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 [....]

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

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 [....]

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 [....]

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 [....]

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 [....]

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

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.....

Who Really Owns the ‘Blaccent’?

By Lauren Michele Jackson @ Vulture.com, Aug. 24

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

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 [....]

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

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

on Ted Cruz's culture being forced to assimilate:

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.