Non Omnis Moriar @sinfulmyths - Tumblr Blog

animusrox

Wouldst thou like to see the world? The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015) dir. Robert Eggers

bellaxiao

falconpunchyourmom

Parallel Earth.

thefingerfuckingfemalefury

AMAZING

thaebae

I LOVE

honey-pot-hobbies

As a white person I feel obligated to reblog this because we need to see this sort of shit more especially in tv shows and stuff like that, will help the future children be less dickish

sweetsweetemo

These pictures speak so loud

pimentogirl

Uhuh. If you’re white and this makes you feel uncomfortable… good… it should. Having our own privilege shoved in our faces SHOULD be uncomfortable because, for the most part, we’re blind to it.

afronerdism

The conversation surrounding cultural appropriation has been so severely mutilated by white “allies” that the original intention behind that conversation has become almost unrecognizable in most social contexts.

afronerdism

To explain what I mean, the conversation around cultural appropriation was started by black and native people to discuss the frustrations we feel at being punished socially and financially for partaking in our cultural heritage while white people could take, I.e. appropriate, aspects of our culture that we are actively shamed for and be heralded as innovators. It was about the frustrations we feel when the same white people who shamed us would take our culture and wear it as if they were the ones who created it while still actively shaming us for doing the same.

The original push behind naming cultural appropriation and having these conversations were so that we as a society could evaluate why we were punished for our heritage while white People were not. It was supposed to be about seeking solutions. The idea was to create a society where we could celebrate our cultures with impunity. It was never about telling white people that they “weren’t allowed” to do certain things. We did ask that white People stop doing certain things because they weren’t doing them respectfully and were not invited to do them, but the primary reason we asked them to desist was to reclaim the things they had stolen and to reassign them culturally back where they belonged.

White “allies” saw these conversations happening and instead of trying to aplify our own voices or even try to learn about the complexities behind why we were saying what we were saying, they instead began screaming over us and creating a narrative that was hardly even the bones of what we originally set out to say. It was like they took the conversation we were trying to have, completely decontextualized it, and stripped it of all it’s nuance in order to gain social currency by seeming progressive.

So the conversation around cultural appropriation went from “This aspect of our heritage belongs to us and we find it egregious that we are shamed for it. What steps can we take to address the racism that’s creating this situation as well as rehome the things that have been stolen” to “you’re not allowed to do that because if you do that you’re racist, we don’t really understand why that’s racist but you’re not allowed to do that and if you do that you’re a klansman no exceptions. So you’re not allowed because because”

At the end of the day, did I like the fact that sally was wearing dreads? No. But my primary concern was not that sally was wearing dreads but rather that sally could wear dreads and I couldn’t. THAT was the intended focus of those conversations. It was about addressing the inequality. It was about us. Now the conversation is just about sally and were completely forgotten.

White People are always asking me what they can do to help. You want to know? Stop talking. Aplify our voices and shut the fuck up because you all have pretty much derailed this conversation and many more like it to the point that we no longer are trying to make steps to understand and dismantle the racism around cultural appropriation and instead are just using it as social shaming tactics.

afronerdism

TL;DR: read my post. Most things worth learning about can’t be summarized in the bullet points of a buzfeed article. Don’t come into academic circles and complain because everything hasn’t been conviently summarized for you. Stop pretending that things aren’t accessible to you because you refuse to do the intellectual labor that is learning.

sophies-sideshow-deactivated201

I don’t usually engage with posts like this (for a variety of reasons) and I almost didn’t engage with this one, but this actually articulates something 1, I didn’t know and 2, couldn’t articulate.

This is essentially why I fucking hate the “cultural appropriation” narrative. Culture only survives and thrives when it’s shared, and being called racist for sharing in someone else’s culture (while also being expected to share my own) is stupid, unhelpful, and wrong.

I didn’t actually know that originally this whole subject was about racist double standards. That explains a lot.

afronerdism

I get so frustrated by the response (white) people have had to this post and wonder if it’s just me who failed to articulate something or y’all just reading into the wrong throng but,

the idea that culture only survives if it’s shared with outsiders is a lie. Culture survives and thrives within communities when those communities aren’t constantly faced with colonization and forced into assimilation. The thing about cultural sharing is that you have to be invited to join in or else it’s not sharing, it’s stealing and misappropriation.

Cultural sharing looks like native Americans letting outsiders come to their celebrations and allowing you to enjoy an share in their traditions. You must then leave those traditions when you leave that space. You shouldnt start wearing native garb and hosting your own pow wows. Buy some memorabilia, put it on your mantel, and then leave it alone.

Cultural sharing looks like black People inviting you to a step show. You share in our enjoyment and then you leave. You leave those traditions when you leave that space. You don’t go home and try to teach your own sorority a step or a stroll in some new box braids.

These things belong to us. We don’t want and shouldn’t have them taken from us. So I’m not at all saying that white people shouldnt be criticized for cultural appropriation. I just want to shift our focus back to solution oriented discussion

solacekames

I used to be the mod of a blog focusing on Japanese cultural appropriation and I’ve been consistently saying this for ten years, and watching white people consistently misunderstanding and turning a systemic, power-based issue into a matter of their own personal purity and how to defend it.

The problem is not white people wearing kimono, alone. The problem is white people wearing a kimono while at the same time Japanese diaspora people are sexually harassed and socially forced to not wear kimono.

I’ve come to the depressing conclusion that most white people will only really listen to other white people on the issue. And there are two main (wrong) ways for them explain it to other white people:

The personal purity way. Being a “good ally” means not doing certain things, whether or not they make sense. We used to get all sorts of questions like “is it OK to eat cereal with chopsticks” that were completely irrelevant and annoying to answer after about the tenth time.

The anti-personal-purity way, in which “cultural appropriation” is for SJWs and it’s a joke concept to be laughed at. People of color are whiners and any white person who listens to them is a loser.

The power-based definition of cultural appropriation has been around for a very long time. It has numerous powerful explanatory essays, books (”Everything but the Burden” is a good one), and economic analyses (for example the material cost to fashion companies stealing indigenous artwork and copyrighting it so the indigenous people are locked out of the market). It’s not new, or trendy, but the reaction against the concept and the deformation into a standard of personal purity is definitely new and really troubling.

I’m willing to talk with people about solutions, but I stop listening as soon as someone says, “culture is meant to be shared.” Fuck no it isn’t! People think they can lay down rules for “culture” when they can’t even explain what definition they’re using. What they really mean is, “I should be free to take what I want from any culture without entering into a dialogue with people from that culture, because that kind of dialogue is too messy and scary and I’d rather not deal with the people as a whole, just the things they produce.”

Ultimately it all comes down to respect for other people and whether you have it or not.

afronerdism

This is such a valuable addition to this post, one if very few. Thank you for sharing.