http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2014/03/cultural-appopriation-and-cultural.html
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2014/03/cultural-appopriation-and-cultural_19.html
Now, I got an email from a blog reader. It was in response to what I said about Randa Jarrar, the Arab-American women who wrote 2 articles stating she "can't stand white belly dancers". Jarrar claims it's bad that "white people" to participate in "non-white" cultural things because "whites oppress and steal cultures" and that it's OK for "non-whites" to participate in "white" cultural things because "white oppress and steal cultures"
It is classic!
There doesn't seem to be a place to leave comments on your blog, so I'm sending one here. Your part about belly dancing being appropriated by the Arabs from other cultures got me thinking, didn't the Arabs appropriate the Old Testament (and much of the base content used in Islam) from Christianity and Judaism?
Also, the Arabs occupied Spain and Portugal for 700 or so years, and I think invaded Sicily at some point as well, so even if whats her names point about Europeans not being able to use the cultural traits of those other Europeans colonized was valid, which it isn't, the same point could be made that Europeans of Spanish, Portuguese and Sicilian descent have the same relationship to Arabs as Jarrar says Arabs have to Europeans. Also, although not the dominant group per se, the Arabs were also significant in the Ottoman Empire which controlled Greece and several other Eastern European countries for several hundred years. For that matter, Arabs were practicing slavery in Africa centuries before the Europeans discovered the Americas!
Thank you!
The problem with all these "cultural appropriation" whiners is that they say "learn your history", but it is them that need to learn history!
These "cultural appropriation" whiners think history is just about evil white Europeans picking on peaceful non-white peoples.
History is a lot more complicated than that!
All over the world, tribes were conquering, killing (even to the point of genocide) and enslaving rival tribes.
What do you think the Aztecs, Zulus, Arabs, Turks, Incas, and a whole bunch of other tribes were doing before the Europeans came to their territory?
They were raping and pillaging and enslaving and all the other bad stuff! Off course, many of those cultures also built great civilizations and contributed to education, art and a whole bunch of other good stuff! No culture is totally perfect nor totally evil!
The only thing got the Europeans to conquer the most was they were the first to make really advanced ships (to bring mass # of troops, settlers, etc to far, far, far away) and to use firearms and explosives so effectively. Also, they were able to run into isolated populations (ie Native Americans, Pacific Islanders) that haven't had the chance to gain immunity to diseases.
And it wasn't even all European populations, it was just a few European countries (ie France, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany) that did so!
Meanwhile, other European nations (ie Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Belarus) spent most of the last few centuries being being conquered by nearby European powers.
But OMG if someone of Latvian, Irish or Ukrainian descent decided to do something "non-white" like belly dance, have corn-rows or wear a kimono. Because chumps like Randa Jarrar and Brittney Cooper says "history says white people are all oppressors who conquer, oppress and steal cultures"? Fool, you learn your history!
By the way, the only great powers in this world is USA (mostly white, but has a half-African descendant as president, plus has a growing non-white population), Russia (white-run nation gaining their power back), and China.
Iran is a regional power scaring people, but is nowhere near taking over the world. It is mostly a threat to nearby nations, just so happen that one of them was a refuge for Holocaust survivors!
India is a rising power, but they don't really care about expanding its military power to outside lands. They're more concerned about Pakistan being taken over by fanatics.
Other than Russia, the rest of Europe has no real military power. It's mostly nations free-loading off US might! European empires are over! All they got left are a few territories that don't even have enough natural resources to prosper in the modern world! And even then, some of those territories have their own sovereignty movement (ie. French-run Tahiti) which can make it likely that the Europeans will continue to retreat even more!
Sheesh, even North Korea (the poor half of Korea) is a much bigger threat than all these European empires of the past. Nobody is scared of Netherlands or Portugal anymore! But people fear a North Korean attack!
So Randa Jarrar and Brittney Cooper need to learn their history and learn the present! Europeans were only conquering far away lands for just a few centuries (compared to multiple millenniums, most of which, the Europeans were far behind Middle East and East Asia in advancement, power and prestige) and are basically retreating to their own shell (with Russia as the only exception).
And even in the US, white power has declined. Randa Jarrar and Brittney Cooper can point out some stories of hate crimes, but most crime is where the predator and victim are the same race. I discussed that issue at http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-fear-of-other.html.
At this point, white belly dancers and white rappers just want to have fun. Just like how Aloe Blacc and Darius Rucker just want to have fun in mostly Euro-American music genres.
Let's all enjoy each other's culture's.
As Rodney King said "Can't we all just get along?"
