Vicariously Offended

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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.

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The popularization of Black American music is indeed a complex topic in this arena. Like, obviously a lot of cultural outsiders made a lot of money off of the situation, but there were at least some benefits to the arrangement, although whether or not they outweighed the cons is perhaps difficult to say. For example, if outsiders had abstained entirely from profiting, what would have changed? Obviously more of the money made percentage-wise would've gone to the owning culture, but would there have been less money overall? Would it have reached the same levels of popularity? If so, it almost certainly wouldn't've happened as quickly, right? These are difficult questions to answer and I'm not educated enough in this area to really offer any. So, while not worth a damn, my gut feelings is that there are at least some strong arguments as to why overall the absence of outsider profiting would've been better for the owning culture.

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I understand that it's a loan word, but my point was that a kimono's cultural meaning is largely similar to how we would say, "Let me go find something to wear". A kimono is a specific way to cut a single piece of cloth into a garment, but the result is still just clothes.

It's like policing what is or isn't "queso cheese". It's really not that big of a deal.

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Only superficially. Dune deconstructs the entire heroic archetype. Paul Atreides’ emergence as the hero and leader of the Fremen is completely artificial and engineered for colonialist purposes (so that House Atreides can control the supply of spice with minimal resistance from the population of Arrakis).

The plan backfires, of course, as the Fremen jihad ends up being more successful than they’d anticipated and spreads off-world.

Schadrach

Rachael Dolezal.

Isn't race at least as much a social construct detached from any physical or biological reality as gender is? If so, why wouldn't transrace people be valid for essentially the same reason that transgender people are?

You can go down the rest of the radqueer rabbit hole from there, since most of their positions are just taking positions related to mainstream LGBTQ identities and extending them to ones less accepted by the mainstream LGBQ community, like xenogenders and being trans-things-other-than-gender.

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I think you can apply the socioeconomic and derogation lenses here. Socioeconomically, Japan has been ahead of nearly every other Asian country for a long while, with only places like China and Singapore recently catching up to them. So, I think that makes it feel okay. And derogatively, I don't think these restaurants are successful because they specifically aren't being run by Japanese people. So that's good on the front as well. So I'd say, yeah, overall it feels fine. However, I'm not Japanese and don't have a wealth of additional context that might provide counter arguments.

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Just imagine a football team using the quaker oats guy as a mascot and calling them "The crackers."

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That's not really the same thing. People that appreciate another culture and enjoy and use aspects of a culture in their life and might be offending someone accidentally and a bully who is trying to harm someone deliberately are different. Intentions do actually mean something.

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Sorry for the double reply, but another useful perspective in this is derogation. I often forget this idea because I'm very class minded, but it's also very important. This is the idea that a culture can be profited off of while simultaneously despising the people that practice it. In practice, this exists as a business around a specific cultural item succeeding specifically because the business is NOT owned/operated by the original cultural group. Some of the best examples of this are around Black American culture in the US. Some cultural products were only valuable AFTER they were owned, operated, and proliferated by White Americans. Which is kinda just Racism Classic but allowing certain useful things to cross the line for profits sake.

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I won't disagree there's nuance.

I'll disagree if you think the person I responded to cares about that one bit vs just complaining about the woke mob of social justice warriors.

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I wasn't responding to the cartoon, but to one comment asking why cultural appropriation is a bad thing.

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Behold, i have drawn you as the soyjack savior complex.