First thing's first: KEEP. THIS. SHIT. CIVIL. If you can't talk about race without resorting to childish insults and rude generalizations or getting angry at people who don't see it your way, leave the thread.
With that said, I bring you to what can hopefully be the general thread about race.
First, a few starter questions.
- How, if at all, do you feel your race affects your everyday life?
- Do you believe that white people (or whatever the majority race in your area is) receive privileges simply because of the color of their skin. How much?
- Do you believe minorities are discriminated against for the same reason? How much?
- Do you believe that assimilation of cultures is better than people trying to keep their own?
- Affirmative Action. Yea, Nay? Why or why not?
Also, a personal question from me.
- Why (in my experience, not trying to generalize) do white people often try to insist that they aren't white? I can't count the number of times I've heard "I'm not white, I'm 1/4th English, 1/4th German, 1/4th Scandinavian 1/8th Cherokee, and 1/8th Russian," as though 4 of 5 of those things aren't considered "white" by the masses. Is it because you have pride for your ancestry, or an attempt to try and differentiate yourself from all those "other" white people? Or something else altogether?
edited 30th May '11 9:16:04 PM by Wulf
Personally I'd rather we as as a culture move away form making assumptions about people based on their clothing or fashion choices, if nothing else id be real nice to kill the "she dresses like a slut" idea.
I don't see how there's that big a difference between "she's wearing that, she's obviously a slut" "he wears that, he's obviously a dude bro" or "she wears that, she's clearly an Asian fetishist". They all seem like rather nasty assumptions about another person's identity based purely on often irelivenirelivant visual information.
Fedora's or Trillbys? I'll admit to own both, though I only wear my Fedora and even then I wear it with a long-sleeve shirt, waistcoat and longcoat, and I look fabulous!
edited 23rd Jan '16 2:40:33 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt can be a problem when people are assumed to be appropriating simply because their shirt happens to be buttoned up along a diagonal near the shoulder in the same place a lot of traditional Chinese clothes
◊ do, even though it's not necessarily an idea unique to Chinese fashion.
edited 23rd Jan '16 2:50:25 AM by AlleyOop
unknowing: Yes I know it's not the same. But the general concept of 'being considerate and understanding depending on the context' applies.
Silasw: In execution, the concept of 'dressing like a slut' harms the person who looks like it. Same with the dudebro. The concept of 'fetishizing an entire race (and thus might be racist)' harms the other person.
edited 23rd Jan '16 5:56:14 AM by MrAHR
Read my stories!Only if the person is actually fetishising an entire race. What I'm talking about is making an automatic assumption based purely on a person's choice of clothing, if a person is not fetishising a race but is assumed to because of their choice of clothing how does that not harm them the same way other assumptions based on clothing harm other groups?
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranSilasw: ...Yeah, Asian and ESPECIALLY Asian-American women have a metric ton of examples about how non-Asian guys fetishize us like crazy.
A while ago, I got a shitton of suspicious Tumblr followers whose names were "Asian sluts," "sexy Asian girls," and other names that weren't even trying to hide their yellow fever.
And my photos on Tumblr aren't even close to "sexy" photos, they're legitimately artsy photos that I took in a shoot with my photographer friend, or Mad Max Fury Road themed photos.
Racism/ethnic prejudice in St. Cloud, MN: http://tinyurl.com/j5youu8
I do want to say that there is a difference between:
A white person receiving a kimono as a gift from a Japanese friend and wearing it when invited (which is cultural exchange)
and
A white person buying a kimono from a non-Japanese source and proceed to wear it completely out of context/disrespectful fashion - like applying yellowface and then getting wasted at a Halloween party (which is appropriation)
The first is a mutual consent and respect between both parties. The second... not so much.
edited 24th Jan '16 1:57:46 AM by PippingFool
I'm having to learn to pay the price
It doesn't always need to be a sacred object to be fetishised/appropriated. The kimono is a instantly recognisable product of Japanese culture and these days it has a strong association with Geishas (at least in the West) so while not "sacred" like a war bonnet or art associated with DDLM, it's still an important piece of cultural heritage.
Hence why it's given out as a gift.
edited 24th Jan '16 5:18:42 AM by PippingFool
I'm having to learn to pay the priceWearing a Kimono really isn't bad, I mean it's akin to say a Japanese wearing shirts with English on em. Many who wear em might not even know what the shirt actually says it's just trendy. read this shirt... Yeah she wore that to a concert. Also nsfw language.
◊
But even more fancy as most Japanese nowadays don't even own one, how to put one on, or even know what the patterns actually mean in terms of marital status.
Now wearing a Kimono or Yukata wrong might be flat out rude or laughable such as having it pulled right over left means you are dressed for your own funeral.
Now Yellow Face and trying to talk with a bad accent however...
edited 24th Jan '16 5:46:28 AM by Memers
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I have heard stories about people seeing pictures of whites in kimonos and accusing them of cultural appropriation. In some cases these kimonos were gifts.
My main point is that this whole thing seems kind of dumb. Does it matter if your clothing or whatever is given to you by a POC? It's either okay to wear it or not.
* Shrug *
I know. Is a white American cosplaying as one of the Doctors committing cultural appropriation because it's a British program?
Keep Rolling OnI mean, it's not that hard to put a short message on your facebook photo of you in a kimono saying "This was a gift from so an so" or "I was invited to such a cool event by such and such" and hwatnot.
It's not gonna stop some of the greenhorns from being overeager and reacting to the pictures without readin, but it will put to rest uneasy fears from most others.
That's an intellectually dishonest argument. Stuff like suits and Lolita fashion aren't cultural appropriation because it just so happens that in the world we live in, "White" - and in particular WASP - culture is the dominant one and people are already coerced into assimilating said culture.
Plus "white" is mainly referring power structure rather than a single "culture". Hence the shifting state of the Irish and pale skinned Latinos over time.
edited 24th Jan '16 6:00:07 AM by PippingFool
I'm having to learn to pay the price![]()
So it is only cultural appropriation if the culture being appropriated is the dominant one?
For real? That is bullshit. The Japanese and Chinese were hardly the dominant culture in the Western societies still managed to achieve a good penetration due to immigration and attractive characteristics such as cuisine and clothing yet the Western cultures had a real hard time penetrating those cultures, mostly due to strict social roles and a good amount of xenophobia, in fact a good share of the story of both China and Japan was them and their leaders giving the finger to Westerners and their culture.
This is also arrogant as fuck, it essentially assumes that the whole world is virtually dominated by Anglo-Saxons and all other cultures and countries lack agency of their own, when the build up came from the amalgamation of previous cultures like the Indian, Roman and Arab cultures.
Even then, specially the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans are the dominant cultures in their respective countries and the Asian region, still adopting Western words and lingo out of the same foreign fetishism the Western cultures did, essentially a bastardization of English words, fashion and cuisine, with little care for their proper meaning.
Not even 70 years ago the Lingua Franca was French and Latin a bit further than that was the proto Italian and Arab languages.
Your examples were essentially caricatures of an insensitive bigoted asshole, if a westerner buys a Kimono simply because he or she thinks it is pretty it shouldn't be more offensive or insulting than a non English speaker buying a T-Shirt with mangled English written on it.
Cultures don't exist in a bubble, they change, they adopt traits of other cultures they find interesting or attractive, that isn't a bad thing. It would be pretty hard for someone to be a racist asshole when they actively enjoy things from other cultures they are supposed to hate.
Rock and Blues did help bring the US black culture to the main stream in an incredibly racist era, the pre WWII Chinese workers and the US high's society helped the Chinese war effort against Japanese occupation instead of being another war somewhere no one gives a fuck, same thing with the Post WWII US/Japan relationship where the rising influence of the Japanese firms and market allowed the entry of aspects of the Japanese cultures in the US and European societies helping normalize the relationship between nations.
It isn't free of issues, there are people who have fetishes about other cultures, seem them as purer or more vivid and interesting than their own and people who use icons and symbols from other cultures in a stereotypical and disrespecting manner as a form of ridicule.
It is the plain difference between someone using a Mohawk haircut because it is a fashionable old cut that is named after a Native American tribe and someone wearing that feather crown chanting "Heyhowareyou heyhowareyou".
Even then the whole arguments against cultural exchange end up being either insulting or condescending.
You see xenophobes and nationalists pushing against cultural exchange as a mean to keep cultural and even racial purity, like the Korean and Japanese right wing or worse the Turkish government. Then you have a bunch of overly sensitive condescending assholes who end up thinking that having anything foreign on you is an offense to any other culture.
For the fucks sake, I am a Brazilian, my whole country's culture wouldn't exist the way it is with all its good and bad without cultural exchange and the absorption of different cultures, such as the Native American, African and European. Neither would the US or even Europe for that matter, not even Asia as we know it if not for the Han's and the Khans, which absorbed and spread the cultures of the peoples they conquered.
Inter arma enim silent legesFor real? That is bullshit.
edited 24th Jan '16 11:49:38 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Yeah, definitely echoing how the important distinction between "normal racism" and "cultural appropriation" is that the former is plain old racism, but the latter is PROFITING off of racist ideas without regard or consent of the culture being sold.
By the way, Superhero Nation
is a really fantastic superhero-genre website with craptons of fantastic writing advice...
And the guy dismissed my superhero script concept solely because "you need a concept that doesn't revolve around your superhero being Asian." NO SHIT?! A SCRIPT THAT DEALS WITH AN ASIAN-AMERICAN GANGSTER WHO ACTS LIKE A SUPERHERO, BUT NEEDS TO PROCESS HIS SELF-HATE AND TRAUMA BEFORE HE CAN FINALLY FLIP THE STEREOTYPE AND ACKNOWLEDGE HIMSELF AS A SUPERHERO, REVOLVES TOO MUCH AROUND RACE?!
And then he said that 1) I shouldn't try to solve whitewashing by making my play so damn Asian, because trying to fight against Hollywood or white-dominant theater companies isn't going to work, and 2) maybe I should figure out another concept that can stand up on its own so it can reach the widest audience possible.
Why the fuck does it hurt so much when I run into white privilege from someone who's clearly intelligent?
I can't even with this boy, though.
edited 24th Jan '16 12:47:29 PM by Sharysa
Seriously, anyone who gets offended over someone wearing a mohawk is just being dumb, to be blunt. It's actually Older Than Dirt (fossilized remains from 2000 BCE have been found of a man wearing one).
On the other hand, calling it a mohawk probably is a little insensitive...because the tribe the modern mohawk actually came from was the Pawnee, and the tribe that gets the credit is not actually called the Mohawk (which is a Dutch transliteration of one of their place names). Their real name is instead the mouthful Kanien'kehaka.
The more you know...
Yeah. A lot of times it's fixing things in more subtle ways.
For instance, you want forehead jewelry? Fine. You want it inspired by Bindis? Fine. You want to call it a Bindi? Ehhhh do your research first.
Read my stories!

Fedora are actually fairly normal here, especially among older people, as are, strangely enough, Stetsons.
I'm planning to buy a bowler, when I have the cash. Bowlers are cool.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.