Cultural appropriation in writing?

[Zombie_Babies]

The whole notion of culture needs to die in a fire. We're so worried about accepting everyone as equal but none of us are willing to give up even a part of what separates us and has since our respective cultures were formed.

Meh, if you're always walking on eggshells you're never gonna get anywhere.

 

[Nellisir]

The whole notion of culture needs to die in a fire. We're so worried about accepting everyone as equal but none of us are willing to give up even a part of what separates us and has since our respective cultures were formed.

Meh, if you're always walking on eggshells you're never gonna get anywhere.

That and the fact that every culture on Earth was formed by stealing ideas from your neighbors and making stuff up.

 

[Zombie_Babies]

That and the fact that every culture on Earth was formed by stealing ideas from your neighbors and making stuff up.

Yep. It's truly amazing to me that people wonder why we treat each other so differently. It's what we want. It shouldn't be but whatever.

 

[Tonguez]

Yep. It's truly amazing to me that people wonder why we treat each other so differently. It's what we want. It shouldn't be but whatever.

Yes I recommend that you give up your way of life and be forced to adopt mine. Lets start by banning you from speaking english and removing the priviledge of using the internet for frivolous reasons....

 

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I am not sure how Voyager failed in the portrayal of Chakotay.

Granted Voyager suffered from weak writing in general, but Chakotay was more or less the Generic Positive Indian Guy, complete with no identified actual group (not specific as a Navajo, Apache, Lakota, etc) and with speeches about "his people" and "spirit" and even "land." More to the point he was created as a character by a man who said he was a Native America, but was actually a Greek-Armenian.

 

[Elf Witch]

Granted Voyager suffered from weak writing in general, but Chakotay was more or less the Generic Positive Indian Guy, complete with no identified actual group (not specific as a Navajo, Apache, Lakota, etc) and with speeches about "his people" and "spirit" and even "land." More to the point he was created as a character by a man who said he was a Native America, but was actually a Greek-Armenian.

Actually they used the ancient rubber tree people of central America as the basis for his tribe. Which granted they never gave a name to. One of the reasons at least according to what Robert Beltran said was that they did not want to pin it down and speculate on how a native American tribe would be in the 24 century.

Which person claimed to be Native American but was actually Greek Armenian? This is the first I have heard of that.

But lying about your heritage that is a no no but why can't a Greek Armenian create a Native American character?

Star Trek has always used basically generic characters since Next Gen almost all the humans are Americans with the exception of Picard who is French played by an English actor who used his English accent. I don't see outrage over that. Yet because they do a generic Native American some how that is bad. Why do Native Americans deserve special treatment but not the French? It is a SF show set 400 years in the future who is to say that many tribes will still exist and not have main streamed into the mainstream culture?

 

[Zombie_Babies]

Yes I recommend that you give up your way of life and be forced to adopt mine. Lets start by banning you from speaking english and removing the priviledge of using the internet for frivolous reasons....

Missing the point. You don't have to have one culture conquer all others for varying cultures to be let go. But hey, if you're down with perpetual war, mistreatment, abuse and the readily available justification for all of those (and more terrible things) that culture provides, whatever. I mean, if that's your culture ...

Srsly, why is the first place your mind took you 'one culture to rule them all'? That's nothing I even implied. We can blend cultures to form a single cohesive one. Anyhoo, that this is what you thought says more about you than me.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The whole notion of culture needs to die in a fire. We're so worried about accepting everyone as equal but none of us are willing to give up even a part of what separates us and has since our respective cultures were formed.

Meh, if you're always walking on eggshells you're never gonna get anywhere.

Why does the idea of culture need to die in a fire? What do you imagine will replace it?

 

[Kaodi]

I actually kind of think it is a problem that fiction does not seem to much imagine what indigenous/non-indigenous relations look like in the future. You need that sort of vision baseline to think about what the results of actions in the present might be.

 

[Zombie_Babies]

Why does the idea of culture need to die in a fire? What do you imagine will replace it?

I explained that. In another post I also suggested what may replace it: a single culture that's the result of all cultures blending. This requires that everyone give something up, though, and I don't see that ever happening.