Prana2020 said:
The Problem with Multiculturalism?
For those who oppose racism, what could be wrong with multiculturalism? A fair amount, says radical critic Vijay Prashad, who argues that the institutionalization and celebration of diversity has become a substitute for antiracist activism. Prashad offers instead the notion of a radical polyculturalism. And, in a speech from the archives, historian Robin D.G. Kelley discusses building the future in the present.
Funny how racism has become a buzzword for attempting to legitimate ad-hominems in discussions. Specially those regarding immigration.
Multiculturalism is an elite-instituted movement, pushed by government backed NGOs that attempt to "integrate" populations from several countries around the world. It is the politically correct facade that implicates the state-wide imposition of "tolerance", towards enormous people who literally have nothing to do with the countries they're moving to, despite their legitimate search for "greener pastures".
When immigration becomes massive, under the excuse of 'multiculturalism' it alienates locals from actual immigrants when it becomes massive. And all those who address these concerns dissenting are discriminated and labeled by the "tolerants" who believe in egalitarianism.
What happens with the anti-miscegenation laws in asian countries?
Why do you have to "deal with this" or else be called a racist and be excluded from society?
People have the right to preserve themselves as a whole, and their cultures, without distinction.
The world has always been multicultural - When people live in the place they belong to.
VTSeeker48 said:
I randomly found this today and I thought it was extremely relevant.
This is a specific post that really resonated with me:
Theres a lot of good content on here.
Tumblr. Pure effervescent enrichment. Old internet energy. Home of the Reblogs. All the art you never knew you needed. All the fandoms you could wish for. Enough memes to knock out a moderately-sized mammal. Add to it or simply scroll through and soak it up.
mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com
Worth a listen, imo
From the article
White supremacy works so that white privilege goes unnoticed.
Hipsters wearing headresses is cultural appropriation because it is a commodification of indigenous culture. It takes something from someone else’s culture without any context or respect and turns it into something marketable and profitable.
Unfortunately the writer of this article seems to be unable to grasp the notion of postmodern capitalism, and is his reasoning seems to be unfortunate enough to forget the fact that asians may purchase such clothing as well, as well as africans, indians or arabs. And pretend it's fashionable because they deem it so.
Cultural loss is a symptom for globalization, not "white oppression".
It reiterates the very techniques of colonialism by objectifying someone else’s culture and turning that culture into something available for consumption.
Quite a very poor attempt at rhethoric that conveniently ignores the fact that european culture has also started to decay ever since modernism, alongside other cultures as well. And maybe 'racist' toward white people too, since not all of us descend from slave owners nor would enjoy owning slaves. Funny enough, the
first slave owner of the US wasn't white.
Since tumblr has acquired the fame of becoming a haven for trends so called "progressive", hardly anything coming from them deserves to be taken seriously.
All there is to read in such blogs is
fashionable sofism at best.
My apologies for bumping an old thread. I had forgotten all about this and only just has it come up again. I want to respond to this not to be defensive, but because I think this is a common line of thought and I see it as a barrier in our understanding of racism.
Firstly, the person behind that tumblr blog is a woman, and I would be extremely cautious about labeling her words as "rhetoric" when she is simply voicing her experience as an oppressed indigenous woman in America. Her experience is not rhetoric, and to disregard her experiences as invalid seems...well, I wouldn't do it.
Secondly, I think Nathaniel Dread did a good job pointing out that there is a huge difference between racism and prejudice.
From
Unsettling Ourselves: Reflections and Resources for Deconstructing Colonial Mentality which can be downloaded
here (highly recommended):
White Supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege.
(Definition from the Challenging White Supremacy Workshops conference, San Francisco, 1998 )
The most common mistake people make when they talk about racism is to think it is a collection of prejudices and individual acts of discrimination. They do not see that it is a system, a web of interlocking, reinforcing institutions: economic, military, legal, educational, religious, and cultural. As a system, racism affects every aspect of life in a country. By not seeing that racism is systemic (part of a system), people often personalize or individualize racist acts. For example, they will reduce racist police behavior to “a few bad apples” who need to be removed, rather than seeing it exists in police departments all over the country and is basic to the society. This mistake has real consequences: refusing to see police brutality as part of a system, and that the system needs to be changed, means that the brutality will continue. The need to recognize racism as being systemic is one reason the term White Supremacy has been more useful than the term racism. They refer to the same problem but:
A. The purpose of racism is much clearer when we call it “white supremacy.” Some people think of racism as just a matter of prejudice. “Supremacy” defines a power relationship.
B. Race is an unscientific term. Although racism is a social reality, it is based on a term which has no biological or other scientific reality.
C. The term racism often leads to dead-end debates about whether a particular remark or action by an individual white person was really racist or not. We will achieve a clearer understanding of racism if we analyze how a certain action relates to the system of White Supremacy.
D. The term White Supremacy gives white people a clear choice of supporting or opposing a system, rather than getting bogged down in claims to be anti-racist (or not) in their personal behavior.
When we look at racism through this lens, as a sort of "network" of power relations, we can see many things. We can see that for one, racism is something in which we all partake in, not just some of us. One does not have to be white to enforce white supremacy. People of color are taught to devalue themselves all of the time. Look at the messages conveyed in the media we consume on a daily basis, look at what kind of news is selected to be presented to the general public. Racism is not a black and white thing. Consider the history of antisemitism throughout the world; Jewish people were not considered white until very recently in history. Race is a social construct, it is not biological and it has much less to do with the color of our skin than we are often led to believe.
So when you say:
...his reasoning seems to be unfortunate enough to forget the fact that asians may purchase such clothing as well, as well as africans, indians or arabs. And pretend it's fashionable because they deem it so.
Cultural loss is a symptom for globalization, not "white oppression".
many things come to mind for me. For starters, one does not have to be white to be culturally insensitive. It's just as offensive for a black person to wear a sacred headband as it is for a white person. Additionally, I think it's important to distinguish between cultural appropriation versus cultural diffusion if you're going to frame cultural loss as a result of globalization.
Cultural appropriation is the adoption or theft of icons, rituals, aesthetic standards, and behavior from one culture or subculture by another. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture. This “appropriation” often occurs without any real understanding of why the original culture took part in these activities or the meanings behind these activities, often converting culturally significant artifacts, practices, and beliefs into “meaningless” pop-culture or giving them a significance that is completely different/less nuanced than they would originally have had.
...
Cultural appropriation is a by-product of imperialism, capitalism, oppression, and assimilation. Imperialism is the creation and maintenance of an unequal cultural, economic, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. Imperialism functions by subordinating groups of people and territories and extracting everything of value from the colonized people and territories. In the case of cultural appropriation, culture is treated as a “natural resource” to extract from People of Color.
Cultural appropriation is profitable. Objects and traditions (but not the people) of marginalized cultures are seen by the dominant culture as exotic, edgy, and desirable, which translates to profits. Capitalism works best when people are not individual people with celebrated differences, but identical workers, cogs in the machine. Once diverse cultural identities are stripped away, the only culture left to identify with is capitalist culture.
This is one aspect of assimilation, in which marginalized communities lose their cultural markers and are folded into the dominant culture. The process of assimilation is sped up when culture markers are appropriated by the dominant culture. Once the dominant culture has access to the cultural markers of a marginalized culture, they are no longer markers of the marginalized culture, and the marginalized culture is gobbled up by the dominant culture.
Source:
Cultural Appreciation or Cultural Appropriation?
Cultural appropriation by its very nature entails taking an aspect of a "subordinate culture" that dominant culture finds attractive, while discarding the rest. The act of appropriation consequently invisibilizes the marginalized culture. It is important to note that appropriation has occurred throughout history in many forms. Several ancient tribal European customs were appropriated by dominant society during the period in which (European) indigenous tribal cultures were systematically eradicated, in concordance with the establishment of Europe's many nation-states. While aspects of these cultures which were desirable and non-threatening to those in power were appropriated, this was a period in which literal witch-hunts were common and those convicted of practicing "witch-craft" or "the old ways" were faced with being publicly burned alive, drowned, stoned, and tortured.
Cultural diffusion on the other hand:
The spread of ethnic cuisine is a tasty example of the phenomenon known as cultural diffusion. Cultural diffusion is the spread of a cultural aspect from one group to another. Food is one example, but styles, technologies, ideas and languages can also be transferred between cultures. The process has a well documented history going back to the spread of agriculture if not earlier. It is generally considered an important part of how societies interact and evolve.
Contrasted with that is cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is when members of one group take a specific aspect of another group’s culture and use it in such a way as to radically alter the meaning of that aspect
Source:
Cultural Diffusion vs. Cultural Appropriation: What’s the Difference and Why Should We Care?
Both cultural appropriation and diffusion can be seen as products of globalization, but one implies consent while the other does not. One implies the taking of things considered sacred outside of their intended cultural context, whilst the other does not. One invisibilizes and marginalizes while the other does not. In the context of globalization, we can see that cultural diffusion is harmful in it's own ways. For example when we think of the selection of exotic cuisine at the grocery store, we often don't think of who is producing this exotic food and what the implications are insofar as production and labor. I see globalization as a direct product of racism or white supremacy. While you might not agree, for you to say that cultural appropriation is a result of globalization and not "white oppression" is kind of contradictory to me. I understand globalization to be a direct result of exploitation and oppression carried out by the dominant society (which is white, among other things beyond the scope of this) onto "subordinate" cultures (eg non-white and otherwise nonconforming peoples).
And maybe 'racist' toward white people too, since not all of us descend from slave owners nor would enjoy owning slaves. Funny enough, the first slave owner of the US wasn't white.
Calling out white supremacy for what it is is not racist towards white people. Racism is bigger than what most of us were taught, it might not be convenient or easy to swallow but if we are serious about dismantling racism we can't afford such reactionary lines of thought.
Simply because your ancestors did not own slaves does not mean that you or your ancestors do/did not perpetuate systemic racism and white supremacy. Like I said, you can be black and be a white supremacist. Racism is not supposed to be obvious, and you don't have to be openly hostile towards people of color to be complicit in acts of racism. And please do not equate racism to just simply the owning of slaves. Racism is much more complicated and as I hope we all know, racism has persisted long after the end of chattel slavery. Don't tell me you think racism just ended when slavery supposedly ended? A good look at US history between the end of the civil war up until the late 60's should tell a different story.
Additionally, I want to add that slavery has existed in most cultures in the world throughout human history. Slavery exists as a larger problem than race, as the racial justification for the enslavement of Africans by Europeans was a relatively new phenomena when it occured. In fact, Arabs and people of Middle-Eastern descent enslaved Africans far before Europeans ever did; and historically Arabs have been considered white by certain circles up until recent history. Today we can clearly see the ways in which people of Middle-Eastern descent are oppressed by white supremacy, but a few hundred years ago that distinction was not so clear.
Racism =/= slavery.
I'd also encourage you to do some research about the so called "abolition" of slavery. The 13th amendment states:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction
Just food for thought.
So what? The world is racist and white people should all feel guilty about it? No. Again, Nathaniel Dread said it really well:
I never said anyone should feel guilty. I don't think any person of color or activist has EVER said that white people should feel guilty about being white.
What white people should do is be mindful of their privilege and the benefits they get from it, as well as working in whatever way they can to level the playing field. You can't erase your privilege any more than you could change your skin color, but you can be aware of it, and engage with others in a more respectful and compassionate way.
If you actually want to challenge racism, it means being mindful of the ways in which it exists and how it defines our relationships. If we can't be honest with ourselves and how we all contribute to the oppression of others (and we
all do...again, it's not just a black/white thing) than we can't hope to seriously uproot racism. Like anything, we need to dig to the root of it which takes work and it means getting our hands dirty.
Sorry for the wall of text, and again sorry to resurrect a dead thread. I do seriously believe this needs to be an ongoing discussion in this community though, but regardless after having seen this response I just wanted to lay out some of my thoughts because I see the widespread assumption that racism is an individualistic thing that our collective society overcame long ago is an obstacle to serious efforts trying to deconstruct racism. We can't engage in a real dialogue if we aren't on the same page about what it is we're discussing.
Anyways I didn't mean to jump on you Prana2020, and I hope some of what I've said is helpful. I know you might not agree with all of it, but dialogue is the best way to work towards common understanding. So, here's to understanding
