Citizens of Tomorrow, Be Forewarned

adailyriot:

neetainari:

hammerofthewitches:

I believe people are becoming too sensitive. There is hardly a culture which is truly and purely distinct from all others; every race, tradition, religion, myth, creed, sex expression, and fashion in the vastness of humanity at some point has met and bled together, especially in race and tradition! I, on my mother’s side, am descended from Cherokee, Navajo, and Aztec Indian and I recently found that I have Persian and Egyptian ancestry as well. On my father’s side I am Eastern European, Scottish, German, and English. I am by no means a “pure” anything, except human of course. I have no Asian heritage, yet I am a practicing Buddhist who owns paraphernalia that is frequently associated with Asian culture. A person from Thailand ignorant of my “Asian” spiritual worldview may see my Thai Buddhist statue and accuse me of cultural appropriation. I see it happen frequently happen to Caucasian people who wear, say, a Navajo feather-headdress. They are accused of being insensitive. An Arabic woman who stretches her earlobes akin to the people of a tribe in Africa is told she is appropriating the culture/tradition of said tribe and that she shouldn’t because she is not African. Nonsense. This attitude of “you are not I” is being taken way too far. I can understand defending one’s culture if it is being mocked or used as a justification for prejudice, but I guarantee you that the boy who wears 1/2” ox bone plugs in his ears is not doing so to “appropriate” the practice from the Africans, or that the girl wearing a Navajo headdress is trying to be insensitive. If it bothers someone that much they should, instead of crying and throwing accusations at the person, try to educate them on the meaning behind it. Stop widening the gaps by becoming angry at something that honestly should not matter. When someone accuses a person of ignorance and insensitivity because they’re wearing an amulet of Ganesha they are propagating the perceived ignorance and insensitivity they are so angered by. Open up the lines of communication rather than jump to damn someone.

Oh look, more of the same “we’re all human” and “I’m like 1/16 Cherokee and I’m not offended” and “how can we know if you won’t educate us”.Almost bingo.

selchieproductions:

I’m not playing bingo at the moment, but a couple of comments are in place anyway;

• No, all cultures and peoples on the planet have not at some point voluntarily met ‘and bled together’; sure, Western colonialism has made sure that the colonised have bled for them, but that’s about it. 
  
  The ‘we are all equal’ trope is a nice thing, but it is not true; if you’re white, or white-passing you’re, whether you want it or not automatically granted more authority in society than if you’re not and to accuse people who defend their cultures for being close-minded is, in essence, to say that when someone comes into your house, kills your parents, sexually abuse your sisters and then puts you in a shed with no heating or running water far away from your home, you should not protest but rather just ‘accept this’ and ‘don’t be so fucking sensitive’. And forgive me for being ‘sensitive’, but I think the victims of human rights violations have more rights to speak up than the ones continuing these crimes. 

•  No one claims that you have to be pure anything. You’re trying to make this seem as if all indigenous peoples are racist, which in itself is laughable, just because we do not appreciate having our things stolen from us. Our religions are not yours to appropriate, spirituality is not primarily a personal experience, but a communal one and if you do not belong to a certain community, they are in their full rights to ask you to not misrepresent them or involuntarily mock them and their traditions.
  
  If someone asked you to not take a dump in a baptismal font in the Sistine Chapel, you wouldn’t, if someone asked you to not slaughter a pig in front of the Ark in a synagogue, you wouldn’t, if someone asks you to take of your shoes in a mosque, you do, so why is it so hard for you to understand that other religions have the same rights to be treated with respect and not turned into fashion statements?

• If you’re Navajo, you ought to know that the feather bonnets were worn by Plains tribes and not the Navajo - a Navajo feather head dress is not a thing.
  
  
• How hard is it to understand that when the majority appropriates every-fucking-thing it can gets its hands on and turns it into a fashion statement, without actually at the same time treating the people they take these things from as human beings, we don’t find it flattering. The problem here is that whenever someone exotifies something, they somehow don’t find the need to learn about the things they exotify. We are rendered long gone objects from which people can pick and choose things, much like people at a buffet without realising that the person you’re stripping naked and discarding like a myth is real, contemporary and currently pissed off.

• It is not up to the colonised to educate the coloniser. The victim of a genocide is not supposed to have to tell the ones killing them that genocide is wrong. The information is already out there, we should not have to carry a library with us each time to spare your delicate senses from being called out whenever we’re seeing you turning our cultures into fashion statements. If you’re old enough to put on an offensive mockery of our traditions, cultures and religions, you’re old enough to hear that you’re being offensive.

Source: hammerofthewitches #cultural appropriation #white pr

(via karnythia)