This is going to sound strange, perhaps, but I feel bad for white people. Racism, of course, relies on a generic picture of whiteness, which requires privilege, cultural difference and culture itself to be invisibilised. In order to be counted as white, specificity of ethnicity and culture has to undergo depletion or even expulsion. That’s a heavy price and a heavy loss – for a world of benefits, of course. I as a non-white person have my difference and culture and specificity constantly pointed out to me, often in hateful ways. It’s an awful and fear-filled way to live. But it’s also a rich one, a way full of my history, my culture, my past, my family, my people, my connection. This is who I am. It is not an easy life, but it is mine. The idea of losing that, even for privilege that is for me frankly unimaginably substantial, sounds like pure horror. But I guess you wouldn’t experience it that way if it’s just your very privileged way of existence.
And I think that goes a little way to explaining why cultural appropriation happens; I don’t think it’s only a matter of white people thinking they ought to have have ownership over other people’s cultures. I think part of it is a loneliness and a lack they are looking to fill, because they have been told that only the other has culture. That lack, of course, is partly real loss, and partly not recognising that there are lots of cultural traditions among white groups. This is simply because we are all told that whiteness is the default, and it becomes difficult to recognise specificity and difference in there. Appropriation partly happens because there’s not a sense of connection to one’s own self, culture and community, but there is a sense of ownership and power.
While acknowledging this loss, it’s far more vital to acknowledge that white supremacy hasn’t just affected the cultures of non-white people by simply appropriating them. White supremacy has altered and destroyed (elements of) many cultures. Ravaging of cultures is violent, and it’s based in a long history of many kinds of violence. It’s gross, manipulative, and wrong. And this is why it feels strange to talk about the beneficiaries of this devastation as also experiencing loss.
But then, to enact violence – physical, psychic, linguistic… – is to lose yourself. It is to lose goodness, intregrity, and common human feeling. To do violence to other people and other cultures is to do violence to yourself and your own.
We need a way of encouraging white people to understand themselves and their cultures that is not a way of promoting whiteness as somehow superior. We need them to recognise that they are not the default, and that difference isn’t embodied in the other, but in the distance between who everyone is. To recognise cultures and identities means to specify whiteness, and therefore lessen white supremacy. When one is attached to specifics rather than a vision of generically great and default whiteness, one has a clearer sense of history.
Amazing!! I have no other words :)
You do realise that “racism” is not something that only white people do don’t you?
People of colour are just as likely to denigrate or despise individuals or groups that are a different ethnicity to their own on the basis of their race.
Iain, racism = prejudice + power. It’s systemic, about much more than individual prejudice. I’m not going to do racism 101 with you here, so please go and do some reading on the subject – there’s so much anti-racist scholarship out there – before you engage again.
I wonder if this is part of the reason for the preponderance of largely white subcultures; an attempt to create and define a meaningful culture and identity among the bleached-out homogeneity of whiteness.
(Obviously, this is not to ignore people of colour who do participate in all manner of subcultures, and the issues of erasure and racism they are faced with therein)
Good thoughts! as a white person, I found that traveling and interacting with other cultures helped me to appreciate and understand my culture more. There isn’t so much a *white* culture, but I found that Australians are different to New Zealanders are different to Americans are different to the British…we do have a culture, but it is linked more to our home than our ethnicity :-)
Interesting. I wonder if it’s more that “white culture” isn’t culture, it’s just old stuff. Part of the disquiet with history? Also, in some circles claiming it is likely to bring down howls of outrage about dead white men and religious oppression etc. Mind you, we do the same with other cultures too, so the dominant culture isn’t even special in that way. Foiled again!
Appropriation can be tricky too, not everyone looks overtly like the ethnic group(s) they inherit from, and some things that are culture in one country looks like appropriation in other countries (The Haka of Te Rauparaha, much as it annoys me, is one example). I mean, Handel is not ethnically related to me except very distantly, but no-one’s ever suggested it’s appropriation for some random white guy (me) to claim his music as part of my cultural heritage.
Also, this morning we had a very special moment at work, my coworker interrupted his rant about how multiculturalism is a failure and Australian immigrants from England, and Canada, and New Zealand all assimilate fine so everyone should and yes, since you ask, of course it’s the white New Zealanders not the black ones. Fortunately I am instructed never to speak to him again because when he said that I rolled my eyes and turned away. I hadn’t even *said* anything at that point, much as I would like to.
Chally
Oh please don’t be so patronising.
Clearly you have something of a chip on your shoulder.
Here is the definition of Racism:
Of course notions of “superiority” is not confined to Caucasian people, nor is it related to those “in power” frankly anyone who believes that an ethnic group or individual warrants hate or disdain because of their ethnicity is by the definition racist.
I believe that all people are absolutely equal in their humanity. and that the argument that you make here is divisive and it just perpetrates further hatred making reconciliation between rival ethnicities more difficult.
I’m not trying to patronise you here, it’s just that I think your engagement would benefit from an understanding of how racism functions as a system rather than (entirely) as a matter of individual prejudice. This is not an argument I am pulling out of thin air, but one grounded in that kind of engagement. Please try to understand where anti-racist arguments like mine are coming from by doing some research before engaging again.
Chally
I am very well aware of the argument that you are making by suggesting that “white people” have power and privilege because of their race. As such you see “racism” as something that only White people can exhibit. I have explored this notion on my own blog on several occasions here here and here
Chally, I suspect Iain is trying to point out that racist Japanese people in Japan are not white, and nor are racist Africans in Somalia. So locating racism as something that only white people do is perhaps optimistic. Sure, if you said “white people from the majority culture in Australia” you’d be more correct, but then you’re opening yourself up to quibbles about what majority culture is and who owns it.
The broader point is possibly that a take on your definition is that what separates the racist from the non-racist is not colour but power. Given power, every racial group has been racist. Look at the jump from the Holocaust to the Nakba, for example, which happened amazingly quickly.
(note that I’m trying to interpret Iain’s remarks in a way that you’re willing to accept, not agreeing that his objection is a sufficient response to your post).
Re-reading it, I’m struck by how much my response is “good thing I’m not white, then”, because by your definition I don’t think very many people actually qualify as white. Most of your homogeneous block of undifferentiated whiteness would actually categorise themselves as Greek, orthodox, Australian, Canterbury supporting Holden owing VB drinking bogans from Epping or some equivalent set of tribal markers.
Hi Chally, great post! It is so true that white people have a loss of culture, and I think this in part stems from the fact you pointed out, that the colonist eurowestern culture(s) appropriates lands and cultures (what my wife calls “culture vulturing”) as part of their M.O. — it’s just part & parcel of “the biz”, part of the exploitation, part of “success”, profit, etc., that makes the dominant predatory colonist culture what it currently is. This reality should not trap (white) people in quicksands of guilt though, which brings me to Native American activist John Trudell, who reminds us that we ALL come from tribes, which makes sense why so many non-Native people appropriate (and often bastardize!) indigenous cultures. I think we all have a deep genetic memory and longing for that “home”, tribal feeling that only indigenous cultures and mentalities have. I feel such loss for the parts of the human race that have been so domesticated and colonized, our minds being mined from such an innocent, early age…
As for ‘racial diversity’, I wish cultural diversity was more respected and recognized, because after so-called post-slavery days, we have people of all colors doing the slavemaster’s bidding. I like how John Trudell says that President Obama is a house Negro, which is just to say that assimilating/contorting ourselves to fit the chokehold of the dehumanizing colonist culture is not progress, for any race.
I feel to heal and have personal and collective peace, we must all get back to our Tribal/indigenous/Native ways. And to those who think this is “romanticizing” (something I see as a red herring to throw people off their Truth & Peace seeking paths), I say wrongo bongo, there is nothing wrong with recognizing & respecting what works “out there” (past and present) and wanting and working to make it happen within.
There is so much wrong here, so much wrong, but I am sick and can’t even deal, so I am closing the thread. Enough of this.