"Is it ever OK to borrow from other cultures?"

"The biggest issue with cultural appropriation is that it belittles the origin culture, in a way that trivializes an entire way of life, turning it into an accessory. If you are a sensitive and respectful individual, the only time it is OK, is with permission or authorization by the origin culture."

From a set a questions and answers about "cultural appropriation," provided on the occasion of Katy Perry's TV-awards-show performance cartoonishly mixing elements of Japanese and Chinese culture.

So — assuming those involved are sensitive and respectful individuals — who must get permission/authorization from what origin culture when the trope is Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot or Samurai Cowboy?

Consider the possibility that the "origin culture" is the United States.  Because the name of the culture is pop.

Another part of United States culture is free speech, and no, rest of the world, you don't have to ask our permission or authorization — and you don't even have to be a sensitive and respectful individual — to appropriate our culture, the culture called pop.

SNL: J-Pop American Funtime Now! from Antoine G on Vimeo.

Racism, Holland style.

Yikes.

"Why didn’t Ellington consider his music jazz?"

Kathryn Jean Lopez asks Terry Teachout, who says:

His problem was specifically with the word “jazz,” which for his generation (he was born in 1899) still had strongly sexual connotations. Ellington believed that such ostensibly vulgar labels would prevent jazz from ever being taken seriously by artists, critics, and scholars, so he tried to come up with a different way of referring to the music. At one point, the label he preferred was “Negro folk music.” Needless to say, it never caught on.

Here's Teachout's new book "Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington," which contains the sentence — Teachout's second favorite of his sentences, he says — “He talked not to explain himself but to conceal himself.”

Racial fashion... deaf fashion... blind fashion... deaf music....

As long as I've started on the topic of fashion this morning, here are Tom & Lorenzo on last Thursday's finale on "Project Runway," where [SPOILER ALERT] finally, after 12 seasons, a black person has won. Here's how Tom & Lorenzo dealt with the racial element:

Anyway, major congratulations to Dom, not just for winning, but for being the first black winner in the show’s 12-season history. The reason this is notable is because typically, the fashion world has a distinct problem recognizing black (and especially African-American) designers and styles. We’re gonna leave that there, though. Dom doesn’t deserve to be designated a standard-bearer by us or anyone else. It’s enough for us to note it, but the deeper congratulations are for a job well done....

And — because, I guess "enough" is never enough:

... Dom’s origins and background have an influence on her work, but not in an overt way. She has a fantastic facility with prints and loves to use saturated colors in her designs. Again, not to make her a standard-bearer, but these are elements (along with shiny fabrics, also seen in her collection) that help define African-American fashion. Once again, it’s notable that the judges gave a win not just to a black designer, but a black designer with a distinct, if subtle, African-American sensibility in her work. The world of fashion is primed to wrinkle its nose at shiny, bright fabrics and wild prints, after all.... Dom did it her way and forced the judges to see the value in her work. Can’t argue with that.

There was also a contestant this season who was deaf, and he continually referred to the fact that he was deaf. He chose to be a "standard-bearer," with a mission to teach the world that a deaf person can succeed in fashion. It was an unexamined premise that people had told him he can't, but who were those people? Viewers were rooting for him, not laboring under the notion that deaf people can't do visual design and manual handiwork. It seems to me that a deaf fashion designer almost has an advantage, like a blind musician.

(I say "almost," because I realize that interacting with people, explaining your work and understanding their response, is a big part of it. But I wish his explanation of his work wasn't so much about his being deaf. The winner, Dom, never used race to explain her designs or her character — never, at least, in the edited footage that made it to our TV screen.)

Now, show me a blind fashion designer, and I might get excited about what he'd do. Seriously. He'd have to concentrate on form and texture that could be perceived with the hands and in the mind. He might care about the subtle sounds and smells. I'd like to see that.

As for deaf musicians, you can begin and end the conversation with the name Beethoven, but here's an article about 6 modern-day deaf musicians. Watch Evelyn Glennie:

The woman who taught the Motown stars to behave in a manner that read as "class."

It's Maxine Powell, who died on Monday at the age of 98.

“Mrs. Powell was always a lady of grace, elegance and style, and we did our best to emulate her,” Martha Reeves, the former lead singer of Martha and the Vandellas, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “I don’t think I would have been successful at all without her training.... Every asset of my personality has been by her influence... Even to the end, she was making sure that I was standing with posture and exuberant grace.”

She scolded the Supremes about how they were dancing the shake. “You are protruding the buttocks... Whenever you do a naughty step like the shake, add some class to it. Instead of shaking and acting tough, you should roll your buttocks under and keep smiling all the time.” She showed them how to do it and: "They were shocked that I could do it and at how much better it looked my way."

Maybe you're thinking: Why aren't there any Maxine Powells around anymore to class up the pop stars of today? But there must be. They're simply classing them up to suit the taste of our time, which is to say putting them somewhere near the edge of what is acceptable to the big majority. More is acceptable today because of what went on in those earlier years. Dancing the shake at all — rolling the buttocks — was near the edge of acceptability in the 1960s. So that Powells' modification — smile when you roll those buttocks — shaped how people felt about such things and was part of a process that got us where we find ourselves today.

The NYT obituary — at the link — doesn't mention the topic of race (other than to say that Powell founded a finishing and modeling school "which placed the first black models" (was it only for black women?)). But it's hard to ignore that Motown succeeded in making black performers popular with white Americans, who might not have liked them so much if they hadn't been remade in the way Powell taught. What does it say about American racism? It was Powell's idea of what white people wanted and didn't want.

It worked, so who can say what would have happened if some other approach had been used?

"It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds."

"I even asked her if she wanted to look at the bag," said the Swiss sales clerk who incurred the wrath of Oprah.

"I wasn't sure what I should present to her when she came in on the afternoon of Saturday July 20 so I showed her some bags from the Jennifer Aniston collection. I explained to her the bags came in different sizes and materials, like I always do. She looked at a frame behind me. Far above there was the 35,000 Swiss franc crocodile leather bag.

"I simply told her that it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags.... She looked around the store again but didn't say anything else. Then she went with her companion to the lower floor. My colleague saw them to the door. They were not even in the store for five minutes."

Now, I think this relationship got off on the wrong track when the sales clerk read the customer as best suited for the Jennifer Aniston collection. This would annoy me. You're steering me toward the Jennifer Aniston?! Why! But Oprah can't go to the press with that, because it doesn't say I was racially typecast. What does it say? You look like a middle class American. That's annoying, but not a topic for outrage. So Oprah points at the most out-of-reach item, figuring it's super-expensive, which it is.


The sales lady stays on track with her original guess that you look like you'd go for something Jennifer Aniston selected to put her name on. Arguably, that's the opposite of racist — looking at a black woman and thinking she's the Jennifer Aniston type? Oprah's outrage seems like what would rankle a white woman: I look merely middle class.

Oh, but isn't it a burden to be black and thus to need to wonder whether any given failure to genuflect is because of race? Even though Oprah's quite different from virtually every other black person who's troubled by that burden, she may feel the call to represent those burden-bearers... especially since she's starring in the latest medicinal movie about race and she'd like you to look at her character and think of her as stereotypically black and not as the huge celebrity Oprah, which is to say, she'd like you to see her as she claims that shop lady saw her. So could you please show her something in crocodile?

From the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary:

The crocodile was fabulously said to weep, either to allure a man for the purpose of devouring him, or while (or after) devouring him; hence many allusions in literature. (See also crocodile tears...)...

1590   Spenser Faerie Queene i. v. sig. E2,   A cruell craftie Crocodile, Which in false griefe hyding his harmefull guile,..Sheddeth tender teares....
a1616   Shakespeare Othello (1622) iv. i. 246   If that the earth could teeme with womens teares Each drop she falls, would proue a Crocadile....
1677   T. D'Urfey Madam Fickle iii. 36   More false than Crocodills, that mourn the slain, and yet delight to kill 'em.

Paula Deen's apology... why didn't it work?

I had guessed — when we first talked about Paula Deen, here — that Paula Deen would be okay. In the comments:

Rumpletweezer said...
I just hope she turns out to be a Democrat.

Ann Althouse said...
Paula Deen is a Democrat, so she'll probably be okay.

But Paula Deen was fired from the Food Network, even after making this apology:



That had elements of a sincere apology. None of the typical "I apologize to anyone who was offended." Why didn't it work? 4 ideas:

1. She opted out of "Today" show Matt Lauer interview, supposedly because she was in so much pain, but she admits that she caused pain, so she should have gone through the pain to expiate the pain caused. And, really, avoiding Lauer wasn't about pain, it was about the fear of probing questions.

2. The video isn't good enough. She's very poorly lit. There's distracting stuff in the background: a creepy painting, a roll of paper towels, a large display of makeup, wires on the floor. The first quarter of the video presents excuses for not going on the "Today" show that sound untrue. She was "physically unable" to go on the show? She wrecks her own credibility at the outset. She moves on to "the pain that I have caused to myself" pause "and to others." She put herself first there. That's revealing.

3. The Food Network had its polls and its ratings. These are cold, grim economic calculations. Perhaps the time for Paula Deen has ended. I see she'd just come out with a new commercial product called "Finishing Butters," which sounds like the title of a "South Park" episode. The whole Paula Deen thing seems based on a joke. The joke is over.

4. Racism is the unforgivable sin in America. Once it's stuck to you, you can't pull it off. Everyone else must act quickly to keep any of you getting stuck to them.

What do you think? All of the above?

Racial clowns: What Paula Deen said in the deposition.

"Perhaps most damning for the butter-loving mogul, who recently came out with her own line of spreads at Walmart, the Enquirer claims that Deen wanted to use a 'slave motif' at her brother's 2007 wedding."

Deen said she got the idea from another restaurant at which the couple dined. Said Deen, per the Enquirer: "Well, what I would really like is a bunch of little n-----s to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts, and black bow ties. You know, in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around."

All right, this is so wrong on so many levels. First, obviously, don't use the n-word. Second, a slave-themed wedding is a terrible idea. But — and I know these are lesser offenses, but I've got to say it — slaves don't wear shorts. Modern American white men wear shorts all too often and look like overgrown boys when the do so. For all of the diminishment of black men over the years — including calling them "boy" — the stereotype did not have them dressed in shorts.

And, obviously, there were all sorts of problems with the way black people were depicted in old Hollywood movies, let's at least get it clear in our minds what the movie reference is. There was a 1935 Shirley Temple movie called "The Littlest Rebel," and here's what it looked like when Bill Bojangles Robinson (playing the slave "Uncle Billy") danced. He's not tap dancing "around" — as if slaves dance around while working — he's giving a performance at an elegant affair — as a soloist, not in "a bunch." And he's not in shorts and shirt-sleeves. He's wearing long pants and a vest and a jacket. So Deen's mental image of what went on in the bad old days of Hollywood is itself an embarrassing distortion.

"Cheerios had to disable comments on YouTube – I’m not going to repeat them but you can imagine the general witless racism..."

"... with stereotypes about minorities and warnings of race-mixing as the end of civilization. Late Friday night, after a day of widespread news coverage, the ad had more than 8,400 thumbs-up votes on YouTube, versus about 900 thumbs-down."

So we don't know who put up the comments and we don't have to suffer through reading them, whatever they were, but we're all watching the ad with the adorable little girl who conveys the message that Cheerios fend off heart attacks and loving females therefore feed their men Cheerios.

Viral ad campaign works swimmingly well.

Racism is bad. Well-known opinion, shared by everyone you know, is stated with indignant new fervor that seems justified by whatever that thing was that no one saw, and what slips in so easily is a genuinely questionable opinion: that eating packaged, processed grain food is good for your health.

Also, kids: In real life, pouring food on your dad when he's sleeping on the sofa is not a good way to cause him to wake up thinking I love you.



ADDED: This is a good time to look back on this great old George Bush viral video: "you're working hard to put food on your family.

"Why Elitists Hate" the Brad Paisley/LL Cool J song "Accidental Racist."

According to novelist Will Shetterly (one of six commentators on the much-maligned recording):

The song’s first sin is it’s earnest. There’s no irony to please hipsters.

Its second sin is it’s about members of the U.S.’s racially and regionally divided working class, a southern white Lynyrd Skynyrd fan in a Confederate battle flag T-shirt and a northern black rapper in a do-rag, gold chains and sagging pants. This song wasn’t made for, by or about people who consider themselves the cultural elite, and elitists hate the idea of being irrelevant, especially in a discussion of an issue as important as race.

Its third sin is featuring a rap artist. Many elitists hate rap as much as they hate country, though they don’t like to admit it for fear of appearing racially insensitive....

Its last sin is its title -- "Accidental Racist" -- which reminds academic race theorists of a pet term, “unintentional racism,” the racism practiced by people who don’t realize they’re racist. The song is about the opposite phenomenon, the assumptions of people who see racism where it isn’t present because they misunderstand the symbols of a different culture....

"'Yoni Ki Baat,' loosely translated as 'Talk of the Vagina,' is a nationwide theatre ensemble..."

"... dedicated to creating a space in which womyn of color can express their own views on sexuality and their bodies - topics which are traditionally kept 'hush-hush' in many of our cultures and communities.... YKB also aims to end the silencing of violence against womyn, especially in diasporic cultures around the world."

Email inviting me to a (free) theatrical performance which will take place at Madison's glitzy Overture Center.

We are proud to present UW-Madison's fifth production of YONI KI BAAT, also known as the womyn of color Vagina Monologues. We will be performing the narratives and stories of womyn in the diaspora, some of which have been written by the performers themselves.

The yoni (Sanskrit word for "vagina") has long been held sacred in Hindu mythology, but through years of patriarchy and colonialism, it has rarely been allowed to speak its mind. In 2003, South Asian Sisters, a collective of progressive desi womyn, decided that the yoni needed a chance to get on stage and tell its side of the story. Thus, "Yoni ki Baat" (YKB) was born.

Thanks for defining "yoni," but what about "diaspora"? The OED (which I can't link, unfortunately) gives only one meaning of "diaspora," and it relates to the Jewish people:

The Dispersion; i.e. (among the Hellenistic Jews) the whole body of Jews living dispersed among the Gentiles after the Captivity (John vii. 35); (among the early Jewish Christians) the body of Jewish Christians outside of Palestine (Jas. i. 1, 1 Pet. i. 1). Hence transf.: see quots.

(Originating in Deut. xxviii. 25 (Septuagint), ἔση διασπορὰ ἐν πάσαις βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς, thou shalt be a diaspora (or dispersion) in all kingdoms of the earth.)

1876   C. M. Davies Unorthodox London 153   [The Moravian body's] extensive diaspora work (as it is termed) of evangelizing among the National Protestant Churches on the continent.
1881   tr. Wellhausen in Encycl. Brit. XIII. 420/1 at Israel,   As a consequence of the revolutionary changes which had taken place in the conditions of the whole East, the Jewish dispersion (diaspora) began vigorously to spread.
1885   Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 760 at Philo,   The development of Judaism in the diaspora differed in important points from that in Palestine.
1889   Edinb. Rev. No. 345. 66   The mental horizon of the Jews of the Diaspora was being enlarged.

I am no fan of the talking genitalia theater genre, but I'm very interested in word choice and the appropriation and repurposing of one culture's highly serious words by another culture.

"Brad Paisley is not a racist."

"He’s not an 'accidental' one (whatever that means) or even an on-purpose one. The man just wants peace and racial harmony, and he’s collaborated with LL Cool on a new song, 'Accidental Racist,' to bring about the post-racial utopia he dreams of. And he’s achieved it, in a way — people of all races are joining hands and coming together as one to mock the song’s colossal wrongheadedness."

Oh? It's like "Ebony and Ivory" all over again.

ADDED: I haven't read all the criticisms of "Accidental Racism," but I have now listened to the song, and the LL Cool J part is the worst, especially the line: "If you forget my gold chains... I’ll forget the iron chains...."

"I feel the Dior cast is just so pointedly white that it feels deliberate."

"I watch that show and it bothers me - I almost can't even concentrate on the clothes because of the cast.... And recently they're changing from a very diverse, worldwide, multicultural cast to just a very Germanic-looking white girl.... Natalie Portman could complain that John Galliano was a racist, but I feel [Dior designer] Raf Simons sends the same message."

What's wrong with the argument that Bloomberg Businessweek cover isn't racist because the artist is from Peru.

Here's the cover, in yesterday's post, where some commenters were saying something like what I'm seeing at the Columbia Journalism Review:

Sounds to me like it might have been [the artist Andres] Guzman’s decision to make the family members minorities — not Businessweek’s. And I have a hard time believing that a man from Latin America deliberately intended to portray minorities, including Latinos, in a negative light.

Ridiculous. It doesn't matter what Guzman intended or how Guzman feels about things. Bloomberg Businessweek chose to run the illustration on the cover. They are responsible for that decision which had to include judgment about how it would be perceived by potential readers. The point of a magazine cover is to reach out to readers — not to passively convey an illustration that an artist was asked to provide. If what comes in from the artist is going to strike readers as weirdly racial, the editors shouldn't run it. Does the Columbia Journalism Review seriously think otherwise?

Now, it is interesting that we perceive a cartoonish image with 4 black and/or Hispanic caricatures to be saying something about minorities. Maybe we should have evolved to the point where our natural reading of such a cartoon would be generic, but Bloomberg Businessweek's choice of cover illustration took place in the real world that currently exists.

"After a string of five similar winners, ['American Idol'] understandably would prefer a different kind of winner."

"Whether by accident or design, this goal has been guaranteed by a total absence of straight, white males with sex appeal in the top 10."

Businessweek "Warns That Minorities May Be Buying Houses Again."

Horrendous magazine cover for which they've issued a sorry-if-you-were-offended apology.

"The Genius of America" — a 30-foot mural that's been hidden behind a curtain.

Because a figure in the lower right corner was deemed offensive.

But late last year, the department... decided to delicately pull back the curtain — for a single hour, once a month — to allow people to make up their own minds....

Not a single objection was raised, which... might offer proof that “over the last decade and a half our sensibilities... have evolved.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes about the TV show "Girls."

Says it's okay if a story about white people only has white people in it, and thinks "The guys are more interesting than the girls."

Did you see that "deconstruction of what has come to be known as 'hipster racism'"?

That "moment that challenged" the "privilege" of the "core audience" of the show "Girls"?

In Season 1, Episode 1, they acted like a character could just be black without being about the fact of his being black, but in Episode 2, the main character, saying "you know what, I never thought about the fact that you were black once," was essentially mocking the viewers' own phony pretense that they didn't think, like back in Episode 1, about the fact that he's black.

Also, they made him Republican... and perfectly decent and low-key about it.

By the way, if you've never noticed that there's something that has come to be known as "hipster racism," I see it's got its own Wikipedia article:

Hipster racism, a term coined around 2006 in an article by Carmen Van Kerckhove, is described as the use [of] irony and satire to mask racism. It is the use of blatantly racist comments in an attempt to be controversial and edgy. Its irony is established in a somewhat post-racial belief that blatant expressions of genuine racism are no longer taken seriously and are an outdated way of thinking, thereby making the use of such overt expressions satiric. In some cases, hipster racism can be seen as the appropriation of cultural artifacts by hipsters.

Why hasn't this led to more trouble if it's actually been around for 7 years? Because it's so lame no one can be bothered to get offended? Because no one really does it? Anyway, I guess I can imagine examples of humor that would fit this category, but the notion that it's been some sort of style trend for more than half a decade just seems so sad. We need better trends these days. Pop culture is insufficiently diverting. 

"American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western."

"It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them."

Spike Lee, being noble, perhaps, but also horning in on another director's movie. Still, why should Quentin Tarantino be able to get away with doing a movie about slavery?

"All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors to see that film. That's the only thing I'm gonna say... I can't disrespect my ancestors. I can't do it. Now, that's me. I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody but myself. I can't do it."

And that's the only thing he's going to say.

"What does he want to be made, an honorary black man?... I want Quentin to know that all African-Americans do not think that word is trendy or slick."

He had to say that too.

I think it's fine for him to say all these things. First, it looks like people are going to him with questions. And, second, everything he said was true.