It just ain't easy to get a rise outta me. I've put up with too much infuriating shit in my life to get genuinely upset very easily. So that's me, not getting pissed off, just sorta raising an eyebrow.
Another social behavioral...thing...is on my mind this morning, once again due to social media. There was an article about a little girl who had a Japanese style tea party, where her Mom made her up and put her in a Kimono, and they tried to make it as "authentic" as possible. A bunch of (probably white) people wanted to call them out about cultural appropriation. A single Japanese person came along and said, "You're all being stupid, there is nothing wrong with this. In Japan, we encourage tourists to participate in such things, we sell Kimono to them, and in fact our own culture is nothing but a mishmash of other cultures anyhow. There's nothing wrong with someone wanting to respectfully learn about and explore the customs of other people." And I breathed a sigh of relief that someone finally put into words something I have struggled with, my discomfort at many of the things people get offended by and the way in which they do.
Sometimes your gut can tell, "OK" from "not ok." The white kids playing cowboys and Indians...you know, we could teach our kids better than that. It's sort of mockingly playing off a stereotype. Use it as a learning opportunity. Blackface makeup was never ok. I feel like we need to examine the spirit behind the act. Is it meant to honor another culture? Or to mock them? Is it a horrible caricature? Or a work of homage? Is it done in respect, or disrespect? This stuff matters, in my opinion.
Though I must say that dealing with a bunch of dirty, stupid rednecks (and I'm sorry, but they were) in Kentucky when we had a flea market booth there, back in the late 90's...every damned one of them was trying to tell me their great great grandma was a "Cherokee Princess" and I wanted to throw things at them. I'm not sure I am offended more by the "cultural appropriation" or just the stupid. Of course, for all I know, maybe there was just the one legit Cherokee "princess" and she's an ancestor to everybody in the county, since they all sleep with their cousins. See, I can get away with that...being insulting as heck to white rural folks. I could say that in my most "enlightened" and "woke" of social circles, and not a one of them would care. It's kinda true. But then, so are some other stereotypes. I have known Mexican illegal immigrants who played loud music, crammed tons of people into cars and houses, and kept a yard full of beer cans and goats. I've known black neighborhoods that really weren't safe, and were rife with gang activity.
Where this first struck me as interesting was when I moved from Virginia to Cincinnati, OH. In Virginia, my high schools were very diverse, had a large black population, and the races tended mostly to segregate themselves. There was legit racism on every possible side, and for me as a white person to reach out a hand in friendship to many of the black people I knew would have probably ended in violence to me. I didn't mind having them around, they did not want me around. But of course there is nothing wrong with their hostility, it is entirely warranted because of privilege or history or whatever, I don't know. All I do know is that I want badly to be compassionate and caring to pretty much every human I encounter. I'm on more of a mission here to make friends, not enemies. I could only accept that they did not want my white ass around, and keep my distance. Of course if one were to point to the fact of me avoiding black people, that would be seen as racism on my part. I'm really not sure what I was supposed to be doing.
Yet there were Confederate flags flying, on trucks and barns and houses, in the country parts of VA, and heck it is at least partly a southern state. Plenty of folks there will argue it's a symbol of being rebellious and hasn't anything to do with racism. I have heard it all. It's common enough that nobody cares, I guess.
Then I moved to Cincinnati, and I was in a high school in a fairly affluent suburb. There were maybe a handful of non-white kids in that school for every hundred white ones.
We had a debate, in one of my classes, about how out in the countryside of Ohio somewhere, a farmer had painted a Confederate flag on the roof of his barn. Literally every single kid in that class was white, and literally every one of them but me was horrified. You might as well have told them that this guy was actually enslaving black people to work his land, that's how horrified they were. As a kid from VIRGINIA, I was like...um...so? He's just some redneck, who cares? Don't you have rednecks in Ohio? He probably doesn't even think it's about racism. Some of 'em don't, you know?
Nope, his intent matters for naught. That flag means slavery, just like you can't display anything like a swastika even though I've heard it was an ancient Navajo symbol, and possibly also used in Buddhism, no...that symbol means one thing, and it's EVIL. Intent does not matter to the offended.
And the offended are often not the downtrodden at all. They are doing something I have seen the alt-right call, "virtue signaling." Trying to prove that hey...they are ok, see...they are very offended by the insensitive gestures of their fellow white folks. Hm. I'm trying to figure out how I feel about this. I have...questions.
When I posted the story about the girl and her Japanese tea party, one of my liberal friends said, "Sorry, just because one Japanese person says that is ok, does NOT make it ok. This is racism plain and simple." She is one of the whitest people I know. Like, "hide from the sun" white. So evidently, white outrage is even more important than someone of the actual culture's opinion, now. What does that mean? Is THAT ok, I wonder?
How do we figure out if something is actually offensive or not, when surely we aren't going to all agree about it? I mean, if intent doesn't matter, and nobody cares if you're trying to be respectful...how do we know? How is one voice louder than another? Is something offensive because one person is offended? Ten? A thousand? Does it matter if they are of the group in question, or can it be anybody?
This is frankly the kind of conversation I think a lot of people should be having. Because the need to tread delicately around anyone who is in any way different from them has got a lot of white people throwing their hands in the air and voting for Trump. Seriously, you want Trump, because this is how we get Trump. People who didn't really want to be jerks to anyone but dammit, they just can't seem to win, every time they turn around, somebody is offended by something, or so it seems to them. How much easier is it, to say that everybody not like you is just somehow your enemy, so you don't have to care what they think, because trying to care about every single shade of possible offense is exhausting and it gets to be too damn much. And at the end of the day no matter how hard you try, you still cannot be considered ally or friend, because you have "privilege" or were born to the oppressing group.
I want nothing more than for humanity to somehow embrace one another as fellow humans first, and actually celebrate our diversities second. But my opinion in this is not universally held by a long shot. Maybe human tribal wiring will win out no matter what. That saddens me.
But I know a white woman who went to live in Africa in the middle of nowhere with an actual tribe of tribal people, and they welcomed her, and assimilated her in, she wore their clothes, spoke their language, ate their food. She was with the Peace Corps. She brought back video. There was a lot of joy in that experience, for her. She also brought back a bunch of the fabric they use for practically everything, and recipes...her welcome home party involved her serving (and my picky ass not eating) these tribal foods. Everything about it seemed positive. But I have a feeling I've got friends who would look for reasons it's "not ok."
Finally, on the subject of cultural appropriation. My friend Supernova, who is a rather complicated ethnic blend...black, white, Puerto Rican, Native (and possibly more, I'm not really sure)... is one who has gotten on my case about cultural appropriation. In his thinking, something like a white girl putting a feather in her hair because it's pretty, is offensive as hell. I didn't bother to mention to him that I have made dreamcatchers and have several in my room. Not a few days after this rant he threw at me...he said something about how awesome tacos are and how everybody should celebrate Taco Tuesday. Now can you tell me, how this appropriation business applies to a trivial hair accessory, but not food, and while we're at it, not music either? I seriously wanted to tell him I couldn't eat tacos anymore, as I am of European descent, and would have to celebrate crumpet Tuesday in order to not be offensive. Jackass. Ya know, how about we can just tell when people are being arseholes and when they clearly are not, otherwise just generally try to be nice to each other. That would be great.
