I have asked four black people I know about whites wearing dreadlocks. The answers ranged from my cousin‘s Nigerian wife; „Haha, nah, it’s fine.“ to my neighbor „That’s something only white women care about“.
It’s a step on the spiral of moral purity, that doesn’t actually improve the life of any black person.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I hate the term “cultural appropriation”. I love it when people take interest and want to participate in my traditions! That’s what makes being a human fun!
Sure, sometimes buttfaces will make caricatures of my people, but they will do that anyways and no amount of PC policing will ever stop people who want to be jerks.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Cultural appropriation is something like McDonald’s advertising a new Indian burger and it’s just a beefburger with some chillies in it, i.e. someone’s attempting to gain from a bastardised caracature of the culture that wouldn’t be something someone from that culture would participate in. Right wing pundits intentionally misrepresented it as things like eating a traditional dish from another culture to make it sound stupid so people would dismiss it, and then people who’d only heard the misrepresentation but wanted to do the right thing or at least appear to be doing the right thing started acting like it was immoral to participate in any culture you weren’t born into.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I would call your example fusion cuisine, which is the best kind and an absolute win. I guess if I was feeling extra cynical I would call it pandering, but I still fail to see why it’s a bad thing.
Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Because its someone (usually white) bastardizing/stealing your culture while making money off of it.
And how is it fusion when traditionally Indians don’t eat beef? Thats like calling a bacon cheese burger the Arab burger.
Bgugi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Making a pan-Indian beef burger would be complicated at best.
The more common example would be misuse of native American war bonnets at music festivals and the like.
Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
By that logic you can’t call ppl out on anything because jerks are gonna be jerks. If ppl didnt call jerks out on their bullshit minstrel shows would still be a thing
Soleos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Welcome participation in your culture is not appropriation. Appropriation happens when a tradition is taken and decontextualized from its original culture, adopted by mainstream culture, and changed to mean something else without buy-in from the originating culture.
You know your culture has been appropriated when some rando who isn’t even part of your culture explains to you how you’re wrong about your tradition because it doesn’t look like their mainstream version. For example, explaining to an Indian person that yoga is a physical exercise program where you continuously shift between isometric stretches.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It’s funny you chose that example. People forget (or are probably just completely unaware due to language barriers) that there are a ton of really kooky quack yoga gurus that were born in India, live their whole lives in India, and have a cult following of exclusively Indians. They say some absolutely batshit stuff and most Indians roll their eyes and mock them the same way that you do with the crunchy granola crowd here.
Soleos@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Sure, that happens and the two aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s kinda like the difference between a close family member shitting on your bed and some random tourist flying halfway around the world only to shit on your bed–it hits different.