Vicariously Offended

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It's not. People use stuff from other places and call them different names all the time

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I think each of the described situations has a different specific answer because the topic is nuanced. As stated above, it can sometimes to be messy to say who owns some piece of culture. But beyond that, the most useful tool is an examination of socioeconomic power dynamics.

If there is a cultural group that is poor, and an outsider from a rich/wealthy group commodifies and sells their culture, while giving nothing to those people, you'd probably agree that that's a shitty thing to do. Their culture obviously had some kind of material wealth value that they received none of.

However, if you take a situation where both parties are well off it seems a lot less shitty. Especially if the cultural group in question is already commodifying and profiting off the same piece of culture.

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Yeah and one of the reasons why we will never get again paper Mario references in other Mario games

God-damnit

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Rodríguez cousin knew how to pack heat

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It's called White Savior Complex.

"Only I, a white person can save you from-- pick a thing. Because I believe you are incapable of fending for yourself, I shall be offended for you!"

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I am Latin American. We couldn't even give an atomic sliver of a speck of fuck about gringos using part of our culture.

If anything it's enjoyable, one more for the family.

And if we get offended? Don't worry. We don't need anyone from a "dominant culture" to look down on us or speak for us.

We can speak and do speak for ourselves

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Sharing culture isn't cultural appropriation.

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That's weird. The complaints I see online about cultural appropriation are mostly directed at corporations trying to sell ethnic stuff.

Those personal attacks as displayed in this meme are usually centrist strawmen vilifying progressives.

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Nah fam only one of them is really, the other one is your standard racist disguised as a progressive

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As with most things, it's a continuum. Some assimilation is good, a hairstyle, a clothing style, food, even customs. Sometimes certain people can go too far, and it gets more problematic. Think the jeweler in Snatch that isn't Jewish but pretends to be. The episode of The Neighborhood with Nicole Sullivan. Rachael Dolezal.

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If you can't unravel the knot of cultural ownership, then does anyone really own it? It would appear to me that "everyone" owns it at that point and can partake in it freely and adapt it to their wants an needs. And no matter the culture, there is always socioeconomic disparities within that group. No matter how small or downtrodden they may appear to you. Someone is always going to be a little bit better off than you and someone else is always going to have a little more power than you.

So is Tostitos racist for not mailing checks to every Mexican person everywhere? Because they sure as hell are making bank selling those chips and Salsa to you. OMG! are YOU part of the problem?

zqps

Great, let's retread the right-wing's favorite progressive strawmen for teh lulz. Any other culture war bullshit I should feel unjustly attacked over?

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According to you.

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I was with you until the last sentence. Can't say I agree with the n word being a beautiful expression of English.

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You're being trolled, there's nobody saying that unless online trolls convinced them. It's concern trolling to stoke division.

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This. The social Justice warriors that are peddling the cultural appropriation line are not representative of the culture or the people of that culture, their opinions, or feelings on the matter.

What we, as a society, need to do, is let cultures be offended when they feel offended, and not assume that they will be offended by something that we think they should be offended by.

Short version is: don't be offended on behalf of someone else.

You don't know them.
You don't know their culture.
You don't know what they see as offensive.

Stop assuming you do.

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Kimono literally just means "thing to wear".

I've heard multiple Japanese people tell me how funny it is how much foreigners concern themselves over wearing... Clothes.

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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).