Cultural Appropriation: Leftist Tropes Can Be Mind-Bogglingly Stupid
01/14/2020
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In mid-2016, I wrote a VDARE.com blog entry, "White Privilege": One Of The Stupidest Ideas Of Our Time, pointing out the logical disconnect between routine complaints about "white privilege" amid the ceaseless nattering about "diversity."  I hadn't previously seen this disconnect pointed out.

"Cultural appropriation" is another turd from the stinking swamp of Leftist "thought," and recently Matthew Stewart, an associate professor of humanities [egads!] and rhetoric at Boston University, made a parallel point about its built-in contradiction:

Another puzzling aspect of the cultural-appropriation focus is that it seems clearly to clash with another progressive imperative: the need to nurture multicultural appreciation. Multiculturalism has been a prominent cause among progressives for more than a generation, but today, admiration for other cultures apparently comes with a warning sign: look, but don’t adopt, lest you face accusations of “theft” or insensitivity. 

[Multiculturalism, or Cultural Appropriation?, City Journal, January 3, 2020]

I collect pithy statements along these lines, and I might as well share some of the wealth.  Here are a couple such items from commenters elsewhere on the Internet:

A white person eating a taco is guilty of “cultural appropriation” while the Mexican complaining about it on a computer is not.

And:

We are told "cultural appropriation refers to 'taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission.'"

So, uh, whom do I go to for "permission" to eat a burrito or play a sitar? Can anyone who's Mexican or Indian grant the appropriate permission? Or do I need signoff from everyone in the given ethnicity?

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