Category: cultural appropriation

Three Cheers for Bari Weiss on cultural appropriation

August 31, 2017 • 9:15 am

Staff editor Bari Weiss is the columnist we needed at the New York Times, as she’s a progressive liberal who has no time for the Control-Left (see my three posts about her here). She must have snuck into the regressive Times under their radar! Yesterday she wrote the piece below (free access; click on screenshot), which is pretty much the way I feel about accusations of “cultural appropriation”.

Such accusations are often used so that ethnic groups can absolutely control discourse about their culture as well as determine who can rightfully borrow elements of their culture, including food, clothing, hairstyles, music, and so on. In general I think borrowing from other cultures, ethnic groups, and so on is a good thing, for it’s a form of flattery that says, “Hey, I like this and want to use/eat/do it myself”. Only under two circumstances do I find it inappropriate: when it’s used to make fun of or demean a group (I’d see a “Muslim terrorist Halloween costume” in this way, though I wouldn’t say it should be banned); and when the cultural appropriation actually reduces the well being of the people who are appropriated, as when a musician borrows a group’s style of music, hires some of the group as backup singers, and reaps all the profits while the singers get very little. This is exactly what Paul Simon avoided when he started writing and singing South African music, using the group Ladysmith Black Mambazo on his “Graceland” album, but making sure they got plenty of credit and money. Had he not done that, it would have been an inappropriate form of cultural appropriation. Simon went on to produce their first solo album in the U.S., which won a Grammy. He’s done the right thing.

The way cultural appropriation is supposed to work, according to the Control-Left, is that you’re only allowed to “borrow down”, that is, you can borrow elements from a “dominant culture” (again, here we have to decide upon a hierarchy of oppression), while borrowing “up,” say white Americans wearing dreadlocks or making the wrong kind of banh mi sandwiches, is wrong and requires all sorts of ancillary admissions, apologies, and reparations to absolve yourself. “Borrowing up”, of course, carries the two dangers highlighted above, but usually I can’t get excited about anybody wearing dreadlocks or Americanizing foreign cuisine, which hurts nobody. Most of the time, I think, the “damage” done by cultural appropriation is imaginary. Or rather, it offends people’s feelings, but that’s all.  And often it shouldn’t, as when white artist Dana Schutz painted a sincere homage to the murdered black teenager Emmett Till, a painting that many black artists said should be removed from her show or even destroyed. My response to that is not charitable; it’s “just live with it.” We needn’t take every complaint seriously, but of course the Left does that because we’re sensitive to the feelings of the underdog.

In the article below, Weiss echoes my sentiments, showing how ridiculous things have gotten when the MTV Video Music Awards yields three separate instances of “offensive” cultural appropriation. (Her words are indented.)

I haven’t watched MTV’s annual Video Music Awards since Bill Clinton was president. I was wearing a plastic choker and Alanis Morissette won for “Ironic.” But I wish I had tuned in this Sunday night. The award show was a veritable orgy — not of sex, but of cultural appropriation.

First up was Kendrick Lamar, whose backup dancers wore ninja outfits as they scaled a wall of fire. While the popular rapper went home with an armload of trophies, he was criticized for borrowing Asian dress. Later, Katy Perry, who just recently finished an apology tour for her previous sins of cornrows and kimonos, “snatched” off her long blond wig — a bit that was torn apart for caricaturing African-American women. Luckily for Ms. Perry, the floodlights lingered longer on her nemesis, Taylor Swift, who unveiled a new video that was immediately blasted for appropriating Beyonce’s “Lemonade.” Speaking of Queen B, I’m just waiting for the charge that she’s exploited Persian culture by naming her new daughter Rumi after the 13th-century Sufi poet.

And that’s just the rap sheet from a single night in pop music. Charges of cultural appropriation are being hurled at every corner of American life: the art museum, the restaurant, the movie theater, the fashion show, the novel and, especially, the college campus. If there’s a safe space left, I’m not aware of it.

. . . The logic of those casting the stones goes something like this: Stealing is bad. It’s especially terrible when those doing the stealing are “rich” — as in, they come from a dominant racial, religious, cultural or ethnic group — and those they are stealing from are “poor.”

Few of us doubt that stealing is wrong, especially from the poor. But the accusation of “cultural appropriation” is overwhelmingly being used as an objection to syncretism — the mixing of different thoughts, religions, cultures and ethnicities that often ends up creating entirely new ones. In other words: the most natural process in a melting-pot country like ours.

. . . It’s no longer just the online hordes that will string you up for your unintentional sins, though the cost of that public shaming can be devastating. In Portland, Ore., activists recently created a list of “white-owned appropriative restaurants” for residents to boycott on the grounds that white people probably shouldn’t make banh mi or dosas. This summer, the University of Michigan posted a job for a “bias response team” employee to “enact cultural appropriation prevention initiatives.” I wonder if they’ll go after people for using algebra (thanks, Muslims).

. . . These days our mongrel culture is at risk of being erased by an increasingly strident left, which is careering us toward a wan existence in which we are all forced to remain in the ethnic and racial lanes assigned to us by accident of our birth. Hoop earrings are verboten, as are certain kinds of button-down shirts. Yoga is dangerous. So are burritos and eyeliner.

(Do check out some of her links to see how ludicrous things have gotten.)

Weiss gives some examples of the kind of cultural appropriation that’s not only harmless but valuable: the singing of classical music by the great black soprano Jessye Norman, the writing of “White Christmas” by the Jew Irving Berlin (I’d add the heartbreaking “Old Man River,” a lament by a black slave stevedore, written by two white Jews), and the widespread aping of American culture by other countries. Cultural appropriation borrows both up and down, as what people like is no respecter of Hierarchies of Oppression. Further, decrying it isn’t going to work, for borrowing has been characteristic of human culture ever since different groups met without killing each other. (Even then they borrowed each other’s weapons!)  And the downside—the largely nonexistent dangers of stealing someone’s livelihood or making fun of them—is way overbalanced by the beneficial effects; as Weiss notes (even giving a caveat):

The point is that everything great and iconic about this country comes when seemingly disparate parts are blended in revelatory ways. That merging simply doesn’t happen in places where people are separated by race and ethnicity and class. And it’s not only what makes American culture so rich, but it is also a big part of the reason America is so successful. When we see a good idea, we steal it; when we have a good idea, the rest of the world is welcome to it as well.

. . . None of this means that all cultural appropriation should be cheered: Sometimes it’s just in plain old bad taste. (See under: ear gauges.) But so long as the impulse is one of homage and not derision, we should encourage borrowing. Culture should be shared, not hoarded.

What refreshing words to hear in the NYT! Think about your own culture; would you be bothered if people borrowed from it? As a secular Jew, I’m pleased that non-Jews like bagels with lox and a schmear, or bialys, or use Yiddish jargon like “mensch” and “chutzpah.” That’s surely borrowing up, but I don’t give a damn. The more the merrier. Do people need to bring up the Holocaust when they say “chutzpah”? Hell, no! I don’t need any apologies or verbal reparations.

But of course we have our naysayers, one being Eric McAdams from Paste, who’s already attacked Weiss’s article in an essay called “NYT opinion writer supports cultural appropriation, doesn’t know what cultural appropriation is.” He calls Weiss’s article “the act of a troll”, with an argument “dumb as dog shit.” Never mind that the referenced examples Weiss gives really have been called out for cultural appropriation. More important, I looked in vain for McAdams’s own definition of what cultural appropriation really is, and at the end it seems that his arguments come down to “borrowing up”, which is not okay. That borrowing up, says McAdams, must be accompanied by “consequences” that the borrower must face—presumably some sort of abject apology or additional homage to the appropriated culture.

McAdams:

You’ll notice that Weiss makes sure to consistently highlight people of color “appropriating” other cultures—people of color that she thinks should get more backlash because she doesn’t understand cultural appropriation. She never comes out and says this, but this focus is because she clearly thinks that white people get undue backlash for their appropriation, and that white people should be allowed to borrow from culture as much as she thinks minorities do. She ignores the struggles people of color have to go through to put out this art and this culture, as though people of all cultures have a perfectly level playing field when that’s obviously not true.

Don’t read this article. It’s just yet another writer whining because they can’t steal whatever idea they want and face zero consequences, another writer who thinks white people deserve accolades when they take an idea from a marginalized culture and abuse it like it’s an accessory they own, another writer who thinks these marginalized cultures should just shut up and be happy that white people are paying them any attention at all.

I’m not sure how “level playing fields” are any more relevant here than they are in arguments for abridging freedom of speech (see yesterday’s post on ACLU director David Cole). This is the same argument for why only white people can be racists, for, in the new definition, “racism = power + privilege.” Anyone who isn’t white therefore can discriminate on the basis of ethnicity or race, and it’s not racism. In the same way, it’s okay to borrow down but not up. When you borrow down you don’t have to apologize.

h/t: Merilee

NPR: Cultural appropriation is “indefensible”

June 29, 2017 • 10:45 am

 We’ve talked a lot on this site about “cultural appropriation,” whose definition is amorphous but roughly corresponds to one culture adopting aspects of another’s.  But the term usually has a pejorative connotation—that is, such appropriation is deemed harmful and unethical to the culture that’s “appropriated”. And that is the subject of an essay by K. Tempest Bradford on the National Public Radio (NPR) site: “Cultural appropriation is, in fact, indefensible.” Wikipedia identifies Bradford like this:

K. Tempest Bradford (born April 19, 1978 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an African-American science fiction and fantasy author and editor. She was a non-fiction and managing editor with Fantasy Magazine from 2007 to 2009 and has edited fiction for Peridot Books, The Fortean Bureau and Sybil’s Garage.

Bradford is an activist for racial and gender equality both within and outside of the science fiction community. In 2005 she founded the Angry Black Woman blog, and her contributions under that moniker have appeared in Feminist SF: The Blog, ColorLines,  NPR’s News & Notes, and in African-American studies textbooks.

Bradford is exercised by Kenan Malik’s recent essay in the New York Times defending cultural appropriation. Quoting Everyday Feminism, to which she linksin her NPR essay and its followup on her own website (“A place for commentary on cultural appropriation“; see also her “Cultural appropriation primer“), Bradford defines cultural appropriation and then explains its harms (note that this is not the first definition at the given link, which is just this this: ” Cultural appropriation is when somebody adopts aspects of a culture that’s not their own”):

Cultural appropriation can feel hard to get a handle on, because boiling it down to a two-sentence dictionary definition does no one any favors. Writer Maisha Z. Johnson offers an excellent starting point by describing it not only as the act of an individual, but an individual working within a “power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group.”

That’s why appropriation and exchange are two different things, Johnson says — there’s no power imbalance involved in an exchange. And when artists appropriate, they can profit from what they take, while the oppressed group gets nothing.

Note that this can work the other way around as well, as when someone in the marginalized group borrows from the dominant group and enriches themselves while the person in the dominant group gets nothing, Presumably that’s okay, though. Bradford continues:

. . . All of this lies at the root of why cultural appropriation is indefensible. It is, without question, harmful. It is not inherent to writing representational and inclusive fiction, it is not a process of equal and mutually beneficial exchange, and it is not a way for one culture to honor another. Cultural appropriation does damage, and it should be something writers and other artists work hard to avoid, not compete with each other to achieve.

This resembles the definition of racism used by the Ctrl-Left: “Racism equals power plus prejudice.”  Under that definition, blacks can’t be racist towards whites, nor can anyone in a “subordinate culture” be racist towards someone in a “dominant culture”.  This, of course. means that all “groups” can be easily ranked in an Oppression Hierarchy, with “racism:” only directed at bigotry against a group below. (I’m not sure what it’s called otherwise.)

Likewise, it’s okay to adopt aspects of a “dominant” culture (Caribbean cuisine can adopt elements from French cuisine, South African blacks can wear Western business suits, and so on), but it’s not okay when the reverse happens. It’s not okay, for instance, for whites to wear dreadlocks, for me to wear Indian clothing in India (which I do) or for whites to open a Mexican restaurant with recipes borrowed from Mexicans—at least not when you fail to make reparations. (Some have suggested that you make a financial donation to those whose culture you’ve appropriated, though for something like dreadlocks it would be hard to determine the recipient!)

The prime example of unethical cultural appropriation offered by Bradford is Elvis Presley, who incorporated elements of black music into his own—and became rich.  To Bradford, that’s unethical because the black musicians who inspired Elvis got nothing, and Elvis became a millionaire. Again, what kind of reparations are needed here. Would an acknowledgment suffice? I’m pretty sure Elvis made one, as have others, like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, but an acknowledgment of your influences doesn’t seem sufficient–not if you want material reparations.

To be sure, Bradford is not calling for writers to never write about characters from marginalized or oppressed cultures. But she says that cultural appropriators must be “respectful guests” rather than “invaders” or “tourists” (see her primer).

I’ve been trying to think of examples of cultural appropriation that fits Bradford’s definition, but nearly all turn out to be hypothetical. For example, a white artist could make a lot of money by playing music heavily influenced by black South African musicians, use the musicians in his recordings, and pay them very little. That would be mistreatment—an unethical exploitation of other people’s music. But when Paul Simon did the Graceland album, he was acutely conscious of this, paid the musicians a lot more money than they would normally get, and gave them plenty of credit—both on the album and in his interviews.  Yes, he made more money than the others, but they did fine, were not (as far as I can see) harmed, and, after all, Simon wrote the songs. He didn’t steal other people’s music per se; he used their motifs. Blatant theft of other people’s work is in fact already covered by trademark and copyright laws. So cultural appropriation appears to have been avoided, as it also was in Ry Cooder’s album with Cuban musicians, The Buena Vista Social Club.

One example of how to obviate cultural appropriation is the Australian government’s suggestion of how to create art influenced by indigenous peoples. That seems fine to me: if people have a strong feeling about religious or spiritual symbols of their culture, you’re better off being sensitive to that. And I think the use of the name “Washington Redskins” for a football team is offensive as a cultural slur, as is the caricature Indian that dances on the sidelines during the games. Perhaps that is cultural appropriation in the harmful Bradfordian sense. If you’re an American Indian, you don’t have to manufacture any outrage about something like that: it’s gut-level offensive.

But that goes only so far. I will not be made to feel bad for wearing a kurta  and Indian trousers in India, nor should whites be made to feel bad for wearing dreadlocks or trying on kimonos. Such acts are forms of flattery, and as far as I can see cause no harm. While there are Outrage Mongers who will in fact call out kimono-wearing or dreadlock-hairing, that’s a form of manufactured outrage by those looking to be offended. I am talking about real offense here, and while the distinction isn’t clear cut, it’s best to tread lightly around some things.

But how far should that go? What about other “cultures” or groups? Must we not offend Catholics or Muslims by mocking their faiths? Is there not a “Catholic culture” or a “Muslim culture”? What about a “female culture”? There are, after all, differences between these groups. Bradford fails to define “culture,” which is one problem with her essay.

Another problem is that of “palpable harm.” She says this about Elvis, for example,

Even Malik’s example involving rock and roll isn’t as simple as Elvis “stealing” from black artists. Before he even came along, systematic oppression and segregation in America meant black musicians didn’t have access to the same opportunities for mainstream exposure, income, or success as white ones. Elvis and other rock and roll musicians were undoubtedly influenced by black innovators, but over time the genre came to be regarded as a cultural product created, perfected by, and only accessible to whites.

I’m not sure that last bit is true, since black musicians became a critical part of rock, especially with the advent of soul music in the Sixties. But regardless, were any black musicians actually harmed by Elvis’s production of hits? I don’t think so. One could argue, and this seems to be the case, that Elvis and other “appropriators” awakened interest in black music, and that was good rather than harmful. When I started listening to jazz, I went all the way back to the black music of New Orleans in the early 20th century, and then onto blues.

I’m racking my brain to find real examples of cultural appropriation in literature, music, or art—examples that that really were harmful, but I’m having a hard time. Readers can help in the comments.

In the end, I think that this issue may be largely a Tempest Bradford in a teapot. Much genuine artistic theft is prohibited by copyright laws, and for the rest, according to Bradford, we’d need to rely on “appropriation judges”. But who will be the judge? If anyone objects to depiction of their culture, does that mean you should stop? Beyoncé, after all, wasn’t offended by a Canadian politician adopting her lyrics “To the left, to the left” as a political slogan. And the subject of that song was clearly not unique to black culture: it was a romantic breakup of the type that happens to those in all groups. One senses here a manufactured outrage—manufactured to make people stand out from others.

It’s the difficulty of deciding “who will judge?” that’s the problem—the same problem that plagues those who call for restrictions on speech. Another big problem is the issue of what is a dominant culture.  Is there really a clear-cut hierarchy of groups, so that it’s always okay to “appropriate up” but not to “appropriate down”?  In some cases, like American blacks vs. whites or Australian aboriginals versus Europeans, it’s pretty clear, but what about Asians vs. Europeans? Is the wearing of kimonos harming the Japanese? And why isn’t social class a culture? After all, one can sensibly speak of a “poor white Southern culture”. Is ethnicity to be the sole basis for judging cultural appropriation? In that case, what about Pakistanis versus Indians, or Sunnis vs. Shiites? And isn’t there a “female culture” and a “male culture” in the U.S.? Does that mean that men can’t wear skirts but women can wear pants?

These speculations may be fatuous, but in the end I think that while the notion of cultural appropriation as harm has a limited validity, demonizing it as Bradford does is divisive, authoritarian, and hurts everyone. Most of the instances that I’ve heard involve people looking to be offended, and ignoring the fruitful rather than harmful ways that all cultures borrow from each other.

__________
Footnote: I append, with permission, a letter that Ben Goren sent to the NPR ombudsperson about Bradford’s article, which he sees as racism. This is Ben’s opinion and doesn’t necessarily reflect mine, but I put it here so readers can react:

Racist bigotry such as that espoused by Ms. Bradford in her rant, “Cultural Appropriation Is, In Fact, Indefensible,” should not be granted the air of respectability that the NPR marque lends — and NPR has permitted itself to be tarnished by echoing her hate speech.

The dictionary Apple includes with Mac OS defines racism as, “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior,” and, “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” This is exactly the position Ms. Bradford espouses with her nonsense about tourists who must consult with natives lest they turn into invaders.

Indeed, it’s nonsense with a particularly pointed animosity towards straight white men. Does she not feel shame at appropriating English, one of the primary artifacts of European culture? Clearly not — and the very absurdity of such a suggestion demonstrates the equal absurdity of her desire to safeguard oppressed peoples from the impurity of straight white men.

Were you to do a simple substitute / replace of her work, swapping those she paints as disadvantaged and privileged, the result would be indistinguishable from Nazi propaganda. Flipping the tables doesn’t make such poison any more palatable.

And, of course, there’s far too much hatred towards others coming from the straight white men Ms. Bradford so clearly hates. And that hatred and the actual harm that stems from it is also unacceptable. But to fight racism with racism, hatred with hatred? She would bomb the village to save it….

Yours,

b&

 

Is just quoting Beyoncé a form of cultural appropriation?

June 26, 2017 • 8:45 am

You know the answer to the question above. According to Black Lives Matter, it’s a strong “YES!”, although nobody would have batted an eyelash about this five years ago. What happened in March is that Niki Ashton, a New Democratic Party member of the Canadian Parliament, emitted a tweet announcing that she was going to liberalize the NDP. Here it is (it’s since been deleted):


I’m not a huge fan of Beyoncé, but I do like the song from which this phrase came, “Irreplaceable“. Here it is to explain and to pep up your morning; it’s about a woman sending away her cheating man, noting that “I could have another you in a minute.”

The relevant lyrics:

To the left, to the left
Everything you own in the box to the left
In the closet that’s my stuff
Yes, if I bought it, please don’t touch
And keep talking that mess that’s fine
But could you walk and talk at the same time
And, it’s my name that’s on that jag
So come move your bags, let me call you a cab

Now a lot of people, including even me, recognize that song phrase. And I saw nothing wrong with using it as a campaign slogan. After all, lyrics are lifted all the time in various causes. Think of Dylan’s “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind”, or Hillary Clinton’s use of Tammy Wynette’s song “Stand by your man”. I’m sure you can think of many more.

The problem for some is that Beyoncé is black, or rather, half black and half Creole. And a white politician can’t just go around quoting songs from a black woman: that’s “cultural appropriation”, tantamount to racism. Never mind that Beyoncé’s song is not specifically about the black experience, as it refers to anyone who dumps a cheating partner; the Vancouver chapter of Black Lives Matter called Ashton out and demanded that she delete her tweet and stop saying “To the Left”. Canada’s National Post story about this tempest in a plate of poutine shows their tw**t:

Since when does the video above, showing a rich woman with a mansion and a Jaguar kicking out her man, represent “black culture”? But Ashton, a feminist concerned with social justice, capitulated and groveled.

The Post goes on to blacksplain why Ashton failed the ideological purity test:

Some experts in race, music and culture say Ashton’s post exemplifies a theme in politics: leaders use black songs and culture to make themselves seem cool while not actually doing much for the black community.

“Politicians don’t have the same kind of clout they once did … and they have to go to pop culture to be relevant,” said Mark Campbell, senior research associate at the Ryerson University Faculty of Communication and Design’s forum for cultural strategies. “The piece around appropriation is really about flexing a certain kind of white power and privilege and co-opting the social capital” of performers like Beyoncé, he said.

. . . “The difficulty for some black community members might (be that) … for some politicians, their only engagement (with black culture) is in music and food or entertainment,” said Dalton Higgins, a publicist and author of six books about race, culture and music. He called Ashton’s effort an “awkward” reference that didn’t really reflect the spirit of the song, which is about a break-up. It reminded Higgins of Toronto Coun. Norm Kelly’s Twitter feed, which is full of references to Drake and other rappers.

Well, you know, if someone used Beyoncé’s lyrics for financial gain, or regularly appropriated the lyrics of black musicians for their own gain without giving due credit, I would see that as a problem. But that’s not the case here. We have a phrase about a breakup—an event not unique to black people—used in a clever way for political purposes. And it was a one-off.  What happened was that Vancouver Black Lives Matter simply bullied Ashton, and she gave in. Perhaps she was conscious of getting black votes, or, more likely, the BLM movement played on her sense of racial justice in a way that made her ashamed.

But she shouldn’t have been. I doubt that I would have capitulated, since I see absolutely nothing wrong with using the phrase, nor do I see it as “cultural appropriation,” which is a pejorative term that is widely used but rarely comes from genuine bigotry. This is no more cultural appropriation than was Hillary Clinton’s “stand by your man” phrase (emphasizing that, as an independent woman, she wasn’t going to follow it) appropriation of the culture of poor whites in the American South.

This kind of accusation will keep being made, but we should keep calling it out rather than capitulating. In general, “cultural appropriation” is a good thing, and I can’t think of any culture that hasn’t borrowed from others. As they say, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” And I admit that sometimes appropriation is not particularly savory. But it’s not unsavory just because you’re “borrowing up”, as BLM implies. They’d presumably have no problem with blacks or Hispanics borrowing from “white culture”, whatever that is. What makes the world more interesting, and better, is each group using what if finds appealing from other groups. Tomatoes and chili peppers both originated in the New World, yet one of my favorite dishes is something you find all over north India, butter chicken, or murgh makhani, made with both ingredients. Is that cultural appropriation? Even if it is, is it okay because the Indians “borrowed up”? (And don’t forget how Italians also culturally appropriated tomatoes from the indigenous peoples of Central America.)

Would you have withdrawn a tweet like Ashton’s if you were called out?

h/t: Charleen

Kenan Malik: more on cultural appropriation

June 16, 2017 • 8:45 am

Yesterday I highlighted Kenan Malik’s take on cultural appropriation (he dislikes those who police it) as well as some of the pushback he got from Culture Warriors. Grania pointed out that Maliks has issued a series of tw**ts asking critics of c.a. some pointed questions. Those who are quick to deny others the right to cultural “goodies” rarely ask themselves these questions:

In the meantime, on a reader’s recommendation I’ve had one of Malik’s books, which was borrowed from the University library, recalled so that I can read it:

From the Guardian‘s review in 2009:

In From Fatwa to Jihad, Kenan Malik takes a panoramic view of England before and after the seismic events of the Rushdie affair. In a collection of punchy chapters in razor sharp prose comes an intelligent and insightful analysis of how racism, multiculturalism, religion and terrorism has affected British society over the last twenty years.

. . . In the last third of the book in, Malik delves into the restrictions of free speech in the post-Rushdie world. As Hanif Qureishi puts it, “Nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses, let alone publish it. Writing now is timid because writers are terrified”. He is probably right when you consider the Muhammad cartoons scandal and Random House’s decision to retract the publication of Sherry Jones’ novel The Jewel of Medina, based on a message thread on an online discussion forum.

These are just two instances of how the grievance culture of radical Islam is winning the battle against Enlightenment values, helped along, Malik believes, by multicultural policy and laws like the Racial and Religious Hatred Act (2006), which has made it an offence to incite hatred against a person on grounds of their religion. Its aim was to protect the faith and dignity of minority communities. But the paradox is that these laws are now exploited to undermine the civil liberties of those very same communities they were meant to protect. The censorship that the anti-Rushdie protestors demanded is the same censorship of offensive thought that imprisoned the cartoon protestors.

The great appeal of From Fatwa to Jihad is its pitiless observation and it is this which raises it above the easy standards of one-sided polemic. No one gets away – certainly not Islamic radicalism and multiculturalism and its penchant for ethnic and religious particularism, the monomaniacal Melanie Phillips and the chauvinism of Daniel Pipes and Mark Steyn are all roundly criticised. If Malik’s book advocates anything, it is a social order based on universalist Enlightenment values, the importance of free speech and for the elevation of secular and progressive ideas within minority, particularly Muslim, communities.

Eight years on, that message and its urgency remain the same.

Kenan Malik defends cultural appropriation, gets demonized

June 15, 2017 • 11:15 am

British writer Kenan Malik, whom I like, has just waded into shark-filled waters in his short New York Times essay: “In defense of cultural appropriation.” Most of the “appropriation” he describes isn’t repugnant to many of us: the controversy about a white woman’s painting of Emmett Till, a black teenager murdered by Southern racists; Lionel Shriver’s assertion of the right of the novelist to write from any viewpoint; and the appropriation of black music by Elvis Presley (and I could add the Beatles). In general, I favor cultural appropriation so long as appropriate attention is given to those whose work was heavily used. At this moment I’m wearing my pounamu (jade) pendant that I got in New Zealand. It’s an appropriation from Maori culture, and if anybody asks I’ll tell them what it is, but I don’t feel bad for wearing it and don’t feel I’m exploiting Maoris.

As far as writers writing about characters whose sex, class, or ethnicity they don’t share—have at it! If it doesn’t work, the marketplace will sort it out, but clearly there are many great works of literature that have involved both cultural and gender borrowing in this way.

There has been some fracas about this in Canada (see here and here), and perhaps Malik doesn’t give that enough attention, but in general I agree with his essay. What has ticked people off is his claim that those who say that authors of “foreign” background can’t write about the complainers’ community are “gatekeepers”, and can even be exercising a form of xenophobic separatism. As Malik says, “It is difficult to see how creating gated cultures helps promote social justice.” One quote about the Emmett Till painting:

In 1955, Emmett Till’s mother urged the publication of photographs of her son’s mutilated body as it lay in its coffin. Till’s murder, and the photographs, played a major role in shaping the civil rights movement and have acquired an almost sacred quality. It was from those photos that Ms. Schutz began her painting.

To suggest that she, as a white painter, should not depict images of black suffering is as troubling as the demand by some Muslims that Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” should be censored because of supposed blasphemies in its depiction of Islam. In fact, it’s more troubling because, as the critic Adam Shatz has observed, the campaign against Ms. Schutz’s work contains an “implicit disavowal that acts of radical sympathy, and imaginative identification, are possible across racial lines.”

Seventy years ago, racist radio stations refused to play “race music” for a white audience. Today, antiracist activists insist that white painters should not portray black subjects. To appropriate a phrase from a culture not my own: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

At the beginning of his essay, Malik admits that if were an editor and wrote this piece, he might be out of a job, like three editors in Canada, and he did incite controversy. The NYT piece has 1055 comments as of this writing, many of them passionate on both sides, and, inevitably, Twitter weighed in. Malik defended himself against the critics:

What is it about social media that turns people into sacks of hatred? Many of Malik’s critics clearly didn’t read his article, let alone bother to look up the skin color of the “white supremacist” who wrote it! (Malik was born in India.) 

h/t: Enrico, Bruce

Spy novel author advised by an editor not to create black characters because he is white

May 21, 2017 • 1:00 pm

This story  was reported in the BBC,  but verified by the Guardian and the Torygraph. It’s another example of so-called cultural appropriation, and an example that is risible. It involves Anthony Horowitz, an author of spy and mystery novels and a screenwriter who is well regarded, at least in some quarters, for he has an OBE. I hadn’t heard of him, but my reading in that genre stopped with Sherlock Holmes, which I loved. (Horowitz apparently wrote two Holmes books as well.)

The BBC:

Author Anthony Horowitz says he was “warned off” including a black character in his new book because it was “inappropriate” for a white writer.

The creator of the Alex Rider teenage spy novels says an editor told him it could be considered “patronising”.

Horowitz wanted a white and black protagonist in his new children’s books but says he is now reconsidering.

“I will have to think about whether this character can be black or white,” he told the Mail on Sunday.

“I have for a long, long time said that there aren’t enough books around for every ethnicity.”

Horowitz, who has written 10 novels featuring teenage spy Alex Rider, said there was a “chain of thought” in America that it was “inappropriate” for white writers to try to create black characters, something which he described as “dangerous territory”.

He said it was considered “artificial and possibly patronising” to do so because “it is actually not our experience”.

“Therefore I was warned off doing it. Which was, I thought, disturbing and upsetting.”

Horowitz, who has written a new James Bond book, went on: “Taking it to the extreme, all my characters will from now be 62-year-old white Jewish men living in London.”

And in the interest of honesty, the report adds this:

The author also revealed he had apologised to actor Idris Elba after saying he was “too street” to be the next James Bond in an interview in 2015.

He was criticised by fans who accused him of making a veiled racial remark.

Horowitz said the fallout from his remarks was “unpleasant because it went against everything I believe in”.

“The character I was being portrayed as was not the person I am,” he added. “I’m still deeply sorry. I’m still annoyed at myself, it was stupid.”

Horowitz said he apologised to Elba at a film premiere and the actor “could not have been more charming, more delightful, more humane”.

He revealed the experience changed him and he is now “more guarded, more careful and more discreet”.

Be that as it may, it’s simply ludicrous to prevent white authors from writing about black characters. Not only wouldn’t we have Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, or Thomas Wolfe’s wonderful and sad The Child by Tiger, but, in fact, omitting black characters from literature or plays written by whites would lead to complaints of marginalization and racism. You can’t win!

Grania also pointed this out:

I wonder what will happen to Ben Aaronovitch who is writing an entire series about a black police officer in London, and the local Jamaican immigrant culture there.

He’s as cishet white male as you can get and has spent most of his career writing science fiction.

Of course his wife is not white, and neither are their children, obviously.

Does this mean that nobody can “write down”? Can whites write about Hispanics, or Hispanics about African-Americans?  Can any man write about women? If not, why not? After all, men don’t have “the woman experience”? (And vice versa, but that’s supposedly “writing up”.)

The solution, of course, is to stop this nonsense. Let writers write what fiction they want, and let everyone and the market sort it out. But let us not have this chilling a priori censorship.

h/t: Michael

Insane political correctness: snowflakes urge destruction of Emmett Till painting

April 4, 2017 • 12:15 pm

If you know about the civil rights struggle in the U.S., you’ll know the story of Emmett Till. An African-American boy from near Chicago, Till, aged 14, went to visit relatives in Mississippi in 1955. There he was falsely accused of whistling at and flirting with a white woman. (It’s recently come to light that she completely fabricated that story.) Because of his supposed “crime”, Till was tortured and killed by the woman’s husband and his half brother.

The two men were arrested and tried for the kidnapping and murder of Till, but—as usual back then—were acquitted by an all-white jury, though the men later admitted they did the deed. (Laws against double jeopardy prevented another trial.)

Here’s Till a year before his murder:

When Till’s body was returned to Chicago, his face battered and mauled, his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral so people could see what had been done to her boy. I won’t show the picture, but you can see it here; it was published in the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, and then republished widely, horrifying both black and white Americans. Till’s death and the open-coffin funeral did have a galvanizing effect on the civil rights movement, probably helping fuel the Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott in late 1955.

Now, however, a painting based on the open-casket photo has stirred a big controversy in the art world—because it was painted by a white woman, artist Dana Schutz. The painting is below:

(From the Guardian): Photograph: Alina Heineke/AP

And the Guardian reports this:

At the centre of the battle over cultural appropriation is artist Dana Schutz’s expressionist painting Open Casket (2016), a gruesome depiction of Emmett Till, lynched in Mississippi in 1955.

The painting, on display at the Whitney Biennial exhibition, initially drew swift condemnation from critics who claimed Schutz, who is white, was taking advantage of a defining moment in African American history.

African American artist Parker Bright stood in front of the painting with Black Death Spectacle written on his T-shirt, and a young British artist, Hannah Black, accused Schutz of having “nothing to say to the black community about black trauma”, demanding that the work “be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum”.

Wikipedia‘s bio of Schutz gives more detail about the accusations of cultural appropriation:

Artist and Whitney ISP graduate Hannah Black started a petition for the painting to be removed, writing:

“ … it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time. Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist — those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go. ”

Schutz responded, “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. […] It is easy for artists to self-censor. To convince yourself to not make something before you even try. There were many reasons why I could not, should not, make this painting … (but) art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection.”

Josephine Livingstone and Lovia Gyarkye of the New Republic argued Open Casket is a form of cultural appropriation disrespectful toward Mobley’s intention for the images of her son. [JAC: see that article here.] Describing how the painting undermines the photograph they wrote, “Mobley wanted those photographs to bear witness to the racist brutality inflicted on her son; instead Schutz has disrespected that act of dignity, by defacing them with her own creative way of seeing.” Scholar Christina Sharpe, one of 34 other signers of Black’s letter, argued for the destruction of the painting so that neither the artist nor future owners of the painting could profit off it.  Schutz’s work reportedly goes for up to $482,500 at auction.

Here’s Parker Bright protesting the painting:

Art News has published Hannah Black’s open letter to the Whitney asking that the painting be removed. Besides the bit above, Black wrote this:

As you know, this painting depicts the dead body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the open casket that his mother chose, saying, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” That even the disfigured corpse of a child was not sufficient to move the white gaze from its habitual cold calculation is evident daily and in a myriad of ways, not least the fact that this painting exists at all. In brief: the painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.

. . .Through his mother’s courage, Till was made available to Black people as an inspiration and warning. Non-Black people must accept that they will never embody and cannot understand this gesture: the evidence of their collective lack of understanding is that Black people go on dying at the hands of white supremacists, that Black communities go on living in desperate poverty not far from the museum where this valuable painting hangs, that Black children are still denied childhood. Even if Schutz has not been gifted with any real sensitivity to history, if Black people are telling her that the painting has caused unnecessary hurt, she and you must accept the truth of this. The painting must go.

To Parker Bright, Hannah Black, and other critics of this painting, I say this:

I completely reject your criticism. If only artists of the proper ethnicity can depict violence inflicted on their group, then only writers of the proper ethnicity can write about the same issues, and so on with all the arts. And what goes for ethnicity or race goes for gender: men cannot write about suffering inflicted on women, nor women about suffering inflicted on men. Gays cannot write about straight people and vice versa.

The fact is that we are all human, and we are all capable of sharing, as well as depicting, the pain and suffering of others.  I will not allow you to fracture art and literature the way you have fractured politics. Yes, horrible injustices have been visited on minority groups, on women, on gays, and on other marginalized people, but to allow that injustice to be conveyed only by “properly ethnic or gendered artists” is to deny us our common humanity and deprive us of emotional solidarity. No group, whatever its pigmentation or chromosomal constitution, has the exclusive right to create art or literature about their own subgroup. To deny others that right is to censor them.

To those who say this painting has caused them “unnecessary hurt” because it is by a white artist about black pain, I say, “Your own pain about this artwork is gratuitous; I do not take it seriously. It’s the cry of a coddled child who simply wants attention.”

As for the accusation that this painting was done for “profit and fun,” that’s a disgusting and reprehensible thing to say. We cannot allow the Culture of Offense to rule the Culture of Art. If art is to flourish in a free society, it can be criticized, but it cannot be censored.

Emmett Till was black, but his story belongs to all of us.

h/t: Su