I love the bit where they’re like “eauh mai gahhh why would they give this awful WHITE person their preshious cultural itaaammms??!!?” Um, because only white kids give a shit about “cultural appropriation”? Which is funny because somehow they can’t see that bitching about it is actually appropriating other people’s VOICES and thoughts and opinions and replacing them with their own white voices. They have become the thing they claim to hate.
WHITE SJW KIDS, STOP TRYING TO SPEAK FOR PEOPLE OF OTHER CULTURES. LET THEM SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES FFS. I promise they can, and will if they need to.
Culture - by its nature, by human nature - SPREADS. It just DOES. People contact other cultures, and they share things. That’s just a fact of life. And it’s A GOOD THING! The VAST majority of people ENJOY that and are HAPPY to share culture! Culture is NOT a finite resource that can be stolen, that can be devalued with use, that can be depleted - quite the opposite, actually. In fact, people from other cultures have explicitly expressed, to me personally as well as to plenty of others everywhere, that they feel pride and excitement when somebody from another culture is interested in or wants to emulate their culture. People who are not uptight white American teenagers/college kids are far more often than not quite HAPPY TO SHARE CULTURE.
And even if it somehow WEREN’T human nature to share and spread culture, imitation is not inherently ridicule or inherently bad. What could possibly make emulating somebody or something bad? Even the most “egregious” “cultural appropriation” “offense” - dressing up for Halloween - isn’t necessarily bad or wrong. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. [Which, I think, is a large part of why people are happy to share culture.] When you see somebody in a football uniform on Halloween, do you immediately assume that they’re making fun of football players, devaluing what they do? Or do you think, aw that kid wants to be a football player when he grows up, or I guess that guy likes football/that player?
So why is it different for cultural outfits, or for adults? It isn’t, not inherently. Dressing up in a kimono isn’t making fun of kimonos or Japanese culture. It’s appreciation. Now, if somebody is going around dressed in a caricature of a culture and openly and maliciously mocking people, then they’re… mocking people and that’s fucking rude. But they’re not stealing culture since culture can’t be stolen, and they’re not devaluing cultural items because culture is far stronger and more meaningful than somebody’s clothes.
I mean, are YOU not happy and excited to share YOUR culture with people? Do YOU get offended if somebody dresses up as something from your culture or learns your language or eats your food or wears your culture’s clothes? If you do, you’re an asshole. That’s not normal.
Like the example in the OP I, too, have been given cultural items as gifts, by people (or race traitors???) from the same culture. I have friends who bring back gifts, including grammar/vocab textbooks, from their home country when they go back to visit, and they get genuinely excited and happy to see me (and anybody they gave gifts to) use/wear their gifts. Once a sweet Cameroonian lady my gramma worked with gave her a cultural dress and actually helped her dress up in it for Halloween. That was super cute. Also, I was once asked to sing at a big, important party celebrating a big, important CULTURAL holiday that we don’t even celebrate in America, BY people from that country, because I could speak (and sing, though not sing well) in their language. I got a massively positive response from every single person there, some of the older ladies actually had tears in their eyes, absolutely everybody there wanted to hang out and speak to me in their language, a couple even invited me to come sing at their wedding later, and the host’s wife even HAND MADE a beautiful cultural dress for me afterward (ooh, so I guess she’s an evil race traitor, right???). Because sharing culture is a WONDERFUL thing that should be CELEBRATED and not fucking OUTLAWED you nazi freaks.
And here’s another example, which actually comes from an excellent YouTube channel where a Japanese guy excitedly shares his culture (or betrays his people????) with the world (TRIGGER WARNING: don’t click that link if you can’t handle watching a man intentionally teach people how to “appropriate” his culture!!):
In this video, he went around asking random people (I don’t think I’ve ever seen the same person twice in his “man on the street” videos) what they think of otakus, and specifically about people from other countries being obsessed with anime and such (that question starts at about 3:15). This is three separate groups of unrelated people who all independently stated that sharing culture is a good thing. There were plenty more answers, ranging from take it or leave it to it’s awesome, but nobody was protective of their culture in any way. (Side note, I think I might be in love with the girl in the 2nd-to-last pic. She is sooo sweet and her smile is sooo pretty and she is just sooo cute!)
So in conclusion, shut the fuck up about cultural appropriation, especially if you’re not from the culture you think you’re defending. Speaking on people’s behalf, as if you know what they want or what’s good for them, is the REAL APPROPRIATION here. Stop doing that, ya dicks.
