Appropriation in action

    When New Yorkers hear a violin pic.twitter.com/HEjW3D3pge

    — Junebug (@airjunebug) August 4, 2018

    Comments

    Latina Writer Accuses Rihanna of Appropriating ‘Chola’ Brows

     @ Ebony.com, Aug. 3, 2018

    Krysty Chávez, a social media editor at Marie Claire, wrote an op-ed for the publication about being offended over Rihanna’s thin eyebrows on the 2018 September Issue of British Vogue. According to her, the Bajan-born pop star was culturally appropriating the eyebrows of Mexican “cholas,” female gang members [....]

     

     


    I was wondering if someone was going to represent Garbo in the chain of eyebrow design appropriation debate?

     


    Turns out the guy responsible for the above cover with appropriation and many others like it is a highly admired black Brit:

    (I don't forget strong images, it's my biz.)


    Leadership by Intimidation


    Offered only because I admire the interior decoration skills of "Some Black Guy"

     


    I just put this article In The News, but it belongs here.


    That is an awesome find, barefooted, one that shows how incredibly fast culture is a changin'.

    Think about how it used to be with ideals of beauty and fashion only a few decades back. We were told what shoes and hairstyles etc. were the thing for the next year and we all dutifully followed like sheep partly because that was all that was available to buy. Then the powers that were running that whole scene started to look "to the street" for ideas of beauty bubbling up from below. Then came Instagram and Amazon and: those powers are basically gone.

    Conversely, I think it would take a century to convince a 16th-century Dutchman that a size zero model of the 1990's was "hot" or "sexy".

    I am truly starting to buy the argument by some bigwig anthropological/sociological thinkers who are impressed at how well humans are weathering massively accelerating cultural change because of massively increased easy global communication. That such change was once thought to be more than most humans could bear, but that all we are getting is a few retrograde "populist" nativist movements and things like MAGA movement in the U.S. which is in the minority and going nowhere fast.


    I'm offended Chola took NOLA's name. The Big Easy is feeling queasy.


    How Our Conversations Around Mixed-Race Identity Have Evolved in the 21st Century

    A project (at the Japanese-American National Museum) illustrates how the explosion of the internet has allowed for a more involved, varied, and purposeful construction of one’s identity.

    By Dan Schindel @ Hyperallergic.com, July 9, 2018

    [...]The context in which Americans think about the question “What are you?” is quite different now than it was in the early 2000s.

    In just 15 years, the explosion of the internet has allowed for more involved, varied, and purposeful construction of one’s identity than at any previous point in human history. With this has come greater interrogation of just what identity is and what it means, both on a cultural and personal level. The constant debates around the definitions and utility of identity politics are one obvious example, as is the discourse around minority representation in art and media [....]


    How Poetry Came to Matter Again

    A young generation of artists is winning prizes, acclaim, and legions of readers while exploring identity in new ways.

    By Jesse Lichtenstein for The Atlantic, Sept. 2018 issue & online now

    [....] It’s been a long time coming, but the door has since been blown off its hinges. Skim the table of contents of the major literary journals, including white-shoe poetry enterprises like Poetry magazine, and even general-interest weeklies with vast reach such as The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. Scan the recipients of the prestigious and sometimes lucrative fellowships, awards, and lectureships granted annually to the most promising young poets in the country. They are immigrants and refugees from China, El Salvador, Haiti, Iran, Jamaica, Korea, Vietnam. They are black men and an Oglala Sioux woman. They are queer as well as straight and choose their personal pronouns with care. The face of poetry in the United States looks very different today than it did even a decade ago, and far more like the demographics of Millennial America. If anything, the current crop of emerging poets anticipates the face of young America 30 years from now [....]


    What makes a yard dance?

    The dandelions, of course!

    (Like you didn't know.)

    wink

     


    wink back atcha




    Anybody up for a black James Bond?

    I realize that I have opened the door here to inevitable questions in the age of vengeful social media: Well, what about a gay Bond? What about a transgender Bond? Can a straight actor play a gay Bond? Should a writer who is cisgender, straight and white be writing about any of this? These cross-examinations have started to feel like reeducation-camp interrogations, wherein no matter what you say, no matter what you agree to, it’s never enough. Sorry, but I decline to play.

     


    Jesus getting poked in the side plus the virgin birth were just appropriating Persian myths at the Council of Nicea. West Side Story's just a reworked Romeo and Juliet. Kurosawa's samurai version of King Lear. Lather, rinse, repeat - nothing new under the sun, incl that phrase. The sun rises, and the sun setteth, and proceedeth around to whence it came...


    Idris Elba already created a stir when he played Heimdall, a Norse god, in the Marvel Thor series. A white supremacist group suggested a boycott.

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/dec/17/white-supremacists-boycott-...

    ​There is a desire for ethnic actors to represent ethnic characters on screen. Black audiences flocked to the movie “Black Panther” earlier this year. The movie proudly headlined dark-skinned actors, something uncommon in Hollywood. “Crazy Rich Asians” stars a cast of Asian actors. Ethnic audiences do like seeing themselves on screen. The real pushback is going to occur when more ethnic actors get to play not only characters from their own ethnic group, but a wide range of characters. There will be a “Black Panther 2”. The question is whether the Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asian movies will be isolated events, or a continuing phenomenon.

    Blackface is no longer allowed, but there has been a trend of whitewashing Asian characters.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/hollywood-has-whitewashed-asian-stories-decades-year-they-couldn-t-n830241

    Nicki Minaj received criticism for cultural appropriation for her song and performance of “Chun-Li”

    https://www.teenvogue.com/story/chun-li-challenge-asian-stereotypes


    Now you're linking to Teen Vogue?  cheeky


    Yep. Young people have a right to complain.

    On a serious note. White actors and artists have had free reign to be whatever they want to be. From Charlie Chan to Ghost in a Shell, there was free access to play any character. From a theatrical standpoint ethnic audiences and actors are seeking equal access. 


    The article is about how a black actor should absolutely play Bond, so it sounds like you agree.  As do I, and most realistically thinking people.  I put it in arta's thread here because the subtext is that some white people, especially British white people who are purist fans of Fleming, disagree.  Do they have a point if they consider it cultural appropriation?

    Arguing against this, traditionalists counter that from the very first Bond novel, “Casino Royale” in 1953, Fleming described 007 as a white Englishman, with a Scottish father and a Swiss mother, who went to the ultra-tony Fettes boarding school after having been kicked out of the even tonier Eton.

     


    It’s cultural appropriation of a fictional character. It could help in recruitment of black spies in England.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/18/uk-spy-agencies-criticised-for-lack-of-black-leaders-mi6-mi5

    ​There has been a long tradition of black actors not being considered for “white” roles (Louis Gossett Jr. in an Officer and a Gentleman). I don’t have a problem with Elba playing Heimdall. I love Black Panther. I love seeing more people who look like me on screen when I go to the movies or theatre. 


    It could help in recruitment of black spies in England. 

    Perfect!


    Re: A white supremacist group suggested a boycott.

    THAT'S TRIBAL BEHAVIOR! Yes I'm shouting. You really make no sense on this topic. At all. Zero. I'm not doing this blog to debate the benefits of tribalism nor to teach the basic down side. I've tried and now I am done with the tolerance on this with you.  I'm not here to go over Tribalism 101.  Moving on to interact with others who understand the terminology and what is really going on with the "appropriation" trend over the last few years which has now gone way beyond past "pride in heritage"sentiments in this country.

    I suggest reading Obama on topic, use google for the speeches,, and um, he wrote this book that sort of addresses it all called Dreams from My Father. His understanding of tribalism and anti-tribalism stances happened to have greatly influenced the Nobel Peace Prize committee when they gave him the prize.


    I am arguing that we are all tribal. The election of Trump was tribal. Wishing tribalism away does nothing. Tribalism is our reality.

    Regarding Colorism,it is now being debated in animation. Disney lightened the skin of Tiana, the first Disney African princess.

    https://theglowup.theroot.com/colorism-or-complete-makeover-disneys-princess-tiana-1828353805

    ​The Parkland kids formed a tribe. They realized that they were monochromatic and reached out to other ethnic groups. That new tribe targeted Laura Ingraham when she and her tribe ridiculed a Parkland student over his college acceptances. Tribes are good things. Unions are tribes, political parties are tribes. The Democrats are a tribe, but within the tribe there is a raging debate about superdelegates. Tribes do not have to be uni-mind constructs.

    Edit to add:

    Had a brief discussion with a Republican today. He is tired of the ongoing mess with Trump. He wants Mueller to get on with things. He thinks Trump is bombastic. He does not think Trump is a racist. He told me that he had not heard about Trump’s history of housing discrimination, etc.

    We can talk and eat lunch together. I simply no longer respect or trust the man.


    Yeah been following the James Bond/Idris Elba stuff. Elba struck me as a perfect James Bond, a natural 

    Mho, James Bond can be any color but has to have an upper class Brit accent is all. It can be any upper class Brit accent from any Brit colonization.

    And he has to be able to affect a cool calm laid back manner. Also he has to always be the kind of guy that is thinking about sex but be in total control of his sex drive, never a hot or passionate type.

    Comes to mind Obama would make a good James Bond if he could do a good Brit accent.

    Finally, there's this: I don't really visualize James Bond as any race at all. He's almost like a robot. He's also playboy, and also a "Ken doll" flipside of a Barbie doll, a creation of the imagination.

    So I don't see the character being easily "appropriated" away from Brit culture. He is a fantasy figure Brit culture from a certain point in time in the culture. But he could be from any one of the sub-cultures or races from that point in time because he is a fantasy. Moving him away from a Brit identity , though, just would just change him into a different character and a different story, appropriated away so that there is nothing left to him. Because he's so shallow! This is not Romeo and Juliet becomes West Side Story, there's nothing deep here. Every culture already has a secret agent thing, even porn does. James Bond is the Brit version.

     


    Yes.  Bond is a fantasy for both men and women, which is why the idea of 007 has remained alive for so long.  The possibility of a female playing the hero has been floated, of course, but I'm not sure we're there yet.  Kinda odd that making Bond black still seems more possible than making the character a woman.  Hmm.  But on a hilarious note making that larger point, here's the Post's Alexandra Petri in 2015.

    CREDITS SEQUENCE:
    The silhouette of a nude man reclines sensually on the barrel of a gun. The gun goes off and explodes into MILLIONS OF TINY SEXY MEN.
    Theme Song: Adele, “Sex Objects And Guns.”
    sex objects and guns
    sex objects and guns
    villains can’t catch a breath
    they fall to their death
    while she makes bad puns
    sex objects and guuuuuns

    (fades out)

    It gets better.

    PS - Obama as Bond is awesome.


    I don't think he can be a woman, because the main part of the fantasy is a male dominant alpha figure from a fantasy world where male dominant alphas always win and keep control of the world. The whole shtick is gone without that. (I suppose you could do a Amazon world version but it would have to be like a sequel where first you have to learn the whole story of Amazon world, and then after that you can have an Amazon that outdoes all the others.)


    No, "he" can't be a woman.  But the character could easily be.  What you're saying here is exactly why women roll their eyes and sigh, arta.  It's also an example of misogynistic thinking.  I realize your intent was not that, but assuming that "the whole shtick is gone" without a male dominant alpha figure is assuming that women aren't able to be dominant figures capable of doing what 007 does.  Funnily, I posted a picture from Kill Bill as a joke on another thread ... but there's that as an example.  Not the same, but kinda maybe sorta.

    James Bond will likely never be Jane Bond.  That's too bad.


    The "misognynist" part of it is an important part of the Fleming fantasy, though I would consider it more accurate to use partriarchial or sexist or anti-feminist. There's definitely "war of the sexes" sub themes., they are important part of the fantasy. There's very strong women but they are never the winners, James the male always is. As a matter of fact, he attracts the smartest strongest most beautiful women who are a near match for him. He is god, they are goddesses, in a world run by a few male gods.

    Sounds familiar. We need Camille Paglia here.

     Methinks this is going way off the topic of current appropriation and mingling and melting pot

    This is simple fantasy, classic myth stuff, and anyone can appropriate it ahd has for thousands of years. J ames Bond is already an appropriation of ancient myths that have been appropriated thousands of time over thousands of years.

    It's a specifically British one, from a specific space and time In Britain. To start making a Jane Bond is making your own version. If he's another all powerful secret agent of a different sex or culture, he's not James Bond. It's that simple. Like I said, there could be an matriarchial Amazonian civilization that had women in control and you could then make a James Bond type figure if you'd like.

    Here's what many people think of as a the Minoan James Bond in a supposedly (actually probably not but just play along with the old interpretation for this purpose) ancient matriarchal culture

    It's just that we are really not talking about appropriation here. We're talking about its long after effects. Global ideal characters that are given historical costume roles to re-evoke 

    Fleming's James Bond is a 20th-century British figure using fantasy based on ancient roles. You can put any picture on it you like.It's just not Fleming's "James Bond" anymore.

    The "Steampunk" movement actually tries to do this with cultural history, fantasize it and twist it with technological change it's difficult and complicated and doesn't always work, that's why it's a fringe culture.


    The head of the spy agency M went from male to female and back to male. CIA agent Felix Lieter went from white to black and back to white. Miss Moneypenny went from white to black. 


    The next James Bond director has been chosen, he is a multi-multi-ethnic American, pretty well qualified as one of them new non-tribal cosmpolitans (I should add that once upon a time Barack Obama was a very strange name, too). My underlining because: Hollywood can see that multi-ethnic globalism is the future, the money they are after is always with the teen and 20-something generations:

    Cary Joji Fukunaga is directing the new James Bond movie. Here are 3 things to know about him.

    He’s one of the most eclectic and sought-after directors in Hollywood today.

    By Alissa Wilkinson @ Vox.com, Sep 20, 2018, 12:20pm EDT

    [....] 3) Fukunaga has an eclectic personal background too

    Fukunaga has spent much of his life moving between cultures and absorbing them. His father, a third-generation Japanese American, was born in an internment camp in the US during World War II; his mother is Swedish-American. His parents split when he was a child, after which his father married an Argentinian woman and his mother married a Mexican-American man. Fukunaga is fluent in French as well as Spanish, the latter of which he learned during summers in Mexico with his mother and stepfather.

    Fukunaga grew up in the Bay Area and once wanted to be a pro snowboarder, something he actively trained for, eventually living in Japan for a year. He majored in history at UC Santa Cruz and studied political science at the Institut d’études politiques in Grenoble, France [....]


    Big picture, same for arts, politics and economics:


    Tribalism got blacks through Slavery and Jim Crow. 


    Wrong. Tribalism is the source and cause of slavery (including that practiced by Africans as well as Europeans) and Jim Crow and many other horrible things like: wars, both civil and international, genocide, mob violence, extra judicial activities like lynchings, violent teen gangs, pogroms, religious persecution, criminal gangs like the Mafia, RACISM......

    Recent past: it sure did a bang up job of things in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.

    Currently: it emptied Syria, Putin pays people to amp it up it in the U.S. and E.U.

    Forever tribal it seems: Jews vs. Palestinians in Israel. Heavenly results there! They're so happy with the results of retreating into tribalism after attempted genocide that they are thinking of creating more tribes: orthodox vs. secular.

    I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half ~ attributed to Jay Gould


    google's "People also Ask" when you search for "Hutu vs. Tutsi":

    How can you tell the difference between Hutu and Tutsi?

    Differences between the communities were greatly emphasised by the European invaders of Rwanda and Burundi, first Germans then Belgians, as an instrument of colonial rule. Hutus and Tutsis have the same language; the same religion; the same culture.

    Are Hutu and Tutsi the same race?

    The largest ethnic groups in Rwanda are the Hutus, which make up about 85% of Rwanda's population; the Tutsis, which are 14%; and the Twa, 1%. Starting with the Tutsi feudal monarchy rule of the Tenth century, the Hutus were a subjugated social group.

    Tribalism: just lovely!  Rwandan genocide Deaths: 500,000–2,000,000


    p.s. It's also the reason for the torture of high school: the in crowd, the out crowd, and the no crowd wants you, otherwise known as cliques. So indirectly, combined with the availability of guns, it is responsible for a lot of school shootings. Certainly Columbine.

    The tribal solution for teen protection is really working out well in Chicago! Here in the Bronx, everyone and his uncle is scared shitless that that crap is coming here with the amping up of recent Trinatarios tribe activity.


    Tribes include people banding together to decrease poverty and crime


    those are political parties and sociological organization, and they are by choice of the individual, not by inherited and cultural qualities of tribe.

    To wit: I haven't really seen anyone yelling about someone "appropriating" their desire to fight poverty or crime! Nor for that matter, nobody yells about someone "appropriating" their desire to cut taxes or get rich.


    There is tribalism involved in fighting poverty and crime. Note the direct confrontation that BlackLivesMatter had with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. BLM viewed both has having too limited a view of dealing with the justice system. There were other black activists who directly confronted the Democratic Party for ignoring black voters. The DNC and Bernie both wanted blacks just to shut up and fall in line. Identity politics enamel a battle cry. Sanders and the DNC were fine with white identity politics. Blacks were told economic solutions would solve every thing. Blacks did not accept that vision.

    There was a tribal battle after the election on white identity politics. Democrats backed off a strong identity politics message and made attempts to improve outreach in minority communities. Republicans decided to go full white identity politics and remain silent about the racist they put in the White House.

    The midterm elections will be a tribal election. Tribes of ethnic minorities are expected to vote majority Democratic Party. Tribes of white men will vote majority Republican. It is unclear where the majority of the white women tribe will wind up.

    Tribes are not inherently evil. Tribes can be protective. Note the impact of the coalition of tribes that surrounded Custer.

     


    Sigh

    Slaves brought to the United States depended on other slaves. They escaped with the help of other slaves. Post slavery they built townships with other slaves. Whites destroyed communities like Rosewood, Florida and a portion of Tulsa, Oklahoma because of anger about surging black townships. Tribalism helped people kee p things together.During Jim Crow, blacks formed organizations like SCLC to combat the practice. Blacks would have died without tribalism.


    The point is that it was a bad thing that were forced by tribal enslavement to do that, not a good thing!

    How Tribalism Overrules Reason, and Makes Risky Times More Dangerous Yes, it's still an innate instinct of homo sapiens. But you either believe that humans are able to evolve out of that or do you think it will forever be tribal survival of the fittest tribes, with lots of deaths and cruelty. You either believe civilization is possible or you don't.

    Hint: the United Nations is not an organization committed to tribalism. 

    Obama At U.N.: Reject Tribalism Home And Abroad, Sept. 20, 2016

    President Obama used his final address to the United Nations General Assembly to make a spirited argument for international cooperation, while also delivering a stern warning about the countervailing forces of nationalism and tribal identity that have been gaining momentum in both the U.S. and Europe

    Obama's message seemed tailored as much for American voters looking towards the November election as for the international leaders who assembled in New York City.

    At U.N., Obama Defends His Foreign Policy: 'We Have Been A Force For Good'

    "We all face a choice," Obama said. "We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration. Or we can retreat into a world sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion." [....]

    We've gotten to where we've nearly "them"ed ourselves to death. Them and them and them. But this is America. There is no them; there's only us. ~ Bill Clinton


    Forced examples and difficult questions about that after centuries gone by. From  Indian Slavery Once Thrived in New Mexico. Latinos Are Finding Family Ties to It. by Simon Romero @ NYTimes.com, Jan. 28, 2019

    [....] Pointing to the breadth of the Southwest’s slave trade, some historians have also documented how Hispanic settlers were captured and enslaved by Native American traffickers, and sometimes went on to embrace the cultures of their Comanche, Pueblo or Navajo masters.

    Kim TallBear, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta, cautioned against using DNA testing alone to determine indigenous identity. She emphasized that such tests can point generally to Native ancestry somewhere in the Americas while failing to pinpoint specific tribal origins.

    “There’s a conflation of race and tribe that’s infuriating, really,” said Ms. TallBear, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe of South Dakota who writes about tribal belonging and genetic testing. “I don’t think ancestry alone is sufficient to define someone as indigenous.”

    The discovery of indigenous slave ancestry can be anything but straightforward, as Mr. Trujillo, the former postal worker, learned.

    First, he found his connection to a Genízaro man in the village of Abiquiú. Delving further into 18th century baptismal records, he then found that his ancestor somehow broke away from forced servitude to purchase three slaves of his own.

    “I was just blown away to find that I had a slaver and slaves in my family tree,” Mr. Trujillo said. “That level of complexity is too much for some people, but it’s part of the story of who I am.”


    Really intriguing about the statue of a migrant in the town center, and the U.S. style homes, is like they are proud of remittance culture? Also like they intentionally chose to be part of American suburban culture rather than be El Salvadorians? And then just went about doing it...

    Mayor of Washington D.C. joins El Salvador town to celebrate migration milestone

    @ Reuters.com, Aug. 14

    INTIPUCA, El Salvador - Far from U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the people of a small coastal town in El Salvador on Tuesday celebrated half a century of their links to Washington D.C. - joined by the capital’s mayor.

    Sigfredo Chavez and Elba Salinas, along with their two sons, were the first migrants from Intipuca to make the long journey to the United States in 1967, ending up in Washington D.C. and paving the way for thousands of people from their town who would follow, local officials said.

    Tuesday’s celebration took place in the town’s central plaza where a statue of a migrant, with a bag on his shoulder, stands in a fountain [....]

    Some 5,000 Salvadorans from Intipuca now live in the Washington area, according to the mayor’s office, while 7,000 inhabitants back in the coastal town take care of U.S.-style homes built with dollars sent back by migrants [....]


    Here is “Crazy Rich Asians” director John M Chu discussing regaining pride in his his tribe

    The reason I did this movie and the reason why it took so long for me to explore this as an artist, explore my cultural identity, was because it was such a sensitive part of my heart and my soul.

     

    I am a complete, residual effect of people speaking out. I was someone who wasn’t awake to those things only because I had my head down to the ground

     

    Ultimately it was the increasing push for Asian representation in Hollywood, as Asian-American voices across social media and beyond rose louder, that caused Chu to do some self-reflecting. With every white-washed character ― like Allison Ng in “Aloha,” Major in “Ghost in the Shell” and The Ancient One in “Doctor Strange” ― came an outcry from the Asian community. Campaigns like #Whitewashedout, #StarringJohnCho and #SeeAsAmStar gained steam, fueled by those of Asian descent who grew tired of seeing their faces and stories repeatedly brushed aside.  

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/crazy-rich-asians-director-jon-m-chu_us_5b688fc5e4b0b15abaa5c133


    Is see the popularity of the movie with the general public, and the fact it got made, as an indicator of the breakdown of tribalism. It's an attempt to understand "the other", to communicate and integrate rather than continue to separate. It's about communication. And it's about interchange of cultures and assimilation. This is how cultures change, it's how integration happens,it's how intermarriage happens and new cultures are born, it's how ghettoes die. 


     How to Watch “Crazy Rich Asians” Like an Asian-American

    By Jiayang Fang @ New Yorker.com, Aug. 13

    ....for me, the true star of “Crazy Rich Asians” is its inversion of racial expectation....

    ....When I was a child, Asians, both those living in Asia and those tucked away in ethnic enclaves in the diaspora, turned to shows such as “Dynasty” and “Dallas” to spy on the inner world of American blue bloods. The reversal, in “Crazy Rich Asians,” in which the audience is made to feel like an interloper vying for a glance of Asia’s glittering class, is what makes the movie, as many critics have deemed it, a landmark....


    The caption to the picture in the article

    Asian-Americans are desperate for “Crazy Rich Asians” (starring Henry Golding and Constance Wu) to be perfect, because the chance to make another movie like it might not come again for years.

    That is the fear. That another movie with an Asian cast will not be made. The resistance to the movie being made came from white Hollywood tribalism. There is a fear that we will go back to white actors playing Asians. The film’s director noted that Asians pushed back on the lack of Asians on screen. Tribe vs. tribe.

     


    Here is more from the director and cast

    Director Jon M. Chu thought he was done with crying over Crazy Rich Asians.

    In an interview with The Root, Chu divulged that he and the movie’s cast and crew “cried almost every day on set.” The history-making film is only one of a handful of Hollywood films to boast an all-Asian cast, and is the first major romantic comedy to ever do so. As focused as everyone was on the task at hand—making a great movie—it was hard to escape the significance of what they were doing.

    “When we [watched] a scene, we’d get this feeling of, ‘Why haven’t I ever seen this before?’ Why isn’t it so obvious? And also never been done? Like a romantic comedy lead of Asian, American Asian, British Asian all these people, it feels so natural,” Chu said. Watching it all manifest onscreen, “it becomes a very emotional, cathartic.”

    https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/ready-for-their-closeup-what-crazy-rich-asians-means-t-1828353463

    There was a similar feel from the cast of Black Panther. It’s 2018 and ethnic minorities are just feeling this.


    Hollywood had no problem with white actors portraying Asians. No one noticed the absence of Asian actors. The Asian community voiced dissent and we now have an Asian cast film. No one would be surprised if a long time passes before another all-Asian cast film is produced. Only way to force the hand of Hollywood is to keep up the pressure. Pressure will come mainly from the Asian community (a tribe). Tribes can actually combat the tribalism of another tribe. Tribes are important for individual survival. Civil Rights organizations,etc are tribes. The United Nations is a group of tribes trying to do good things.

    Tribe definition

    1. a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader.

    Tribalism

    1 : tribal consciousness and loyalty; especially : exaltation of the tribe above other groups. 

    Tribes often simply want equal footing with other groups, not superiority.


    As I said earlier I am done discussing one of your favorite topics of how wonderful tribalism supposedly is.

    I want to get back to the topic I created this thread for: cultural appropriation.

    The book on which the movie is based is full of "cultural appropriation" memes. It is also full of self-deprecating humor, it makes fun of everyone in it. It's fully about the confidence of a mature culture that can make fun of itself and also mutate.

    Here's but a small sampling of Kwan's Asian stereotypes: Hennessy-swirling, cigar-puffing fat-cat Asian tycoons; fortune-hunting "Taiwanese tornadoes"; Hong Kong fashionista men ("dandies in the truest sense of the word"); ABCs ("overconfident and overfamiliar" types who "grew up drinking Vitamin-D calcium-fortified American milk"); Chuppies (Chinese yuppies); Henwees (high-net worth individuals); old amah kitchen hands; an assortment of marriage-scheming mothers, aunts and in-laws; bitchy shopaholic party girls; blinged out Hong Kong ladies who lunch; un-blinged out Singaporean ladies who lunch (they "wore less jewelry since they were always so scared of being robbed"); Japanese ladies who lunch (with "sun visors and fanny packs" who "looked like they were on the way to the golf course"); penny-pinching Asian immigrants; penny-pinching old-money overseas Asians; spendthrift old-money overseas Asians; spendthrift new-money mainland Asians; "self-hating" Asian-Americans who "feel that the ultimate act of assimilation is to marry into the dominant race"; and the Asian men who size them up, "quantifying every inch ... by a completely different set of standards than [they] would use for non-Asian girls".

    The reader almost needs an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of who thinks what of whom, and why.

    Crazy Rich even offers a playful riff on the trope of all Asians being good at math, when Chuppies at a bachelorette spa weekend run the numbers before convincing one of their own to dump her "poor" boyfriend. After projected income taxes, mortgage and property taxes, school fees, Swedish au pairs, Sri Lankan maids, dresses, shoes, facials, manis, pedis and Pilates, the girls have (in their heads, anyway) "already spent $470,000 of Simon's salary". It's the sort of lighting-quick computations I haven't seen since the SATs. [.....}

    The great irony – and pleasure – of Crazy Rich Asians is that those being stereotyped stereotype right back. Call it a reversal of the collective gaze.

    Cultures change by interacting with other and partaking of other cultures. They stay the same by staying in ghettoes and are marginalized but not interacting and partaking of other cultures

    On your meme about how hard it supposedly was to get the film made, that is not at all what is communicated here in the 2013 Guardian article:

    The book has been the blockbuster beach read of the summer, so clearly these stereotypes are resonating with the masses. Hunger Games producer Nina Jacobson has optioned the film rightsVogueVanity Fair, Wall Street Journal – media outlets as prestigious as the designer name-brands flaunted throughout the novel – have all touted their praise.


    Joy Luck Club 1993

    Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger 2000

    Yep Asian lead cast movies are easy to get green-lighted


    (snark warning)

    Pressure will come mainly from the Asian community (a tribe). Tribes can actually combat the tribalism of another tribe. Tribes are important for individual survival. Civil Rights organizations,etc are tribes. The United Nations is a group of tribes trying to do good things.

    Can I get seven nickles?


    Tribes often simply want equal footing with other groups, not superiority.

    Wait wait, I know that one, I've heard it before! HERE IT IS!

    You realize you make segregationist arguments on this site all the time, all the time? And then you have the nerve to criticize rappers for this or that transgression against the tribe and supporting Trump!  You support Trump's divisiveness and tribalism with many things you say. As I said: you make no sense on these issues. You argue all sides of the issue, whatever suits you at the time. Again I suggest reading some Obama speeches and book. And thinking and thinking again.

    Tribalism has been used throughout history by :"the man" to pit dumb tribals against one another (i.e., Jim Crow, just one of a 1,000 examples). Obama knows this all intimately, grew up an American kid in Indonesia with a white American mother, an Indonesian stepfather, and an African father, more anti-tribal training in Hawaii, more with visits to India, Pakistan, Africa....He rejected tribalism and made himself a star at Harvard Law, won political seats by appealing across tribes. Known to disparage tribals in private, like in they cling to their guns and bible...

    Your plan today (may change tomorrow): keep your tribe in the ghetto, supposedly safe and sound from the bogeyman, so lacking in confidence that they aren't allowed to do self-deprecatory humor. Talk about how racist Hollywood is even though many aspects of "Afro American" culture have become incredibly popular in worldwide mass pop culture. You've already been assimilated, while you weren't looking, sorry.


    My tribe is in the city and the suburbs. 

    Regarding rappers, Obama called Kanye West a jerk. There is a term “invited to the cookout”. That refers to people who offended the tribe. Omarosa is working her way back to an invitation to the cookout. 

    You are tribal. You propose a dress code to keep from getting shot. You require that people see a straw man glass as half full. You set criteria for acceptable behavior.

    The.theme seems to be relax and enjoy the status quo. Democrats need white votes, therefore it is selfish for blacks to make demands. Let’s have none of this identity politics crap. The status quo is just fine.

    Cultural appropriation is not worthy of discussion. There is no need to discuss whites playing Asia roles, for example. Everything is perfect just the way it is. We love the status quo.

    Whites know best how to teach black children how to advise their children. What blacks are doing is wrong. 

    Nothing needs to change. Enjoy your half full glass. Don’t complain.


    HuffPost has tweets indicating excitement about the first serious all Asian cast film in 25 years.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/-tweets-that-sum-up-what-a-time-to-be-alive-it-is-for-asians_us_5b75c6dde4b0182d49b1f89b

    ​Why would anyone be upset about their culture being appropriated, there is so much diversity on screen. Bring on more white actors.


    On another cultural issue the use of the N-word there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of Democrats and Independents who think that is appropriate for white people to use the N-word. Republicans maintain the same 25% who think that use of the word by whites is OK.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-republicans-n-word_us_5b75da23e4b0a5b1feb93aa8


    "Let my people go - to Jack-in-the-box" - waiting for the commercial. Of course MLK stole it from Moses' deli crosstown.


    FoxNews cannot tell the difference between Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle

    https://ew.com/news/2018/08/16/fox-news-doubles-down-defends-patti-label...

     


     The ultimate in cross cultural appropriation:

    NASA says Aretha Franklin’s asteroid will keep orbiting after singer’s death

    By John Bowden @ TheHill.com - 08/16/18 09:56 PM EDT


    Possibly worth remembering Respect was recorded in Muscle Shoals, not in Aretha's native Detroit, and it was in a multiracial studio back when session musicians weren't interested in segregation -  they wanted to play and get paid. A year after Respect, MLK's death would suck much of the oxygen out of that camaraderie in Muscle Shoals & Memphis studios.

    http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/muscle-shoals/index.html

    https://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/09/post_266.html

    https://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/08/from_mlk_to_obama_are...

     


    fabulous, the links give me the chills, to paraphrase some famous lyrics: something big is happening here what it is ain't exactly clear yet. those who didn't have to spend Sunday evening as a kid in front of the Lawrence Welk show at (non English speaking, knife in apron pocket) grannie's house have no idea just how big. The highly toned down white milquetoast form of big band swing music was Lawrence's specialty, as if inspiring anyone to jitterbug might cause heart attacks. always a little German marching twist to it, a one and a two, oompah pah


    The Southern version of Lawrence might have been Hee Haw, kind of a TV predecessor to Branson, Missouri where nothing controversial would pass, including the shifting face of Country Music (where' s Graham Parsons of the Flying Burrito Brothers who launched a thousand bands, or Hank Williams Jr? all very sanitized)


    Heh, PP, check out these "first time hearing" videos, guy is blown away, basically because he has no idea it's not really 100% white Brit music. Ancient history, just getting to it now, could be Marco Polo on the Silk Road:

     


    Historic example-- how it happened in Iran in the 19th century, via Afghanistan, Russia and the West:

    The paintings that turned Persian art on its head in the 19th century

    By Susan Babaie @ Apollo-Magazine.com, June 2; small excerpt with one of several examples from different periods discussed:

    [...] After the invasion of Afghan tribes in 1722 and the collapse of Safavid rule, the ensuing decades of political chaos and social fragmentation were brought to an end in 1785 by Aqa Muhammad Khan, chieftain of the Turkic Qajar tribe, whose tactical genius was matched by the shockingly brutal subjugation of his enemies. His assassination in 1797 was followed by two Qajar reigns in which a central government was established and Tehran’s position as the new capital became permanent. Under Fath ‘Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), Iran’s Caucasian territories were ceded to Russia, thus realigning Iran’s borders to the outlines of the country we know today. The reign of Nasir al-Din Shah (r. 1848–96) was strengthened by the creation of new permanent armies, and institutions of higher learning based on modern technologies and inspired by European models. Qajar rule is usually understood as being tethered to its main ideological and political predecessor, the Safavid reign of 1501 to 1722, but also as a bridge to modernity – and this duality can be seen in the paintings of the period [....]

    Ladies around a Samovar (c. 1860–75), Isma‘il Jalayir.
    Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

    The extraordinary painting of Ladies around a Samovar (c. 1860–75) is a case in point. The artist Isma‘il Jalayir, a well-known court artist, used photographs of individual women to compose a gathering around what appears to be an afternoon tea in a garden. Several of the figures are recognisable from other paintings as well as reminiscent of late Safavid types (the musician to the far right, for instance). Jalayir’s composition, however, is deliberately defiant of the mimetic devices so central to photography, at least in its early uses. The women are posed tightly together on a porch (notice the column to the right) against a lush background of trees and bushes and engaged in the activities one might expect of a gathering of women at court: dancing, playing music, smoking, drinking tea, looking elegant in their finery. The painting is as innovative in style as Persian miniature paintings of the 16th century or the Safavid portraits of the king and his entourage. Yet the unreality of what might otherwise be a depiction of an everyday genre scene is unsettling and utterly modern. Nowhere do we find this kind of intermixing of styles and modes of picture-making in the painting traditions of Iran before the late 19th century [....]


    Save the taco - Fox's Tucker Carlson speaks out before the PC frenzy goes too far.

    https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b7632bfe4b018b93e92337c

    (of course Chinese takeout is American as well)

    As Davy Crockett famously cried, "Remember the Extra Hot Sauce!!! (and guacamole)" - historical words of bravery.


    The whole taco thing is too much, way beyond the other Amero appropriations/distortions like Eye-talian. I have noticed from personal experience that white guys of northern European heritage have a genetic predisposition to tacos. More so than any other food except meat and potatoes, maybe more than hamburgers. One example of quite a few: my cranky picky eater "greatest" gen father loves tacos. He is the kind who will only eat "Chinese" if its "chow mein" (brothers once took him to a Thai restaurant, after which he said-don't you EVER do that to me again!) After all, tacos use iceberg lettuce.That is still the only lettuce he will eat.


    Iceberg lettuce, bread *must* have butter, etc. Ayup.


    they still like us, they really do like us, or at least what we used ta be:

    One more week ... we're very excited. 'American Masters 1940–1980' opens 24 August – https://t.co/5lMnHWrg4L#americanmasters @TerraAmArt pic.twitter.com/Mz6xaGy6kN

    — NationalGalleryAus (@NatGalleryAus) August 17, 2018


    They're white - what do they expect?

    I liked the Piper Laurie bit, like the father eating peas with a knife to make the guest feel at home. Kim Basinger's another good one. People don't get why Forrest Gump's so offensive.

    I never had an accent, but can slip into one quick. People can't guess where Im from, and more try to fit in, though I had an Irish friend tell me to cut it with the imitation Irish accent - they'd had their hearts set on an American for Xmas, not a cultural wannabe.

    Ask about class and appropriation in America without talking about accents... we've got the reverse snobbery thing going, but some regional dialects are more equal than others.


    You guys are really hilarious. Cultural appropriation became a “thing” because of social media. More people were able to comment when they notice a lack of minority faces on screen

    https://www.wmagazine.com/story/hollywood-diversity-study-lack-of-women-people-of-color

    ​When blacks saw Bo Derek with braids and hear that Derek created a new hairstyle, there was resentment. It did not get wall to wall coverage. Twitter allows the disgust to spread like wildfire. People who grumble about feeling left out now have a larger voice. The world has changed. After Jolson, Pat Boone, Elvis, Timberlake, etc. some people are objecting to what they see. The more access ethnic minorities have to fully participating in society, the fewer complaints. While you’re laughing, minorities are working to make that day a reality.

     


     no, actually we are not hilarious, you are, because what is actually happening is that you are finally coming around from confusedly arguing both sides of the issue to seeing what all the rest of us on dagblog have been talking about since your own cultural appropriation thread. Diversity in a society is the opposite of tribalism. You are finally starting to see how tribes break down by mixing and mingling and appropriating what they like about other tribes' cultures. And that it is a good thing, not a bad thing. That tribalism is often a bad thing.

    It's what art history and cultural history studies are about. It's really the only thing they are about! The mixing and mingling and borrowing and appropriation that cause changes in styles over time! The stuff that doesn't happen when you stay in ghettoes and your own villages and don't mix with each other.

     And we have been noting how global social media has sped that up to a rapid pace like humans have never seen before.

    And how MAGA and Trump and other nationalistic movements are a counterreaction of people who want it to slow down and stay with the old tribalism a while longer. Including widespread tribalism about skin color. And how Obama is against tribalism and for diversity and cultural "appropriation" which preferably called cutural sharing, trade and communication.


    P.S. You've been arguing a lot on Trump's side until now.. Here's why I say that, tribalism 'splained in 1 1/2 minutes by historian Timothy Synder:

     

    Listen to this historian explain why Trump chants "Build That Wall!" (with @TimothyDSnyder) pic.twitter.com/iyBVRGO6z2

    — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 16, 2018

     

    This is why I have found a lot of your arguments about the wonders of tribalism offensive.

    If what you want to do in reaction to what is in that video is to retreat into tribe in the face of the 21st century and a minority of white people freaking out about it, your end result is probably going to be "separate but equal" if you are lucky, actual war if you are not. Aggressive tribalism is not the answer to anything but the end of the world, that's what Obama's U.N. speech was about.

    It's understandable to retreat into tribe when you and yours feel threatened or hurt or ripped off or not appreciated enough or in danger. But history has shown it's the wrong way to go. You got to mix as individuals and stay open to borrowing and trading with other tribes. And yes even imitating them as actors.

    A cavaet for everyoone, Synder is dumbing it down a bit, things are more complicated than that in fascist theory and in reality, and I don't agree that tribalism = fascism 100%, but it's a real good job of getting across the basics.. Astoundingly good.


    Cultural appropriation started with Bo Derek? The whole point of Silk Road traffic was to bring back silk and shit from the east; the "Spice Islands" to bring spice and coffee and what-not; Euro cuisine didnt have tomatoes and corn and potatoes until Columbus. But when the rest of the world appropriates Europe's Renaissance or America's Industrial Revolution and everything they see out of Hollywood, it's called success and progress. Constantine appropriating other religions at Nicae around 300 was called Modern Christianity. The Romans appropriated Greek Gods (renaming) and culture while erasing the Phoenician/Carthagenian empire and legacy in the Mediterranean.

    Hollywood of course pulls in and redistributes - it's the melting pot of memes and visuals for the whole world, Appropriation Central.

    (p.s. following up a bit of diversion where we're discussing white Southerners and accents in Hollywood with "you guys are hilarious" is pretty insulting - what, we didn't talk enough black stuff for you, baby needs attention?)

     


    I'm losing patience, too. The least he could do is go and read up on what happened in Rwanda. Talk about myopia of tribe, geez. This is my blog, not a news thread and I really don't want to spend any more time doing Cultural History 101, I feel like I'm being trolled. I'm used to getting paid for lecturing and tutoring on topic as to America/Europe/Asia 18th-20th Cent. to clients.

    I've really enjoyed the interaction with you and barefooted. Cross cultural is truly my absolute favorite thing but I haven't kept it BECAUSE it's changing so fast. And I know you have tons more experience actually living it!

    So I'm going to try to ignore responding to the trolling but continue adding.


    No cultural appropriation did not start with Bo Derek. I mentioned Jolson and others. Diversity in the United States came because specific ethnic minorities began the push and there is still fights about it. The push made by Asian actors and the public rejection of movies made with whites playing Asian roles makes it much more difficult for a white actor to be cast as an Asian in a future movie. The motion picture academy is finally bowing to decades long pressure and adding ethnic minorities to the list of those eligible to vote. Tribes fought for that diversity. The tribes won a battle in the war. It appears to me that you and AA would argue that a white actor should be able to play an Asian role.

    This reminds me of the battle over the use of the word nigger. At the end of the day, whites who use the word are punished by society because of pressure brought by a tribe. Those in the tribe who did not think the word should be used at all were not supportive of whites using the word. The members of the tribe who used the word claimed the word as their own and defied whites to say the word. It appeared to me that you and AA were arguing universal use of the word.

    I did find AA’s suggestion about clothing choice as a way not to get shot a knee-slapper. It came directly from D.L. Hughley’s parody book of advice blacks receive on how hot to get shot. It also came from DiAngelo’s book on how we really don’t talk about race. At the end of the day, We divert to Europe, and jokes. it seemed that you both argue for the status quo.

    Tell folks looking for change to get off my lawn.

    Edit to add:

    It is an abomination for a white actor to play an Asian

    Here are the words of John Hu, director of Crazy Rich Asians

    ————

    “This is a fairy tale that can inspire a lot of young people and tell them we are on the same level, and that we could have been in all of those classic movies, we just weren’t given the opportunity,” he tells The Daily Beast.  

    It is to Asians what Black Panther is to the black community: a beacon of representation, as well as a big, shiny middle finger to all those in Hollywood who say it can’t—or shouldn’t— be done. And Chu, the child of two Chinese immigrants, didn’t buckle under the considerable pressure, delivering a wonderfully entertaining romantic comedy with broad appeal

    There’s something poetic about Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians coming out in the same year. 

    I think it’s a sign that things are changing, and it’s a reflection of the audience speaking back to the studios that have for so long just done whatever they want. This is a conversation we’re having now, and this year was a big answer to the wave of reactions several years ago to #OscarsSoWhite, to #WhitewashedOUT, to all these different things. And now it was up to us—filmmakers, executives, everyone in the right positions—to react and give it a response. I’m very proud to be one of the people on the front lines to be able to do that

    ————

     

    There is Joy in seeing yourself on screen. Whites take this for granted. More of this and debates about cultural appropriation goes away. Asians playing Asians. It took ethnic groups (tribes) to fight for this.

     


    The discussion about cultural appropriation in the United States has to do with minorities being locked out for most of the time the country has existed. Ira Aldridge had to go to London to have a successful acting career. You can’t separate the current furor over cultural appropriation from segregation and theft of music, etc from blacks for  decades.


    I'd imagine whites playing Asians hit a watershed with Mickey Rooney's over-the-top racist Japanese character in Breakfast for TIffany's 50 years ago.

    Then there's Anthony Quinn, a Mexican of 1/4 Irish descent who played "Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Filipino freedom-fighters, Chinese guerrillas, and Arab sheiks" before becoming Mohammed's uncle, the French Gaugin, an Italian in La Strada, an Inuit in The Savage Innocents , a Ukrainian Cardinal in Shoes of the Fisherman, a Bedouin in Lawrence of Arabia, British royalty in King Henry II, Caiaphas trying to kill Jesus, and his masterpiece, happy-go-lucky Greek Zorba (to match his Greek character in Guns of Navarone).

    Requiem for a Heavyweight was remade several times with Quinn as a Mexican (facing Cassius Clay), Jack Palance as a Scottish-American (Palance being born a Ukrainian named Palahniuk), a 1957 BBC version with the not-very-boxer-like Sean Connery (& a small Michael Caine part), along with a Dutch and Serbian version.


    White actors are still playing ethnic roles. Asian audiences and actors are objecting.

    https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/showbiz/gallery/rooney-mara-white-ethnic-roles/index.html

    Again the status quo is being challenged. When I describe tribes, I am really talking about ethnic minorities who fight the resistance of many in the arts to accept diversity.


    "It appeared to me that you and AA were arguing universal use of the word." - oh bullshit - I simply pointed out blacks sitting around going "yo nigger, bring me a beer" or "wassup, niggah" can't really be so pollyannish that the word itself gives them vapors, even if (gasp) uttered by a white person, and the idea of trashing a white girl rappin lyrics at a concert in good spirits to a black rap song that repeats "nigger nigger nigger" is just bizarre, manipulative and downright retarded.

    But keep playing this game, you've obviously got a lot of ammo and time on your hands.


    You direct your attack at me. Obviously, I wasn’t be one who stopped the young woman from singing the rap lyric. That was Lemarr and the audience. I provide links to document that I am not a lone voice. So, yes black people object when white people use the word. You got a lot of black people who would push back.

    Your status quo is not accepted.

    Edit to add:

    There is a discussion about the word nigger that is ongoing.in the black community. Singer Eric Benetvtalke about how the word when used by rappers only serves white supremacy. Michael Eric Dyson discussing his new book on C-SPAN noted that at some point rap is going to deal with why it is still talking about the same negative images of black people. 

    There is an updated version of The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why noting the following

    The N Word reveals how the term “nigger” has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America over the four hundred years since it was first spoken on our shores. Jabari Asim pinpoints Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of the “nigger.” In a seminal but now obscure essay, Jefferson marshaled a welter of pseudoscience to define the stereotype of a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self-control. Asim reveals how nineteenth-century “science” then colluded with popular culture to amplify this slander. What began as false generalizations became institutionalized in every corner of our society: the arts and sciences, sports, the law, and on the streets. Asim’s conclusion is as original as his premise. He argues that even when uttered with the opposite intent by hipsters and hip-hop icons, the slur helps keep blacks at the bottom of America’s socioeconomic ladder. But Asim also proves there is a place for the word in the mouths and on the pens of those who truly understand its twisted history—from Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle to Mos Def. Only when we know its legacy can we loosen this slur’s grip on our national psyche

    Tribes have discussions about how the greater society should view them.


    Literally the only times I've been confronted with the word in a decade is 1) in rap songs, and 2) at Dagblog in your discussions. Certainly it's not in my vocabulary except in very pissed off irony not aimed at blacks or when responding to a comment by rmrd. Take that for whatever you want.
    Meanwhile, I think police abuse is a much more important use of our time, but that's just me talking, the token southern cracker on the blog. Word up.

    BTW, I think AA was complaining of even her blog pieces turning into a few of your favorite things...


    Great post! I agree that Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music is an outrageous example of cultural appropriation. She's not Austrian!! She doesn't even have the modicum of respect for the culture to pretend to have a German accent. 

    Also I read the book the Von Trapp Singers and that movie wasn't historically accurate. 

    Disgusting!


    Not only that, it celebrates pedophilia and other tawdry behavior with that "I am 16 going on 17" bit, showing Hitlerjugend Rolf Gruber waiting in the shadows ready to tap her until his Nazi love takes precedent.

    Plus it makes a sham of marriage and religious vows, as if they were something to throw overboard with any passing philanderer with 6 children already.

    And then there's the whole issue of borders, how they continually break the law and ignore any immigration restrictions whatsoever. Would have served them right if the Swiss had built a wall to keep 6 anchor children from storming their borders and then singing about it.

    Sad!


    No effort to assimilate once they arrived. Constantly with the  Edelweiss crap. If they're so in love with their home country they should go back where they come from


    Yeah, I fell for the narrative real hard as a little parochial school kid. It's that opening scene. (Heart-rending manipulative drama in song: drag queens and Broadway fanboys are the best at judging it, know it the minute they see it.)

    The WWII Nazi theme reminds me of something related to this acting meme we're getting into. The other night channel surfing I ended up re-watching parts of the movie Valkyrie about the von Stauffenberg plot against Hitler. There was a big to-do in Germany about the casting of Tom Cruise for the main role because he is a Scientologist and Scientologists basically have a role as an evil "other" tribe in contemporary Germany. So basically, your heroes cannot be acted by Scientologists over there. Me, I just thought: he did a real mediocre job of it, too American everyman, doesn't get how to play an old school European elite.


    I was reading an interview on American Psycho with Christian Bale, who'd seen Tom Cruise on Oprah and seen his manic schoolboy antics & boyish smile, but deadness behind the eyes, and that's how he decided to play Patrick Bateman. Probably wrong for Valkyrie unless they had chainsaws and axes gleefully punched through foreheads (and from what I understand the plot failed, no?)


    What you don't get is that I'd be most pleased to have Jabiri Asim or Michael Eric Dyson participate on this thread. They address these things at a sophisticated level that interests me.

    You, on the other hand, have exhibited a grievance agenda, as opposed to a scholarly agenda, in nearly everything you post..  I am not interested in that at all except as seeing you as a specimen of anger so great that you come to scream and lecture at a small group who are really your allies.

    Not only that, the grievance agenda you often offer is often lowest common denominator agitprop of like the 1980's rather than the newest stuff that might be of more interest as a specimen. It is too often insultingly dumbed down stuff for high school reading level audiences offered without irony or nuance.

    As I suggested before, mho it would be helpful for the Dagblog community if you did your own blogs on that instead of hijacking other people's discussions all the time to your one-track mindedness. And then you can deal with reaction there as you like. Or not.

    I'll go further: I especially find your grievance agenda distasteful, and not just a curious specimen, because I feel it's feeding into the tribalism and divisiveness of the Trump agenda. And when you get into it here on other people's threads, it's like you are continually dragging people into doing the same, when they didn't intend to participate. I for one would much rather note and discuss the positive changes in the culture and politics in reaction to the Trump catalyst.

    And I really really don't like how your rhetoric style often suggests you speak for all black people. You do not, that personally gets my goat as I think of friends and family who would forcefully disagree that you speak for them. Speak for yourself, nobody gave rmrd the title of representative for all black Americans.


    P.S. To be perfectly clear: I'm tired of wasting hours being dragged into dumbed down conversations with you about cultural issues and trying to be polite about it. No more Ms. Nice Gal because I've got to get tough with myself on wasting time on things that don't edify. Looking for elite discussion on topic, people with a political agenda need not apply and I am going to be mean about that. I even suspect that if more people did that, demanded grad school level discussion here, there would be more participation from masthead folks. With some of them on my Twitter feed now, I see how they are saying very interesting things that they don't bother to say here because the discussion is often lowest common denominator.


    Micheal Eric Dyson and Jabari Asim would not agree with your point about clothing choices in preventing police abuse.

    Edit to add:

    I cannot believe that you have not heard black people express views similar to mine.They are not radical.


    How "Minding the Gap" went from skateboard documentary to a raw look at domestic abuse

    Director Bing Liu talks about taking inspiration from skate videos, being his own subject, and making one of the year’s best films.

    By Alissa Wilkinson @ Vox.com  Aug 17, 2018, 1:00pm EDT

    [...] Liu and I recently spoke by phone about finding inspiration in skate videos, how reality TV has affected documentary filmmaking, the challenge of making a movie in which you’re also a character, and the raw, emotional experience of shooting scenes where he talks to his own mother about his stepfather’s abuse of him and his brother [....]


    Tons of cross cultural stuff going on here:

    The 10 Best Nigerian Music Videos of the Year So Far @ OkayAfrica.com

    Contemporary African art is the hottest area in international elite art market. This is different, they are making this  stuff for their own market, not expecting to go international and nonetheless doing stuff like a video about a love affair in Barbados. And the rappers really twist the (clearly in some cases) American prototypes in strange ways.



    Black-ish's Kenya Barris just scored a $100 million Netflix deal

    @ AVClub.com, Aug. 16

    .....After months of speculation, Black-ish creator Kenya Barris has just joined Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy in Netflix’s prestigious “nine-figure TV producers” club, with Variety reporting that Barris has signed a three-year deal valued at roughly $100 million to exclusively make shows for the service.....


    Netflix did a remake of the “Great Day in Harlem” photo that featured jazz greats. The network photographed 47 black actors featured on various shows.

    https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/netflix-black-great-day-in-harlem-image-spot-1202856238/

    Kenya Burris, Shonda Rimes, etc do have production deals with Netflix as noted in the article. 

    There were also shows that were canceled 

    https://www.essence.com/entertainment/black-tv-shows-canceled-2017/

    The concern is whether hiring ethnic minority producers and actors will become commonplace or is only temporary. We continue to have low representation in Hollywood 

    https://www.wmagazine.com/story/hollywood-diversity-study-lack-of-women-people-of-color

    ​Additionally, we have been through cycles before. Blacks shows were popular in the 1990s  then disappeared.

    https://jezebel.com/5805940/what-ever-happened-to-the-black-television-sitcom

    Hopefully the current increase in minority shows will be permanent 

    https://qz.com/270114/we-havent-entered-a-new-era-of-black-tv/

     



    on Japan mixing with Christianity

    Ogino’s subsequent career is apt to disappoint. She opened a clinic, attracted many patients and was a good doctor, but not a brilliant one. Her grim struggle had hardened her. Her disdain for helpless victims of life, fate and circumstances is understandable — it’s what she herself refused to be — but chilling all the same. As she aged, medical passion yielded to Christian passion. The church, unlike Japanese society, opened its doors to women: The sign on the door of the church she attended read, “Anyone at all, please come in any time.”

    from


    Who Really Owns the ‘Blaccent’?

    By  @ Vulture.com, Aug. 24

    While Awkwafina successfully imitates something in Crazy Rich Asians, it's not black language.


    She could imitate Swahili or Tagalog and it wouldn't save the film. Lame generic stuff, but gets good reviews because has Asian faces. Hope they come back next year with a real plot and better acting.


    ah but comes to mind "crazy rich people" might be the one tribe that "Hollywood" traditionally and consistently profits on, and quality not necessary, whether Asian, black, white, Jewish, British upper class, Texas, Beverly Hills, ancient, medieval...


    Rubbing elbows with the hoi-polloi, a guaranteed draw.



    From the comment section.

    Muslim women face a lot of stigma wearing hijabs, from people telling them they are being forced despite what they say, being accosted, treated as terrorists, etc. Now imagine you choosing to wear one because it's "cute" and those same people are telling you you're adorable.

    Now imagine instead we all worked to create a safe environment for women to wear what they want, including hijabs. At that point the stigma a Muslim woman faces is much reduced and the room for what would be called cultural adoption is created.

    ·Cultural adoptionis really just a claim to unfairness and disrespect. It's a feeling that someone is rubbing society's unfair treatment of who they are in their faces, and that's embodied in that moment by someone who may even be doing so without any ill intent


    French toast with french fires for breakfast. I really stuck to the frogs this morning

     


    What a socialist commie you are. It's freedom toast and freedom fries!


    French toast predated the French. 

    When it comes to what seems simple things like hairstyles, the complaint is that there is a double standard 

    Zendaya wore dreads and was criticized for appearing like she just smocked a joint. The .same reviewer praised dreads on Kylie Jenner as edgy.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/zendaya-wrote-a-powerful-defense-of-her-dreadlocks-after-rac?utm_term=.pjmMBN8XPG#.bc2MOdjXAw

    Zendaya gets attacked. Jenner gets attacked.

    For those who argue that black women straightening their hair ignores the fact that black natural hair or dreads are not acceptable as “normal” in many workplaces.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BKamzmMD0Pz/?utm_source=ig_embed

     


    French Fries actually come from Belgium, which is good because there aren't Brussel sprouts in Brussels, nor Lima beans in Lima. Hamburg wants its burgers back, or at least an apostrophe of acknowledgment - 'burgers. Augie Busch took Czech beer, moved it to a smelly quarter by the Mississippi, added rice of all things, and it was an "American" success. I lived on British food one year, but got tired of all the curry. Now I'm back to German - gyros and falafels. Though American is still the best and probably healthiest - burrito bars, lo mein and Chicago deep dish pizza, along with my good old neighborhood kosher deli with hummus and grape leaves. Makes me wonder why the Old World for all its perceived ancient charms couldn't come up with that.


    I did know about the French Fries and the French guy who brought potatoes to France after his imprisonment in Prussia. The French medical society had to approve eating potatoes as something that was healthy.

    On the human side of things, it is pretty clear that most of the arguments about cultural appropriation in the United States are really about white supremacy. White culture has only recently been called to task about imagery of black bodies. Social media aided in broadcasting objections to depictions and arguing about stealing culture. Braids on black women being criticized for braids is only one example.

    When the question of appropriation of white culture by blacks in the United States, it has to be remembered that assimilation was a means of survival (forced acculturation). As noted above, natural hair is frowned upon in many places. Madame CJ Walker made millions providing potions to straighten curly hair to make black women more acceptable.

    The question of appropriation of white European culture also gets debated. It is instructive to look at the collection of blacks in western art housed at the DuBois institute at Harvard. The art dates from the Egyptian ear to modern times. Black nobility and even depictions of blacks of Gods are depicted during the Middle Ages, for example. Blacks were in Europe much longer than is generally assumed.

    https://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132229965/the-root-the-black-presence-in-western-art

    Historian Steven Stuckey, who died today, changed the perception of slaves in the United States. He detailed Slave culture and the impact blacks had on American culture.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/obituaries/sterling-stuckey-dead.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

    We are not post-racial. Real challenge to how blacks are depicted is relatively recent. Social media allows a larger variety of voices to be heard. When Marc Jacobs was criticized for marching braided white models down the runway, his initial response was to critique black women for straightening their har.

    https://www.essence.com/fashion-week/new-york-fashion-week/marc-jacobs-responds-faux-locs-backlash/

    Continued backlash resulted in an apology

    https://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a39304/marc-jacobs-spring-2017-dreadlocks-controversy/

    The status quo will not hold. We will find a new normal.

     

     

     

     


    For those who argue that black women straightening their hair ignores the fact that black natural hair or dreads are not acceptable as “normal” in many workplaces. [...]

    What about black women who want to straighten their hair?  Or dye it blond?  Just because, presumably, they like it that way?  Women of all persuasions spend a whale of a lot of money on their hair - and black women probably more than most, out of necessity - so does it make sense to assume that they all do it just to please appease others?  No, it doesn't.


    My comment was addressing the argument that if white women cant wear braids, black women shouldn’t be able to straighten their hair.

    There are many corporate offices where natural hair and braids are discouraged. Straight hair allows some black women to fit the required corporate style. Why are people ignoring this truth?

    https://www.essence.com/hair/black-women-natural-hair-discrimination-workplace/

    This standard that natural hair and raids are frowned upon is at the core of cultural appropriation complaints. As long as the double standard applies, the complaints of appropriation will continue.


    This video by "Some Black Guy" which I posted upthread is inspired by the dreads topic. It was published March 2016 when this was a big argument on social media.

    Your comment sounds like you didn't watch it.

    He makes fun of your p.o.v. and call it horseshit and explains why.

    And I agree with him 100%.

    The problem with a lot of things you post are that they are old arguments that are sooo over!!! Like here: it was over 2 years ago.

    All colors of people wear dreads now, all colors of people wear beaded hair now.

    No one who is culturally hip is arguing about a lot of shit you bring up. All you do by bringing it up is fueling old divisions, it's almost like you are a Russian troll trying to upset Trump fans.

    The point I keep trying to make is that bringing up shit that is lowest common denominator old shit is insulting to us here on dag. We know all this stuff, don't need blacksplainin'. We might not have been on top of it two years ago, but by now we know wassup.

    Watch the video

     I don't for one second believe two years later that a large number of blacks are all upset that dreads are being worn by white people. Pretending that that is the situation and that Dag members need to be informed of it is insulting to me and members here. Like we are going to fall for Trumpian crap. We're not stupid and don't hang out in the Trumpian sticks. I don't want to acquiesce to you presenting this as reality on a forum I participate on and certainly not on one of my threads. Don't dump shit like this on one of my blog threads unless you want to see me call it out as garbage, which it is.

    Dreads are popular and only idiots are arguing about them now. The argument is over. They've been "appropriated," otherwise known as popularized, another feature of Afro-American sub culture that long ago went mainstream and became popularized. New status quo. Not owned by anyone. Most Afro-Americans are proud the style is now popular except in the rural sticks and is American, no hyphenation.

    But you're still feeding the whiners. Sorry if you feel you did not get a deserved royalty payment, too late now.

    It you want to talk offense at cultural appropriation you are going to have to up the quality level of your offerings several fold for me to find it an acceptable topic of discussion rather than ridicule it.

     


    One of my kids finds a new website or café and then the other has to steer clear because she "discovered" it and the other's just copying, appropriating if you will. I discovered Facebook - quit copying me. I had an iPhone first - quit copying me. I discovered air first - stop breathing. Fun being a parent - and re-witnessing the behavior on Dagblog.

    "Post-racial" means exactly what I say it is -  a special time-dependent mix of completely not giving a shit with hyper-sensitivity to this or that racial issue - which is it? Depends on the day of week, the color of the players, which way the argument skews.

    What do we do when New York rappers from the Bronx try to sound Jamaican, when Puerto Ricans speak Mexican? Gonna be a rumble. Speaking of which, was it Bernstein that Jew ripping off Puerto Ricans for the Shakespeare crowd or New Yorkifying the classics? ruining classical or contemporizing it? Somewhere someone gotta feel misused. I hate feeling happy.


    The Victim Olympics thing really does often enter into things here. Let's take it away from race to keep it simple and talk subcultures like Goths or Punks when they started. Some of them wallow in being an oppressed minority, think that's part of their culture and therefore resent becoming popular, feel become popular is co-opting or selling out, yadda yadda. Now step that up to doing it by race or ethnicity instead of chosen culture in this day and age.  Major problems. Fight for the bottom, least popular, to maintain victim status? Don't really want to be popular and accepted? Want to stay a poor and small group? Need to be victims of the larger culture? Pretty sad.


    They call it cultural appropriation but it really is race based not cultural. The dread story is one of the silliest. Afro-American culture is totally different than black Jamaican culture. Music, art, in just about every way it's different. But it's ok for an American black culture to appropriate Jamaican black culture. 

    One of my favorite Aesop fables is about a man who hired a donkey and owner to take him to another city. In the mid day sun they stopped to rest and the owner sat down in the donkey's shadow. The man who rented the donkey immediately complained that he had paid for the donkey so he should get to rest in the donkey's shadow. The owner retorted you rented the donkey but not the donkey's shadow.

    Many arguments are about something as insignificant as an ass's shadow.


    Jamaicans have been in the United States for a long time. They are part of black American families. I remember walking in Harlem in a Jamaican neighborhood one September. The community was having a block party with food and invited us to enjoy their food and drink. At family reunions we celebrate with our. Caribbean cousins.


    What you seem to be saying is if your sister marries a Jamaican you and anyone in your Afro-American family gets to have dreads. What if someone in the family married white? Does the white person get the in the family exemption? If my sister marries a Jamaican does anyone in my family get to have dreads? Or if your or my sister marries a Scotsman does anyone in our families get to wear traditional kilts?


    In the United States cultural appropriation is essentially a discussion about white supremacy. Complaints that blacks had about how they were portrayed was limited. Now there can be pushback. The cultural appropriation argument is part of the pushback. Black women who wear Afros to the office often face criticism. Straight hair is recommended. When they see Kim Kardashian or Kendall Jenner wear braids and receive praise, they respond on Twitter and in print. When they see Zendaya equated with a druggie for wearing braids, the response to cultural appropriation intensifies. There is no big mystery.

    #OscarsSoWhite and grumbling about white artists winning certain music awards is also part of the pushback. Feeling ignored by Hollywood was a part of the reason for the celebrations around “Black Panther” and “ Crazry Rich Asians”.How could you miss this?

    The argument that the above is victimology is absurd. Blacks have been fighting tor poor people with the Por Peoples campaign.They came out to the polls to remove DAs who refused to prosecute police who murdered unarmed blacks. Blacks have showing up to elect Democrats in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. They are able to multitask.

    Blacks have been complaining about whites calling police on black people for merely coexisting in the same space. People have died from this practice of calling the police. One legislator has proposed making bogus calls a crime. Instead of looking for solutions, there is a request that we make sure these calls are increasing first.

    So yes, cultural appropriation is about race and white supremacy. Blacks are paying attention to other issues as well.

    But you got jokes.


    What does this have to do with my comment? When ever you face an inconvenient comment you simply change the topic. Perhaps you think that's a clever way to avoid an uncomfortable discussion but don't think people don't notice your avoidance tactics.


    It is not avoidance. The core issue is about white supremacy. Your comment is the deflection. 

    Edit to add:

    The discussion about things like hair are skin color based. From personal experience most white parents of black children that I know don’t feel the need to mimic black culture personally. Rachel Dolezal was an exceptio .


    My comment and many of your comments were about whites wearing dreads. Now it's not about dreads it's about white supremacy. Whites can't wear dreads because of white supremacy. Whites can't wear dreads because Blacks are feeling ignored by Hollywood. Your arguments are ridiculous, not worth considering and they don't address my comment.


    You made the comment that things were about race, not cultural. 

    Race cannot be separated from the dread argument. Race extends to the natural hair argument. Both are frowned upon in corporate culture. I provided an article linking to a discussion about pressure applied to conform

    “I was most surprised by the industries women worked in that were experiencing criticism for natural hair such as retail and fashion. Many of these responses were outright discrimination,” Clemons shares. One woman even shared that her job explicitly stated, with images, the hairstyles considered acceptable—Eurocentric ones—and those that were not—TWAs, afros, braids and so on.

    I interpret that as a white supremacy standard. If you disagree with the term can we at least agree that natural hair and braids do meet with resistance in many places?


    The core issue is about white supremacy. Your comment is the deflection. 

    Excuse me, this thread is not about white supremacy.

    It was posted in the Creative Corner section for a specific reason, to avoid people like you hijacking it with your outrage jihad.

    Truth be told I was hoping you'd stay off of it so that some of us could have a discussion without you hijacking it with your "teaching whitey on dagblog a thing or two about the black people" ridiculously stupid and arrogant communiques.

    Please start your own blog on white supremacy. And I wish you all the luck in the world finding whiteys to respond who don't get it so you can do your excellent splaining to them. And all the amens you seek.


    yes yes yes. The most maddening part of it is that it's like dealing with a little kid who thinks nobody sees what he is doing. That again, is insulting to the audience on this site.


    Uh 

    You referee to me to some black guy as someone you agree with 100%

    Are you trying to convince me?

    Does some black guy speak for all black people?


    No I am saying this is my blog in Creative Corner, I dealt with the dreads issue in one of the earliest comments and it is disrespectful of my blog not to address it where I first did.

    This is not a "In the News" post. You are supposed to respect that I am the author here. If you don't like what I am thinking, it is trollish to keep hammering away. I as the author ot the blog entry am allowed to find your criticism of the ideas I present, whether by saying it directly, or quoting others, as rubbish. And once you have made a point, to not keep repeating what I think is rubbish.

    Not censoring, but just in order to have an intelligent discussion and not be hijacked by someone who wants to hijack to his own agenda. Got an agenda, post your own blog on it.


    Who knows - I remember Bob Marley and Lee Scratch Perry and Bo Derek and Cicely Tyson and Jane's Addiction and Bobby McFerrin and Dred Zeppelin and Whoopi Goldberg and Bad Brains and Living Colour and Rage Against the Machine and Gary Oldman and I just see a bunch of people trying to look cool, don't see the supremacy, and these Kardashians are way way late in the game - plus, do they count as "white" now?


    Nobody wants the Kardashians

    OK objects to the white supremacy term. 

    Do you agree that many corporate offices frown on Afro hairstyles on black women?

    Edit to add:

    Articles about resistance to black natural hair in the workplace

    https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/06/512943035/new-evidence-shows-theres-still-bias-against-black-natural-hair

    https://rewire.news/ablc/2017/04/17/black-hair-discrimination-real-but-is-it-against-law/

    https://www.teenvogue.com/story/black-women-natural-hair-bias-discrimination

    https://www.essence.com/hair/black-women-natural-hair-discrimination-workplace/

    My argument is that when whites get a pass for wearing a similar hairstyle and are praised, it creates a reaction.


    Like I give a fuck about corporate hairstyles. Eat the rich. If you can get enough hair off them, sell it as extensions for all I care.

    And you brought up the Kardashians. Fuck no I don't want em, and if you dont either, what does it teach us about appropriation? Not a goddamn thing. Why dont people just dress how the fuck they want within the limits of their Nazi workplaces, and we get on with our lives?


    FWIW, I'll humor the hijack here since the thread is ruined.

    I wore a genuine salon produced Afro in at least 5 workplaces (had to have lots of part time jobs) in the late 70's for a couple years. In the Midwest, not NYC. Including corporate, restaurants catering to downtown business lunch, luxury retail sales, journalistic offices, antique auction house. Experienced zero discrimination with black hair, white face. Afros were all the rage for all colors. They sold the picks everywhere, there were perm kits specifically for people without black hair to get black hair. In the late 70's.

    THIS IS REALLY OLD CRAP, what you are posting about hair issues! Possibly fueled by Russian trolling!

    If you are going to discuss this topic on one of my threads I expect better, high quality input, not this lowest common denominator racial agitprop!

    Go watch the Jeff Stilson/Chris Rock movie Good Hair to see the quality of discourse I would expect to even want to discuss the topic with you. And that's 9 years old! I'm giving a mulligan to be willing to discuss that as if nothing has changed since then


    It seemed to me that the discussion on hairstyles was continuos.


    well here, it's easy to find "the Afro-American community" dissing their own hair choices, go yell at Damon Young about solidarity and shaming and discrimination


    LOL.  This thread ruined?  It's one of the better ones of late!  Read it from start to (current) finish, and you see conversation ... not a strict guideline for a topic but a real-life topic-bouncing argue-agree-argue again conversation between multiple people.  I'll take that cup of tea, thanks.  laugh


    This thread is so ruined they couldn't get Elysian Fields to pose for a selfie with it. This thread is so ruined if they found it next to Angkor Wat, they'd be planting more vines and jungle just to hide it. This thread be so ruined they could film "The Acropolis: The Lean Years" on it w/o any set changes. This thread be so ruint Atlantis be calling it "grandpa" and finding its reading glasses. Seriously.


    How naive you are. Bo Derek wore dreads to express her support for the KKK and other white supremacist groups. Whoppi Goldberg wore dreads to protest Hollywood ignoring blacks at award shows. How can you be so ignorant of the deep political significance of every fashion choice?


    You forgot to mention that Bo Derek did that as recently as 1979! Not enough time to heal the pain of the appropriation, not enough time.


    Do you think that black women face discrimination based on hairstyles in the workplace?


    This blog is titled to be about "appropriation in action". It is not about discrimination in the workplace as regards hairstyles. I am not interested in that topic. You have hijacked my blog so much that you ruined it. You have zero sense of blogosphere etiquette.

    That I think you are on a jihad that I think unhealthy for society is not even applicable as regards this. If you wrote a blog about discrimination you could rightly get on my case for hijacking your blog and I would be wise to just stay away from participating on it. I am not really not interested in your myopic jihad about race, please keep it off my blog entries as I find it not just offensive but as destructive to society as Russian troll messages imitating Black Lives Matter. I think you feed Trump divisiveness in a lot of what you post and it makes me uncomfortable that in just ignoring you I am being complicit in that. It would be easier to ignore if you did it on your own blogs. I come here for a select audience so that I don't feel I have to spend a lot of time objecting to what's being posted.


    No.  If there's discrimination, it's not because of their hair.

    Yes.  There's discrimination in the workplace.

    No.  It's not just towards blacks.

    We're done here.



    Really, rm?  Even the article's headline is disingenuous.

    If a company/organization/business has a stated dress/hair/general appearance policy they don't have to point to why they don't like yours when they deny you employment.  According the the article, a white woman with purple hair would have been denied.


    A black woman with braids or an Afro could be denied employment. Correct?


    Under the above described circumstances, correct.  So could a white woman with braids or an Afro.


    Here is where we disagree, for many black women the straight hair is more difficult than the Afroo​


    Below.


    Technically Bo was an 11, but Rob Reiner/Spinal Tap sued, so she dialed it back to a 10. Talk about white abuse of power. I think some of Archie rubbed off on him.

    ps - creators of Spinal Tap still fighting to get their money :-(    that's more worth commenting, the "possession is 9/10ths the problem" approach to the law. And such a classic....


    I think you are just trying to deflect from the struggles of the Afro-American community, how come you don't have interest in their lawsuits?


    That's a TV series, no? Sad after Meghan left...


    Anything Markal/Merkel: SAD! Windsor! BREXIT!  (no collusion!)


    Are you mocking me?


    no silly you inspired me to mock someone else


    Ah, a mock proxy (mock lobster?), all's good then.


    The Kardashians should be hung for their witchy white ways, stealing all the good black man and miscengenating mixed race progeny. Stay separate but equal! No appropriation, no assimilation! Forever!


    P.S. Aside: One can tell from the lack of an appropriately ironic/satirical emoji with the above comment that I have given up on idea that I would ever apply for any job which would inspire scouring the internet for any controversial comments I have ever made.


    Nicely done.


    Funny, I thought you were applying for a job where you'd scour the internet for any controversial comments people have ever made. Should consider - you'd be good at it.


    Been there done that in olden blogosphere days (i.e., but but you said this in 2004, here's the link!) Didn't turn out pretty, turns out ideological blogosphere stars like to reserve their ability to change their minds, and take on new personas without admitting change, go figure.

    And that was with context, context, context, Nowadays: twitter is a gold mine of zero context.


    Like Apollo XIii, "Mission Control, we've lost context..." "this is Major Tom to Ground Control - I'm stepping through the door/and I'm floating in a most peculiar way..." strange we gave up space dreams for twitter fights - what a come down.


    I post links to support my position. Marc Jacobs issued an apology. Those are facts. Halloween is coming and it is likely that someone will wear something controversial. Another apology will be demanded just like the one given by Marc Jacobs.

    Edit to add:

    July 2018 article on Zac Efron In dreads.from W magazine

    https://www.wmagazine.com/story/zac-efron-dreadlocks-cultural-appropriation

    ​Black women can be denied employment because of locs

    https://www.teenvogue.com/story/judge-rules-workplace-dreadlocks-ban-legal-problematic?mbid=synd_teen-vogue

    Edit to add:

    Other apologies for appropriation 

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2016-is-the-year-of-celebrities-apologizing-for-cultural-appropriation_us_581b9331e4b0aac62483017b

    http://www.okayplayer.com/news/justin-timberlake-apology-cultural-appropriation.html


    trolling my own thread with victim olympics games, because: what the hell, heh

    What is Jewish hair? by  Leah Berkenwald, October 26, 2009 @ JWA.org

    For more about Jewish Hair, check out Episode 5: "Jewish Hair" of Can We Talk, JWA's podcast.

    The buzz about Good Hair, Chris Rock's new documentary about Black hair, has got me thinking about "Jewish hair": what it is, what it means, and where I -- a straight-haired woman -- fit into this curious piece of Jewish identity. 

    "Jewish hair" is a tricky thing to define, since Judaism can include people from any racial or ethnic background. And while Jews are known to have a variety of haircolors, as well as levels of curliness, "Jewish hair" seems to refer to dark, curly, and often frizzy, hair.

    The first time I became aware of “Jewish hair” was when I went to an overnight for prospective students at Brandeis University. Up until that moment, sitting in a crowded upperclassmen dorm, I had never really thought about my hair as a part of my Jewish identity [....]


    You can't troll your own thread - I think it's in the bylaws somewhere.  In the small print that you can't read without squinting.  Dagblog guidelines suggest it, actually, I think, maybe.  Or it might be against the rules ... I dunno, I never read them.


    then comes to mind this little 1969 bubble gum top 40 hit that started the process of co-opting my own counterculture tribe. we all rolled our eyes at the time that this was not an accurate picture and they just don't get it, they're making fun of us:

     

    All for nought. Within a decade everyone was wearing blue jeans and male construction workers had long hair and earrings.. then came the football players...it was only the science geeks and marines who took so damn long to give up their crew cut signifiers


    p.s. from the lyrics, 1969:

    I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy

    Ratty, matty, oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming

    Streaming, flaxen, waxen, knotted, polka dotted

    Twisted, beaded, braided, powdered, flowered and confettied

    Bangled, tangled, spangled and spaghettied


    I remember the song well (I went to visit a friend a couple miles away and forgot to tell my parents, he'd just bought this single, listened to it over and over. Got the ass-whooping of my childhood when I got home towards dark...)


    You make a good point. I wear my hair in a pony tail and have for years but when i was young I had to keep it short with a part on the side if I wanted to get a job. The prejudice white heterosexual males have to deal with is so oppressive. That was your point right?wink


    seeing this photo just now, I am thinking how pictures like this are so rare now showing the animosity towards long hair and "hippies", it's like we've erased the whole "generation gap". At the time, it was not pretty, many hated spoiled boomers for rejecting the culture at large, some of the father vs. son fights about long hair were just brutal and tore families apart, long hair signified draft dodging and to some a slap in the face, as not appreciating what WWII vets went through to see that all the spoiled brat boomers could go to college, etc. It was real, in flyover country especially you really did feel the hatred if you showed any counterculture signifiers. Culture change is hard work that we forget all about after it's done cheeky

     

    Anti-Hippie protestors, 1960s. pic.twitter.com/zf6rewQWrA

    — History In Pictures (@HistoryInPix) September 1, 2018

    To rm:

    When you're a woman, let me know about your hair.


    That is a dodge

    I was previously told to watch “ Good hair” which chronicles difficulties black Women’s have sp greeting “good hair”.iIs your argument that dying hair purple is the same as getting straightened hair. I’m posting comments from black women. Give me links that support your viewpoint.


    I never told you to watch anything.

    My point re: straightened hair, purple hair, no hair, etc. was stated in context, and clearly.

    I don't need links to support my viewpoint, rm.

     


    hat tip to wabby for a news thread link that got me this one:


    3-minute professional version of above:

     


    very interesting tactic, really blatantly pushing on the culture clash limits, this is taking what Queer Eye for The Straight Guy did to the max:

    ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ sparks protests in rural, Southern towns

    @ TheHill.com- 09/02/18 02:00 PM EDT


    I think Top Gear had a couple guys hold hands in the South & then see how quick they can speed across the border or else...


    I wouldn't let my children go to this story hour. With the bizarre dress it appears that these men are attempting to make a sexual statement to prepubescent children. I wouldn't let my children go to a story hour with a heterosexual women bizarrely dressed in such a way as to make a sexual statement. A story hour for children isn't a place to make sexual statements. Exposure to the complexity of human sexuality is something that should wait until children are mature enough to understand.


    certainly a valid argument, and, as I said, it's really pushing it. It's trying to teach tolerance, but first and foremost it's tolerance to kids for a style of dress and type of behavior, a chosen culture.  These are transvestites, not trans trans-sexuals.. Not basic human rights but the "right" to dress as one likes. And it's at public libraries, not private groups.. So on the support end, it's the same thing as using taxpayer's money to fund radical art. And on the other end, it's bordering on interfering with majority parental preference about how children should be educated.

    All that said, I think like an enlightened Montessori-type-school would welcome this as a "fun creative thing" for imagination about gender roles, letting the children imbibe elite culture as it really currently is, and not think of it so much as sexual. Others will interpret as sexual, that's the problem. I am thinking probably should not be at public libraries, just like I think public funds should not be used to fund avant garde art.

    Edit to add: it also brings up this point for me: the anger at elite culture from MAGA "populism", old time conservative culture. If angry MAGA families were given free tuition for their kids to a Montessori school where imagination and creativity was encouraged and their children equipped to navigate elite culture, would they take it? Because that what it takes not not end up so downtrodden in this day and age. Clinging to your guns and bibles doesn't help climb the ladder, it ends up the opposite. Hiding from reality whether you like it or dislike it is marginalizing, ghetto-izing.


    P.S. Comes to mind what drag queens do and present is not a whole lot different from what Barbie dolls present. It's just that it's live men doing it. It's about gender roles. So they are just going in reading stories to kids to show kids to be tolerant of all kinds of weird people and the way they dress, that they might be nice, fun, gentle creative human beings.

    BUT in actuality, a good argument could be made from the left that you don't want your girls being taught by a drag queen about what it means to be female.

    Me, overall, if the public's not forced to pay for it, I'm all for kids playing with this and thinking about it. But then I'm NOT an anti Barbie feminist, I have nothing against what my Barbie doll helped me think about as a kid. She actually helped me understand trannies when I grew older because: she didn't look like any real woman I knew, she had a strange body, it was like fake/fantasy, made to fit the costumes. Her costumes were the thing, the main thing.


    My understanding about drag queens is that it's hyper-sexualized in both dress and manner. It's not simply a man wearing traditional women's clothing or a man in a bizarre costume. It's not like a women wearing jeans even when a women wearing pants was shocking.  As I said I'd feel the same if a hetero women was dressed in a hyper sexual costume while reading stories to kids.  I'm quite liberal in how I raised children when I was with a women with 3 kids. But I do feel there are limits to the amount and type of sexuality a child is capable of understanding and is appropriate to expose them to.

     

     


    on Ted Cruz's culture being forced to assimilate:

     


    Still controversial when pop taste appropriates high


    Or over here when it's "design your own creche" could be anything.


    I live in Brooklyn. It is easy here to forget how backward other places might be.

     

     


    yeah hah I saw a lot of the events on the old Twitter feed, Brooklyn Museum was co-sponsoring or something. Thought of posting some of them, too. I was actually thinking of going for that Puerto Rican medicine booth, see if anything there might help as western medicine sure as hell has been failing me. Seriously. I thought: Brooklyn Museum wouldn't be connected anything dangerous for fear of lawsuit.

    But I think you may be wrong about Afro Punk being Brooklyn type niche-y and still elite? Somehow I got the impression it is becoming a very popular "genre"....


    I am just reporting what happens sometimes. I probably put this observation in the wrong place. It is not about the elite per se but the development of taste. Shared tastes sometimes find new partners.

    I got all borough and stuff to get a rise out of anybody else.

    I don't care if the Mets win.


    I'm just reporting.

    What?  A wrong observation?

    Maybe.  Maybe not.

      So my tastes aren't shared by you ...

      My friends still say screw the Mets.

     


    Excellent.
    May not be able to come back from it.


    Keep on keeping on. Don't worry I won't tell anyone your borough has actually become mostly a bunch of boring family friendly breeders, and is just so yesterday.  I figure by April few will be able to find out by themselves that you share the tastes of flyover country because then you won't have a subway from Manhattan anymore.

    I know you don't care if the Mets win. They were invented for the Trump people over in Queens and S.I., no? The way I understand it, the Yankees were too elite.


    p.s. Just in case you live in Bushwick, though, fuggeabout what I just said. Because it's not really Brooklyn or Queens, it's more like an eastern outpost of downtown LA. And why would anyone there bother to go to Manhattan, when they can just take an uber to/from LaGuardia?


    Both replies are excellent. May need to figure a way back because those are fighting words.


    So playing the dozens gets a bit slower as we get older, eh? A bit like playing chess by post, "I'll mail it in"


    4 Afro-Latinos Get DNA tested; a Buzz Feed 7 1/2 min. video. Is great fun, joyful reactions about their revealed mix:

    p.s. also love the first two comments @ YouTube.

     


    a classic appropriation/assimilation move, why this church has lasted 2,000 yrs:



    We saved it from certain ruin, like everything else about the Empire. "Abuse it or lose it", I think it's called.

    (BTW, I think these commas technically go inside the quotes, but they look so dumb, especially on phones - another shift?)


    on commas who knows. I have no idea these days, I'm still working on who is right about how to do websites in footnotes. I am guessing wikipedia wins in the end on format?


    Footnotes? Information wants to be free, as in free beer. Theft is property, possession is 9/10th of the law...


    Absurdity of Cleese's comment hits hard here, the global Borg didn't just appropriate the empire's best feature, it assimilated it:

    Total speakers, 2017. (million)

    English: 1212
    Mandarin: 1107
    Hindi and Urdu: 697
    Spanish: 512
    Arabic: 422
    French: 284
    Malay: 281
    Russian: 264
    Bengali: 261
    Portuguese: 236
    Punjabi: 148
    German: 132
    Japanese: 128

    (Ethnologue)

    Longer list: https://t.co/LSkybNSCbm

    — The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) September 18, 2018

    Tiny island should be proud. Where is Latin now, for example? Nobody cares if someone tries to appropriate it.


    Huh? Latin's appropriated Brazilian/Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Romanian and part Maltese - over 1.2 billion.


    you're right, my bad!


    A New Curatorial Vision Disrupts Inherited Ideas of Regional Identity in African Art

    Laura De Becker’s first major exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art puts its expansive historical African art holdings in conversation with contemporary art of the continent.

    @ Hyperallergic, Sept. 17, 2018

    [....] “The contemporary art market in South Africa is very strong, very vibrant,” she said, “so I really wanted to bring some of that dynamism here.” [....]

    De Becker also uses Beyond Borders to highlight some of the troubling questions about the longstanding imposition of identity and region being inflicted on Africa by outsiders, particularly colonists.

    “I think it’s really interesting to reflect on what is the history of borders, what they mean in our current age of networks,” said De Becker; “and all of these borders that have been applied to and used to make sense of African art, have histories themselves — and are flawed.” [....]

    Follows the trend in millennial curating, BTW, is all the rage to throw away exhibiting within traditional categories. Mixing objects from not just nations and cultures but different ages is what they are all doing, it's really from top down, the big museums like the Met started it. It's breaking the traditional capitalist narrative of history, doncha see? To them PoMo philosophy is creed. It's like crazy in the direction of individual narratives and individual histories, almost the opposition of tribalism. Everybody sees something different is the solution and the problem. One big big problem: no factual truth, everything is individual vision.



    The cultural appropriation debate will continue because the true core is a discussion about white supremacy. Watching the Ford-Kavanagh hearing, the real-life double standard was apparent.  If Ford behaved the way Kavanagh behaved, she would’ve been labeled hysterical. The cultural appropriation debate centers on ethnic minorities being criticized while whites receive praise. Black women are ridiculed for thick lips while white women feel free to get lip injections. Black buttocks are ridiculed while white women get butt injections.  The debate about a double standard expands into pushback when whites wear hairstyles clothing clothing that would be criticized if one by black person. The cultural appropriation discussion will continue.  

    Serena Williams body shamed

    http://www.papermag.com/serena-williams-body-shaming-2574356861.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

    Use and abuse of black women’s bodies in the media 

    https://medium.com/@adannaakams/cultural-approptiation-the-use-and-abuse-of-black-women-in-todays-media-f74b34b03dd9

    Social media allows comments made by ethnic minorities to reach the ears of the majority community. Some react with shock, how dare some of these minorities refuse to participate in our joy of appropriation.

     

     

     


    Author Lionel Shriver dons a sombrero to lament the rise of identity politics in fiction

    By Constance Grady @ Vox.com, Sep 14, 2016

    Lionel Shriver, the Orange Prize–winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, is turning heads with her latest speech.

    Delivering the keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival, Shriver gave a talk called "Fiction and Identity Politics," in which she argued that the concept of "cultural appropriation" was a made-up concept, one that she hoped would be a "passing fad," because it "is part of a larger climate of super-sensitivity, giving rise to proliferating prohibitions supposedly in the interest of social justice that constrain fiction writers and prospectively makes our work impossible."

    Shriver argues that fiction writing, by its nature, demands that writers step into shoes that are not theirs, that they inhabit identities that do not belong to them. She worries that in a culture that demands authenticity in its depictions of marginalized peoples, writers may be more unwilling to try to write from those perspectives.

    She herself, she says, gets anxious about writing in the voices of black characters, despite the fact that she grew up in the American South and has "a pretty good ear" for "black dialects."

    Throughout her speech, she wore a sombrero, a reference to the mini controversy that came out of Bowdoin College last year when students at a tequila-themed party wore mini sombreros. ("We’re not saying it’s a fiesta, but we’re also not not saying that :) (we’re not saying that)," the invitation said.) Those students were later denounced by the student government for performing cultural appropriation [....]

    Audio Interview/Podcast, Sept. 24, 2018

    ‘Everyone on Earth is part of my world. They belong to me’

    Lionel Shriver on art, freedom and the nonsense of ‘cultural appropriation’.

    This weekend, the first episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show was aired. In this monthly podcast, Brendan is joined by an esteemed guest to discuss the big ideas and bad ideas of the early 21st century. His first guest is the novelist and cultural rebel, Lionel Shriver. They discuss art, freedom, identity politics, feminism, transgenderism, and more. 


    No action yet. He's just a male so-called neo-pop artist-provocateur pondering what some powers-that-be are saying:

    If rhapsodizing over a Yoruba artifact is “a neat distillation of cultural colonial and racial appropriation,” isn’t a review of a contemporary Yoruba artist the same thing?

    — Walter Robinson (@walter10065) December 17, 2018

    If the “Western gaze” has for 100 years “flattened” the “colonized cultures” of Africa, how does posing in African masks and fabrics today show they “possess their own spirits”?

    — Walter Robinson (@walter10065) December 17, 2018

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