Cultural Appropriation: What Is It, Does It Matter

The other day, we had another public outcry of cultural appropriation. This one was aimed at a teenager who wore a Chinese-style dress to prom. The allegation was crap as is the idea of cultural appropriation generally. So why is this even a thing? You might find this interesting.

Cultural appropriation is the idea pimped by racist minorities (mainly blacks) and progressive whites that somehow the things minorities do a lot are unique to them and cannot be done by others of another race. Things that have been considered cultural appropriation include whites wearing dreadlocks, whites wearing scarves on their heads, whites singing "like blacks," whites selling tacos, whites wearing African colored clothes, the "word" nigga, tribal tattoos, white actors in minority roles, and other dipshitery.

Is cultural appropriation legitimate? Ha. Hardly. First of all, anything that grants rights to people based on race is racist and immoral. Secondly, almost none of this stuff actually comes exclusively from minority culture. Indeed, black thugs may wear bandanas on their heads, but so have European and Chinese peasants way back to the Dark Ages. Not to mention, if we're going to play this game then whites have a lot of things they can claim minorities should not be allowed to do. Even worse, if we took this seriously, it would destroy minorities in this country when whites stopped buying Chinese food, sushi, books about foreign cultures, black music or black films.

So why do people make this idiotic claim? Well, some portion are just ardent racists. They want the world broken into competing racist camps because they hate Western culture and this is the only way they can fight that which everyone else loves. It won't surprise you to know that a sizeable number of these racists are "progressive" whites. Others accept this idea because they are retarded follower-sheep who spout whatever politically correct crap is in fashion. These are the people who typically don't even understand what is appropriation and they just scream whenever they see white person + something identifiably minority. This is where the dress crowd came from. They had no clue what was supposed to be wrong with her wearing the dress, they just knew it had elements that might somehow allow them to whine, so they screamed bloody murder... just in case.

But neither of those groups really drives this. So what really drives it?

Economics.

Cultural appropriation is basically about black economic power. It is an attempt to keep whites out of the black economy. This is why it really has taken hold most strongly in the music world. As whites have learned to rap and sing in similar tones and timbers and phonics as blacks, black artists have come to realize that they are in danger of losing their white audiences to these white artists. The result is that rappers like Iggy Azalea have been savagely attacked for "sounding black," as have pop stars like Mehgan Trainor and Bebe Rexa and others. Each has been attacked as racist and not legitimate because they are whites who "sound black." Why? As I said, they represent the destruction of a black music monopoly, and if they succeed, history suggests that blacks will be pushed out. So they scream cultural appropriation and hope to make it toxic for whites to compete on similar terms.

Even things like the hair issues have economic roots. If whites adopt things like dreadlocks, white hair dressers will begin to treat these things. That again means competition from whites for something that is basically a black monopoly. I can tell you that, right now, blacks get ripped off when it comes to hair care. If blacks can start to go anywhere, the monopoly will crack. What about "black" clothing? It probably won't surprise you that there are black companies that cater to black-culture clothing. FUBU comes to mind. If African-style clothing gets the melting pot makeover (i.e. gets Americanized and genericized like sushi or pizza), then the ability to sell "authentic" cultural clothing gets washed away by the mass market. In each case, something that is a niche that provides blacks with economic power would be destroyed if whites could move into the market. Screaming cultural appropriation, i.e. racism, is the tactic being used to keep whites out.

In fact, let me toss this in there. There are black groups in big cities who are fighting (to the point of using terrorist tactics) to stop whites from moving into black neighborhoods. Indeed, there was a fascinating article about this in the LA Times last month. Some liberal whites were trying to open coffee shops and things like that on the edges of black neighborhoods and these "activists" were destroying their shops and threatening their employees to keep them out because if they got a foothold in the neighborhood, then the neighborhood would be gentrified by other whites and the activists didn't want the whites competing with the black economy already there. They too called this a version of cultural appropriation... and (stupidly) genocide.

This is what really seems to be going on. Whites are encroaching upon the black economy and the cry of cultural appropriation seems to be the tactic used to keep whites out. This just happens to dovetail beautifully with the desires of the racists to separate everyone and the politically correct who wet themselves whenever race comes up even if they don't know why. That's why I don't think this charge will go away any time soon, i.e. because it's too useful to too many.

That said, I don't think it works ultimately. Where there is money, people will follow. And as each month seems to see more whites moving into rap or adopting tiny parts of things they like from black culture, it is inevitable that all of this will get the melting pot treatment.