Wow, Stanford alumni

[pastwatcher]

This is pretty damn shameful.

And right around Columbus Day, too. Because you know how the "discovery of the New World" was just awesome.

Note: I'm actually very "patriotic" about the USA. I think there's a lot of good or at least hopeful things about this country, and I would rather use my places within American culture to influence it than any other--even though I want a world where resources are shared well enough that we don't need nation-borders, or something like that. But, if we celebrate Columbus for his representation of European exploration of the New World, then we celebrate genocide, and we continue to ignore many of its survivors' descendants.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

In Latin America (or somewhere in LA) they have La Dia de las Razas, or 'The Day of the Races', celebrating the day the different races which make up their societies met. It may not have been the most peaceful encounter, but none of us in the New World would exist if not for it. I like the idea of celebrating all of our cultures.

What do you think of the comments on the post asserting that it is only the privileged, 'white' Indians who care about mascots? There seems to actually be a real dispute between different groups of Indians over the issue. (EG, the Wikipedia claims that 91% of Indians polled "found the name "Redskins" acceptable," and "According to polling results published in Sports Illustrated in February 2002, 'Although most Native American activists and tribal leaders consider Indian team names and mascots offensive, neither Native Americans in general nor a cross section of U.S. sports fans agree. According to the article, "There is a near total disconnect between Indian activists and the Native American population on this issue.' "

It seems like there's a problem here of one privileged group speaking for another, less-privileged group which doesn't agree with them? It seems rather like a co-option of identity to me. But on the other hand, I don't want to offend or be disrespectful to the people who do care and are offended. They have, of course, every right to their feelings and identity and experiences and all.

Of course, I'm not a fan of any sports teams and don't own any sports related merchandise and the schools I've been associated with have mascots which are totally irrelevant. So my opinions are pretty irrelevant.

[pastwatcher]

Well, I would believe there's disagreement, you can even see disagreement among writers of "Indian Country Today" (though the actual numbers here may be misleading). I could also imagine that people have a lot more to worry about than their cultures when they're focused on survival, or common issues like violence on reservation, etc; however, I don't see how misrepresentation could help anyone. It mostly seems to show disrespect and ignorance; and a general cultural attitude of not acknowledging groups' existence is, in our interdependent society, basically a withdrawal of needed protection.

Like, so much of our culture thinks of "Indian" as a figure of the past, somehow against progress, somehow not representing anyone alive today. That is disrespect but it in turn makes it easier to ignore real live Native Americans, so, not to care about when reservations are drained of resources, or not to listen when groups ask for help. It is likely, if this theory reflects much truth, that activists see it this way...and I mean, it's not like unfair treatment of Native Americans isn't still happening. It is.

And I agree that those calling for a stop have every right to their experiences--and in this case it also doesn't seem like they're speaking against anyone else, and basically I'm not going to make the call on when something doesn't have a racist impact. I personally, like I said, think these things do have those impacts, but consider that irrelevant too.

In general though, cultural appropriation is really hard to think about, right? I mean, if someone picks up the most superficial aspects of your culture and spreads them around, what does that do to you? There are extreme examples like the swastika, where a succession of people used the symbol so it got further and further away from Hindu control, and now people can't use their own symbol because it's too otherwise loaded. But what does it do most of the time, when symbols of your culture are picked up and distorted into different common meanings? Does it just remind you that you are misunderstood? Does it make people see you as more "other" than them, or as like you in a way that is false and miscommunicating--and does that matter? Does it do basically nothing but offend you, or if not you, others in your culture? ...I still don't know really, but it's definitely something to be cautious about.

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

It's very difficult for me, as a fairly mainstream white person, to even contemplate cultural appropriation, because the closest things I can think about which I identify with in my own life, things from my own cultural background, are generally shared so widely or else treated in such a way as to be completely meaningless. What I mean is, it doesn't hurt me. Like, someone from Japan could copy Western Art and produce manga with bastardized versions of European history in them, but what would I care? It wouldn't affect me at all. Or as someone tried to make an analogy in the thread, what if the 'Fighting Irish' weren't at a Catholic school in the US, but at an English school? Well, even as someone with some amount of Irish heritage (I could be half Irish for all I know,) this wouldn't affect me in the least--so I wouldn't care. My Scottish ancestors are regularly exploited and misrepresented on the covers of romance novels, but I don't see how this possibly could hurt.

I suspect that's where a lot of people are coming from on this issue, including many Indians. If you don't even live in Atlanta and don't interact with any Braves fans, why would you care?

I was thinking this morning about 'What *is* appropriation?' No one cares if you appropriate their food. I can eat all of the fried okra I can get my pasty little hands on and no one will ever care. Religion becomes trickier, because some religions are explicitly evangelical, and so want to be appropriated, while others explicitly aren't. Just declaring that you're setting up a new form of Judaism would be considered kind of not-cool by the other Jews. But still, who has a right to dictate what other people are allowed to believe or not believe about god? How do we 'own' these things, and do they ever legitimately become part of another group's cultural heritage? If my mother read me Bre'er Rabbit stories, and I saved my Bre'er Rabbit books and now read them to my children, and someday they tell those stories to their kids, does that become part of our culture, as well?

I minored in anthropology because I love other cultures. I love learning about how other people think and see and experience the world. There are so many different ways of being. And yet, saying "I love X culture" or " I love Y about this culture" is a very tricky business. I hope we can all learn to be respectful enough that we can all celebrate each other's cultures without fear of harm someday.

I still remember, in what I think must have been a crucial moment of my childhood, spotting an Indian costume in a toy catalog when I was 8 years old. I wanted that costume for *months*. It became one of my dearest possessions. I loved Indians. I read books about Indians. I visited Indian reservations. I sought out dolls with darker skins so they could be Indian dolls. I lectured my friends about how the movies were wrong and it was the cowboys who were the bad guys and wrote Rabbit-Proof-Fence style stories about children escaping from boarding school.

It's odd to me that if it turned out that my unknown grandfather were actually an Indian, I would suddenly have some justification to claim ethnic allegiance to a culture which I formerly didn't. (I don't have the skin tone to pull an Iron Eyes Cody, after all.) But it's quite likely that I haven't a drop of Indian blood in me, despite all of my desires to the contrary. (I was also convinced as a kid that if I were Mexican, I'd have friends, and prayed for god to turn my hair black.)

That original costume was certainly appropriated. I doubt it was accurate, and certainly most Indians these days wear jeans and t-shirts like everyone else, not headbands and fringe (actually, Indians never wore headbands. Hollywood just stuck those on movie-Indians to keep their wigs on. Then the hippies picked up the style, and now tweens are wearing them to dress up like hippies.)

I understand the argument that you should not do things that are harmful to others. I understand why violent, ugly, harmful representations are bad.

--cut for length

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

But in my own personal experience, it was through an initial misrepresentation that I came to learn a great deal of *real* things about real people, came to respect and try to understand them, instead of just accepting the vague ideas which I had imbibed from our culture. It made me less able to ignore real live Indians, to not care about them or not listen to them.

I don't want to be disrespectful or harmful to anyone (except those I disagree with and see as threats to my comfort, safety, and happiness). And I don't in the least consider my experiences representative of anyone else's, or that Indian costumes and mascots and the like are going to suddenly change conditions for Indians everywhere. But it does make me wary of the theory as you've articulated it.

I think unfair treatment of Indians persists less because of the Atlanta Braves than because of institutionalized racist structures and folks generally not caring about issues they know nothing about. Most folks don't care about the negative effects of US drug policy on folks in Latin America, for example, not because they've seen stereotyped depictions of Colombians, but because they just don't know and don't care.

I find the case of the Florida State Seminoles rather interesting (I suppose it's good they decided to be the Seminoles and not the Crackers? But maybe less amusing?) in the way the college has worked with the Seminole tribe to create depictions which the tribe approves of. I wonder if students who attend FSU end up more aware of and sympathetic to Seminole causes and interests as a result, and if this could be a viable strategy for increasing visibility of real Indians and drawing attention to their accomplishments and struggles.

Anyway, I've babbled on for far too long. Good night and take care.

[pastwatcher]

Hey, lots of good points.

And I am definitely on board with the "maybe we will be able to celebrate each other's cultures respectfully" thing. I think it's kinda circular, though: particularly offensive cultural distortion tends to happen when there is already a high level of casual disrespect and/or ignorance of that culture in the mainstream. But, what the effects are, and where the lines are drawn, and what can actually help or not, is definitely something I don't understand well despite some amount of trying to.