Cultural Appropriation

a reply to: ThatDamnDuckAgain

The USA is supposed to be Borg culture. You come here and we adopt you and your culture will adapt to service us. We will add your cultural distinctiveness to our own.

It's the melting pot concept.

Most of us adopted American ways without completely giving up our own native ways. As a result, I'm now a 40 something white woman in the heart of the country who has British roots. We have some traditional British foods and practices in our family traditions that have carried down.

At the same time, my recipe book is full of recipes from other cuisines and cultures. We make Middle Eastern, Mexican, and a few Asian dishes on a regular basis in addition to standard American staples. My husband is from Tennessee, so we have some Southern style fare like chicken and dumplings and corn bread in there too.

I've learned how to roll my own sushi.

I vacation on my stomach and search out at least one food adventure on every trip we take. Someday, I hope to find a real Chinese restaurant with all the nitty gritty type dishes, and I want to have something adventurous when I do - chicken feet or testicle soup or something.

I recently started practicing tae kwon do which is Korean, but my instructor is a typical American and my class has all races in it. Is that appropriation?

I think it would be crazy to live in a country as great as this one is that affords us so much wonderful variety and then restrict ourselves based on race.

All roads lead to Rome, an when in Romd do as the Romans do.

Its twisted because America industrial revolution was brought about to other nations during it the many campigns it has, an has even revoltuionized those nations too.

Vietnam didnt have any railroads before the war, an it did after. America living standards or what it calls the dream seems to be evweyone else. Thing is, is it cultral, or just merely technolgical.

India has Bollywood...juzt saying.

Something else to consider about it:

Sometimes, when these old practices from different cultures are kept within a culture so strictly, they die out with that culture. The young grow up leaving the old ways and gradually you lose so much. When practices are allowed to be cross-pollinated to new peoples and places and their appeal attracts others, they grow and thrive and part of the vast human story lives on even if it isn't exactly with the original people always or even done for quite the same reasons, but when done properly, you learn the roots of a thing so even that will never fully die.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and when you have a great thing, others want to engage with it too, even if they aren't like you. That's how you get true diversity, not this separate but equal nonsense the current trends are pushing.

And when everyone is learning and engaging with the best bits of what everyone else has to offer in their cultures, then we learn about and from each other and that brings true unity. You don't fear what you understand, rather you learn to respect it.

a reply to: Nyiah

(do not use chopsticks in the left hand, it's very rude)

I wasn't aware of that, and I think it's a good example of what I was trying to say earlier. Someone within that culture would of course know not to use chopsticks in the left hand, but I wouldn't... so while I don't think someone accidentally doing so would be necessarily offensive, someone doing so and then demanding that it is OK would be offensive.

BTW, while I do not enforce the "no shoes in the house" thing, I don't (normally) wear shoes in the house and don't mind if others remove theirs. It does help keep the floors clean, and I consider it more comfortable. Shoes are meant to protect the feet from obstacles such as sharp sticks or rocks... not many of those on my floor.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

There are those little things. As a Westerner, we wouldn't think twice when learning how to use chopsticks. We'd simply learn with our dominant hand, and of course, most of us would pick the skill up with our right as most of us are right handed. I did.

In tae kwon do, you learn a lot of weapons. I've been through this with my son. Most of them can be learned either right or left, depending on which hand is your dominant. However, they are learning gum do (sword) this cycle, and it is completely different. There is no left hand for it. All techniques are taught and learned right hand dominant.

There is likely a reason for it, just as there is likely a cultural reason why the chopsticks are only used with the right.

Adele got into trouble recently for appropriating the body of a hot chick and doing her hair in batnu knots

Herman Mashaba got very rich selling hair relaxer and skin whitening cream.

Cultural and class aspirations, it is what drives fashion and advertising.

I was sad when rap flooded out grunge in the 90s.

What culture shall I appropriate today?

Muaha Muahahahah Bwahahahaha.

*strokes mustache and goatee*

For it is I, White Devil, fondler of cultures.

Hide your cultures I'm raping all your folkways.

I've just been informed I am a beige devil, so adjust accordingly.

a reply to: Lysergic
easy tiger.

Here is a funny stroy

The EFF has threatened to shut down Clicks stores countrywide on Monday if the company does not do so itself.

This after the health and beauty retailer came under fire on Friday, for an advert in a campaign run on its website where it published an image of African hair, which was labelled as dry and damaged, while an example of white hair is described as fine and flat.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is a South African left-wing[17][18] to far-left[19][20][21] pan-Africanist political party. It was founded by expelled former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius Malema, and his allies, in 2013