"A lot of schools... require African Americans to."

Google "black teacher". Plenty of them have dreaded hair. Moreover, if having a job required them to undread their hair, there would be very few blacks with dreaded hair. That is clearly not the case.

Off topic, for a long, long time, I just assumed black people had thick hair.

Also, Thucy, if a Thai dread his hair, would that be racist?

The principle according to Thucy, if I understand correctly, is that that would be okay because because African American culture have a position of power over Thai culture.

This what Thucy wrote:
POWER RELATIONS IS WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

That should read, African American culture does *not have a position of power over Thai culture.

I'm going to repeat something I said earlier:
"The intersection of exploitation, ignorance, bad execution, and grievance culture."

Insofar as power relations make a difference, that's because it's easier for a 'strong' culture to exploit a 'weak' one, for a 'strong' culture to get by without knowledge of a 'weak' culture, and for a 'strong' culture to get away with badly executing elements of a 'weak' culture. It's not the case that a 'strong' culture borrowing from a 'weak' culture is *inherently* bad. Nor is it the case that a 'weak' culture borrowing from a 'strong' culture is *inherently* good. Cultures borrowing from each other is *generally* a good idea, it's just also easy to fuck up if you aren't paying attention.

It's like white people rapping. You can be Eminem, or you can be Iggy "runaway slave master" Azalea. Clearly white people rapping isn't inherently bad, and white people aren't the only ones who can fuck up rapping, but it's easier for white people to fuck up rapping in a way that's exploitative, ignorant, and damaging, because they have readier access to markets black rappers can't tap.

As for where grievance culture comes in, well, that goes back to what TooCoolSunday said on page 1. Anyone can call any cultural borrowing 'appropriation' and get offended over it in their media bubble. It doesn't mean they're automatically justified; however, it also doesn't mean appropriation is *never* a legitimate issue.

Is Iggy Azalea exploitive? I don't know enough about rap music to comment. Isn't she just an Aussie girl who grew up listening to rap music and decided she wanted to become a rapper herself.

American culture is everywhere in Australia. It's only natural that people who grow exposed to American culture their whole lives are going to be influenced it. But not actually being American Iggy Azalea is going do it a bit differently... less authentically if you like, just as the Rolling Stones played the blues inauthenticity.

Moreover the Australian market is so small that you can barely make a living in Australia playing music, unless you have international appeal. So naturally some artist will emulate American artists.

Perhaps her music is artistically mediocre (I cannot judge that). But is it racist for her to emulate one of the most popular music styles in the world? We're not talking about an endangered Amazonian tribe here. On the world stage as far as music goes, Afrcan American culture is a global colossus.

@spyman- Iggy Azalea is not mediocre as otherwise T.I wouldn't associate with her. He want a "bad bitch" he "don't want no mediocre"

Lol. I really wouldn't know. If you say so. I don't know her music. However I do know there is no shortage of commercially successful black music artists.

I don't think it would be easier for a girl from regional Australia to go to America as a teenager (by herself I believe) and make the big time performing hip hop music. The girl must have a lot of drive.

I didn't say 'racist', because I think coded labels are a hot mess of explosive disagreement and misunderstanding (which is why I don't like stepping into this thread, either, except I thought the excessive focus on power dynamics per se was becoming a closed loop of futility). I just said 'exploitative, ignorant, and damaging'. And I'll admit characterizing Azalea's work as a whole that way is an overreach given my knowledge base.

On the flip side, I *wasn't* saying the issue with Azalea was that she's a white Australian imitating African-American culture. That would be one of those 'inherent' things I'm trying to get the discussion away from.

What do you think about dreadlocks and white people, Lethologica?

What I am trying to establish is whether there some guiding principle that we can use to determine whether or not something is a misappropriation of culture.

So we name the principle and say "white people's dreadlocks meet that criteria". Then we look at what else meets that criteria. If the end of result of that process is unsatisfactory then we need to go back to the drawing board and try to establish a revised set of criteria.

So we a need a couple of examples of black culture that is okay for white people to appropriate. I would suggest blues or jazz music for example. And from we there we can ask is it okay for white people to play it, or listen to it. If it is okay for white people to listen, then why not play the music, and if that is okay too, what makes dreadlocks different.

"It's like white people rapping. You can be Eminem, or you can be Iggy "runaway slave master" Azalea. Clearly white people rapping isn't inherently bad, and white people aren't the only ones who can fuck up rapping, but it's easier for white people to fuck up rapping in a way that's exploitative, ignorant, and damaging, because they have readier access to markets black rappers can't tap."

That's BS. Black rappers absolutely do not have a more difficult time tapping the market and are seen as more "authentic". Also, you seem to suggest that black people would find offense to lyrics written by white rappers that they wouldn't find if written by a black rapper. That's racism.

i have a question since Michael Jackson became white would his use of black culture after becoming white be considered cultural appropriation?

^ my above question is real please respond

But you were joking, right?

Michael Jackson was an African American whose skin became gradually lighter over time for some reason (did he whiten his skin or did he have a disease). But he was still an African American. So no. It is inconceivable that he should be accused of appropriation of black culture. He helped define an aspect of that culture.

@"leon1122 Online (125 D)
04:55 AM
+1
False equivalency again. African American culture is not being eradicated, but I know it's more convenient to just ignore the rest of my post."

Thanks for ignoring my question. I was asking something to start building an arguement. But you haven't answered, i'm not planning on paying you any more heed if you're not interested in listening.

I specifically didn't make that false equivalence yet. So you are arguing against a strawman witout caring about the arguement i may actually make.

"
Come off it. Ora is exercising his creative intellectual skills. Maybe he has become converted but when he made his first replies, he must surely have been adopting a position from which to explore the topic."

I wasn't getting into this either, but now i fear i must go re-read my opening comments. Regardless, it is beside the point.

I'm not sure what you mean about my first post, or what you are reading into it...

I had read the link i posted in the past. So when i said 'i can't talk about it' i meant - i've never worn dreads, nor been a person of colour who is hurt by this.

orathaic do you believe yourself personally that white people wearing dreads is cultural misappropriation?

If your answer is "no" or "I don't have a position, personally", then what I said is correct. You have been playing the devils advocate. Nothing wrong with that. It wasn't a criticism.

So what we are saying is race is more than skin deep? And culture as well? This entire conversation hinges on us using race to define people. You see a white man with dreads and think "racist" but he was born in Kingston and was raised under the Rastafarian faith, doesn't that make his actions not appropriation at all but rather him expressing his own culture? Doesn't our immediate thought to call him racist make us inherently racist? I could go on as in our modern world skin color should rarely he assosciated with culture we've had enough integration and cultural exchange that you find black skinned Irish who have been living in Ireland for generations and even may have fought for Ireland's independence; would that person drinking a pint of Guinness on st.patrocks day be wrong or would it be an Irishman expressing his own culture? See we get tied up in there color coded stereotypes to an extent we now argue that those not following our societal definitions of a culture are labeled as "racist". *drops mic*

leon doesn't know markets are non-uniform and misrepresents my words, no surprises there. /ignore

spyman, looking at it that way, I think there's one more criterion to add to the ones I listed, which is 'significance to the original culture'. With that in mind, looking at dreads...well, my hunch is that it's generally below the threshold. I don't have a good handle on what the significance of dreads is, but what I know suggests it's a variegated cultural tradition that got bottlenecked through one or two focal points in the '70s and '80s, and its significance is not particular to American PoC. J Random white guy wearing dreads isn't imitating Kylie Jenner, so the exploitation level has to be considered pretty low. Individual execution will always vary, of course, but...well, hunches again: someone who cares enough about their hair to do dreads probably won't fuck it up *too* badly. And ignorance? I don't know what I don't know, and I don't know what other people don't know, but I don't think it's easy for that criterion alone to tip the scales.

Again, though, not my area of expertise.

If people match our stereotypes we label them by their culture or race; when people break our stereostypes they are racist. Our society is broken, our definition of race is broken, and our definition of culture is broken.

The white guy who was raised by his adopted black parents and in a predominately black neighborhood, emulates his family and friends and an outsider doesn't see that backstory they see his skin and label him a poser or a problemic appropriator; not what he really is: a person expressing HIS culture

"Again, though, not my area of expertise."

I think I think if you need a university degree in cultural studies in order to determine/understand whether or not morally wrong to wear a certain hairstyle then we really are in intellectual loop-dee-fucking-loo post-modern fairly-land.

That's not a dig at you Lethologica. It's a comment on how absurd the proposition is, IMHO.

Have any of you considered the emotional detriment you could have walking up to a person you don't know and berating them for their hair or clothing choices because you think they are disrespecting it only to find out they wear it for religious or personal reasons. What if I get Chinese symbols tattooed on my chest above my heart; what if those symbols are the given name of a Chinese Christian missionary who was sentenced to death by the Chinese government and I want to keep him, who he truly was a Chinese national close to my heart and honor his memory? Am I committing cultural appropriation? Won't you assume I am and assume my tattoo means something stupid like "dark wolf man" or some other disrespectful thing? Won't you label me based on your false perceptions, stigmas, and ignorance? Won't you commit the thing you are most arguing against?

'Not my area of expertise' means I don't have much knowledge of, or *any* lived experience with, dreadlocks--*not* that I think any sort of university degree is a prerequisite for informed opinions on the matter.

I have never had dreads either. However I have had many friends over the years with dreads. It is a very popular hairstyle in Northern NSW (Byron Bay region) where there is a big alternative / new age / hippy culture.

I personally have never associated the hairstyle with black people (until the last ten to fifteen years we had very few people of African origin in Australia). I always thought of it as a hippie thing. So the people I knew with dreads (no one now) would have been copying older hippies.

The thing that gets me here is that we aren't even talking about "racial appropriations" because it doesn't exist. Because most people understand that culture and race are separate but apparently we today can't see past race. All the examples of cultural appropriation we've expressed are tied to race. The reality is that cultural appropriation is more about misusing a culture than subjugating a race. If you dye your skin red and dance around a fire making that icon icky racist "Indian" chant that's cultural appropriation, taking the time to learn and master true Native American music and dance is not.