Tag: cultural appropriation

twocannon:

garrettauthor:

rudejerkface:

I realized that the only people who truly get offended by Cultural Appropriation are Americans. Ask a Jamaican if you can wear dreadlocks and they’ll most likely say they don’t care. Go to Japan wearing a Kimono and no one will be offended. Please remember that these people have voices too and can speak for themselves. You the SJW may be well meaning, but you getting offended for these people is incredibly patronizing to them because you are speaking for them. They don’t need that, they can speak for themselves. Remember that.

“I realized that the only people who truly get offended by Cultural Appropriation are Americans oppressed people living in America.”

Fixed that for you.

The fact that the people complaining are American doesn’t invalidate their complaints. They are complaining BECAUSE they are American, and when America isn’t trying to steal their culture, it treats them like shit.

Of course Jamaicans don’t care if you ware dreadlocks in Jamaica. In Jamaica, a black guy with dreadlocks is your next door neighbor, the guy at the beach, your taxi driver. In America, a black guy with dreadlocks is “a thug,” “a criminal,” someone you cross the street to avoid walking past. 

But then a WHITE person wears dreadlocks…lord almighty, they look so cool, they’re so exotic, it’s so fresh and exciting.

Of course they don’t mind if you wear a kimono in Japan. It’s common there. It’s part of the dominant culture, the one in power. A Japanese woman wears a kimono and she’s not particularly out of place. But a Japanese woman wears a kimono in America, and she’s doe-eyed, passive, submissive, gives a boy that “yellow fever.” 

But then a WHITE person wears a kimono…it’s so cool, so exotic, they’re so cultured, isn’t it wonderful how good their tastes are?

Let people in other countries speak for themselves in those countries. 

Let cultures in America speak for THEMselves in America. 

You have to take an immense logical turd to call minorities in America “patronizing” and telling them other cultures can “speak for themselves,” while DIRECTLY talking over them and trying to explain—with shitty, small-minded, poorly-thought-out arguments—why they need to shut up and listen to you, another fucking white guy.

When I was younger, I didn’t want to wear my hanbok to school because I was afraid I would get made fun of. I was ashamed to take part in and learn about my birth culture because I felt it was othering, that it was distancing myself from my peers. I was constantly stereotyped and treated differently because I am Asian. I didn’t want to stand out, but I didn’t have a choice.

At the end of the day, white people can shed whatever culture they’ve taken from, but I still remain Korean. And I still exist in a place where people make fun of Asian accents, where the standards of beauty favor white women and not people like me with “squinty eyes” and round faces, where I, a person and not an object, am considered “exotic” and am highly fetishized.

So yes, it is incredibly insulting that white people treat my birth culture like a costume while simultaneously degrading the people who created it.