Guest post: Appropriation or flattery?

Originally a comment by Papito on The influencer wife.

I once had a long conversation with a good friend of mine, who is a Japanese-American, about appropriation. She had been very offended that a group of white and Chinese protesters shut down an event at the museum that allowed visitors to try on, and take a picture of themselves in, a kimono. The protesters insisted that this was cultural appropriation, you know, all the usual, orientalism, the male gaze, whatever. My friend, let’s call her Keiko, insisted that it wasn’t their culture that they were talking about, and in her culture, Japanese culture, trying on kimonos and having your picture taken in them was something that people did. She was very bothered that people from another culture were preventing people from her culture from sharing their own culture with the museum visitors. The kimonos in question had literally been fabricated for the specific purpose of being tried on at a museum exhibit as a cultural event. But they were packed away, the exhibit was canceled, and the museum apologized for their cultural crimes.

In our long conversations about the matter, we decided that, like racism, appropriation can only happen where there is a power differential, or subordination. Japan does not see itself as subordinate to America, America does not see itself as subordinate to Japan, thus there can be no cultural appropriation by Japanese of American culture, nor cultural appropriation by Americans of Japanese culture. The question of whether Japanese can appropriate Black American culture is more complex, but let’s not get into that.

Can an American appropriate Spanish culture? What does that really mean? Can a Spaniard appropriate American culture? I tend to think no (either way), whereas an American can appropriate, say, Mexican culture.

My wife studies Flamenco, both singing and dancing. She adores it. She is of Cuban extraction, visibly Hispanic, but born in America. Is she appropriating Spanish culture? Are the many Japanese who study Flamenco appropriating Spanish culture? (Flamenco is hugely popular in Japan) The Spanish don’t seem to think so.

Hilarious pretended to be really Spanish instead of just loving Spain and Spanish culture. But I don’t think that can count as appropriation as much as flattery. I think the Spanish are much more upset that she stuck her foot in her mouth by saying that she’s a white girl, and there are lots of white people in Europe… as if saying that Spanish people aren’t white.

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