Talking about identity/cultural appropriation, how to navigate life?

I wasn't going to say anything, but after reading @Brock_Knifemann's taco bar example, I decided to share my 2c.

I'm Turkish. I haven't lived in Turkey for years. People of my nationality are a tiny minority in my current country. And yet, when I see a kebap shop or a "Turkish barber" (that isn't run by Turkish people) or people dancing in traditional Turkish attires in festivals it never feels like appropriation to me. I mean, someone found the food/culture/experience/whatever so cool that they decided dress that way, cook that way or work that way. How cool is that! At best, I'm happy. At worst, indifferent.

I can see other people in other countries feeling differently about this, but personally I've never really "got" appropriation and years after first seeing that word, it still feels just as alien to me as the first time.

I listened to a great piece on this not too long ago. You can listen to it here. The piece is about the history of the song Dixie which was during the America Civil War, an anthem for the troops fighting to preserve slavery. The reporting tracks the song's history back up North to the minstrel shows where performers dressed as racist caricatures of black people would sing and dance. (If you for some reason feel like the North was ever a bastion of tolerance I suggest looking up minstrelsy.)

Anyway, near the end the presenters get to the supposed origin of the song: a family of musicians whose neighbor stole it and used his money and clout as a white person to publish it. All in all, Dixie was appropriated across cultures between three and five times depending how you count. It was appropriated from a song about the land where most of the composers ancestors and family would have lived, to a racist parody song, to a defining facet of white Antebellum culture on par with the stars and bars. The conclusion is a story of black roots musicians performing Dixie. Which is given its history seen as an appropriation of sorts.

The story here, as far as takeaways for me, is that that whether an act is cultural appropriation or not is all about intent and power relations.

At the outset, the song was stolen and popularized by a white man. This is appropriation because the work was reproduced but without the consent of the author and not in the name of celebrating their composition. The intent and power relations here are exploitative. The same is true of the minstrel shows.

However, I would argue that Dixie as it is now, a folk song passed down through generations is, regardless of origins (which are disputed). To me this is not an appropriation because Dixie is a component of Southern identity. Yes, it is stolen. But hey, so is the entirety of the land the south currently occupies. Yeah it's a super racist totem but idt that automatically makes it appropriated

Nor, is the re-co-opting of Dixie by modern black musicians. Yes, it takes a piece of culture from somewhere else but the intent is to celebrate work and the power dynamics are not such that any one is being exploited.

All in all, my point here is that there is no hard and fast rubric for assessing appropriation. The way Dixie has passed through different hands by similar means but with different outcomes. To illustrate, take for instance its transmission as piece of popular culture and subsequent reinterpretation first by Confederate soldiers in the civil war and then by modern musicians are not so different in terms of how the song moved around. Some people heard a song and then they started singing it because of what it meant them. What was different though were the intent of the performers and the power relations between the parties.

You can apply this framework by asking yourself: Does this [whatever you are looking at] celebrate the culture it comes from? Does the person wearing this costume seems to have a grasp of and appreciation for what they are emulating? Would a member of said culture also be able to enjoy this? Or, are they reproducing racist stereotypes and problematic tropes associated with a socially dis-empowered group? Is this fun or is it derogatory? It can't be both.

Sorry, I can't answer your main point in a satisfying way but I'll talk about a couple of your side things.

I've seen more white people saying it's "cultural appropriation" than black people saying that

No commentary on the situation you're talking about specifically, but be careful with this line of thinking. It's worth keeping in mind who is able to talk about these things freely and with minimal judgement. I know from personal experiences with other issues that sometimes because I'm in the mentioned group, I'm more timid because I'll be more likely to be seen as uppity or being too extreme on issues that have an effect on me or whatever. In some cases, this includes the threat of violence. This is generally the idea behind trying to get people who won't have to deal with that to be vocal about it (and also one reason why I strongly disagree with anything suggesting that people "stay in their lane").

could someone explain to me why drag isn’t offensive? Isn’t it men dressing up as women and taking feminine stereotypes to the extreme? Like, I enjoy RuPaul but I’m always wondering why people find it cool.

Well, this is a complex one. Historically, drag has been a hugely important outlet for queer people and was a way for us to be visible in a way that just wasn't otherwise possible. Even though on one level it's "dressing up as a woman," it rarely serves quite the same purpose as the equivalent with racially-bound clothing does.

However, in a lot of trans communities drag (in practice, usually not conceptually) drag is seen as being a bit mocking of us. There's obviously a clear history connecting drag and the "man in a dress" stereotype that's followed us around forever, so there's discomfort there. There's also just a lot of straight-up transphobia coming from people like RuPaul and at this point I get a little suspicious if someone says that they really like RuPaul's Drag Race. It's nowhere near "makes you a bad person for liking it" territory, but it makes me put my guard up.

So not the reason you were thinking about, but it's worth mentioning.

I can only comment to 1)

I think we need to make a seperation here. I think cultural apropiation as in everyday people dressing up, listening to foreign music and in general enjoyment of even isolated aspects of different cultures is a joyous thing and should be celebrated, as it shows (even if often only minor) interest in different culture.

I like to invite people into my culture and show them the ways of my people. And that is what should be done when somebody misrepresents or misuses a culture. Education instead of alienation. Grow together in understanding of each others cultures and become a more friendly, open and intercultural world.

On the other side, the capitalistic appropiation of cultures is just plain disgusting! (Thats where i think people suffer most)

I'm no sociologist, so take my thoughts with the appropriate grain of salt. Anyone who is more knowledgeable, please feel free to correct me.

Cultural appropriation (as I, a white male American understand it) is basically taking and using someone else's culture inappropriately. It's totally cool to love and appreciate Mexican culture (for example), but not cool for me to set up and run a trendy taco bar that pushes actual Mexican-American owned establishments out of business. In this case, I'd be using someone else's culture to my benefit at their expense. Likewise, it's totally cool to buy a dream catcher from a member of a Native American tribe because you like it, it's not cool to make my own and sell on Etsy. It's not about enjoying a culture that isn't your own, it's taking and using it for your own.

Identity is a lot harder since many groups have different ways that they identify themselves. It can be language, economics, religion, whatever. For example, I am an American and identify as such even thoughI detest things like Football, guns, country music, Republicans, etc that are "associated" with being an American. Identity is complicated and we are not obligated to associate with one just because we were born into that group. Likewise, we don't have to accept parts of an identity that go against our personal beliefs. We can be raised and identify as culturally Catholic but we don't have to accept things like priests molesting children.

I hope my thoughts help

I'm an ethnic majority, and can't speak towards being at the receiving end of cultural appropriation. My understanding of it—generally speaking—isn't so much engaging with the elements of a culture at all, but engaging with cultural elements and doing them a disservice. Given that most people probably aren't in tune with any given culture to know if their participation in a cultural element is in good taste, this is where we get people being surprised when called out for cultural appropriation. It generally comes from ignorance rather than from malice.
Cultural Appropriation is historically closely tied to Colonialism, of which we shouldn't look at too fondly. If you're engaging with a culture with knowledge, respect, and input of those belonging to that culture, that can't be appropriation. That would be more closely described as a cultural exchange, and is to be celebrated. Appropriation is taking a cultural element, without regard for history, or spiritual beliefs, and not considering at all how their use would be interpreted by those of that culture.
On the internet you will mostly see, I think, people overreacting to rather benign actions. But it is something that exists, and is problematic. I feel that all one needs to do to avoid being disrespectful to a culture is to educate oneself on cultural significance and act with respect. Even then we might misstep, but the answer to that isn't to defend ourselves but to apologize for any transgressions and to do better in the future.

Drag is interesting, and as a Gender & Sexual Minority I feel a bit more qualified to speak on that and on identity.

Drag has a long, hundreds of years history. Harking back to the days of theater in which the performers were all men, cross-dressing in a performance was ubiquitous. It's a part of Western culture, at least. In modern times, drag has evolved into an art-form in itself and is a celebrated aspect of the LGBT community, enjoyed by a great many people. It's a kind of role-play, and is both entertainment and a form of self-expression.
While not something that applies to every single drag artist, being a non-binary gender identity is fairly common among them. That being, identifying as not wholly male or female and to say nothing of their physical sex.
I think it's something to be celebrated. Gender roles are artificial, and for someone to be comfortable enough with who they are to experiment with how they present themselves is just fantastic. Self-exploration should always be lauded. Like many things, gender identity isn't so much of a binary as it is a spectrum. The idea that being trans is all-or-nothing doesn't hold much water as well. Some people are assuredly entirely transgender, while others may identify as agender, or gender-fluid, or maybe kind-of-trans-but-not-enough-to-transition. It's a part of the human experience that I think the majority might not put any thought into, and navigating how one actually feels and how one wants to be seen is a really scary thing. I value drag not only for entertainment, but because its cultural acceptance makes it more acceptable and less daunting to explore your own identity.

Taking part in a custom of a culture other than your own is not "cultural appropriation". Cultural appropriation is claiming ownership over someone else's culture. Simply taking part in it is not claiming that it was yours all along.

What people who scream "cultural appropriation" at every turn don't seem to understand is that culture spreads. That's what it does. It's nothing but memetics, memes (the original Dawkins meaning of the word) traveling outward.

I agree with you. This is a really tough one to talk about, particularly because it's such a complex issue with so many different perspectives.

This is far from a comprehensive response to all you brought up, but I think for me, the problem is too often discussed at the individual level (e.g. five year olds wearing Moana outfits) and not enough at higher levels (e.g. the company that made a commercial mass media product that inspired people to wear those outfits in the first place).

Is Disney good for exposing millions to a different culture in a positive way, or did Disney appropriate that culture as a tool to make themselves millions? I feel like the answer is "both," which just reinforces the idea that there are no easy answers here.

Cultural appropriation:

I do not think it's possible to judge cultural appropriation without judging intent. Intent is extremely hard to discern, even when presented with a lot of facts, so usually it's a guessing game based on the behavior of the individual. If the intent is to take pieces of a culture and claim them as their own culture, or to take pieces of a culture and claim they are the culture whilst ignoring others, that's appropriation. If you just really happen to like kilts and want to wear a kilt because they are cool, that's not appropriation.

Identity:

Philosophers have been debating this for thousands of years. You hit on the major points, in all honesty - there's varying levels of identity out there. In fact, some people (such as myself) are identity "chameleons" in that we change our identity depending on the audience (psychology studies have shown us that nearly everyone does this to some extent). What you wish to claim as your identity is entirely up to you. I find little to no value to ascribing an identity, except when it benefits my audience to understand more about me or my values. I think this is a tricky road to walk, however, as many people have the wrong idea about said identity, and it means that I will often have to educate them, which leads to me often not claiming any identity for convenience.

It's really a political problem. It's not about whether or not to dress your kid as Moana at Halloween, it's about the level of potential backlash.

This is the first time in history "appropriation" has become a mainstream concern. Not just individual cases that stand out, but the concept in itself. And with that, the main problem with it is that it isn't established yet and it hasn't solved all its niche cases. It's important to acknowledge that, especially if you care about it. What I'm seeing is a lot of backlash from the right about how issues like this are pushed into the mainstream and people not in the know being ridiculed and ousted for breaking some new social norm, even when they had no intent to hurt anyone's feelings. You could say that's their problem but it's not that easy. People can vote and the right successfully uses being the only side that even allows for voicing confusion (I'm not even talking about flat out rejection!). The left needs to signal that it's okay to make honest mistakes and focus on rewarding positive behavior over punishing non-PC statements. I think that also includes to acknowledge a range of severity (i.e. doing a racist bit that paints a minority as stupid vs letting your kid dress as Moana for Halloween).

I honestly believe that the rise of right-wing governments in many countries is at least partially due to the level of aggressiveness of the left when pushing certain flavors of political correctness. The left is used to playing an outsider role, a rebellious one, so it's used to shouting to not be talked over. The problem is that it's now in a relative position of power in large parts of the media, pop culture, university campuses and big cities. Yet they're still shouting! And that's not a good look (and might inspire people to shout back!).

In the end, this is about creating awareness that certain things are insulting to people that we might have never realized. We have a bunch of things that we decided it's not okay to mock, including being overweight, disabled or poor. People get these concepts, in general, but they're the result of a long process of creating awareness for it. You learn most of it growing up. It's more difficult to teach that people with non-binary gender might consider certain pronouns offensive or the details of Fiji culture. You can't really expect people to immediately grasp that. You can't expect people to be happy about having to learn 9 new made-up pronouns at the threat of being called sexist if you don't. This takes time and a lot of convincing and negotiation. If you don't accept that, you'll push people in the hands of the likes of Jordan Peterson.

There are acts of cultural disrespect and appropriation which are so egregious they're salt rubbed into unhealed wounds, but they're as much acts of stereotyping and reductionism as outright theft.

It's a big deal in the culinary world because so many cuisines have been grossly misrepresented by conqueror or colonizing nations - "curry" in the UK, just about any "ethnic" cuisine in the U.S. (if I was a Mexican citizen, I'd sue Taco Bell for fraud)... even though some of those poor facsimiles have evolved into meritorious food in their own right.

"Curry" is a particularly hard bone to swallow because India has over two dozen vastly different regional cuisines, with variations down to village and household level. [The Netflix "Chef's Table" series has a neat discussion about this in Season 2, Episode 6, with Gaggan Anand.] In the same manner, "French", "Spanish", "Chinese", "Caribbean", "Southern", "African" (!) and other reductionist labels erase a tremendous amount of proud invention, history and identity.

I don't normally try to say much when it comes to a topic like this. There aren't a lot of identities that I hold where I feel like someone can reasonably be said to rudely but accidentally caricature my people, and even if they do the rarity of the event means it's not really worth the time or thought. This is a problem where from the get go, I should probably be doing more listening than speaking as people who are more directly impacted can and should hold the mic for longer.

I think the single biggest attribute of this conversation that I haven't seen said all that clearly is that what we're all talking about when anyone complains about cultural appropriation is a feeling of having your personhood taken away or denigrated by someone who isn't from that same culture. "Cultural appropriation" is a way of describing the feeling of dehumanization that comes a focus on the culture rather than the people within that culture.

No people are a monolith. You're going to have a ton of any group of people disagreeing on just about every issue under the sun. And I strongly suspect no one wants to feel like another person sees them as a given identity first to the exclusion of their being an individual, especially in the United States where individualism and the idea of individual agency is kind of a big deal.

People in this thread are making insightful observations (and I especially adore @Catt's reference to one of the several prior conversations we've had that talk about this issue in other contexts). A lot to do with the problems of culture appropriation involves power dynamics, absolutely. I think the root problem remains, even when there is a power dynamic enabling it, when someone feels another person is dressing up as a culture rather than as a person within that culture.

As far as identity is concerned, I would imagine we form our identities around what best helps us cope with our surroundings, and what helps us place ourselves in those surroundings. And that identity necessarily shifts based on those surroundings. For a lot of people of color, they don't really get much choice of not identifying as their racial ethnicity in the US, where race does form a meaningful impact on our surroundings. Sometimes you are in a situation where you have more choice on how much to see yourself as a given part of your identity. Context matters.