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Cultural Appropriation in role-playing games (draft)
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6696994" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I find the term 'cultural appropriation' to be decidedly vague. In general, cultures - if we can think of them as being something like memes - generally want to trade ideas with other cultures. It's usually a fairly healthy activity for a culture to engage in, leading to greater depth and sophistication. Strong claims that you ought to control how your culture is borrowed or utilized typically marginalizes your own culture unless it is ignored - which it usually is. I'm inclined to think with a smirk about the French governments obsession with stopping the French people from appropriating words and ideas from other cultures, and really how little the English culture is offended when ideas are appropriated from it. English culture is quite happy generally to colonize other cultures idea space and language, forming various sorts of pidgin languages and sprinkling itself into dialects as varied as Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese. </p><p></p><p>Likewise, English is a famously aggressive borrower of words from other languages, amassing a vocabulary of loan words several times larger than many other entire languages. I suppose there might be some ignorant idiot out there that thinks English has too many foreign words in it, but if you robbed English of all the words it has borrowed from Latin, Greek, French, Spainish, Arabic, Japanese, and so forth, we'd quickly be reduced to the pathetic state of the French government and always having to invent new 'English' neologisms to keep our language 'pure' - inventions which half the time the French people ignore anyway and just say things like 'la blue jeans'.</p><p></p><p>I can't recall a single time I was afraid of my culture being appropriated, even when it wasn't done in a manner I particularly approved of - as for example the wholesale appropriation of the iconography of angels and devils into Japanese manga and anime. I suppose we are to conclude that the Japanese are still being acted on and still without agency when they reinterpret western culture and ideas for their own purposes? If so, then it's going to get really confusing determining with say First Nations Rock N Roll is empowering or just another sort of minstrel show.</p><p></p><p>And there is your 'trigger words', and were I really think this gets real. 'Cultural Appropriation' is a really terrible name for what is really wrong with the things that we ought to object to. The problem wasn't that culture was getting appropriated. To the extent that culture really was being appropriated, it was an entirely subversive thing guaranteed to taint the supposed cultural purity of the bigots that were trying to protect it. The problem wasn't that culture was being appropriated. The problem was that culture was being deliberately subverted and mocked, by a group that lacked the standing to subvert and mock back or sufficiently protect its own cultural legacy with economic and media power. The problem wasn't that the larger culture was infatuated with the real culture of the minority, which is a rather good and powerful thing on the whole, greatly to the advantage of the minority. The problem was that the larger culture wanted to impose a sham of the real culture on the minority as an act of oppression, making its lies and belittlement become a sort of reality or at least the illusion of reality. </p><p></p><p>That was a terrible act.</p><p></p><p>But 'cultural appropriation' generally? It's about as dangerous to anyone that wants to be a racial supremist as say interracial marriage.</p><p></p><p>Ultimately, this is one of those danged if you do, danged if you don't things. If you do, then it's 'appropriation'. If you don't, then you aren't promoting 'diversity'. And mostly, when it is brought up, it really is about power plays. It's about claiming to be a representative priesthood, with veto rights to censor whatever isn't liked. And the obvious proof of that is that I don't have the right to say these things. I have to link to some guy with the right birthright whose says the same darn things on youtube, so that the racist insults can be hurled at him by the priesthoods.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6696994, member: 4937"] I find the term 'cultural appropriation' to be decidedly vague. In general, cultures - if we can think of them as being something like memes - generally want to trade ideas with other cultures. It's usually a fairly healthy activity for a culture to engage in, leading to greater depth and sophistication. Strong claims that you ought to control how your culture is borrowed or utilized typically marginalizes your own culture unless it is ignored - which it usually is. I'm inclined to think with a smirk about the French governments obsession with stopping the French people from appropriating words and ideas from other cultures, and really how little the English culture is offended when ideas are appropriated from it. English culture is quite happy generally to colonize other cultures idea space and language, forming various sorts of pidgin languages and sprinkling itself into dialects as varied as Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese. Likewise, English is a famously aggressive borrower of words from other languages, amassing a vocabulary of loan words several times larger than many other entire languages. I suppose there might be some ignorant idiot out there that thinks English has too many foreign words in it, but if you robbed English of all the words it has borrowed from Latin, Greek, French, Spainish, Arabic, Japanese, and so forth, we'd quickly be reduced to the pathetic state of the French government and always having to invent new 'English' neologisms to keep our language 'pure' - inventions which half the time the French people ignore anyway and just say things like 'la blue jeans'. I can't recall a single time I was afraid of my culture being appropriated, even when it wasn't done in a manner I particularly approved of - as for example the wholesale appropriation of the iconography of angels and devils into Japanese manga and anime. I suppose we are to conclude that the Japanese are still being acted on and still without agency when they reinterpret western culture and ideas for their own purposes? If so, then it's going to get really confusing determining with say First Nations Rock N Roll is empowering or just another sort of minstrel show. And there is your 'trigger words', and were I really think this gets real. 'Cultural Appropriation' is a really terrible name for what is really wrong with the things that we ought to object to. The problem wasn't that culture was getting appropriated. To the extent that culture really was being appropriated, it was an entirely subversive thing guaranteed to taint the supposed cultural purity of the bigots that were trying to protect it. The problem wasn't that culture was being appropriated. The problem was that culture was being deliberately subverted and mocked, by a group that lacked the standing to subvert and mock back or sufficiently protect its own cultural legacy with economic and media power. The problem wasn't that the larger culture was infatuated with the real culture of the minority, which is a rather good and powerful thing on the whole, greatly to the advantage of the minority. The problem was that the larger culture wanted to impose a sham of the real culture on the minority as an act of oppression, making its lies and belittlement become a sort of reality or at least the illusion of reality. That was a terrible act. But 'cultural appropriation' generally? It's about as dangerous to anyone that wants to be a racial supremist as say interracial marriage. Ultimately, this is one of those danged if you do, danged if you don't things. If you do, then it's 'appropriation'. If you don't, then you aren't promoting 'diversity'. And mostly, when it is brought up, it really is about power plays. It's about claiming to be a representative priesthood, with veto rights to censor whatever isn't liked. And the obvious proof of that is that I don't have the right to say these things. I have to link to some guy with the right birthright whose says the same darn things on youtube, so that the racist insults can be hurled at him by the priesthoods. [/QUOTE]
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