So, i’ll say it.

Jenn is a racist. And if you try to white wash it in the least, then you are a racist too.

I notice she doesn’t get angry at white girls who enjoy “appropriated” cultural methods, tech., etc. What a sexist double standard.

Those of you who make apologies for this “energetic” rant expose yourselves as ridiculous.

The funny part is that NONE of the people who complain about this have any intention of introducing themselves as “Americans” when they go abroad. They are indignant “Americans” when they come here and peaceful “Canadians” – not associated withthe war in Iraq – in every other country in the world. You’d think they would be grateful for this handy ability to seperate themselves from our unpopular asses, but I am a self-centered United-Statesian so what do I know?

Also, I was recently told that people who live in those parts of the Americas south of the US border consider it offensive for people here to have appropriated the term ‘American’ as if it referred solely to residents of one of the three countries in N. America. This had never occurred to me before, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.

The name of the country is The United States of America. Besides “Americans” what are our options? “United Statesians”? Our self-appelation of “Americans” is a consequence of the universal desire to come up with the shortest way possible of expressing things so as not to waste time and breath. It has NOTHING to do with any attempt to “appropriate” the entire continent.

“Cultures that seem “premodern” or “subordinate” attract this fetishism from modern day Americans.”

This is one of the many cases where a widespread basic framework of biological knowledge would come in handy. Any lifeform that exists today is by definition modern, even if it’s a bacteria. If you can see a bacteria as modern, other members of your own species shouldn’t be a stretch.

It’s also a case where our ideological frame of ‘progress’ bites us in the buttocks. Modernity is generally used to mean the present time, but piggybacked along with that is the expectation of a certain level of technology, a nation-state level will to dominate, particular social structures and buy-in to the market economy. Modernity is a freighted concept that ignores both the cyclical nature of societal power and the truly impressive history of the accomplishments of pre-colonial peoples. We’ve been conditioned as a society to reject the modernity of both those people impoverished by our cultures and those who simply refuse to adopt our values.

“(Nobody “just likes something because they like it” if the thing they like is the least bit complex or freighted with cultural meaning. Sure, when I buy a green tea at the coffeeshop, it’s pretty inconsequential, but when I buy green tea at the white-person-Asian-fetishist tea shop or at the yuppie co-op (and I’m thinking of specific places in my town) it’s marketed as this “Asian” “exotic” “pure” thing. It’s marketed.)”

This is true. I like the exotic teas at the co-op because they have interesting nutritional/medicinal properties and aren’t drenched in pesticide. I make no apologies for my organic ginger tea. If not wanting to be poisoned or wanting antioxidants makes me an elitist, sign me up.

However, I’m studying tropical agricultural systems and food varieties this quarter in school and I have to tell you that there’s barely anything we eat in the west that hasn’t been appropriated at some point or another. And in that light, shopping at the yuppie co-op (alternately, as it is in my area, the hippie co-op) where they might actually celebrate in some sense the origin of the food and may carry the products of companies that paid the farmer a decent wage, may not be such a bad thing.

From Asia (Do you really want me to break it out into east, west & Asia-Pacific? ‘Cause I ain’t gonna.): Citrus, rice, soy, stonefruits (peaches, plums, almonds, etc.), melons, pistachios, bananas, yams, coconuts, sugar, numerous spices, etc.

From the original Americans: Corn, potatoes, chocolate, sweet potatoes, other yams, peppers, tomatoes, beans, squash, tapioca (the starch of the cassava/manioc root), etc.

From Africa: Coffee (2nd most traded world commodity after crude oil), yet other yams, oil palm, sorghum, other melons, etc.

I could go on and on, but a picture should be emerging. US citizens eat more corn than any other group of people on the planet, we’re Tostitos(TM) on the hoof, but it’s an intentional cultivar whose wild ancestors had cobs (if you can call them that) that ran about an inch long. Latter-day corn is the product of thousands of years of cultural labor and it’s in almost everything we eat in this country in one form or another. Is this appropriation? If not, why not?

Probably most people around the world don’t consider coffee or chocolate to have the slightest cultural significance, mainly because they were assimilated so long ago. Medieval Arabs were the first to bring coffee back from Africa and then Europeans appropriated it in their turn. Chocolate was brought back to Europe by the planet’s most expansive colonial tradition and yet nothing seems more US than a Hershey’s chocolate bar. Now coffee is grown mostly in S. America and Asia. Chocolate is grown most widely in Africa. Who’s appropriating what here? You’ve got agribusiness firms, consumers and let’s not forget, a lot of very poor farmers…

… and about them, here’s what I see as the real appropriation, foodwise: These last two popular, luxury commodities are grown almost exclusively in the tropics by brown people so poor that many of them can barely afford to send their kids to school. In part because their countries are usually in hoc to the IMF and their forced structural adjustment contracts don’t allow for free public schools, and partly because when you and I go to a coffee shop, only 1% of the price we pay makes it back to the coffee farmer. It’s pretty much the same picture with chocolate, if not worse. Don’t get me started on bananas.

If you want some appropriation that means life and death right now, consider the ongoing appropriation of third world labor by those among us who think it’s our god-given right to have $0.79/lb bananas. Consider the ease with which most of us can ignore the effect our purchase of Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Sara Lee and Nestlé coffee products have, instead of being bothered to understand why someone might insist on a fair trade label. Or look at the general obliviousness involved in buying child & slave labor chocolate from Mars, Hershey and Nestlé.

These commodities are loaded with cultural significance, with issues of race and class, privilege and dominance. These appropriations, precisely because they’ve been so seamlessly integrated into our society, are completely invisible. I’m not sure how that fits into the fetishization dynamic (though not to disregard it), because there aren’t big groups of suburban whites that I’m aware of trying to act like indigenous Africans or S. Americans, though it certainly fits into seeing them as subservient enough to be of no consequence.

But the appropriation doesn’t end there. Our society continues to sanction economically damaging thefts of natural and cultural heritage that remain farther below the radar than eating sushi, which at least someone generally got paid for. Consider US patent law as another modern face of colonialism, with private firms able to steal indigenous cultural knowledge and biological wealth and set their seal on it as a product from which no one else may profit. Consider hoodia, which is a cactus that the S. African San tribes have used for thousands of years to stave off hunger, now turned into a patented weight loss supplement for westerners who are Tostitos(TM) on the hoof. This brute force economic racism that should properly be called slavery and theft seems to me to make a textbook example of what ignoring white privilege leads to.

Also, I was recently told that people who live in those parts of the Americas south of the US border consider it offensive for people here to have appropriated the term ‘American’ as if it referred solely to residents of one of the three countries in N. America. This had never occurred to me before, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.

No one I know studies German, dresses in “folkloric” German costumes, learns traditional German fighting techniques, and plans to go to Germany to seek a German bride because German women “naturally” make more desirable mates–while I know personally a number of guys who are like this about various parts of Asia. Cultures that seem “premodern” or “subordinate” attract this fetishism from modern day Americans.

Is the Francophile dead? Are there no young hipsters left who read Camus, drink Orangina, watch Jacques Tati movies, and dream of the Left Bank?

Quel domage, if so.

Months ago I decided to learn more about Pagan Germanic/Nordic culture. Not only am I learning things I never knew, I am also discoving that our Pagan ancestors had a worldview much closer to the Dharmic faiths than “Western” (read Christianized Greek/Latin) worldview. In fact, I have learned that Almost of the traditionally “eastern” philosphies were produced by a fusion of the non-IE “native” beliefs with the beliefs of the Indo-European immigrants/conquerers who settled amongst them. They are not “ours” nor are they “theirs” – they are ALL of ours and this kind of racial compartmentalizing is not only based on sloppy thinking it is simply factually wrong.

Primarily, I am a history nut with no intention of confining himself to only the history of people who share my skintone. The funnny thing is that the Chinese and Indian (not Americans of chinese/indian decent – like this author – but people born and raised in the PRC and India) students in my lab ask ME questions about the ancient history of “their” cultures – stuff that they, like most Americans, ignored in school. They dont bust my ass for being a “asianophile” trying to “steal” they’re culture – some of them actually seem to look almost “proud” that a foreigner, especially an “self-centered American” would take the time
to actually read the Rig Veda, the Chuangzi, etc and appreciate them as classic works of art and philosophy.

True, there are idiots who actually would choose a mate like this – and there are dumb asians commited to marrying a white women. Its not about”they do it to” – because there is no ‘they’ and stupidity transcends cultures.

For the record, I’m not against cultural borrowing by people not born into a particular culture — this has been elucidated in the comments to the post in question. It would certainly be a difficult position to defend, even were it something I advocated.

Instead, as the original post above describes, I am against misappropriation coupled with disrespect for the source cultural practices. I’m against taking what’s convenient and denying what’s too weighty — enjoying green tea but being ignorant or supportive of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Practicing kung fu but knowing nothing about the Rape of Nanking. Fetishizing Asian culture while being ignorant of what charges of Asiaphilia mean and how you might fit into that category. I hope that clears something up.

As far as the idea that I should be “grateful” that my culture is fetishized, and whether or not Indian culture is currently a fad — I can only say that, in my opinion, being a fad is no better than being hated and reviled. In both cases, our histories and heritages are still being digested, processed and consumed by non-insiders, with the intention of distorting who we are for the sake of someone else’s benefit. It’s like arguing that Asian Americans should argue for the model minority myth because it is a “positive stereotype”: I would counter that the act of stereotyping is itself the distasteful act and that no matter what, stereotypes should be struggled against. Similarly, so long as any culture is treated with disrespect by the majority mainstream, whether a fad or reviled, we have reason to object.