Jump to content
JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

Recommended Posts

I can't give you hard and fast examples of when it's "okay" and honestly, the intent, positive or negative, is not very meaningful if you hurt people of that group, in doing so. A lot of people culturally appropriate in a way that they feel is positive, harmless, but still has a detrimental effect overall in how people perceive that culture and how they feel they have a right to access it. I can't tell you about a specific, hypothetical situation. Those usually are not super useful for the purposes of this because you still want a really hard line where I tell you it's okay or not and I'm saying that it could literally be okay to some people in that group and not others. What we're doing, what I'm doing as a fellow white person, is using my privilege and education, from what I've done, to tell you, another white person, about this stuff so maybe a person being oppressed in that way doesn't have to. Other white people checking you on your bad behavior or cultural appropriation is not because we feel we're somehow "above" you for doing so but rather because it often saves someone in that group from having to take time out of their day and possibly get attacked or worse. Now, there's definitely a deeper discussion to be had about how we as white people approach pulling people aside about this, certainly, but I think we've tackled the fundamentals here. 

 

I also think it would behoove people here to start looking up bigger resources - a lot of what I've learned is literally just from being in diverse groups of feminists and listening to what they have to say about people appropriating them. I also follow a few tumblrs like "this is not japan" and such, but those are not specifically designed for educating white people but rather Japanese people venting about cultural appropriating. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wow have there been a lot of posts today. I would've joined the discussion earlier, but I was at work. Jumping right in:

 

I can't give you hard and fast examples of when it's "okay" and honestly, the intent, positive or negative, is not very meaningful if you hurt people of that group, in doing so. A lot of people culturally appropriate in a way that they feel is positive, harmless, but still has a detrimental effect overall in how people perceive that culture and how they feel they have a right to access it.


This is the core part of cultural appropriation that I don't get. To take a specific example, how does a white person getting dreadlocks hurt black people? In what way is any black person's quality of life diminished by what a white person does with their hair?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wow have there been a lot of posts today. I would've joined the discussion earlier, but I was at work. Jumping right in:

 

This is the core part of cultural appropriation that I don't get. To take a specific example, how does a white person getting dreadlocks hurt black people? In what way is any black person's quality of life diminished by what a white person does with their hair?

 

 

In regards to black hair styles in specific, there's also the part where white people literally don't have the hair texture to support dreads. The term "dreadlocks" is straight from Rastafarian culture and has a lot of significance, so calling your hair locks/dreadlocks is already ignorant of what culture you're borrowing from. Then there's the addition of the fact that white hair is not meant to be locked. It's matted. You are matting your hair, often at the detriment of your hair's health. It's dirty, or sufficiently matted to the point that you have to shave your head when you are done having them and many white people have legitimately disgusting hair when it is "dreaded" which is frustrating, because black people's hair is seen as "nappy" and "dirty" despite their hair naturally being able to lock itself. Most people don't even know this because black hair textures are generally not centralized as part of hair and beauty practises, which is often why black women have to only go to other black hair salons because white women literally don't know and aren't taught how to take care of it. Black people's hair naturally locks up and can be un-locked, so to speak, because of what their hair specifically does. 

 

White people attempting to do this, along with cornrows, "afros", are often called novel, in vogue, cute, quirky, whereas black people who wear their hair as it naturally grows out of their heads, are shunned, called unprofessional, dirty or otherwise "unkempt." The whole industry of straightening and relaxing black hair is so to better mimic white centric beauty standards. Appropriating these hairstyles without considering the context, the political meaning, and generally, the suffering that black people go through is appropriation.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I apologize if I'm derailing here. Y'all have been helpful, but I have perhaps been a bit indirect with the intent of my questions.  My main issue surrounding all of this that the rubric by which it is used is entirely inconsistent.  The basis for which something is considered appropriation is based not necessarily on it's appearance, but on the perception of it's appearance.  When someone is accused of cultural appropriation and they deny it, by the very structure of the idea they are not given a means to defend their actions or disprove the claim.  I have a white friend who often uses black slang, turns of phrase and speech patterns, and is constantly accused of this.  Each time he denies it, and is not believed until he pulls out a picture of him and his two black adoptive parents (his biological parents died when he was a baby, and their friends adopted him).  We jokingly refer to this as his "race card", but it underscores the point that black culture is his culture, though his appearance wouldn't suggest this.  I find that this idea, not in it's principle but in it's application, encourages us to treat cultures as monoliths while at the same time berating us for doing so.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Wow have there been a lot of posts today. I would've joined the discussion earlier, but I was at work. Jumping right in:

 

This is the core part of cultural appropriation that I don't get. To take a specific example, how does a white person getting dreadlocks hurt black people? In what way is any black person's quality of life diminished by what a white person does with their hair?

 

 

 

>>In regards to black hair styles in specific, there's also the part where white people literally don't have the hair texture to support dreads. The term "dreadlocks" is straight from Rastafarian culture and has a lot of significance, so calling your hair locks/dreadlocks is already ignorant of what culture you're borrowing from. Then there's the addition of the fact that white hair is not meant to be locked. It's matted. You are matting your hair, often at the detriment of your hair's health. It's dirty, or sufficiently matted to the point that you have to shave your head when you are done having them and many white people have legitimately disgusting hair when it is "dreaded" which is frustrating, because black people's hair is seen as "nappy" and "dirty" despite their hair naturally being able to lock itself. Most people don't even know this because black hair textures are generally not centralized as part of hair and beauty practises, which is often why black women have to only go to other black hair salons because white women literally don't know and aren't taught how to take care of it. Black people's hair naturally locks up and can be un-locked, so to speak, because of what their hair specifically does. 

 

White people attempting to do this, along with cornrows, "afros", are often called novel, in vogue, cute, quirky, whereas black people who wear their hair as it naturally grows out of their heads, are shunned, called unprofessional, dirty or otherwise "unkempt." The whole industry of straightening and relaxing black hair is so to better mimic white centric beauty standards. Appropriating these hairstyles without considering the context, the political meaning, and generally, the suffering that black people go through is appropriation. 

 

Yes, I read that. I saw a description of why white people dreads didn't really work. What I didn't see was a description of how that led to diminished quality of life for black people, which is what I was asking about.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I apologize if I'm derailing here. Y'all have been helpful, but I have perhaps been a bit indirect with the intent of my questions.  My main issue surrounding all of this that the rubric by which it is used is entirely inconsistent.  The basis for which something is considered appropriation is based not necessarily on it's appearance, but on the perception of it's appearance.

 

This is something that really bothers me. People talking about cultural appropriation have this weird tendency to make minorities into homogenous monoliths: "Dreads are part of Black Culture" they say, as if all black people are the same. Dreads come from specific cultures, many black people have no more connection to those cultures than white people do, but no one has ever accused a black person of appropriating dreads.

I'm not sure I have anywhere to go with this idea, but I'd like to add it to the discussion.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

White people with "locked" hair often just have dirty hair because that's the way their hair works. Because of this, black people with locked hair are looked down on because their hair is seen as dirty when it isn't because that's just how their hair works. This leads to a bad perception of a natural black hairstyle, and can prevent them from being seen as professional thereby limiting the opportunities they are provided unless they spend the extra time and money to make their hair fit a white idea of what hair should look like.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

White people with "locked" hair often just have dirty hair because that's the way their hair works. Because of this, black people with locked hair are looked down on because their hair is seen as dirty when it isn't because that's just how their hair works. This leads to a bad perception of a natural black hairstyle, and can prevent them from being seen as professional thereby limiting the opportunities they are provided unless they spend the extra time and money to make their hair fit a white idea of what hair should look like.

So, white people do dreads badly, which lowers society's estimation of all people with dreads, which lowers the quality of life for all people with dreads? Why does that only apply to culture and not, well, everything? "Doing [X] badly lowers society's estimation of [X], thus harming all people who [X]" sounds universal. To take a random example, tattoos. Should I not get a shitty tattoo because it will lower society's estimation of tattoos and thus harm all people who have tattoos?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Dreadlocks, the term we contemporarily think of, is primarily from African and Islander cultures, and specifically was focused as a part of Rastafarianism. Yes, there are other cultures in the world that have practised matting or coiling hair, but locks, the locks we think of, are singularly a part of cultures that have hair textures that make dreadlocks a thing they can naturally wear as a part of their hair. White people who want to matt their hair or leave it so unkempt that it forms matted parts and is particularly at risk for dirt and mold, go right ahead. But you're not locking your hair and it stands as sort of callously adopting something that's really, on many levels, not for us. 

 

Something doesn't have to contribute material harm to a group to be appropriation - but it can be embarrassing, rude, callous, disrespectful, devalue that as part of a sacred or special tradition, normalize it away from the group in question while the group in question still has to deal with being made fun of or outwardly hurt BECAUSE it's still seen as part of their group. Black men have had to cut off their dreads to work at certain jobs. So if you're a white person who can have matted hair and not get fired from your job, but a black person can, can you not see how that's a double standard? It's not that white people "lower" the standard (even though it's SUPER GROSS), it's that white people can put these things on as a costume and suffer no ill effects from it, while simultaneously as a group (I'm speaking systemically here) oppress black people who have dreads. Granted, yes, it does have something to do with the fact that a lot of white people have treated the "black body" as other and therefore think that their hair is matted when it's not, but it's not 100% causal in that way, I don't think. (Not sure.)

 

To move away from specifically dreadlocks, since people want to hyperfocus on that, this is a huge complex topic and there's no one right answer but really specific examples keep getting derailed here. As for your friend, itsamoose, yes, he was probably raised speaking parts of AAVE. But guess what, is he white and not seen as intellectually inferior because of that? Does he get stopped by cops? He still can borrow from that culture and be shielded by white privilege. It might not be appropriation per se, and I think you can see the difference here, but it's still tied very heavily into what him being white allows him to do without significant negative effects. 

 

I keep circling back around to this, but a lot of these arguments seem to keep cycling back to "Well, I want to figure out a way when this is okay, or why does this person get to do XYZ and why can't I? Or why is THAT not cultural appropriation?" and my answer is, "It might be okay, it might not be, it depends, and sometimes people have different situations from you." But overall, you guys need to look at this macro-level. You need to dig into why this is bothering you to be considered somehow culturally appropriating and why it's frustrating that it seems inconsistent. Think less about the whole "oh my god, what if I do something WRONG" and think more about "Why might people bring this up with me or a friend? How can I remedy this about myself? Where can I learn more about this? Why is this important to know about?" 

 

If you fuck up, you can always at least apologize and try harder in the future. But we need to collectively understand the forces at work here which are tied very much into racism, oppression, colonialization.

 

Edit: I'm free for DMs but I need to eat my dinner. After that, someone else can speak about this topic, I think.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Given how often appropriation pops up perhaps it would be really useful that it gets its own thread?

 

This is something that really bothers me. People talking about cultural appropriation have this weird tendency to make minorities into homogenous monoliths: "Dreads are part of Black Culture" they say, as if all black people are the same. Dreads come from specific cultures, many black people have no more connection to those cultures than white people do, but no one has ever accused a black person of appropriating dreads.

I'm not sure I have anywhere to go with this idea, but I'd like to add it to the discussion.

 

There is this difficult balancing to be done about theoratical individualism and theoratical social structure... like we are our own individual self that is formed out of social context in which we live in.  Pure individualism is blind to the social influences so with that we end up with the kind of response like "affirmative action is racist" because it is blind to very real social structures where great number of minorities are more likely to be at a disadvantage... on the other hand is the concern you and moose are raising, in that if we go too extreme with pure social structural view, then we also end up with ironical backlash of categorizing people into certain roles purely based on race/gender/class on very broad stroke...

 

So denial of cultural appropriation as whole would be too individualistic, while using race as sole measure would be too vague and broad.  So I guess lot of initial irks that I, moose and you are feeling about this topic is because it is often presented as its broadest form, but I think that's just because it's the shortest way to express the idea so I think it's good idea to give people benefit of the doubt that they would consider variety of factors instead of assuming that they would apply it its most basic form.

 

Well at least that's my simple (maybe too simple, just a lay person's talk here afterall from me) view on it.

 

Edit: looks like AppleCider beat me to it.

 

Like, give people benefit of the doubt that when they are concerned about appropriation that they are willing to consider variety of factors.  It may be that some people won't and would apply super broad strokes.  But why default to the worst possible explanation?  Afterall aren't we also just asking to give us benefit of the doubt when we talk about intent or other factors that we are not necessarily some assholes?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

well but people with tattoos are not a race with centuries of history of oppression

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you fuck up, you can always at least apologize and try harder in the future. But we need to collectively understand the forces at work here which are tied very much into racism, oppression, colonialization.

I think a lot of people are scared of making that fuckup and being judged to be a bad person. I think it's also a legit criticism of a lot of leftist rhetoric that a bunch of people will jump to that 'bad person' label fairly readily, so that's not even really an unfounded fear. People want that hard dividing line so they can know they're definitely in the clear: Unfortunately, this is not a problem amenable to clear cut lines like that. It really is just something you gotta try your best at with the expectation that sometimes you're going to mess up, and hope that people are understanding when that happens.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think a lot of people are scared of making that fuckup and being judged to be a bad person. I think it's also a legit criticism of a lot of leftist rhetoric that a bunch of people will jump to that 'bad person' label fairly readily, so that's not even really an unfounded fear. People want that hard dividing line so they can know they're definitely in the clear: Unfortunately, this is not a problem amenable to clear cut lines like that. It really is just something you gotta try your best at with the expectation that sometimes you're going to mess up, and hope that people are understanding when that happens.

 

It's hard and uncomfortable to think about the fact that we all grew up in a racist and sexist and homophobic society and, no matter how hard we try, we're going to fuck up every now and then. That basically has to be okay, to a point. Everyone is going to be a bad actor at some point (especially Nicholas Cage), but that doesn't necessarily make them (or you!) a bad person.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To move away from specifically dreadlocks, since people want to hyperfocus on that, this is a huge complex topic and there's no one right answer but really specific examples keep getting derailed here. As for your friend, itsamoose, yes, he was probably raised speaking parts of AAVE. But guess what, is he white and not seen as intellectually inferior because of that? Does he get stopped by cops? He still can borrow from that culture and be shielded by white privilege. It might not be appropriation per se, and I think you can see the difference here, but it's still tied very heavily into what him being white allows him to do without significant negative effects. 

 

I keep circling back around to this, but a lot of these arguments seem to keep cycling back to "Well, I want to figure out a way when this is okay, or why does this person get to do XYZ and why can't I? Or why is THAT not cultural appropriation?" and my answer is, "It might be okay, it might not be, it depends, and sometimes people have different situations from you." But overall, you guys need to look at this macro-level. You need to dig into why this is bothering you to be considered somehow culturally appropriating and why it's frustrating that it seems inconsistent. Think less about the whole "oh my god, what if I do something WRONG" and think more about "Why might people bring this up with me or a friend? How can I remedy this about myself? Where can I learn more about this? Why is this important to know about?" 

 

I think this gets to where you and I differ on the issue.  When we go out to bars and the like, which is where I was exposed to him experiencing this, my friend is treated as though he is being held personally accountable for the cultural remnants of things diametrically opposed to the culture he identifies with.  I have been in similar situations with a female friend of mine who married a black man, and there have been much more high profile cases like Rachel Dolezal.  I get the emphasis on the macro level, or rather seeing this issue as a part of the trends and forces that shape our society, which I agree with in principle.  The application however confuses this with the individual, and that might seem like nothing for the most part, but I think you could make just as strong an argument for it helping create a multicultural society as it does to create a more polarized one.  One of the reasons I linked to that article about colleges earlier was to point out that these attempts, while often well-intentioned (such as policing microaggressions on college campuses) often lead to more polarization.  That isn't to say I think the concept should be abandoned, but that in practice it isn't what it purports to be.  There isn't a desire to figure out when it is OK or not, or whether it is ok or not, the emphasis on specifics is really just the second part of any good philosophical discussion.  I think we all agree that in principle the idea has merit, or is at least worth of merit, but we can't really gain an understanding of it without involving of concrete examples, typically edge cases.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Dreadlocks, the term we contemporarily think of, is primarily from African and Islander cultures, and specifically was focused as a part of Rastafarianism. Yes, there are other cultures in the world that have practised matting or coiling hair, but locks, the locks we think of, are singularly a part of cultures that have hair textures that make dreadlocks a thing they can naturally wear as a part of their hair. White people who want to matt their hair or leave it so unkempt that it forms matted parts and is particularly at risk for dirt and mold, go right ahead. But you're not locking your hair and it stands as sort of callously adopting something that's really, on many levels, not for us. 

 

Something doesn't have to contribute material harm to a group to be appropriation - but it can be embarrassing, rude, callous, disrespectful, devalue that as part of a sacred or special tradition, normalize it away from the group in question while the group in question still has to deal with being made fun of or outwardly hurt BECAUSE it's still seen as part of their group. Black men have had to cut off their dreads to work at certain jobs. So if you're a white person who can have matted hair and not get fired from your job, but a black person can, can you not see how that's a double standard? It's not that white people "lower" the standard (even though it's SUPER GROSS), it's that white people can put these things on as a costume and suffer no ill effects from it, while simultaneously as a group (I'm speaking systemically here) oppress black people who have dreads. Granted, yes, it does have something to do with the fact that a lot of white people have treated the "black body" as other and therefore think that their hair is matted when it's not, but it's not 100% causal in that way, I don't think. (Not sure.)

 

But at that point what you're describing isn't harming anyone, it's just benefiting from a double standard. And of course, it's shitty and racist that the double standard exists, and those who perpetuate it are racist, but it's not racist to benefit from a double standard. If it were, it would be racist for white people to commute to work unhassled, because they're benefiting from the double standard that black people do get hassled.

 

I see that you don't like specifics, but I don't understand how anyone is harmed by cultural appropriation, and the only way I can think of to determine whether or not any action is harmful is to drill down until you have a chain of cause-and-effect that establishes "I do X, which causes Y, which causes Z, which causes A, and A diminishes Alice's quality of life", and it's very difficult to do that on a macro scale.

 

 

You need to dig into why this is bothering you to be considered somehow culturally appropriating and why it's frustrating that it seems inconsistent.

 

It doesn't bother to me to be considered culturally appropriating because I've never been told that I'm doing it (literally never!). It bothers me that it seems inconsistent because I am an insufferable pedant who is bothered by everything that seems inconsistent.

 

well but people with tattoos are not a race with centuries of history of oppression

 

So cultural appropriation is bad and shouldn't be done because it diminishes the quality of life of a group with a history of being oppressed. But shitty tattoos are okay because the people whose quality of life you're diminishing haven't been universally discriminated against?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Now, this may be incredibly presumptive of me, and I would absolutely love to be proven wrong, but, am I right in assuming everyone participating in this discussion is white? This seems like a very white forum to me, even the podcast consists of upper class, San Franciscan white people. The demographic is white males between the ages of 18 and 35. I don't think any of us can say whether or not something is offensive to black people on their behalf.

 

I am white now, but my ethnicity was not considered white before -- and some still don't consider me white. The fun of being Jewish by birth.

 

I also speak as a gay man who is very aware of the way that gay culture appropriates the culture of black people (black women in particular) and does his best to keep those around him from doing that.

 

I also don't think you have to have any specific credentials, by birth or otherwise, to talk about appropriation. It's a widely discussed phenomenon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think any of us can say whether or not something is offensive to black people on their behalf.

 

I'm not contradicting that white people can't speak for black people, but this is hinting at a common attitude that I'd like to discuss.

I don't think you can be offended on behalf of anyone but yourself (you can perhaps say "I know Bob and personal experience tells me he too would be offended", but that's not the sort of thing I'm talking about). If a black person can be offended on behalf of black people in general, what happens when another black person comes in and says "On behalf of black people, I am not offended"? By allowing multiple people to speak for those other than themselves, you create a contradiction, and the only way to resolve it is to declare "anyone being offended on behalf of the group supersedes anyone being unoffended on behalf of the group" (or contrariwise that unoffended supersedes offended) .

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm fine with white people talking about racism and appropriation, the problem I have is when we start assuming and saying something is offensive to x without even asking them. It's like a weird form of racism where we assume we know what's best for the other race. Somethings are pretty obvious and should be called out, but when it gets a bit more complicated I still see people saying "x is definitely offensive to y's" without actually talking to y's.

 

When does this actually happen, though? More often this type of rhetoric is just used to silence social justice movements by casting them as all bourgeois white people. That was the ostensible thesis of #NotYourShield. I know the most conservative member of my circle of friends frequently talks about how he never hears black people talk about privilege and other hot button terms, only SJWs, as though that told any story other than his own field of view.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×