. I do think it’s legitimate complaining about cultural imitation that is either a false pretense of belonging, or some dishonest kind of superficial aping behaviors that veer into caricature. Those are the areas where the whole concept probably came from, and legitimately so, before being blown out of proportion by academic theorists. And that would include areas where even racists enjoy cultural appropriation: blackface for example, or some forms of aping a culture to make it seem inferior or ridiculous.
13. December 2020 at 18:12
Christian,
on the food, I believe a lot has to do with raw materials, followed by intentional dilution of the elements perceived too “foreign”, and thirdly, by cost pressure and absence of competition for excellence. Finally, it’s also about whether there are enough people around that both know, and care, how the food is supposed to taste like.
Example of the first: French baguette that tastes “French” is really hard to find outside France, and it appears that the exact quality of flour you need for it has something to do with it. Example of the second: obviously, spicyness is often toned down etc. Example of the third: Good cuisine needs a lot of manual labor. As a result, it is often best in poor countries where Baumol’s cost disease has not yet forced restaurants to automate to save labor (frozen food etc). So when you import that delicious “poor country” food into a rich industrialized country with expensive labor, you compete with the frozen food competition… and now you have 2 choices, keep up your quality and be really expensive, or adapt to the competition and be less tasty and cheaper at the same time.
Your Espresso example is in the final category, and I have also felt puzzled about it. I believe this one is really down to culture – at some point near the border, there are enough people around to actually care how it tastes.
13. December 2020 at 18:51
Name one conservative or libertarian that has EVER mentioned the two words: “cultural appropriation”.
That term, and the usage, is a spawn of the “radical woke left” and their Marxist sympathizers.
There is a reason the CCP exterminate Uighers. They don’t look Han. And they have a different culture.
When you consistently support policies that the “woke” support, and you throw your public weight behind “BLM Marxists” which you did in July, you only increase the number of these sick and twisted people.
If you care about the country, then denounce these lunatics before we are also exterminated by some American version of the CCP.
13. December 2020 at 19:24
Scott: We’ll have to agree to disagree on the meat and potatoes. In other words, there’s no accounting for taste.
Christian: What had made this ‘German’ restaurant so great was that it was indeed very German. The restaurant sat in an area with a very old historical German population that had kept up much of the culture over the centuries, to the point that the restaurant was across the street from a German butcher’s shop.
Urban sprawl long ago ate up the actual independent character of the town but this historical town center is still quite German, although even that is slowly disappearing.
13. December 2020 at 19:36
“Obviously, it’s infeasible for entire cultures to give permission”…Chinese food, Snow White, and Disney
“Chinese food” is not owned by anyone (except in the cultural appropriation sense). Snow White is also not “owned” by Western culture. It’s owned specifically by Disney Corp. Every Westerner must pay Disney to use Snow White’s likeness and, thus, so does every Chinese person. Every individual is equal. No Chinese person needs to license public domain Chinese food and, thus, neither does any Westerner. If a specific Chinese person or corporation owned IP rights over a specific dish, where even other Chinese needed to pay licensing fees, then so would Westerners. In fact, one fundamental error in the notion of cultural appropriation is that it treats property as something that can be owned collectively by a culture. Property is owned by individuals and legal entities. You were right the first time, “Obviously, it’s infeasible for entire cultures to [license, and hence also impossible to own, IP]”.
13. December 2020 at 19:57
“opponents of cultural appropriation don’t care about the views of the ‘victimized’ culture.”
More examples: (1) 90% of Native Americans weren’t offended by the Washington Redskins name [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-poll-finds-9-in-10-native-americans-arent-offended-by-redskins-name/2016/05/18/3ea11cfa-161a-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html], (2) something like 75% of Latinos don’t consider themselves to be People of Color, and (3) 97-98% (depending on poll) of Latinos don’t like the “Latinx” label.
We don’t assume that White activists’ (e.g., environmentalists, anti-war protesters, religious activists) views are representative of most Whites. Quite the opposite, the label “activist” usually connotes someone out of the mainstream. We have right-wing and left-wing activists but not many centrist activists. When it comes to minorities though, we assume that activists represent the mainstream. If left-wing Native American activists object to the Redskins name, we assume that most other Native Americans must be left wing too. Ditto for left-wing Latinx activists. Maybe, the least appreciated “unconscious bias” is that we don’t allow minorities to own their own thoughts. We allow their minds and identities to be “appropriated” by activists and ignore what mainstream minorities think.
13. December 2020 at 20:28
Don’t place the west into one category like your woke friends.
There are many Asian Cuisines that are awful, so don’t pretend they are all wonderful. I don’t think you are eating pigs feet, or canned cat meat which is widely available, and LOVED in much of China. I just left Shanghai, where too Chinese were talking to us about their pig feet dinner.
There are many Italian, French, German, Greek, Spanish, Russian, and English cuisines that are very good too. They are not just meat and potatoes.
In fact, Italy is known worldwide — including in China — for having the world’s best cuisine. So the Asia vs West myth, and woke racist agenda you are propagating is simply false.
13. December 2020 at 20:31
Ted, “Intellectual property” is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure that the inventors of Asian cuisine would appreciate being compensated.
As far as Asian restaurants here, I’m sure the people in China who pirate software are also paid for their labor. But what about the inventors?
Christian, Great story. The racist woke Westerner assumed she couldn’t be Japanese because she didn’t look Japanese.
mbka, Yes, I was thinking of blackface when I mentioned “cultural ridicule”.
BC, You said:
“Chinese food” is not owned by anyone (except in the cultural appropriation sense). Snow White is also not “owned” by Western culture. It’s owned specifically by Disney Corp.”
Exactly. The problem is the double standard. We steal from the Chinese (and Germans) and complain when others steal ideas from us. Snow White should be in the public domain. She’s a character in a 200 year old children’s story.
13. December 2020 at 22:25
No, it’s even worse than that. The people leading the protest were not ethnically Japanese. Most were ethnically Chinese, and claimed that their feelings as Asian Americans were more relevant than the feelings of actual Japanese people.
13. December 2020 at 22:44
mbka,
I really like your examples. Your baguette story is so spot-on and so are your explanations. I live quite close to the French border, but it is impossible to get a real baguette on my side of the border.
The borders and markets in Europe might be open, yet even today it is often the case that you are in a completely different world as soon as you cross a border, especially when it comes down to food, farmers’ markets, restaurants, prices etc.
Scott,
yeah, it’s real story, here is a recap:
https://ruinmyweek.com/random/appropriating-japanese-culture-tumblr-troll/
@MichaelM
Yes, I’ve heard of those old German towns in America too, but never seen any. The Amish might come close as well.
I have not been to the US in a while, not since Covid-19 anyway, but the last time I was there I missed most of all: butcher shops, bakeries, chocolate and good showerheads. Bread seems to continue to be the most difficult. Sometimes one could find an Italian bakery, but then it’s still not the same kind of bread. For Europeans it is puzzling how Americans can live without European bread.
14. December 2020 at 03:08
Christian,
thanks for the compliments. And I totally agree on the bread issue. Good bread is awfully hard to find. I’ve never had bread in the US that I liked when I lived there. And in Singapore, missing nothing on food overall – this country has the best food I have ever seen in any country – it took me 20 years to discover a bakery where I liked the bread. Only in 2020 suddenly some bakery popped up that that makes real sourdough. Not the European dark bread of Germany or Austria, nor the French true baguettte. But honest to goodness great sourdough. Finally I can eat bread again. And it’s objectively good – my filipina wife loves it just the same. I’m so glad that the Taiwanese owners of that bakery finally managed to culturally appropriate it from, wherever.
14. December 2020 at 09:05
Scott – “‘Intellectual property’ is in the eye of the beholder.”. No, it’s actually a well-defined legal term that is continuously refined via litigation and legislation.
” I’m sure that the inventors of Asian cuisine would appreciate being compensated.
“As far as Asian restaurants here, I’m sure the people in China who pirate software are also paid for their labor. But what about the inventors?”
If you’re being facetious, okay. If not, you’re being absurd.
My favorite local restaurant is Thai, owned and operated by a man who grew up in Thailand. His mother taught him how to cook. Did his mother invent Thai cuisine?
A bit closer to your current home, to whom should Ming Tsai have paid royalties for his phenomenal success with Blue Ginger?
14. December 2020 at 15:38
Ted, You said:
“If not, you’re being absurd.”
Did Disney invent Snow White?
You said:
“‘Intellectual property’ is in the eye of the beholder.”. No, it’s actually a well-defined legal term that is continuously refined via litigation and legislation.”
It’s so well defined that it’s constantly fought over in litigation. So well defined that many if not most economists think the laws are far too strict. In any case, why should Asians accept the US definition? We benefit hugely from the way the concept is currently defined, and would be hurt with other definitions. (By “we” I mean our billionaires.) For instance, Europeans don’t want American food and wine producers to be able to put European names on their products. You might say the Europeans are wrong, but how is that different from our crazy IP laws?
15. December 2020 at 10:01
This is all pretty well summed up by the comedian Ryan Long’s Youtube bit “when wokes and racists actually agree on everything”
16. December 2020 at 18:19
It is part of my culture to appropriate the culture of others. And many other cultures do this, too.
Regarding westernized Asian food, I think it is great. Most Indians are vegetarian and an “authentic” Indian restaurant would have mostly (entirely) vegetarian options. But I like my Chicken Tikka Masala, and I think it is cool that Chicken Tikka Masala is the national dish of Great Brittan.
16. December 2020 at 22:53
Chinese cuisine is the ultimate example of necessity being the mother of invention. The power and richness and depth of Chinese culture cannot be denied, as much as I wish the other side had won the revolution.
Now, I do think it’s extremely easy for elites to enjoy cultural transactions and appropriations, while ignoring the perspectives of the working classes. I guarantee you they don’t give a rats ass about Snow White in Chinese theme parks, they want their wages to hold.
PS. let’s open the restaurants and music venues and the comedy clubs, we’re forgetting how to live.