Christian Allaire is upset. As Senior Fashion and Style Writer at Vogue magazine and self-described "champion" of Indigenous stories and artists, he laments the sight of his Native culture being "reduced to a kind of gimmick" and "reduced to caricature" in the fashion world. He calls this "appropriation."
Per his online biography, Allaire hails from the Nipissing First Nation in Ontario, Canada, from which he derives his Ojibwe heritage. You would never know it from the pictures, which betray a whiter-than-white effeminate marshmallow who looks less like a proud Indigenous "champion" of anything and more like a backup dancer. If Elizabeth Warren and Ward Churchill had a love child…
Allaire isn't alone in his outrage. Jeremy Helligar at Reader's Digest is in a tizzy because Bo Derek wore her hair in cornrows. In 1979. And he's upset that the crows in the cartoon Dumbo had caricatured black voices. In 1941.
Over at Good Housekeeping, Beth Dreher huffs and Lizz Schumer puffs over Madonna dressing in the traditional garb of the North African Amazigh people, not registering the irony that nobody would have ever known the Amazigh people even existed had it not been for Madonna doing so. To her credit, Madonna consistently tells the cultural appropriation police to go pound sand.
Samantha Vincenty at Oprah Daily likens Miley Cyrus's infamous twerking stunt to a style she "lifted, without credit" from the black bounce music scene in New Orleans. But she goes further. Instances when black artists appropriate from Asian and Indian cultures are "a little more complicated" because "the power differential isn't as obvious."
Of course. The power differential. What can't it do?
See what Vincenty is attempting here? She insinuates that when whites "lift, without credit" from minorities, it's blatant theft. But when minorities steal culture from whites (or from each other), it can't be considered theft because, in her words, it "doesn't happen on a level playing field." It's the exact argument the Left makes when they claim that minorities can't be racist against whites.
Predictably, activists insist that cultural appropriation can only go in one direction, i.e. by the dominant culture against "oppressed" cultures. And by that, they mean white people against minorities. They have no objection to white culture being appropriated, as it has been for centuries, around the globe. The aforementioned Helligar, who raged at Dumbo's caricatured black voices, doesn't object to the same movie's caricatured Italian voice in Timothy Q. Mouse, or the caricatured uneducated poor white voices in the circus clowns.
The activists' argument, such as it is, is designed to make white people lose in either situation. If white people admire and adapt an aspect of minority culture, they're guilty of "appropriation." If white people dislike and resist aspects of minority culture, they're guilty of "xenophobia" and "white supremacy." Per leftist dogma, the whites must be the oppressors in every situation, and minorities must be the helpless victims.
But as I've written before, the first step to resisting this illogical fallacy is to refuse to play by the Left's rules of language and debate. Just because the cultural appropriation police declare that minorities can't appropriate from the dominant culture doesn't make it so. To insist it is not only illogical, it is in itself racist. Do not concede this point, and don't allow the debate to move forward until the leftist you're debating does concede it.
Wikipedia defines cultural appropriation as the "inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity." So while we're on the subject, what aspects of American and Western European culture have been "appropriated" by others? Democracy and republicanism, God-endowed liberties, equality under the law, religious tolerance, the pursuit of objective science, governmental checks and balances, trial by jury, property rights, modern technology and medicine, universal education, an independent press, and free market capitalism are but a few.
There are other cultures in history that have contributed greatly in these areas, including the Persians, Indians, Byzantines, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese, but you'll notice that, by and large, it isn't their descendants who are moaning about "appropriation." So before anyone starts harping on their culture being "appropriated," keep in mind the "appropriating" you yourself have done from other cultures, and to greater benefit.
Here are some questions for Christian Allaire and his ilk to ponder. Do you get around solely by walking, by wind-driven boats, or on the backs of animals? Or do you travel by car, rail, cruise ship, or airplane? Cultural appropriation!
Do you live in a squalid mud hut near a malaria-infested swamp? Or do you enjoy a Western-designed home, fully equipped with modern plumbing and electricity? Can you press a button on your thermostat and warm or cool your entire house to the exact temperature you desire? Do you have an oven that cooks your food, and a refrigerator/freezer that preserves it? Cultural appropriation!
Do you enjoy internet and cable service? Do you own a computer, a cell phone, and a large-screen TV? Cultural appropriation!
When you get sick, do you have the local witch doctor "read" some chicken bones and then prescribe bloodletting and a chant or two to ward off the demon? Or do you head to a modern medical facility, in which Western medicine is practiced? If you suffer a serious injury, are you dragged to the outskirts of the village and left for dead? Or can you call an ambulance, which will be on scene in minutes to transport you to the nearest hospital? Cultural appropriation!
Do you run around all day in a loincloth? Or do you enjoy Western-style dress, including blue jeans, t-shirts, gym shoes, ballcaps, hoodies, and all the accessories therein? Cultural appropriation!
Do you hunt for your food with a sharpened stick, not knowing if you and your family are going to eat this week? Or, thanks to European developments in agriculture and animal husbandry, can you go to any number of grocery stores within five miles of your front door and choose from dozens upon dozens of varieties of each product to stock your home for literally months if you so choose? Cultural appropriation!
Do you fear being whipped, hanged, or beheaded in public as retribution for your overheard criticism against your chieftain, elder, emir, ayatollah, or Comrade General Secretary? Or do you enjoy the right to disagree with, insult, ignore, vote out, or even (if they are Republican) harass and threaten your elected leaders? Cultural appropriation!
And if you claim that many of the cultural perks I listed are technological in nature and can't be categorized as "culture", I retort that the advancement of science is in and of itself a product of Western culture, and that those technological perks you enjoy would not exist without the Western mindset of open inquiry and objective, systematic pursuit of scientific knowledge. The West set this standard, and has advanced it beyond what any other culture could ever have dreamt to do. If you disagree, please provide a list of the non-Western equivalents of Copernicus and Galileo and Newton, of Einstein and Curie and Crick, of Edison and Ford and the Wright Brothers.
I'll wait.
Tell me about your grand libraries and monuments, your aqueducts and dams and roads. Astound me with tales of your vast cities, your centers of learning and philosophy, your masterpieces of music and art. Dazzle me with the works of your Socrates and Aquinas and Goethe, your Mozart and Gentileschi and Michelangelo, your Dostoevsky and Stowe and Alighieri.
I'm still waiting.
You've been allowed to cut in line by 10,000 years and take front-row seats to the greatest show on earth, and now have the audacity to complain about the people sitting next to you who moved their coats for you to sit down, because they "appropriated" your style of coat.
But let's have one standard here. Cultural appropriation is either theft or it's not. Across the board. Remember, we don't concede to your racist assertions that this theft is a one-way street. So make a choice. If you want a mass trading back of cultures, you can have your clothing and hairstyles. But you get your Stone Age back with it.
Related: Behold the Monster You Created
And if the prospect of that trade-back suddenly deflates the balloon of your alleged longing for the glory of the pre-Western indigenous lifestyle, then maybe you're not so proud of that lifestyle as you so loudly proclaim to be.
Culture transcends race, tribe, and border. And that's what makes it so cool: it's an open gift for anyone who embraces it. When two people interact on any level, they inevitably influence each other's culture. That's not theft, or appropriation, or white supremacy. That's Sociology 101, day one, page one. And, more often than not, it benefits both sides.
If the aforementioned Christian Allaire wore a Fighting Irish t-shirt, I wouldn't be offended. And if he started speaking mockingly in a wee leprechaun voice while eating shepherd's pie and drinking Guinness, I still wouldn't be offended. And that's not because I'm special; it's because I'm an adult. And that means I don't lie awake at night bathed in cold sweat, blaming "appropriation" for all the ills in my life and of my "people", and pretending a minority in a cowboy or pilgrim costume causes me irreparable harm.
And if I ever do get to that point, please involuntarily commit me, because my problems will run much, much deeper than what outfit Christian Allaire chose to wear today.
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