I think one of the things we’re stuck on in the cultural appropriation wars is other things the folks who are appropriating could do, and other things we activists could provide with respect to alternate places to put energies, creative juices, alternate ways of life, if you will. The problem with appropriation simply being wrong and being made so by activists is that it does nothing to address the truism that exoticism sells. It sells books and video games and movies and it keeps the audience interested. Moralizing, shaming and humiliating folks who do it or consume it  is, while immediately effective, not ultimately so. It doesn’t provide enough impetus for folks to change their ways, nor does it provide folks with the alternatives they need to start creating change themselves.

Simply saying “Don’t do it. It’s wrong.” is not enough to change the world. It sure is a good way of making folks miserable, though, as we revisionists claim to know about the Puritans.

These are essentially Taoist approaches/thoughts, although they are rather modernized. I’ll try to approach the essay from that perspective.

I should note that one of Taoism’s strongest philosophical aspects is the idea that change is an unavoidable aspect of life. We recognize that humans seem to instead prefer stasis or very very slow change, and one of the ways that Taoists attempt to practice our philosophy in the world is to become willing and able to embrace and encourage (and benefit from) change. Instead of fighting change, we manage it and we try to benefit from it.

In my system (and of course many others’), wisdom maps to the 5th trigram, moon or the river.

Another list of aspects and explanations:

• Fairness
  As I’ve said before in other posts, a sense fairness is essential to keep you balanced and on the right path. Not only must you demonstrate fairness, honor, compassion, and other characteristics and talents to keep your opponents convinced you are accessible and reasonable, but you must do right and be honorable for its own sake. The fight is not a contest, but part of a journey you undertake, an evolution you engage in, and you cannot afford to compromise yourself in order to win. Completion of a fight is not victory, but another step on your journey as a warrior. Knowing that you live that journey is part of a warrior’s expression of wisdom.
• Judgment
  Not only is this good judgment from the point of view of immediacy of decisions, but also the long view, the ability to judge the character and intent of others, good judgment in words and actions. Display your wisdom by displaying good and able judgment.
• Tactics
  Tactics and strategy go hand in hand. For wisdom, know both, not one without the other. Tactics concern themselves with immediate goals and smaller and shorter range changes. Manage the short-term changes and set the groundwork for the longer-term changes. Tactics is part wisdom, part luck, part hunch, part knowing when and when not to take action, when and when not to claim credit, when and when not to lead.
• Strategy
  Strategy is the other side of the equation. It’s the long view, the greater reach, the wider scope. As opposed to tactics, the management of the short term changes, this is long-range planning and longer range changes. Use your wisdom to know how one relates to the other, read long term changes in the foundations set the the shorter term tactics. Again there is wisdom in both acting and not acting, and a mix of both should see you through.
• Boundaries
  One of the long-held wisdoms I’ve benefitted from (I was almost born with a spoon made of boundaries in my mouth) is the usefulness of well-formed and well-policed boundaries. This is a deep and introspective wisdom founded on knowing your limits and insisting on them. You do not have to defend boundaries (and this is something I learned pretty recently) actively. If you know your limits and withdraw out of range, going slack and letting your opponent fight emptiness, that’s usually more than enough. The most important lesson about boundaries that I learned later in life was that any fight takes two (that it’s like ballroom dancing). And if you become empty (however you manage that), you are unassailable.
• The Long View
  Part of strategy and of wisdom as a whole is the ability to look forward to not only your ideal future, but to the future that involves other people. Ideally, you should be fighting for a future state that is not only attainable, but that is acceptable to all concerned. Remember that compromise is a necessary part of reality, and plan based on that. I emphatically do not mean that you should overstate your goals in hopes of compromising precisely where you want to end up. I mean that you should fight justly and be prepared, still, to get only part of what is your most ideal outcome.
• Least Harm
  Another part of the long view of wisdom, and not only that but of compassion, the principle of least harm applies to you as a warrior and to you as an activist. Not only should you be sure that you are fighting a just and right fight, but you should be sure that you are doing the least harm for the greatest good. Think back to my earlier essays about how you are responsible for the damage you do in the fight.
• Intelligence
  Not only does this mean the raw intelligence required to be articulate and to be able to analyze your position, your assets and your best use of those resources to get where you want to go, but Taoism also emphasizes knowing as much about your opponents as possible.
  In the Art of War, it is strongly preferrable to win battles through knowledge of your opponent and informed diplomacy (over the relatively shameful methods of warring or sieging). I think the idea of finding out about your opponents should also include a practical knowledge of their context and their boundaries.

I need to say something here about the exercise of intelligence (both in the sense of having innate intelligence and in the sense of gathering intelligence about your opponents) and what I saw going on in the recent discussions about cultural appropration on the blogosphere.

One of the things that shamed me (and stimulated me to start writing these essays) about what my fellow warriors and activists were doing was that many of them were asking for far more than their opponents were willing to give.

You cannot  conscionably do this as an honorable warrior or an activist. It is not only counterproductive, but you should just know better. Asking or demanding that your opponent do things that they clearly feel are unethical to them is wrong. When you ask for concessions that are demeaning or unethical, you will end up simply alienating your opponent. A better discussion would be to discuss the ethics themselves, though I will warn you that discussing ethics and boundaries with someone who clearly has a strong sense of them is likely to be a difficult and time-consuming fight.

In any case, it is vital that you know your opponent’s boundaries so that you do not ask for the unaskable, so that you remain reasonable. There will be very little progress while your demands are unreasonable unless you have at your disposal overwhelming force. And we all know that’s not the case here.

These discussions are about intersections of boundaries, personal space, risk-taking, sensibility, morality, exoticism, common sense, being insiders, being outsiders, the privilege of the narrative perspective, privilege in general and so on. The way I know about the discussion is that someone tagged Hanne (I don’t know where this happened, and I’m not going to trawl all the posts and responses to find it) over her posts about Chinese cooking (which are informed by work in the cuisine that she has largely done for herself and her dietary restriction, but also very much to my benefit) as being potentially an example of cultural appropriation. I think the post that was most upsetting for the person that tagged Hanne was the one where Hanne wrote about creating a new dish in the style of other Chinese dishes, utilizing some of the principles of Chinese taste combinations and philosophical (Confucian, Taoist) knowledge that drives food combination choices in Chinese cuisine.

Let me first play my race and personal context cards and then get into discussion about cultural appropriation.

I am Hanne Blank’s partner.

I am half-Chinese (specifically Taishanese, for those who make the distinction). My father, who is full-blood Taishanese, was born in Oakland, CA, and is a U.S. citizen. So am I. My mother, who is a mixture of Scot, Welsh and English, was born in Woodward, Iowa. I personally speak no more than a few words of Taishanese (most food words and festival words) and no more than a few words of Mandarin (mostly from Mandarin 101 class I took in adult school 10-15 years ago). I do, however, study English translations of Taoist texts and consider myself a practicing Taoist, both in physical practice and in mental/emotional/political practice. Aside from family festival/reunion/feast holidays that I do not regularly attend (it’s a geography issue – most of  my Taishanese family in the U.S. lives in California while I live in Baltimore, MD) and a penchant for eating and knowing about exotic (i.e. non-mainstream American) foods/cuisines, I am very well assimilated into the predominant cultures where I live and work, which are mostly uniform and “white”.

As far as Hanne goes, what I know is that part of her focus on Chinese cuisine is partly because it pleases us both and partly because its non-dairy ingredients tend to be compatible with her diet. For any other reasoning behind it, you’d have to ask her.

I need to go on to say something. Cultural appropriation is a concept I think we come around to talking about periodically because it is so subjective and so complicated. In essence, the argument goes that if you are not an in situ part of a culture, your adoption of practices of the culture to your benefit, especially to your benefit with respect to public things like reknown and reputation, especially if you appropriate others’ culture in a deeply irreverent and disrespectful way, especially if you pick and choose aspects that are “cool” or that you like, operating as an outsider to said culture, cultural appropriation can be a morally or ethically bankrupt exercise. The idea is that if you appropriate culture wrongly or imcompletely, you can end up doing a lot more harm than good for all of the people who grew up in that culture or who are more genuinely involved in that culture than you are.

There are also good examples of folks going too far with cultural appropriation (if you follow this link, know that the post is not by the primary transgressor, and the poster is someone who is I think pretty genuinely responsive to the concerns of the First Nations activists who were gracious enough to seek dialogue with the poster in the comments – the enitre thing including the comments is a good read, but may take a strong stomach). Folks who engage with other cultures in a fundamentally flawed way, and who are deeply DISrespectful and have, it can easily be argued, done irreparable damage both to individuals and to entire cultures by their poorly executed, culturally appropriative actions done without clearly good intentions.

There are also good examples of folks going “too far” with cultural appropriation and getting it right. Even though they’re completely outside of the culture somehow they manage just fine to be absolutely appropriate and note perfect even with gaudy and overblown characters, myths and fact in a culture they admire (obviously) but are not part of.

I think that as with many risky behaviors (some of which pay off famously for everyone involved and some of which do not), dipping your toe into the wide ocean of possibilities represented by cultural appropriation can come back and bite you in the ass if you do it, or it may work out to increase the positive cultural capital for all people involved, including you.

All in all, I would prefer that competent, careful, strong, intelligent, respectful people of all kinds took risks to try to make this world a better, more interesting, more vibrant place. I want authors to be able to have the choice to engage in the risky behavior of writing material that might be interpreted as disrespectful cultural appropriation, in the pursuit of good, respectful and well-executed cultural appropriation. As a reader of sometimes risky texts, I want a world where the reader can and is allowed to say something about when the writing doesn’t work out for me. I also want a world where the author feels comfortable enough with the risks already taken and the respect I grant them to feel okay about having a discussion. This discussion, this dialogue, is a good thing. It teaches us to learn from our mistakes. It teaches us where the boundaries are today, and it helps us predict where they might be tomorrow. All this kind of work is good.

As a person of color, my reactions are more mixed. I see the cultural appropriation discussion as one which I hope privileged folks would keep in their own sandbox. I would like to see privileged folks be self-educating and would like them to turn to each other for tips and tricks on how to do this sort of appropriation respectfully, and have them sort their baggage out before coming out into the common world that we all share and that we all have to coexist in. I know that this is a pipe dream. Logistically, sometimes victims of privilege  have to call out privileged people when the privileged people cause the problem. Sometimes the victims of privilege have to start the ball rolling and sometimes we have to stick around to talk about and articulate the finer points of the discussion and sometimes we have to be around, even, to be wrong.

On the other hand, as a person of color, I’ve written before about how I feel about being forced into the docent or explainer role. I don’t enjoy being called to speak for anyone other than myself. I don’t enjoy doing anti-racism or racism 101-level discourse. Regardless of others’ need for such an intervention, it feels like a responsibility I didn’t volunteer for that ends up on my shoulders anyhow. The less of that the better, in my opinion.

I don’t know how to close this post up gracefully so I think I’ll just end it here and try to reduce the risk of rambling and pointlessness. I guess my summary is that I am aware of the risks and discussions of cultural appropriation. This particular round of discussion involves a friend who I think can take care of herself. It involved Hanne (however briefly) and she can take care of herself. I guess I am just arguing that it’s OK to be at the point where we discuss culturall appropriation endlessly because the boundaries are so variable and universally unclear and I think that the potential gains may be worth the risk, as long as we all remain respectful and try our best to be ethical, moral and honorable.

Update: It’s been a while since I posted this and there’s one thing I want to add that I will try to expand upon in a later post.

As usual, the way the total discussion went was that some folks who are anti-racist activists and who were involved in this discussion were completely appropriate when making criticisms and having followup discussions and some folks weren’t.

As an activist myself, I am familiar with the frustration that happens when things that you thought were settled are kicked up again, and I am familiar with the well-worn tropes that the privileged will often use to try to duck responsibility for their words and actions, and I am familiar with the outrage that I feel flowing through my veins when I am dismissed and ridiculed for taking the time and effort to give feedback.

I think where I differ from the activist-as-mob (which is where these discussions sometimes go, and where part of this dicussion went) is that I think of my activist self as a warrior self. As a warrior, I feel that there are certain rules I should follow, and that I get sad about other activist-warriors not following.

I think Elizabeth Bear (let me repeat that I am her friend, but I think she can take care of herself), as one of the center figures of this particular shitstorm, comported herself admirably in a way I associate with an honorable warrior’s way. She was careful, respectful, accessible, responsive, and acted in good faith for at least 4 days (don’t believe me? Read all of her responses to her own comments threads – she even engaged with the original poster and hammered out some mutual understanding), but I saw folks in the wider discussion refer to her as “typically defensive” and “overly defensive” and I saw other non-flattering terms used to describe her actions that were simply unfair.

I think that as activist-warriors, we activists have a responsibility to make sure that when we fight our fights, the discussion does not get out of hand, and that in our expression of outrage and anger we do not use unnecessary epithets to describe our would-be oppressors (and sometimes these folks end up being potential allies we’ve just offended instead). It made me sad to see that, and honestly that’s why I usually don’t fit in long with anti-racist communities. I’m usually cool with 75% – 90% of what’s criticized and discussed but I usually dissent, eventually, which ends up biting me in the ass. I’m still an anti-racist activist, but I think my focus on having these reasonable boundaries about what I will publicly say usually get me in trouble. For those of you still reading and interested at this point, I think the major issue I have in such communities is that what I will vent about and when and how I will vent about it is very different from most of my brethren, and I think that my sensitivity to the offense that is part of satire in general is much lower than it is for most of my brethren.

I think the situation is very subtle, because if a person who is interested in aspects of another culture is careful, that person can respectfully appropriate and do good anyhow. There are many fine lines and slippery slopes and grey areas and it can be difficult to tell right (is it possible to appropriate in a properly respectful way? Is assimilation a “right” form of appropriation? Read below for my take on a right way of doing it) from wrong (search this article for “blood was on the floor” for the instant rage paragraph – happily, many First Nations folks commented on the article and at least educated the blog poster about the protest that in blogging the event/protest, the poster initially found puzzling) in cultural appropriation-prone situations. I hope you can see how folks can get a little irate about appropriation.

I tend to think that was separates the right way from the wrong way is respectful and complete adoption of a culture or cultural aspect or practice. By which I mean if we do pick and choose, we do it knowing the complete tradition, or as near complete as we are allowed to discover, and we avoid doing certain things within that tradition for our own ethical reasons, but we do it as fully informed and respectfully as possible.

For instance, when H and I were getting to know each other, H was good with eating Chinese food (the food of some of my people) as long as we could try to avoid pork and shrimp (I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess why). That condition was based on mutual respect and the mutual interest we had in one another and in one another’s cultures.

Since then, H’s living conditions changed, as did mine, and due to some strategically important (to this discussion) food allergies on both of our parts, Chinese food has attained a much greater importance in our day to day lives. H has a Cantonese 2-handle cast iron wok (that she occasionally deigns to let me use – ) in which our household does a lot of cooking. H has learned from me, from my father, and from cookbooks my family has always used, as well as from new cookbooks written by Chinese and by first world white authors who have had immersive training and are pretty fluent with the Chinese cooking culture, a pretty complete cooking system that is as genuine to the Chinese cultural roots as we can manage without exporting H and immersing her in China.

She is appropriating the culture, but she is doing it respectfully, completely, carefully and beginning to understand a lot more about it, honestly, than I do. Lately she has been able to invent new dishes in the same tradition, using the same systems of organization and belief about the characters of foods that are consistent with both Chinese cooking tradition and the humoral system that is consistent with traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

She’s found and is exploring intersections between Chinese cooking and with TCM, and we have both studied some meditation and martial arts in the TCM system.

At the same time, she continues to pursue her profession as an historian of and writer about Western medicine. I think she finds the contrast valuable and informative, and I’m sure she would agree that knowing about the two systems of health helps write about the one. So in a way, this appropriation is profitable to her and someone in China or from China or the Chinese traditions might possibly take offense.

I would expect, knowing her, that she would not be dismissive and would try to address that person’s offense personally and respectfully. Regardless, unless that person had a really compelling reason, I doubt that H would leave off of continuing to learn about and implement what she knows about Chinese cooking.

I think this is the essence of respectful, appropriate cultural appropriation. The willingness not only to be as complete about your learning of the other culture as possible, but to be responsible to how consumers of your new knowledge, skills, appearance, whatever, respond to that appropriation, and to your displays of the knowledge you’ve appropriated. This is to me the essence of respect. As an outsider, I think that is part of the covenant you assume when you appropriate all or part of another culture.

I think the problems with cultural appropriation come from 3rd party study of a culture and appropriation of that culture or aspects of it without respectfully engaging with native practitioners of the culture. I think it’s really problematic and challenging for a total outsider to go from only book knowledge and appropriate culture. I think that’s prone to a whole mess of risks and trouble, and I wish people wouldn’t do it.

Some links:
(You can find plenty more by googling “appropriation” and “cultural appropriation”)

• Dancing with Ga(y)nesh (PDF)
  An academic paper on cultural tourism, hetero takeover of a GLBT event, and the theme of the event itself.
• Herbwifery discussion
• Dance Spree mailing list archives
• A writeup of the WisCon Cultural Appropriation Panel
• Maori party talking about cultural appropriation