Cultural appropriation is something like McDonald’s advertising a new Indian burger and it’s just a beefburger with some chillies in it, i.e. someone’s attempting to gain from a bastardised caracature of the culture that wouldn’t be something someone from that culture would participate in. Right wing pundits intentionally misrepresented it as things like eating a traditional dish from another culture to make it sound stupid so people would dismiss it, and then people who’d only heard the misrepresentation but wanted to do the right thing or at least appear to be doing the right thing started acting like it was immoral to participate in any culture you weren’t born into.
I would call your example fusion cuisine, which is the best kind and an absolute win. I guess if I was feeling extra cynical I would call it pandering, but I still fail to see why it’s a bad thing.
It doesnt make sense to have a beef burger called an Indian burger.
You want a legit example of cultural appropriation? How about white ppl claiming for decades that rock and roll was invented by Elvis while he was ripping off Chuck Berry.
Or techno and house was invented in Europe?
Or the whole white girls in native head dresses mentioned below.
Another example is Western Yoga. It repackages Indian philosophy, spirituality, and associated physical exercise as wholesome exotic exercise for western women. Yoga and eastern philosophy and spirituality has entered the West from the 19th century on. It has developed its own practices, distinct and separate from the Indian original, while retaining the vocabulary and exotic trinkets around it. I don’t hear many complaints about that though, neither from Indians, nor from the woke (for lack of a better concise term). Mindfulness meditation has completely done away with the exotic decorative elements.
It can be difficult to draw a line between cultural admiration, idea exchange, intercultural learning, and exploitative appropriation.
A related topic that gets no attention in the USA is cultural imperialism. The USA is so dominant culturally, it suppresses and even extinguishes local culture and languages around the world, including Western countries in Europe. That’s not only rap music, Hollywood, and blue jeans, it extends to philosophical and political ideology. Terms like PoC and white privileged are mindlessly copied to Europe. Even though anti Slavic prejudice is widespread in Western Europe, even though they are just as white, or even more blond and blue eyed (Poles and Baltics) than Western Europeans. Turks, Greeks, southern Italians, Lebanese, Cypriots, and Israelis basically look the same, but get treated differently. Still people try to shoehorn this into the term PoC, instead of developing their own models, that fit the reality in Europe. It becomes more problematic when using BIPoC, as lots of countries in Europe have indigenous majorities.
This cultural political dominance lead to huge protests during Black Lives Matter also in Europe, even though it’s a minor issue in Europe. Drowning refugees in the Mediterranean die in far higher numbers, than from police shootings. Black Europeans usually don’t have a history of being enslaved either. Most came from Africa by their own desire. (White European) Activists still rather reuse American ideas regarding this, instead of developing their own more fitting analysis.
White privilege is definitely a thing in Europe. I dont see too many white looking Slavs, Balkans, or Turks getting stopped by police and asked for their papers in the Ubahn or HBF compared to Arabs and Africans.
Also
A new paper by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) reveals the differences between people’s experiences with police stops. It shows that Black people, Asians and Roma are still more likely to be stopped and searched by police
And the Africans that immigrate to Europe often do so due the economic exploitation thats keep their countries in continuous poverty by the European rape of Africa in the 19th and 20th century. The “choice” isnt much of an actual choice…
Cultural appropriation is something like McDonald’s advertising a new Indian burger and it’s just a beefburger with some chillies in it, i.e. someone’s attempting to gain from a bastardised caracature of the culture that wouldn’t be something someone from that culture would participate in. Right wing pundits intentionally misrepresented it as things like eating a traditional dish from another culture to make it sound stupid so people would dismiss it, and then people who’d only heard the misrepresentation but wanted to do the right thing or at least appear to be doing the right thing started acting like it was immoral to participate in any culture you weren’t born into.
I would call your example fusion cuisine, which is the best kind and an absolute win. I guess if I was feeling extra cynical I would call it pandering, but I still fail to see why it’s a bad thing.
Making a pan-Indian beef burger would be complicated at best.
The more common example would be misuse of native American war bonnets at music festivals and the like.
Because its someone (usually white) bastardizing/stealing your culture while making money off of it.
And how is it fusion when traditionally Indians don’t eat beef? Thats like calling a bacon cheese burger the Arab burger.
What do you think about t-shirts in Asia with bad English spelling, that resemble American colleges‘ designs.
Many Muslims and Christians in India eat beef. India is an extremely diverse country with many languages, cultures, and religions.
Btw. Indian Sadhus often sport dreadlocks as well. These are ascetic spiritual men, who do yoga all day, smoke weed, and live off donations.
Among the 101,000 surveyed households, 9,711 reported having consumed beef/buff. Using population weights given by NSSO to arrive at total population estimates, it can be said that out of 1.1 billion people, 83.5 million consumed this meat variety, which is around 7.35% of the total population.
It doesnt make sense to have a beef burger called an Indian burger.
You want a legit example of cultural appropriation? How about white ppl claiming for decades that rock and roll was invented by Elvis while he was ripping off Chuck Berry.
Or techno and house was invented in Europe?
Or the whole white girls in native head dresses mentioned below.
Or just Post Malone in general
I can keep going
Is an actual good example.
Another example is Western Yoga. It repackages Indian philosophy, spirituality, and associated physical exercise as wholesome exotic exercise for western women. Yoga and eastern philosophy and spirituality has entered the West from the 19th century on. It has developed its own practices, distinct and separate from the Indian original, while retaining the vocabulary and exotic trinkets around it. I don’t hear many complaints about that though, neither from Indians, nor from the woke (for lack of a better concise term). Mindfulness meditation has completely done away with the exotic decorative elements.
It can be difficult to draw a line between cultural admiration, idea exchange, intercultural learning, and exploitative appropriation.
A related topic that gets no attention in the USA is cultural imperialism. The USA is so dominant culturally, it suppresses and even extinguishes local culture and languages around the world, including Western countries in Europe. That’s not only rap music, Hollywood, and blue jeans, it extends to philosophical and political ideology. Terms like PoC and white privileged are mindlessly copied to Europe. Even though anti Slavic prejudice is widespread in Western Europe, even though they are just as white, or even more blond and blue eyed (Poles and Baltics) than Western Europeans. Turks, Greeks, southern Italians, Lebanese, Cypriots, and Israelis basically look the same, but get treated differently. Still people try to shoehorn this into the term PoC, instead of developing their own models, that fit the reality in Europe. It becomes more problematic when using BIPoC, as lots of countries in Europe have indigenous majorities.
This cultural political dominance lead to huge protests during Black Lives Matter also in Europe, even though it’s a minor issue in Europe. Drowning refugees in the Mediterranean die in far higher numbers, than from police shootings. Black Europeans usually don’t have a history of being enslaved either. Most came from Africa by their own desire. (White European) Activists still rather reuse American ideas regarding this, instead of developing their own more fitting analysis.
White privilege is definitely a thing in Europe. I dont see too many white looking Slavs, Balkans, or Turks getting stopped by police and asked for their papers in the Ubahn or HBF compared to Arabs and Africans.
Also
A new paper by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) reveals the differences between people’s experiences with police stops. It shows that Black people, Asians and Roma are still more likely to be stopped and searched by police
Black people face a disproportionately higher risk of being stopped and searched by police in affluent areas of London. New data reveals they are up to 48 times more likely than white people to experience this
Young men in France perceived to be Black or Arab are 20 times more likely to be stopped by police than the rest of the population, according to the country’s human rights ombudsman. Racial profiling runs deep in the French police force
Discriminatory police practices such as racial profiling have been the subject of debate in Germany for a number of years – though without any reliable underlying statistics. The scientific staff of the Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR) has now for the first time examined the link between perceived phenotypic difference and police stops in Germany based on data drawn from a national representative survey. The findings show that respondents who are perceived as foreign are stopped by the police around twice as frequently as those who are not
Minor issue my ass.
And the Africans that immigrate to Europe often do so due the economic exploitation thats keep their countries in continuous poverty by the European rape of Africa in the 19th and 20th century. The “choice” isnt much of an actual choice…