Category: cultural appropriation

“Cultural appropriation” of a Chinese dress causes big kerfuffle

May 1, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Some people are permanently poised to be offended; in fact, you’d think they get pleasure out of being offended.

One of the topics that often triggers unwarranted offense is cultural appropriation—the adoption by one culture or ethnicity of food, clothing, music, or other aspects of a different culture.  In principle this could be offensive, as in the use of blackface, but more often than not it’s simply the appreciation by one culture of another. BuzzFeed (click on screenshot below) and other sites like the Washington Post and the BBC describe a particularly ridiculous example:

What happened is that 18 year old Keziah Daum, a high school student from Utah, decided to wear to her senior prom a quipao, or traditional Chinese dress with a high neckline and slit skirt. While this was worn in China (and still is by societies that try to preserve the dress style), it was really a form of women’s clothing invented in Shanghai in the 1920s and limited to wealthy socialites. Here, for example, is a quipao society I photographed in a mall in Macao on my last visit to Hong Kong:

Well, Ms. Daum made the deadly mistake of liking a quipao she saw in a Salt Lake City vintage clothing store, saying that she was “immediately drawn to the beautiful red grown and was thrilled to find a dress with a modest neckline.” She wore it to the prom and posted the following pictures on Twitter.

You can see the four sub-pictures by clicking on her tweet, but here are three of them. Daum looks lovely, though of course the last picture might be considered offensive by some. I don’t, as it’s not making fun of a culture but imitating (I think) a gesture thought to be Chinese (it’s also Indian, Nepalese, and used in many other countries):

 

Well, you can question the wisdom of the last photo, but believe me, this fracas would have happened had just the other pictures been posted. Sure enough, Jeremy Lam, a student at the University of Utah, took great offense and posted this tweet:

As you see, it got 17,000 comments and was retweeted 42,000 times. As you might expect, though Daum had her defenders, she only got those defenders because of the spate of people who called her out for “appropriating” a “traditional dress with a long history and making it into a fashion statement.” Well, the dress doesn’t have a long history, was limited to the upper classes, and is supposed to be a fashion statement. If the dress represents “Chinese culture”, it is only a very narrow segment of Chinese culture. (If a lower-class Chinese woman wore it, would that be considered “class appropriation”?).

Daum, as might be expected, was sandbagged, not expecting this at all, and was hurt. You can see all the negative and supportive comments at BuzzFeed (it turns out Jeremy Lam had engaged in even more impure forms of cultural appropriation in previous tweets.) But she even tried to be nice about it:

“I never imagined a simple rite of passage such as a prom would cause a discussion reaching many parts of the world,” Daum said. “Perhaps it is an important discussion we need to have.”

She said that she was sorry if she had caused any offense, and that her intent was never to anger anyone.

“I simply found a beautiful, modest gown and chose to wear it,” she said.

No, we don’t need to have a conversation about her wearing a quipao as a prom dress. It’s not insulting and wasn’t intended to be. It was the best kind of cultural appropriation: the adoption of some aspect of culture that you admire. Yes, we can and should talk about blackface, Mexican sombreros, and the like, but if we’re going to talk about cultural appropriation, how about this site, showing Asian workers adopting “dress-for-success” fashion, which happens to be Western? How about if we talk about the limits of “offensive” cultural appropriation?

Isn’t the picture above an example of cultural appropriation? If not, why not? After all, at least in the U.S. Asians enjoy a social and academic advantage over Caucasians; so if “punching down” is worse than “punching up”, Asians wearing Western suits would be the graver sin.

But this is all nonsense. Cultures intertwine and enrich each other; I can’t imagine the U.S. without the musical, culinary, linguistic, and artistic contributions of non-Caucasians (I won’t say “other cultures” because all of us descend from immigrants). We wouldn’t have the great musical form of jazz without the African-Americans who invented it, and yet its adoption by cultures worldwide occurred without the supposedly negative aspects of “cultural appropriation.” That’s another example of cross-fertilization of cultures.

Making a poor high school woman feel awful about her choice of dress is something that these misguided Social Justice Warriors like to do. It accomplishes nothing positive; all it does is make the “appropriators” feel bad and the puritans feel good about themselves. Can you tell me if anything positive came out of this?

 

h/t: Seth Andews

Leisure fascism: Vegan says that a carnivore can’t eat tofu because it’s “cultural appropriation”

January 15, 2018 • 4:00 pm

Well, yes, this is from The Sun, but it does give names and I suspect it’s true (it’s reported at multiple places, including msn) .  Click on the screenshot for the LOLs:

The relevant bit of their exchange (in case you didn’t know, “tofurkey” is a turkey substitute made out of tofu, intended for consumption at Thanksgiving):


How well the termites have dined—or have not dined! I’m crying and shaking now. I can’t even. . .

Read the original article for more fun, including to see how the carnivorous tofu-eater was temporarily banned from her Facebook group.

h/t: Cindy

Bad cultural appropriation: Taco Bell offers “chocolate covered pubic lice”

November 10, 2017 • 2:30 pm

Yes, this quesadilla filled with candy is real, and it’s on sale at select Taco Bell stores. As Fortune reports:

Taco Bell is bringing its latest food mashup to the U.S.: a quesadilla filled with Kit Kats.

That’s right. Following the chain’s success with the Doritos Locos taco, Taco Bell has rolled out the “Kit Kat Chocoladilla,” a chocolatey creation that packs a flour tortilla with bits of Nestlé’s (NSRGY) wafer bars and melted chocolate instead of cheese or veggies, Brand Eating first reported. The Chocoladilla is being tested at select locations in Wisconsin through mid-November, according to Mashable.

This appears to be a test sale in Wisconsin, so readers should let me know if it’s on sale and still called a “Chocoladilla”. That’s because “ladilla” is Spanish for “crab louse” (but can also be used to refer to someone who’s annoying). Viz:

Don’t any Spanish speakers work at Taco Bell headquarters?

h/t: Su

The annual roundup of “offensive” Halloween costumes: you vote!

November 1, 2017 • 10:00 am

Insider has taken it upon itself to show the 16 most offensive Halloween costumes of the year, and why they’re offensive (I didn’t see any of these in person, but I didn’t go to a party or trick-or-treating). Insider‘s description and comments are indented.

I’ll ask you to vote on each costume in a poll following it: is it offensive or not? (You can view the results after you vote.) PLEASE VOTE, as I’d like a decent sample size (of course the readers here aren’t a random cross section of Americans!)

If you have no opinion, don’t vote. You are likely to find at least one or more of these offensive, so please give your reactions to any specific costumes in the comments.  Here we go!

“Sexy Shooter Happy Hour”

This Yandy offering comes complete with a “poncho-style” minidress and a sombrero, both of which draw on exaggerated stereotypes of Mexican culture and could be considered offensive.

“This Dream Catcher Costume could be considered cultural appropriation”

“Men’s Arab Sheik Costume.”

It’s harmful to reinforce negative and misconceived notions about a region, religion, or group of people, like this Kmart costume does.

The “Golden Geisha” Costume

Wearing a geisha costume, like this one from Yandy, could be seen as cultural appropriation.

“Rasta Costume Kit.”

This Walmart costume includes a dreadlock wig that could be deemed offensive.

“Anne Frank/World War II Girl Costume.”

The site that was selling it under the name “Anne Frank costume” removed it, but you can still buy it (under the name of “World War II Evacuee”) from Walmart.

“Dia De Los Beauty.”

If you’re not Mexican, it would be offensive for you to dress in Day of the Dead-inspired garb, like this costume from Yandy.

“Inflatable Ballerina.”

Try to avoid costumes that could be interpreted as body-shaming, like this one from Target.

“Droopers.”

This mock uniform from Spirit Halloween manages to be both ageist and body-shaming to women at the same time.

“Reality Star in the Making.”

Although it might seem topical, this Yandy costume, which is intended to look like a reportedly pregnant Kylie Jenner, also has body-shaming implications.

“Upside Down Honey.”

Yandy makes the controversial “Upside Down Honey” costume, which some argue unnecessarily sexualizes Eleven’s iconic outfit by lowering the dress’ neckline while shortening its hemline, swapping sneakers for platform heels, and replacing ankle socks with thigh-high socks. [JAC: This appears to come from a t.v. show, “Stranger Things”.]

“Sexy Convict.”

Incarceration is not funny, though this Yandy costume tries to suggest otherwise. [JAC: The note also says the costume “could be interpreted as trivializing the U.S. prison system”.]

“Restrained Convict.”

By presenting a straightjacket as a joke, this Yandy costume downplays a serious issue. [JAC: The description adds that “this reinforces harmful misconceptions about mental illness in prison.”]

“Hobo Nightmare.”

Homelessness is a serious issue, although this Wonder Costumes getup does not present it as such.

“Gorilla/Harembe”

On its own this Yandy costume is fine, but implying that it is the animal that was controversially killed in 2016 would be problematic.

“Snake Charmer.”

This Yandy costume not only appropriates Middle Eastern culture but also has disturbing sexual undertones. [JAC: ???]

h/t: Melissa

Now hoop earrings have become cultural appropriation

October 19, 2017 • 12:30 pm

Among the venues becoming Authoritarian Leftist (actually, it’s been largely like that for a while) is Vice News, which now cements its ideology with an article called “Hoop earrings are my culture, not your trend.” It’s written by “Anonymous author,” which shows both the cowardice of taking this risible stand, but also the willingness of a supposedly respectable news site to refuse to divulge who writes their pieces.  What kind of journalism is that? This is not a leak from an anonymous source like Deep Throat. (As we’ll see below, the author has been identified.)

Anonymous, however, makes this argument. She could have stopped after the first sentence.

In the grand scheme of things, hoop earrings may seem insignificant. But seeing white women wearing them is unnerving. White girls did not start the “trend” of over-sized hoop earrings and yet they’re the ones being praised for donning the “edgy” style. Meanwhile, women of colour who wear them face racial stereotypes or the assumption that they’re participating in a disposable trend. Last month,Vogue declared up-dos and gold hoops to be the ultimate summer pairing. They credited a bunch of mainly white models with starting the trend and even proclaimed that “bigger is better.” Never has that been the case when it comes to women of colour wearing over-sized gold hoops. A style that links so heavily with identity is not taken seriously until it is seen on a white woman.

I’m not sure what it means to “be taken seriously until it is seen on a white women”. Another interpretation would be “the fashion industry just noticed that hoop earrings look cool, and have declared it a ‘thing‘.” That has nothing to do with the marginalization of women of color, only that there has to be a time when some appealing aspect of culture gets noticed and touted if it’s to spread to other cultures. After all, there was a time, long ago, when Chinese restaurants didn’t really exist as places for Americans to eat. Did their new popularity reflect that fact that their growth meant that they were finally taken seriously by white people? That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose, but it has nothing to do with the denigration of Asians. It has to do with finally noticing that Chinese food happens to be good! (I am a creditable Szechuan cook; does that make me extra guilty?)

The anonymous author goes on:

Earlier this year in the US, three latina students painted a mural urging their white classmates to take off their hoops. White confusion ran rampant, prompting one of the creators to explain that “This is about how women of colour can’t wear their own style and culture because they are looked down upon when they do so… But on the other hand, white females are allowed to appropriate the fashion when it is beneficial to them or makes them look edgy.”

I do try to keep my ear to the ground, but I’m unaware of black women or Latinas have been denigrated a lot for wearing hoop earrings. In fact, I’ve never heard of a single instance. Was that some kind of bigotry that I missed?

Actually, as The Claremont Independent reports, what was  painted was not really a “mural” but graffiti created by three Latina students at Pitzer College in California. Here it is:

One of the “artists,” a student at Pitzker College, notes that these earrings, and other decorations, are “symbols of resistance” that cannot be appropriated:

“[T]he art was created by myself and a few other WOC [women of color] after being tired and annoyed with the reoccuring [sic] theme of white women appropriating styles … that belong to the black and brown folks who created the culture. The culture actually comes from a historical background of oppression and exclusion. The black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings, (and other accessories like winged eyeliner, gold name plate necklaces, etc) are typically viewed as ghetto, and are not taken seriously by others in their daily lives. Because of this, I see our winged eyeliner, lined lips, and big hoop earrings serving as symbols [and] as an everyday act of resistance, especially here at the Claremont Colleges. Meanwhile we wonder, why should white girls be able to take part in this culture (wearing hoop earrings just being one case of it) and be seen as cute/aesthetic/ethnic. White people have actually exploited the culture and made it into fashion.”

This issue was also taken up by the Independent (is that place going downhill, too?) in the following article (click on screenshot to go there), which identifies the Vice writer as Ruby Pivet, a Latina writer. How did they find out?

The Independent basically regurgitates the Vice piece, so you don’t need to read it. But when did reporting at a place like the Independent consist on pointing at and regurgitating an article from another news source?

At any rate, I seriously doubt that hoop earrings were originally worn as “symbols of resistance”: they are only declared so post facto to prevent others from wearing them.

And winged eyeliner? Amy Winehouse, clearly a cultural appropriator par excellence.

Gold nameplate necklaces? Fault Iggy Azalea, wearing her Twitter handle!

There are too many white women with lined lips to show, but, as the ultimate cultural appropriator of hoop earrings—who in fact has made them part of her image—I submit this for your disapproval:

Anita, take off your hoops!

Now here we have a real dilemma: which woman of color dares to call out Anita Sarkeeian for culturally appropriating their symbol-of-resistance jewelry? Or will Sarkeesian simply admit her ideological misstep and stop wearing her hoops?

Want more cognitive dissonance? Here’s feminist activist Emma Watson wearing the Earrings of Shame.

Emma, take off your hoops!

But—as with dreadlocks—hoop earrings, while they may have been adopted by Latinas, have also been adopted over the course of history by many groups. WUSA-9, a CBS station and site, says this:

So what is the origin of the hoop earring?

There is no pinpointing who was the first to rock [JAC: please excuse the preceding infelicity] a pair of hoop earrings, but the popular jewelry piece can be traced back to Ashurnasirpal II, King of Assyria (884-859 BCE), according to the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body.

There is a depiction of the king wearing thick hoop earrings in a palace in the ancient city of Nimrud, which is modern day Iraq.

Hoop earrings were evident in the major cultures of the ancient world including with the Greeks and Romans.

Pirates and sailors also often wore gold hoop earrings. Seaman often wore the earrings as a mark of their travels, according to LiveScience.

Pirates also used hoop earrings for superstitious reasons since it was believed the metals in an earring contained magic healing powers. Others believed the earrings would keep them from drowning or sea sickness.

When a seaman died, the earring would pay for their funerals or to pay for their bodies to go back home. Pirates would even dangle wax from their earring to use as ear plugs for when firing cannons.

Even Wikipedia backs that up:

Ear piercing is one of the oldest known forms of body modification, with artistic and written references from cultures around the world dating back to early history. Gold, Silver and Bronze hoop earrings were prevalent in the Minoan Civilization (2000–1600 BCE) and examples can be seen on frescoes on the Aegean island of Santorini, Greece.

Here’s an example from a fresco on the Greek island of Santorini (Wikipedia caption)

A Fresco depicting an elegantly dressed woman with hoop earrings from Akrotiri, Thera (Cyclades) Greece, ca. 1650-1625 BCE.[2]
Did Latinas themselves culturally appropriate hoop earrings from ancient Greeks and Minoans? Who cares? As you know, I object to cultural appropriation only in the rare instances where it actually damages a group by degrading their image or reducing their livelihood without recompense. That’s not the case for hoop earrings, which are simply one more aspect of dress that has spread among groups because people like it. Cultural appropriation, a sign of flattery and admiration, has been turned into a grievous sin among Leftists.

But here nobody has been harmed. People have been offended, but that’s ginned-up offense, and I don’t take it seriously.

Huffington Post clarifies Oppression Hierarchy by incisive analysis of cultural appropriation (dreadlocks versus Chinese tattoos)

October 13, 2017 • 9:30 am

HuffPo has done us all a service by deciding the ranking of oppressed groups, and they’ve done so in a clever way: by adjudicating which group should be most offended by cultural appropriation. The decision is in the piece below, co-written by Lilly Workneh, HuffPo’s Black Voices Senior Editor, and Jessica Prols, the Asian Voices Executive Editor.  Click on the screenshot. In this case, it’s a black versus Asian contest: which, would you guess, is the most oppressed (i.e., which group is most hurt by cultural oppression: tattoos vs. dreadlocks)?  

First, the contests: Asian-American basketball player Jeremy Lin (above right, plays for the Brooklyn Nets) sports dreadlocks. Former Net Kenyon Martin, above left, who is black, sports, among his copious ink, a Chinese tattoo on his arm. I can’t read it (maybe a reader can help), but here it is:

I thought the fracas about dreadlocks had died out, and I still think it’s okay for people who aren’t black to wear them. After all, the hairstyle is adopted not as an insult, or a gesture of “colonialism”, but out of admiration for the look. It’s not at all like blackface or wearing a “Mexican bandito” costume during Halloween. And, after all, cultural appropriation is pervasive for every culture. Asians now wear Western suits, as do blacks, who didn’t wear them until they got their freedom from slavery and mingled with culture derived from Europe. In fact, the black parts of Chicago are loaded with Chinese restaurants. Why is that not cultural appropriation, while Sporting Dreadlocks While Asian is?

At any rate, Lin wrote a thoughtful defense of his hairstyle at The Player’s Tribune, and did so because there was, as usual, a back-and-forth not only between these two players, but also on social media. Here’s part of his explanation:

I never thought I’d ever think so much about hair. Honestly, at first I was surprised anyone would care what I did with my hair. When I started growing it out a few years ago in Charlotte, it was just something I was doing with six of my family members and friends. It was meant to be fun, and to be an expression of freedom.

I didn’t really plan for it to be anything more than that.

Then I kept going with it and it started to become … a thing. Looking back, I can see why my hairstyles turned some heads. (What was I thinking here?) But I liked how the process of changing my look actually made me feel more like myself again. I realized that in the years since Linsanity, I had spent a lot of time in a box, worrying about other people’s opinions on what I should and shouldn’t be doing. I wanted to stop basing my decisions so much on what strangers or critics might say about me. It was cool how something as simple as how I wore my hair could pull me out of my comfort zone and make me feel more free. Before I got older and had a family and kids and all of that, I wanted to be able to say to myself, Who cares what anyone else thinks? For me, the different hairstyles became a fun way to do that.

But then he goes on to worry about insensitivity, which is fine, but concludes that he’s keeping his dreads. The very fact that he felt he had to write this is a sign of how deeply Offense Culture has spread. And the essay didn’t satisfy Martin. As PuffHo reports:

The matchup between the two began last week when Lin wrote an essay about why he got dreads. In the The Player’s Tribune, he admitted he hadn’t considered the issue of cultural appropriation, that he had talked with a number of people about his decision and pointed out he was able to empathize.“I know how it feels when people don’t take the time to understand the people and history behind my culture,” he wrote. “It’s easy to brush some of these things off as ‘jokes,’ but eventually they add up. And the full effect of them can make you feel like you’re worth less than others, and that your voice matters less than others.”

Three days later, Martin weighed in and said Lin’s dreadlocks pointed to the fact he wanted to “be black.”

“Do I need to remind this damn boy that his last name Lin?” Martin asked in a YouTube video. “Come on man, somebody need to tell him, like, ‘Alright bro, we get it. You wanna be black.’ Like, we get it. But the last name is Lin.”

And PuffHo won’t let it die. First, the black and Asian authors of the article agree to declare Martin the Most Appropriated, because blacks are more oppressed:

But borrowing a cultural marker like dreadlocks, which embody both joy and struggle unique to the black community, is not the same as having a Chinese tattoo, a symbol that doesn’t carry the same weight of oppression. Yes, appropriating Chinese culture through a tattoo is exoticizing and insensitive. But the the act of putting on and taking off dreadlocks ― which are related to the systematic economic and social oppression of a racial group ― demonstrates a greater level of disregard.

And they go into excruciating detail, to explain why (my emphasis):

To Lin’s point, the adoption of Chinese tattoos, tribal tattoos and other similar varieties is problematic. It doesn’t cross a using-someone-else’s-culture-for-personal-gain line in the same way, say, Kylie and Kendall Jenner’s Chinese takeout purse does. But the issue of appropriation boils down to the fact that most Asian people don’t like their culture reduced to an accessory. There’s also the issue of modern-day and historical discrimination against Chinese people, so turning Chinese customs into an accessory can come across as cherry-picking parts of a culture to accept ― rather than embracing an ethnic group as a whole. And ultimately, a practice like making Chinese tattoos a Western trend without an actual connection to the culture can feel exoticizing.

But Lin’s retort to Martin’s criticism was basically saying the tattoos and dreads are uniform in their demonstration of “respect,” and that’s just not accurate. Yes, cultural appropriation of Asian culture is oppressive in that exoticizing a culture can create a depiction of Asians as “others” or perpetual foreigners. But Asian-Americans are not held down by this characterization in the same way black people are for something as fixed as hair ― and the struggle it represents. 

Dreadlocks, which are essentially twisted locks of hair, are more than just a hairstyle. They have become symbolic of blackness and black culture and while some wear them for aesthetic reasons, others can have a deep cultural and spiritual connection to them. The style itself is widely worn by many Rastafarians, a religious movement bred in Jamaica, and, for some among them, it can represent a resistance to Western or Euro-centric hairstyles while honoring their roots.

Well maybe it’s not “respect” that’s demonstrated, but it’s certainly “admiration” for the hairstyle.  The key to PuffHo’s answer is in the bolded part above.  It’s surely true that blacks are more oppressed, and subject to more discrimination, than are Asians. But it’s not because of their hair.  What PuffHo is saying is that it’s not appropriation that’s the real issue, but “appropriating up“—emulating aspects of a culture that’s less oppressed than yours. Apparently all sorts of borrowing is bad (except borrowing from European culture), but it’s more bad to borrow from a culture seen as more marginalized than yours. I’d suggest that PuffHo and others fixated on cultural appropriation produce a Hierarchy Chart, so we can know when we have to worry (i.e. it’s not ok to appropriate from those lower on the list).

As for the “false equivalency”, that’s misleading. According to HuffPo, they are equivalent faux pas; it’s just that one is more faux than the other.

And as for tattoos, that’s risible. I’ve seen many people inked with phrases in Sanskrit, French, Hebrew, and many other languages. The phrases are not expressions of bigotry, but usually phrases expressing some sentiment or emotion in its original language. When I see a movie star with a Hebrew tattoo, getting angry would be the last thing I’d do. In fact, that wouldn’t even cross my mind.  Tablet shows eleven non-Jewish celebrities with Hebrew tattoos. Perhaps the “worst offender” is David Beckham, who has arm tattoos in both Hebrew and Sanskrit:

Both Beckhams are inked with ani l’dodi v’dodi li, ha’roeh bashoshanim, the Song of Songs wedding fave: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine, who browses among the lilies.” Shockingly, hers is written and spelled correctly. His is ungrammatical (“my beloved,” dodi, is in the masculine form) but still sweet. FYI: His tattoo is above a Sanskrit rendition of his wife’s name, spelled wrong. (Becks also has a bonus, smaller Hebrew tattoo above his left elbow, from Proverbs 3:1; it means“My son, do not forget my teaching but keep my commands in your heart.” I can’t find any non-blurry pictures of it, but one must assume it features the correct gender pronouns. Yay?)

Should I write an article for HuffPo? I could give ELEVEN cases of Jewish appropriation, and who has historically been more marginalized and oppressed than the Jews? It’s a thought. . .

I’ve discussed this issue several times before, and have argued that yes, there are times when cultural appropriation is, well, inappropriate. Most invidious is when you actually damage a person or group by appropriating their culture. I find this uncommon, but there was one potential instance that I used as a counterfactual: if Paul Simon had appropriated South African music, collaborating with the members of Ladysmith Black Mambazo on the “Graceland” album, but then denied them credit or a decent amount of money, that would be offensive and execrable. That didn’t happen, of course, because Simon is a decent man, but if it had, it would be cultural appropriation that should be called out. Likewise, dressing in blackface, which is meant to mock African-Americans, is hurtful.

But things like food, dreadlocks, tattoos, wearing kimonos, and so on—these are expressions of admiration, not denigration, and they don’t hurt anybody except the Pecksniffs eternally looking to be offended as a way to affirm their uniqueness. I refuse to stop wearing my Indian clothes in India (and sometimes in the U.S.): they look good, and in India they’re simply more comfortable. Do I need to be mindful of the oppression of Indians by the British every time I put on a kurta? I don’t think so, nor do I need to explain it. I know what happened in India, and that’s enough for me. But even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t feel it necessary to apologize if an Indian person called me out for wearing the clothes of their culture.

It’s venues like HuffPo that continue to divide the Left and make us all look ridiculous. Culture is meant to be appropriated, for it’s that kind of fusion that improves life, and is damaging only rarely. Yet this rot is spreading into society at large. When two professional athletes need to argue about who’s been the most damaged by tattoos and dreadlocks, then you know something’s gone wrong with society.

Nutty (ex) professor: Israelis eat hummus and falafel as a “project of erasure” and a “promise of genocide” to Palestinians

September 5, 2017 • 11:30 am

Talk about intersectionality: here’s what happens when anti-Zionism combines with the Regressive Left’s abhorrence of cultural appropriation. Result: a long and looney disquisition on how Israelis are using hummus to “erase” the Palestinians.

You may remembe Steven Salaita, a professor embroiled in a big academic scandal three years ago. Salaita, of Palestinian and Jordanian ancestry, had risen to a tenured professorship of literature at Virginia Tech, and then was interviewed for a faculty position in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UI). Salaita was offered that job, but it was controversial because Salaita had, on Twitter, made several statements that could be considered anti-Semitic. They’re pretty dire, like this one (a New York Times article gives several more):

Apparently some donors and students objected, and although Salaita was selected for the job, the trustees of the University apparently refused to offer it to him. Salaita, who had resigned from his Virginia Tech position, was thus jobless.Forty-one UI department heads supported his hiring, but it was to no avail: he didn’t get the job. Salaita sued UI, winning more than $800,000.

I remember at the time that although I took strong issue with Salaita’s tweets and his position on Israel and Palestine, I took even stronger issue with UI’s not giving him the job. If he was the best qualified scholar, as everyone thought he was, then his private views on Zionism, Israel, and Palestine, no matter how abhorrent, were his private views, and shouldn’t bar him from the job. Only if they later impinged on his scholarship or teaching should the University examine his behavior. But he never got that chance.

In the end, UI was censured by the American Association of University Professors, and Salaita was offered the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut. Wikipedia reports that he didn’t hold that job for long:

Salaita’s position at the University of Beirut was not renewed due to some inconsistencies in his hiring. The university stated it was due to “procedural irregularities”. In 2017, Salaita announced that he is leaving academia because no institution will hire him for full time work.

Since the UI affair, Salaita wrote one book about his personal travails and dropped off my radar. But he reappeared today when Malgorzata called my attention to an article by Salaita in The New Arab about Israelis’ appetite for food like falafel, hummus, and shawarma. Although the New York Times‘s Bari Weiss applauded this kind of culinary borrowing in an article I discussed previously, Salaita is incensed by this passage from Weiss, who is Jewish:

“Consider the simple act of eating a meal in an era of cultural purity. This weekend I had dinner in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, cooked by a Palestinian who was raised in Israel where her brother served in Parliament. Yet her restaurant is billed as Lebanese. And she accents her traditional dishes with herbs – cilantro, basil – that would never be found on a plate in the Levant. But if proponents of cultural purity had their way, I’d have spent the evening cordoned on the Upper West Side watching “Yentl” and eating gefilte fish.”

Well, Salaita isn’t having that kind of cultural appropriation, and in his article “Israeli’ hummis is theft, not appropriation,” he vehemently attacks the Israelis fondness for Middle Eastern food. It’s not just that Israelis like hummus and falafel (the falafel sandwich was in fact invented in Israel), it’s that they claim either that these are “national dishes” or “invented in Israel.” But he gives no example of anyone claiming Israeli invention—hummus is in fact centuries old, and probably created in Egypt; and as for falafel or hummus being Israel’s “national dish”, that may in fact be true in terms of popularity, but the government doesn’t make that claim.

What happened with both foods, as far as I can see, is that they have been eaten by Jews and Arabs in the Middle East for hundreds or thousands of years—long before there was a Palestine, or even before Islam arrived in the Middle East. (Remember that Jews lived throughout the area, not just in what is present-day Israel.) The foods were were appreciated by everyone, including Jews whose ancestors lived there forever as well as new arrivals after World War II. It was largely Israelis who proceeded to market hummus and falafel throughout the world, giving these dishes a much broader popularity than they had before.

Remember too that these foods and others mentioned are not “Palestinian”, but eaten throughout the Middle East.  To Salaita, that’s not fair—as if countries like Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon didn’t have the chance to export or popularize falafel! No, Salaita has to see this not as just cultural appropriation, but cultural theft—and worse! Ethnic cleansing!

As he says:

Weiss knows, or should know, that the controversy about Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian food – most infamously its claim to hummus [JAC: Palestine has no exclusive claim to hummus!], a lucrative product in Europe and North America – has nothing to do with Jews eating Arabic food. In fact, it has nothing to do with Jews at all. That ludicrous idea is possible only because Zionists aggressively conflate Jewishness with Israel.

Instead, it has everything to do with a deliberate, decades-old programme to disappear Palestinians. Referencing Arab defensiveness about traditional dishes without mentioning colonisation or ethnic cleansing is a whitewash.

And it’s not just a whitewash, but genocide! Salaita continues his tirade:

When Zionists (or their oblivious collaborators) claim Arabic food as Israeli, it’s not a paragon of intercultural harmony but the studious destruction of Palestinian culture. We can mitigate ambiguity by avoiding the word “appropriation,” which doesn’t adequately capture the dynamics of Israel’s voracious appetite for anything that can be marked “Indigenous,” which it needs to shore up an ever-tenuous sense of legitimacy.

“Theft” is more accurate. It is also rhetorically superior. Discourses of modernity exalt cultural interchange, but no good liberal supports piracy.

. . . It’s no shock, then, that Palestinians and their neighbours get salty whenever hearing the phrase “Israeli hummus.” Using Arabic food as a symbol of Zionist identity hands over the day-to-day victuals of the native to the coloniser. It’s a project of erasure, a portent of nonexistence, a promise of genocide.

This is like The Culinary Protocols of the Elders of Zion, summoning the vision of a pack of conniving Jews deciding to dominate the world by taking over the hummus trade, and getting rid of the Palestinians in the process. It would be laughable were not Salaita deadly serious. And I’m sure he’ll find his followers, for people hate Israel that much.

Salaiti’s main objection seems to be to applying the adjective “Israeli” to these foods, even though I have no idea how often that’s done. (Note that Weiss’s piece, which enrages him, doesn’t even do that!) But it’s sheer insanity to call that cultural theft, much less a project to erase Palestinians and colonize their land. It’s no more theft and erasure than is the phrase “Chicago pizza” an attempt to debase Italians and “erase” them en masse. Nor do I see falafel or hummus or any of the other Middle Eastern foods being adopted as “symbols of Zionist identity”. Israelis (a nationality that includes many Arabs) just like the damn stuff! As do I.

And if Israelis did manage to popularize falafel and hummus worldwide, then good for them. Those are tasty foods and healthy ones as well. They do not serve as symbols of Zionism for Israelis or Americans—or anyone save an unhinged and disaffected anti-Israel professor. Ask yourself this: is Palestine (much less Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon) being hurt by Israeli’s widespread consumption and marketing of these foods? I don’t think so, as Palestine and the other Middle Eastern countries have long had the opportunity to popularize them.

I objected when Salaita was denied the job at UI. When he lost the job in Beirut, it was a sign that maybe something wasn’t right with the man, but I didn’t give it much thought. But now that he’s given to unhinged ravings in Arab media, like the disgraced loon C. J. W*rl*m*n, Salaita is either revealing his true colors or has been driven mad by ill treatment. If it’s the latter, I feel sorry for him, as I was a supporter in his UIC battle.

But I can’t say I’m behind him in his claim that Israelis’ love of Middle Eastern food—and the unsubstantiated assertion that that food is promoted as “Israeli”—are examples of cultural theft as well as harbingers of genocide. As Steely Dan wrote, “Only a fool would say that.”

A project of erasure, a portent of nonexistence, a promise of genocide? Naah, just hummus.