Dear DADs. Do you have any good resources about cultural appropriation vs appreciation when it comes to illustration? I'm becoming more and more obsessed with this notion of how a white guy can respectfully paint a black woman/ young girl in a fantastical Han Dynasty China etc. I'm not looking for answers, and obs don't know yall's backgrounds/ethnicities, so much as other places you might suggest I turn to to tackle to topic. Thanks, -Drawing Stick Figures
Great question! This has been a hot topic and the point is not to make artists and authors scared to depict cultures (and genders and sexual orientations) not their own, but to make sure that they’re doing it respectfully. That’s the real difference between Cultural Appropriation & Cultural Appreciation.
A good question here is to ask yourself WHY you want to paint black girls & Han China. Do you feel strongly about showing more diverse characters? Are you making a statement about cultural clash? Is it important to the narrative you’re building? Or is it a mashup of cool shit just bc it seems cool to you? That’s not a bad place to start but you need to dig deeper.
Here’s a quick checklist of things to ask yourself:
—Have you done research into the origins and meaning of the cultural symbols you are referencing? If the answer is “I just thought it looked cool” then go do some more research.
—Are you representing something sacred in that culture in a superficial or sexualized or fetishized way that is disrespectful to members of that culture?
—Are you profiting from using references and styles that the original culture is being discriminated for? In other words, are you getting away with something because you’re white that an asian or black or hispanic person would be punished for?
The point is not to stop white/cis/heterosexual folks from painting or writing diverse cultures, gender expressions, and sexual orientations — we’ll never get anywhere with making art and media more diverse if we leave it only to the members of that minority to do so. The point is to aim for “imaginative engagement” — I love this quote by Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie: ‘‘The moment you say a male American writer can’t write about a female Pakistani, you are saying, Don’t tell those stories. Worse, you’re saying: As an American male you can’t understand a Pakistani woman. She is enigmatic, inscrutable, unknowable. She’s other. Leave her and her nation to its Otherness. Write them out of your history.’’
The answer, as with many things, is Research & Respect.
Here’s some starter resources:
NYTimes: Is Cultural Appropriation Always Wrong?
Everyday Feminism: The Difference Between Cultural Exchange and Cultural Appropriation
Bustle: 7 Things You Might Not Realize Are Cultural Appropriation That Are
P.S. There’s not a lot of specific material on this in illustration, but Art Directors are constantly talking about it, both the topic of how to get more diverse artists hired as well as making sure artists are depicting minority experiences with the utmost respect. White illustrators who have been doing a great job of depicting diverse characters in a white-dominated field (SciFi/Fantasy) that you can look at are Greg Ruth, Tommy Arnold, & David Palumbo. Maybe we’ll have to suggest it as a topic to Muddy Colors.
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