Running racism in America thread

Not a pissing match. A discussion.

Nobody owns a culture. I could stop my post at that. ... but then I wouldn't be me.

Everything you said about what you respectfully disagree with is subjective. "Trivially playing around with," "disrespectful" "ham-handed," "ignorant way." According to who? What if I find 5 people who disagree with you?

So if I decide based on my sensibilities that the women making tortillas in Mexico are ignorant and ham-handed and being disrespectful, I have a right to demand that they stop making tortillas?

When you read the article that started this, nobody was saying anything like that anyhow. ... what made their tortillas ignorant and disrespectful and ham-handed. ... was that they weren't Hispanic! ... and that it was terrible that they went to Mexico, asked a lot of questions, watched women making tortillas and then came home and found a way to replicate the tortillas through trial and error.

That led to a charge of "cultural appropriation."

The writer from the Portland Mercury who weighed in on the controversy, said this: "Several of the most successful businesses in this town have been birthed as a result of curious white people going to a foreign country, or an international venture, and poaching as many trade secrets, customs, recipes as possible, and then coming back to Portland to claim it as their own and score a tidy profit.”

First of all, those women didn't come home and claim it as their own. The whole shit show started because one of them gave an interview and told her story of going to Mexico.

But putting that aside (because so what if they claimed that they invented the tortilla), I find none of it immoral, racist, disrespectful or wrong in any way, least of all someone starting a business and working hard and profiting from it. If they want to start a burrito cart and they can attract customers (because the food is good, what a novel concept!), I have no problem with it. And of course anyone who objects simply because they aren't Hispanic is being exclusionary (and racist, if you are being honest about it).

It's a perversion of language and what is really happening, to try to twist that into being an inclusive act by saying, "Well, it's OK for them to do it. ... but only if I (or whoever you think should be doing the excluding), in my subjective wisdom, have decided that they are being culturally authentic and non-demeaning."

 

Well, it is now going to be a movie about a black woman who stays silent. ... so there's that.

I had no idea this was actually a thing.

I'll say the obvious: You can't find a 6-year-old on earth who has a problem with a black mermaid. ... until an adult gets in their ear.