One More Note to Sound on Racial Appropriation

[cathschaffstump]

Cultural Appropriation Question: Does it strike anyone else as ironic that a bunch of U.S. citizens who have regular access to the Internet are talking about cultural appropriation, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation? Given the following information:

1. The average impoverished person in the U.S. is better off than the average middle class person in many African countries.
2. The predominate issue of globalization is the Western usurpation of more traditional societies, usually through technological means. This has often been called cultural colonialization.
3. The truly poor and citizens from other countries are shut out of the argument of RaceFail by a lack of access to technology, or a lack of the ability to speak English, which is rapidly becoming a common language and (alas! although there are movements to the contrary) privilege.
4. Those of us who have access to technology, regardless of where we come from or what we think, are actually privileged over those who have no access.
5. There are those that have no leisure and/or limited freedom, given their harsh day to day life, to answer these questions.

So, cultural appropriation is an issue. Agreed. It's important to consider the plurality of all, and to consider the issue of cultural appropriation as it relates to globalization and a general stamp of Western or colonial culture in regard to the rest of the world. Agreed. For your consideration: everyone who is engaged in the conversation is more privileged than everyone who is not engaged in the conversation due to issues of lack of access, often due to geographical, political, and economic circumstances, as well as the linguistic challenges and stigmas of non-standard English, notwithstanding.

Did the RaceFail conversation address any of these concerns of global inequity? Does anyone know? Can you point me to places in the argument where that happened?

To clarify, I'm not saying that we should not address the conversation. It's an important conversation that affects many people. However, let's all take a moment to consider how lucky we are to be able to do it, and appreciate that for the privilege it is. Let's all decide to do something else to listen to our brothers and sisters worldwide for whom it is impossible to enter the conversation as a sincere indication of how much we appreciate our privilege.

The English Language Acquisition teacher in the back of the room

Originally published at Writer Tamago. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[tltrent.livejournal.com]

This was a point I am painfully aware of and was desperate to make--the unexamined privilege of "First Worlders"--but decided to just try listening instead. Still, this was and is very much on my mind through all this. Glad you were brave enough to bring it up.

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

You *would* understand, having been out there.

It might be a better time to bring it up, when feathers are less rankled in regard to ideas, and when people are more receptive to listening.

Catherine

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, there was a call recently to "return" the conversation to its origins, discussing the marginalization of people of color both within SF/F fandom and as characters in SF/F works. As such, there is also a movement to provide some financial assistance to PoCs who otherwise might find it difficult to attend WisCon (I don't know if any other cons are in play, though).

However, rather than feeling that the conversation had gone too far afield from its origins, I really appreciated the fact that it had grown and evolved, so that what had begun as a rather tightly focused discussion threw a lot of much larger issues into high relief and forced people to consider their attitudes in many aspects of their lives, not just within their SF/F hobby (or profession, if the person in question is a writer/actor/director, etc.).

Frankly, I found the idea that we were "supposed" to be sticking to the original discussion as hampering to progress as those mice who popped up on many journals calling the mere existence of the discussion in the first place "racist". I welcome a further expansion of the discussion that might consider what you've raised here.

I think that both in the issue you've raised and the previous discussion, what people have been starting to zero in on is the issue of what I will call "accompaniment". This is something we've been working on at our church for years, starting with when we became the first Sanctuary Church in PA to shelter illegal Salvadoran refugees our government wouldn't acknowledge, because the Reagan administration was friendly with the government trying to kill them, and culminating most recently with this (http://tabunited.livejournal.com/4957.html). We're very excited about this coming Sunday and the opportunity to accompany the Lenape Nation as they "come out" after a very long time underground, and to be the most recent signers of the treaty.

As we learn from this whole experience and move forward, I think that all those in positions of privilege--which is relative, as you've noted--might consider the ways in which they can be allies and accompany those who have not been afforded the same privileges, listen before leaping, and invest some time in truly considering what our lives would be like without the privileges we daily take for granted.

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your church has done some good work in this regard.

I can understand wanting to reign in the scope of the discussion, but I also believe we need to keep things in perspective in all ways.

And I think we need to all band together to work on some of these issues, not appropriate them.

Cue the "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" Pepsi lyrics...

Catherine