Cultural Appropriation

Social Justice Is About Power And Control, But Not For The Benefit Of The Powerless

Samuel Hooper9 Comments

SJW white people dreadlocks social media

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What happens when a white Social Justice Warrior encounters a mixed race person who fails to hold the “correct” opinions about cultural appropriation?

If you still need convincing that the “social justice” movement is in fact nothing to do with justice or equality and everything to do with wielding power over other people to control what they think, say and do, then let this picture be your guide.

Here we have a comment posted by a young Social Justice Warrior – an online activist who spends their time trying to police the public discourse and censor others – on the tumblr social network, in which the user Party Island (pronouns: they/them) confesses a dilemma.

You see, Party Island is very much against the phenomenon known as “cultural appropriation”, that timeless phenomenon where cultures, customs and fashions spread across different national or ethnic groups. While some Bad People might think that cultural appropriation is a good thing, responsible for everything from the pop music we hear to the fusion cuisines we eat, in fact cultural appropriation is a terrible tool of oppression in which arrogant white people claim credit for the cultural innovations of other marginalised groups, either for personal or commercial gain. Or so say the SJWs.

And Party Island was posting on the evils of white people wearing their hair in dreadlocks (a particularly contentious issue in the SJW community) when one of his mixed-race friends dared to utter the now-blasphemous assertion that people of any race or background should be able to wear their hair any way they damn well please, and that Party Island was massively overreacting.

As the complaint reads:

I’m at a loss. I posted about white people & black hair on Facebook and my old roommate, who is mixed race but white passing, is telling ME I’m overreacting and that “people should wear their hair how they want.” I don’t know how to approach this. I don’t want to talk over her because even if she’s white passing, she holds more authority over me in race related issues. I don’t know what to do.

The friend’s statement that “people should wear their hair how they want” is shocking to the ears of Party Island, who is used to playing the role of white saviour to the “oppressed” black masses by being a jumped-up, self-righteous little internet censor, persecuting anyone who fails to use the latest up-to-the-minute politically correct terminology and customs.

Now Party Island has been told to lay off, not by a fellow white person – their peer at the bottom of the inverted hierarchy of privilege – but by someone who is mixed race, and therefore occupying a more senior position in the pyramid. In Social Justice World, you see, power and legitimacy to speak on any issue derives from one’s place in the pyramid. On feminist issues, for example, being a woman (or any guy with a penis who decides to identify as a woman) gives one a certain right to speak about feminist issues, but being a black, disabled woman means you occupy an even higher position in the inverted pyramid and that your words, therefore, count for much more.

If a white person had told Party Island that they were overreacting by getting upset at other white people who “appropriate black culture” by wearing their hair in dreadlocks, Party Island could demand that they “check their privilege”, insist that they were being oppressive and send them off to educate themselves on issues of racial justice and cultural appropriation. But the friend is not white, they are mixed race. And this presents Party Island with a dilemma.

On the one hand, there is the strong instinct to “punish” the friend’s blasphemous statement that white people should be allowed to wear dreadlocks, because this is how these parasitical people gain power and influence over our discourse, culture and society in the first place – by meting out public shamings and other punishments to heretics in order to advance their own ideology. But on the other hand, Party Island knows that as a white person in the presence of a mixed race person (though “white passing”, they tell us, as mitigating evidence) their duty is to bow obsequiously and defer to whatever the mixed race person happens to say on the subject of race.

This creates an unresolvable logical error in the SJW brain of Party Island. They want to be a good foot soldier in the Social Justice Army and “re-educate” this blasphemer, but the blasphemer is of superior rank in the social justice hierarchy. It’s a bit like a zealous, well-trained infantry private discovering his captain breaking the army code of conduct. The desire to call out the crime and administer “punishment” is overwhelming, but the captain’s rank causes hesitancy and a failure of courage.

So what does Party Island do? Unable to confront their mixed race friend directly about their Evil Thoughtcrime and insufficient anger at the cultural appropriation of dreadlocks, this SJW flags his problem to the wider community in the hope that it will be seen by other properly-educated SJWs who occupy equal or greater rank in the hierarchy of victimhood, and who therefore have the power and legitimacy to correct this erroneous mixed race person. Ideally, in this warped world, a “black passing” black person who is also a transexual, disabled rape survivor will come passing by, notice the exchange and unload on Party Island’s poor mixed race friend with the full weight of their exalted position in the pyramid.

If all of this seems ludicrous and a million miles away from doing anything which might conceivably affect or help actual black people in America, you would be right. Because at its dark, festering core the Social Justice movement is not about delivering justice, equality or doing any other kind of social good. Social wrongs are merely the fuel which power the machine to perform its true purpose – controlling the language and the thinking of society in order to establish beady-eyed little zealots like Party Island as the indispensable clerisy who tell everyone else what to say and do.

Social Justice is, above everything else, about the acquisition and exercising of power. Victimhood is actively sought and eagerly weaponised by members of this Social Justice clerisy in their scramble for status amongst their peers and contemporaries. The legitimate problems and grievances of minority communities become irritating background noise, a distraction from what really matters – this finickity, juvenile, university campus parlour game in which casting oneself as the most vulnerable, oppressed but simultaneously tolerant person imaginable confers tremendous power, while the slightest slip (such as accidentally using the wrong word) can lead to immediate excommunication from the group.

That’s what is going on here.

That’s what “social justice” is really all about.

 

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‘White Girl Asian Food’ Reaction: Cultural Appropriation Police Want to Control What People Think

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

White Girl Asian Food and Breakfast Tacos

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Identity politics zealots will not rest until they control the thoughts, as well as the behaviour, of everyone else

Taking a break from writing something more serious on the subject of identity politics (watch this space), I spent some time today amusing myself by reading some of the apoplectic reactions to the White Girl Asian Food truck in Austin, Texas.

Some of the sentiments expressed were hateful and vile, while others tended towards hand-wringing incredulity.

This blogger has trouble balancing her desire to praise a female entrepreneur with her clear uneasiness at the “cultural appropriation” at work:

On one hand, I’m glad it doesn’t claim to be authentic Asian food. According to an interview with Vice, she changed the name of the food truck from “Com Bun Yeu” to “White Girl Asian Food,” so people would stop assuming she sells authentic Vietnamese food. Her goal was to make it clear that she was “a white girl cooking [her] rendition of Asian cuisine [and she] couldn’t think of a name that was more honest and straight to the point” than “White Girl Asian Food.”

I also respect her and her family for leaving their home and living out their dreams of owning food trailers – that takes a lot of guts. It’s also amazing that she’s part of the 26% of female-owned food establishments. You go, girl.

But, on the other hand, I’m irritated that she combines the bare bones of a few cuisines and shuffles them under the umbrella of Asian food. There will be people who eat at this food truck and assume this is what Asian food is all about when this is a false representation of an extraordinarily broad cuisine.

At the end of the day, I think the food truck should stay if it receives a large helping of cultural humility. But changing its name (again), in English and Vietnamese, to better represent the food served would be a great next step.

This is certainly one of the more measured responses, but still it reveals everything which is ultimately wrong (and doomed to create more problems than it solves) about the broader identity politics movement.

At one point, the author – Jocelyn Hsu from UC Berkeley – frets that “there will be people who eat at this food truck and assume this is what Asian food is all about.”

So what? Every day there are people who eat at places like Wagamama or P.F. Chang’s and lazily believe that they are having an authentic culinary experience. They happen to be wrong (not that there is anything wrong with P.F. Chang’s – I would pay good money if they opened a restaurant here in London), but their misapprehension in no way impacts on anybody else.

At most, one could argue that by splashing around in the paddling pool of more Westernised interpretations of Asian cuisine they are denying themselves the opportunity to experience the authentic food of another culture. But even if this is so, the cultural appropriation police are still light years away from establishing a link between one person’s ignorance and another person’s harm.

In his epic debates against the religiously inclined, the late Christopher Hitchens would often say that even accepting the deist view that there is a God, the faithful still have all their work ahead of them in order to prove that God has indeed revealed himself to mankind, and that certain chosen people have been favoured with knowledge of God’s nature and detailed commandments for how we should live our lives. Similarly, even accepting the idea that cultural ignorance harms the culturally ignorant, the identity politics cultists of today still have all their work ahead of them to prove that a white American’s assumption that chop suey is a commonly eaten dish in China in any way harms Chinese or Asian American people.

Unless, that is, one believes that minority groups can be harmed by even the unexpressed thoughts and beliefs of another person. If you believe that it is possible to inflict grave harm merely by misunderstanding the cultural history and “lived experience” of another identity group in your own head, then the anger and paranoia start to make more sense.

And of course this is exactly what the cultural appropriation protesters do believe. To them, it is not enough for other people to think their own private thoughts unmolested, facing criticism only when they commit an act of overt prejudice. Rather, all unknowing heretics must be badgered into thinking the “correct” thing, even if they were not themselves spreading misinformation.

By applying this extremely high standard for cultural awareness, minority groups will not stop incurring real harm until every last septuagenarian in Des Moines understands that the Panda Express drive-thru they visit every Thursday lunchtime is in fact not typical Szechuan cuisine.

There may be an academic term to describe this frantic need to control and tweak the thoughts of other people, though I have not yet come across such a phrase in my reading of Haidt, Haslam, Campbell or Manning.

But I would call it a plain old inferiority complex – and a quite unnecessary one at that, for every cuisine and culture possesses its own inherent value, cannot be “invalidated” by the ignorance or even derision of others, and does not require the full understanding and approval of white America in order to exist.

There should be room on this Earth (and in America) for the White Girl Asian Food truck and authentic Asian cuisines to peacefully coexist. Ironically, the only ones arguing otherwise are the people who march under the banner of tolerance.

 

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Cultural Appropriation Hysteria – NPR Earnestly Debates The Merits Of Culinary Segregation

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

White Girl Asian Food - Cultural Appropriation

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Put the chopsticks down and step away from the rice bowl, Timmy!

While our universities become increasingly unrecognisable places where academic freedom is curtailed and human behaviour restricted in the name of identity politics, NPR is fretting about people of one race and culture having the audacity to cook the cuisine of another:

Recently, we started a conversation about food and race. Specifically, we wondered out loud, who gets to cook — and become the face of — a culture’s cuisine?

[..] As with many things involving race and class in America, there are no easy answers — and we’re not expecting to find any clear-cut ones. We’re more interested in starting a conversation.

Here’s some of what we heard from you.

On one hand, many of you pointed out that cooking the cuisine of other cultures is a tangible way to connect. That’s part of what makes America a literal as well as figurative melting pot.

[..] At its heart, food is about identity — about where we came from — which is why the topic of cuisine and who cooks it can be so personal and complicated for some.

[..] Many of you stressed the importance of approaching the cuisine of others with respect. And that means highlighting not just the ingredients, but also the culture behind a dish.

Read the whole thing. The article is littered with numerous examples of narcissistic, self-obsessed, virtue-signalling statements sent in by NPR readers and listeners, each competing with one another to be the most enlightened, compassionate warrior fighting for those poor people whose very identity is being erased by the likes of Panda Express and Chipotle.

The upshot seems to be that a plurality of NPR listeners will very graciously allow us to continue cooking the food of other cultures, as long as we do so with sufficient respect and reverence for the culture from which we are borrowing.

But don’t you dare seek to make a profit on the back of a cuisine which is not identified with your personal ethnic background, because that is clearly a step too far:

Some of you said what’s bothersome isn’t so much whether a person of one race or ethnicity is cooking the food of another culture. That can be done respectfully. The question, then, is more about opportunity — who has a chance to profit from making a cuisine?

The idea that the value of something should be determined by the consumer rather than some prissy Identity Politics oppression-based algorithm seems anathema to Twitter user Chandra Ram and a number of other NPR followers.

How long, then, until some virtue-signalling  Identity Politics cultist proposes a system of “culinary reparations”, whereby restaurants are entitled to serve the modified cuisine of marginalised cultures only if they pay a some kind of tax on their revenue, to be distributed equally among everyone who can prove membership of the “injured” ethnic group?

And if you think something so ludicrous would never happen, just wait until the current crop of students passing through university have graduated, entered the job market and worked their way into our political system.

That’s the hipster food truck industry in London decimated, for a start.

 

Postscript: One of the best responses to the attempt by Identity Politics cultists to re-segregate our cuisines along ethnic lines comes from this Reddit user:

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 17 – Woman Assaults Student For “Cultural Appropriation”, Claims She Is The Victim

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

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Identity Politics preaches that violence is an acceptable tool of coercion to make other people conform

Watch this video of a woman – believed to be Bonita Tindle, possibly a university employee – accosting a white male student in the corridor of a campus building at San Francisco State University, because she objected to the “cultural appropriation” behind his choice of hairstyle.

The Daily Wire gives context:

In a video published on Monday, a black female said to be a campus employee accosts a white male said to be a student at San Francisco State University out of hostility to the “cultural appropriation” of his dreadlock hairstyle.

“You’re saying I can’t have a hairstyle, because of your culture? Why?” asks the white male, who appears to be wearing a dress.

“Because it’s my culture,” responds the black female.

“Do you know that it was in Egyptian culture? Are you Egyptian? Naw,” replied the male student with animated body language.

Interjecting, a black male observer who appears to be wearing pink leggings asks the white male if he’s Egyptian.

As the white male attempts to leave up a staircase, the black female grabs his left arm sleeve. Giving in to the pull, the white male demands to be left alone as he descends back to the main floor.

Except that this is not the whole story. The white male student does indeed attempt to leave up a staircase, and is repeatedly prevented from doing so by the female. He is clearly, demonstrably trying to leave the scene and is prevented from doing so by the person accosting him.

At one point (20 seconds and 25 seconds in), she actually pushes him back as he attempts to walk up the stairs, prompting the student to say “Yo, girl, stop touching me.” Once he makes it up the stairs, the female has a hold of his sleeve and tries to cajole him back down, saying “come back”.

But then, when he does, she has the temerity to exclaim “you put your hands on me!” as though an unconscionable assault on her own person has taken place. “Do not put your hands on me” she warns, gleefully, as she takes out a notepad, presumably to document her own very biased take on the incident.

Forget the stupidity of taking offence at cultural appropriation in the first place.

Were it not for the fact that the encounter was recorded on video, it is not difficult to imagine the white male student being reported to campus authorities for having “put [his] hands” on his own aggressor, being dragged through a disciplinary process and quite possibly being found guilty at the end of it – especially given how spineless many university administrations have proven to be in the face of student power grabs.

Bonita Tindle - Assault White Student for Cultural Appropriation - Identity Politics

Consider the mindset one must have to accost a perfect stranger, harass them about their personal appearance, push them and actively prevent them from leaving, and then turn around and complain “you put your hands on me!”.

Consider, too, the entitled, mischievous grin of the perpetrator as she harasses the male student, believing that her weaponised Identity Politics-driven actions give her the license to do whatever she pleases, because she is “in the right”. We saw exactly the same look on the face of the young student protester who vandalised a pro-life campaign stand and was then unable to explain her actions to a campus security officer.

There is nothing noble about this person’s attempt to fight “cultural appropriation”. This is the action of someone who has been taught that she can get away with anything if only she only uses a few words from the Identity Politics lexicon as her shield. And if the San Francisco State University administration are even remotely competent, the aggressor will (if she is indeed a university employee) be terminated effective immediately.

But the point is not this one incident, caught on camera. Other, similar incidents like these are happening on college campuses across America with increasing frequency.

The same toxic ideology of Identity Politics has infected our academic institutions in Britain, and we are only lagging a couple of years behind the United States.

Those of us sounding the alarm are not making this stuff up. I follow this issue closely and have Google Alerts set to inform me when new stories break about campus authoritarianism, free speech curtailment and Identity Politics-inspired violence, and there are simply too many for me to cover on this blog. I currently have a backlog of over twenty incidents, each one worthy of comment, most of which will never be written up here for sheer lack of time.

Watch the video. Because this is where worshipping the cult of Identity Politics leads. Remarkably, it does not turn out well-rounded, robust young adults ready to become productive, engaged citizens. On the contrary, our Safe Space and Trigger Warning culture is turning out a generation of snarling, vindictive crybabies, people who are completely incapable of managing interpersonal relationships and interactions without the assistance of the higher authorities to which they constantly turn for help.

And when there is no higher authority to hand, these Identity Politics priests and priestesses are quite happy to lash out physically, assured of the righteousness of their cause.

This is no longer a joke. Bad actions – now including physical assaults – spring from bad ideas. And the cult of Identity Politics is the academic mother lode of bad ideas.

 

Update: It has been confirmed by San Francisco State University that the aggressor is not directly employed by the institution. The university has opened an investigation.

 

More outrageous “Tales From the Safe Space” are documented here.

 

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 14 – Too Many New Stories To Track

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

This Is A Safe Space - Embroidery

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In which Semi-Partisan Politics admits defeat…

When I began the “Tales From The Safe Space” series, my intention was not for it to dominate the blog to the extent which it has done over the past couple of weeks. But I have continued to write the stories up, because each case covered here has exposed or highlighted a different side of the Identity Politics issue, and I think there has been something unique to say about them all.

That being said, there are other pressing things happening in the world. In Britain specifically, the coming EU referendum (and the upcoming launch of the Leave Alliance) is deserving of more coverage, as is George Osborne’s imminent Budget, which looks set to provide more fodder for our “What Conservative Government?” series.

Therefore, future “Tales From The Safe Space” may come in the form of occasional digests and summaries of stories from around Britain and America – since new campus controversies seem to be occurring faster than I can cover them individually on this site as a one-man operation.

So, without further ado:

A pro-life bus advertisement in Ottawa was reported to “trigger” several activists who objected to its message:

 

Activists at universities in southern California and Arizona are demanding that campus authorities ban U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials from recruiting on campus, on the inevitable grounds that it makes students who are in America illegally feel unsafe:

Protesters at several campuses in Southern California and Arizona have demanded administrators cut all ties with the federal agency, and some have protested agents’ presence on campus. Students say border protection representatives make students – especially students in the country illegally – feel unsafe.

At UC Santa Barbara in late January, a parade of students boisterously demonstrated against border patrol recruiters at a campus job fair, loudly chanting “f*ck your borders, f*ck your walls.” One organizer told The College Fix agents’ attendance was “triggering” for undocumented students, adding “there is no space on this campus for an organization that continues to threaten the safety of students.”

Last fall, after UC Irvine students circulated a petition that called on administrators to remove a U.S. Customs and Border Protection booth from the school’s fall career fair – saying officers’ presence would make the campus unsafe for students in the country illegally – the agency backed out of the event.

A student committee at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge abruptly changed the theme of a party which was to be based on Jules Verne’s novel “Around the World in 80 Days”, because of fears that student costumes would amount to cultural appropriation:

Cambridge university students have caused an Around the World in 80 Days-themed party to be cancelled because they claimed it could encourage “cultural appropriation”.

Undergraduates complained that the theme could even be seen as racist if revellers dress up in clothes from a different ethnic group.

Students at Pembroke College are now arguing about whether axing the event was restricting their freedom of expression or preventing offence towards ethnic minorities.

And in slightly more hopeful news, Peter Tatchell – recently the victim of a ridiculous attempt at Reverse No-Platforming by a particularly virtue-signalling and fame-hungry NUS activist, covered on this blog – has come out against university authorities who are often just as hostile to free speech as the safe space-dwelling students they serve:

University officials who censor student journalists pose as great a threat to free speech as controversial “safe space” policies, a leading activist has said.

A freedom of expression row has erupted at University College London (UCL) after The Independent revealed that the institution had been accused of threatening and intimidating one of its student reporters.

Rebecca Pinnington, 21, said she was made to feel “intimidated, anxious and scared” after UCL warned she may face disciplinary action – including expulsion – for possessing confidential documents found on a public university server.

The university initially denied that threats had been made, but last night conceded that the letter handed to Ms Pinnington “set out the full range of penalties available in the disciplinary code”.

Generally welcome words, and good to see the veteran activist taking the fight to the campus authoritarianism of university administrations as well as over-sensitive students.

And finally, a very welcome piece in the student newspaper of my own alma mater, Warwick University, pushing back against cultural appropriation hysteria:

Why do we all have to stick to our own cultures and not be allowed to merge? People should be able to wear whatever they want, and to engage with other cultures freely.

Just think what this could mean for the fashion world if culture-fusion clothing became more acceptable. Maybe the diversity would allow men to would have more clothing options too. This year at the Oscars the male actors all showed up wearing practically the same thing! It’s not really their fault; there just aren’t enough clothing options for men. In the future they could come to the Oscars in a sherwani? A Kilt? Or various other traditional clothes that I don’t know the names of because they aren’t mainstream enough.

A lot of fashion trends, are inspired from other cultures. There are some global trends emerging in fashion, for example I noticed that as crop tops and high wasted skirts became popular in the West, simultaneously South Asian designers reignited the lenga trend (which is basically a crop top and a long high wasted skirt).

Good to see some more voices raised against the attempts by censorious student activists to enforce a new kind of cultural apartheid on campus, whereby the enjoyment of one culture’s cuisine, fashion or art outside of its original context is viewed as tantamount to modern day colonialism.

More – inevitably – to follow soon.

 

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