Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Fighter-Cricket" data-source="post: 7756616" data-attributes="member: 32852">Phew, this topic certainly isn't the easiest to talk about, but I'll try my best. Here it comes:First, I get out some thoughts that I have about the context of the discussion about cultural appropriation. As far as I know, the critique of cultural appropriation is part of a broader discussion about how to respectfully live with each other in a multicultural society. In our world race/ethnicity has a tremendous impact on how you can live your life. Many people of color, or from asian, african etc. descent have often a quite hard time to live a life that many (not all!) white people enjoy. Aside from having a harder time to reach better education and jobs, the daily life of non-white people can be hard. Daily racism, lack of respect, mockery etc. are abundant. And when we talk about a certain lack of respect towards people, we also talk about a lack respect for the culture and heritage of those people. In colonial times many western writers did write quite a lot about the colonized people. There was also a lot of fiction and adventure literature. Not always where those stories openly vile and negative towards the described people. But the described colonized people often were pictured as extremely exotic, sometimes very strange and incomprehensible with their weird customs, architecture, languages etc. And with every story about the weirdness of those people those stereotypes grew more powerful. And if stereotypes get out of hand, all what is left, are those cliches about people - and those people are not pictured as what they are: just regular human beings like you and me, with ups and downs, hopes and fears and all of the stuff. So, people started to think about how to write about other cultures appropriately, without ephasizing weirdness and difference and strenghtening stereotypes. Or how to write fiction using parts of other cultures. Some would say that this can be done. Some would say that every writing using parts of other cultures is, wait for it, cultural appropriation. This term also comes into play when somebody wants to use parts of other cultures for other reasons. Like for example dressing in Saris, wearing dreadlocks or things like that. Some people would say that this is in itself without respect or maybe even racist. Okay, now we are left with the question, can I use things from another culture, like literature? One answer would be: no. Another would be: yes, but be respectful about that culture and its people, know what you do, engage openly and respecfully with the context and history of that what you use, come in contact with people whose daily lives are built on what you want to use. It seems that some publishers want to go the safe road and avoid problems, what I totally understand. But I also think that the discussion about this should be had nonetheless.*lecture mode off*</blockquote>

Verification