Cultural Appropriation

(https://en.wikipedia.org)

Golliwog’s Cakewalk

Black people originate; White people imitate

What would America be like if we loved Black people as much as we love Black culture?

Amandla Stenberg US actor. Amandla Stenberg: Don’t Cash Crop On My Cornrows (2015).

White people feel rightly‑flattered when aspects of their culture are appropriated by others, since they correctly‑assess that such appropriation is a tacit compliment.

Yet Whites baulk at appropriating what is best (or better) in other cultures, without also employing mockery as a fundamental part of the process, since that would mean they are not the master race they regularly‑claim to be.

This actual lack of genuine superiority explains the White need to borrow from other cultures in a mocking fashion, in case anyone believes that Whites take others as seriously as they take themselves.

Cultural Appropriation by Black people is not the same as that practiced by White people because the former does not also, in the process, entail the Black appropriator is:

1. Benefiting from White privilege without the White oppression of Black identity;
2. unable to handle the whole truth of the other culture, because of a:
1. desire to pick only the liked parts of the other culture;
2. refusal to actually & actively‑engage with and appreciate the other culture because it is seen as inferior; &,
3. denial that there is anything more to the other culture than the stereotypes enacted through White cultural appropriation; revealing contempt for others in the process;
3. lacking a sense‑of‑humor;
4. attempting to claim the culture being appropriated was invented by the appropriator while, simultaneously damning those whose culture is being appropriated;
5. racially mocking other cultures as inferior in order to appear superior:
1. Although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Whites refuse to believe that such implicitly‑servile compliments could ever apply to other cultures;
2. those who angrily‑express their fear for their lives – as a direct result of being racially‑stigmatized in this way – are deemed by Whites as possessing no:
1. Sense of perspective when marginalized groups are stigmatized when expressing their cultural traditions. But when a White person appropriates from these same groups, they are celebrated by other Whites;
2. desire to integrate with or appease Whites by laughing along with their racist jokes (Whites never laugh at the jokes others make about them, after all);
3. ability to use their anger wisely;
4. sense‑of‑humor; &, therefore,
5. right‑to‑life.
6. lacking a substantial culture of their own, as Whites try to:
1. Convince themselves that culture is merely a set of clothes that can be worn or discarded on a whim, rather than something inherently‑meaningful that is essential to one’s sense‑of‑identity;
2. believe that they are not deeply‑jealous of the life‑enhancing richness of everyone else’s culture but their own;
3. conceal the fact that Whites hate Blacks because they can never be anything like them;
4. hide the fact that Whites lack originality and must resort to copying others with better ideas;
5. fill their identity‑denying cultural emptiness with that which they can never understand; &,
6. provide a phony solution to their lazy inability to solve their resulting, ingrained existential problems;
7. attempting to justify the:
1. Theory of racial supremacy (guilt‑ridden scapegoating); &,
2. practice of racial supremacy (ethnic genocide);
8. trying to assuage political correctness (PC) by either conforming to PC (pretending not to be prejudiced) or mocking PC (openly‑expressing prejudice);
9. merely engaging in monkey‑like imitation:
   1. Blacks will try to improve what little they copy; &
   2. continue to recreate for themselves what White culture lacks;
10. trying to win the favor of their ethnic coevals by offering disdain for other cultures &;
11. upset and angered by the fact that the very existence of other cultures proves People Of Color (POC) do not need White culture as the basis of Black identity.

Because Whites have little in their culture of which to be proud, they assume that minstrelsy will promote their unearned sense of superiority and self‑regarding contempt for others; while it does nothing more than really reflecting their ingrained and cultureless contempt for themselves.

Pretending to like Black culture; while making it clear that Black people remain to be discriminated against is racist since it does not include any sense of actual cultural appreciation of that culture nor genuine cultural exchange with that culture. Whites behaving like Blacks garners praise and attention from Whites; while Blacks‑acting‑like‑Blacks does not – despite the fact that the original is always better than the copy. The original is clearly‑focused as to purpose, while the copy is always like a blurred photocopy: Never as good as the original; while presupposing the possibility that the original was tampered‑with before being copied. Thus, cultural appropriation creates a double standard that perpetuates the White cause of further oppressing already oppressed groups.

This White pretense is in sharp contradistinction to when Blacks appropriate other cultures; eg, Valentine’s Day. Such cultures are not disrespected, they are actually appreciated and a genuine cultural exchange takes place. This pretense reflects the way in which Whites have, over 500 years, parasited‑off and vampirised others to fill the sensational, emotional and ethical void inside themselves and their culture – all the while pretending (in the interests of the superstitious White belief in White supremacy) that this fundamental need does not exist.

Because White culture lacks an ethical core, White people need other cultures to be able to form any kind of a basis for theirs; proving Black culture could never be either dependent upon, nor inferior to, a White culture that is, itself, dependent and inferior. White people lack the work ethic and the imagination to create their own substantive culture, so liberally borrow from others without ever wanting to offer credit to the source of their cultural appropriations – people whom they loathe and fear.

This is why the cultural appropriation practiced by White people is racist, because it reflects the White jealousy that they can never be as fully‑human as Black people, and the hope that mere mimicry will give them the Black kudos Whites lack – as if dressing‑up as a lion could make anyone as fearsome as one. It simultaneously tacitly‑acknowledges (via ridicule) that to actually be Black is to be nothing, politically, in the eyes of other Whites.

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Appendixes

External Links:

1. 6 Ways You Harm Me When You Appropriate Black Culture – And How to Appreciate It Instead.
2. What We Can All Learn From Nicki Minaj Schooling Miley Cyrus on Tone Policing.

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