Vicariously Offended

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Good thing I'm not part of the "dominant culture". Would hate to speak for you. Just speaking for myself.

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I think a big part of appropriation is either pretending the thing is from a different culture or just divorcing it from any existing cultural context. People just don't think about what an actual effect is so just knee jerk accuse anything vaguely similar of cultural appropriation.

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As a Quebecois, I like that Canadians like poutine. I don't like that they pretend they have invented it. I also like that they like maple syrup and the traditions surrounding it (cabane à sucre). I don't like that they appropriate it as a thing of their own (we produce 90% of global maple syrup).

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And katana just means "one-sided blade." But when you deliberately use a foreign word in English to describe something, you're talking about a specific kind of that thing.

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Idk if I'm just old now and it's not the parties I go to but I'm sure glad that "sexy native american" isn't really a Halloween costume anymore.

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Exactly, just like when you have bullies in high school. Don't assume that just because someone is wandering around mocking and relentlessly making fun of another student that the other student isn't ok with it. We need to leave space for the victims to come forward if and when they feel uncomfortable, and not use our positions of authority to try to provide social support to people who we view as victims. After all, it worked for Anita hill and everyone who came after.

See I can make a stupid argument too

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That's an interesting one. It's not like you can stop music and explain the instrumentation in the middle of a song. I have seen in live shows when they use uncommon instruments they'll explain it either at the start or between songs.

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It's mainly just that, since information can be copied without removing access to the original from the current possessor of that information, I don't see a good justification to restrict use of it. If you steal something, the original owner loses while you benefit. Since the unexpected loss is probably felt worse, this is a net negative and therefore a bad thing. But, if you copy information (which IP by nature is), you can give it to an arbitrarily large number of people without even taking it from the original, enough benefit to in my opinion outweigh the frustration that loss of control causes. Capitalism adds another element given it also ties monopoly over a given bit of information to artist compensation, but even without capitalism, I don't think information should be seen as property

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No, that's an entirely different thing

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"Wie de schoen past trekt 'em aan."

If you feel spoken to by this comic then maybe you got a problem...

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When I was growing up in the 80s and some frat-bro types ran around town dressed like the Three Amigos while swilling beers and fumbling their Spanish, parents and teachers would call it "tacky" and "annoying" and "juvenile".

Now, in the 20s, the children of those frat-bros puts on the same outfit and does the same stupid shit. But their peers are the ones rolling their eyes and telling them that they don't look cool, while the parents clap and take pictures and get off on a romanticized youth lived vicariously through their frat-bro kids.

So the frat-bros become resentful. They go home, pull out their crayons, and make up a naked brown man to give them permission to behave miserably. And then they go on podcasts and make Instagram reels explaining how - um, aktuly - if you don't think the tourist-trap Spirit Halloween tier get-up I'm wearing on Cinco-De-Drinko to celebrate getting wasted is cool, you're the real racists.

Then Budwiser releases an "Authentic Mexican Logger" and the same frat-bros lose their fucking minds because their favorite beer company just Went Woke.

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But that’s not as controversial.

It IS controversial. Its just controversial for the same chuds who demand the right to throw on brown-face and call it cosplay. As soon as a beer company starts releasing their label in Spanish or putting a foreign flag on a product or otherwise identify with the wrong kind of foreigner, a big segment of the population loses its mind.

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If you go around being publicly offended for another group because you saw someone wear or eat something YOU think they shouldn't becuase "That's not YOUR culture". Then YOU might be a "White Savior".

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That's a different thing

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I think he was a Salamanca.

zqps

Agreed on the first point. But even in progressive circles I don't see this kind of behavior anywhere near as often as people make it out to be, to the point that it seems like a strawman. It's been memed to the point that the very term has become a favorite of right-wing culture war pundits.

zqps

Do you know what a strawman is?

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Now, in the 20s

Fuck, my back

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The know of cultural ownership is absolutely unravel-able in many situations, just not all. In some situations it's exceedingly clear and in others, not. I think you're trying very hard to find hard-and-fast, absolute rules for these situations, but they don't exist. The keyword is nuance, nuance, nuance. Each situation is different and each situation deserves scrutiny as to whether or not it crosses the line. This is a judgement call made by each and every person.

If you really want me to engage on the specific situation of Tostitos/chips and salsa I will, so you can see the process of my scrutiny.

First, I think that as any item of culture becomes more and more diffused (ethically or not), it's original ownership becomes diluted. Things that were once appropriation in the distant past, if done today, would not be considered as such as the context around them changes (in a myriad of ways).

So, if Tostitos started as a company today, I'd say making chips and salsa is not appropriation. But, if Tostitos was founded a long time ago, before chips and salsa were a foodstuff ubiquitous across the US and Tostitos was created by one outside of that cultural ownership, then I'd say it likely was appropriation. It also might be fair to argue that in the modern day for Tostitos specifically, "the damage has been done" and there really isn't much fixing it, so consuming their products isn't necessarily problematic. But this would be a point as to why identifying appropriation early on and stopping it is especially important.

As to whether I'm part the problem - for Tostitos no, but for other things almost certainly yes. I'm human and I don't know everything, and I've certainly made mistakes in this area, but that's okay. What's important is that once I've learned something is in fact a mistake, I own up to it and stop making that mistake.

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I think academically, derogation is often considered as a component. Like profiting off a culture while simultaneously despising the culture and the people who own it.