Dude. :)
I don’t think this is entirely accurate. He’s just keeping the argument very narrow so that he can keep feeling correct in his hilariously stubborn way. But, yeah, he ignores everything that makes his firmly-held opinion fall apart. I find he’s pretty good at putting on blinders to large chunks of these kinds of debates.
I found Africa Lounge.
Could this be? Had I possibly found African food in a sea of stale bagels? What type of food might it be – West African? What a great idea to put an African restaurant in the international airport to showcase to new arrivals some of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the area and to make people of different backgrounds feel more welcome. Also, have you hade African food? No matter which region you are sampling–it’s delicious. I almost jogged over, smiling in excitement.
But as I got closer, the warning signs started to appear. Were those zebra print chairs? Oh no, was that a caveman mural on the wall? My joy was rapidly plummeting…
One of the trickiest conversations you’re bound to have regarding race in America will likely be about cultural appropriation. While not as charged as “racist” or “privileged,” “cultural appropriation” is a term that carries a lot of emotion and confusion for many people of all races.
At it’s core, cultural appropriation is about ownership of one’s culture, and since culture is defined both collectively and individually, the definition and sentiment about cultural appropriation changes with one’s identification and sentiment about their culture.
If that last sentence sounded really complicated, that’s because it is–
So you want to talk about race - Ijeoma Oluo 2002
One of the first things slave owners did was try and strip their slaves of everything they were, their names, their language, everything that gave them their since of self. Culture was so important to white slave owners, they realized raping, torture and murder was not sufficient. They were not fully successful.
You don’t have to steal from cultures to add to your culture, but remember, history didn’t just have individuals stealing culture, they stole actual people. And no, white men in western civilizations can’t really speak for the experience and identities of those people and their descendants… even though throughout history and today, they still demand that right.
The problem with cultural appropriation is that a certain group of people considers any sort of cultural assimilation as such if it’s ‘western culture’ stealing from ‘any other culture’.
I guess we’ll see if there is one, or just deflecting snark. I would not hold your breath.
Let me flip this to a non western example.
When I was in India, I saw, and went to, a number of restaurants purporting to be different cuisines. There was a place called Mexicali run by a nice Indian man named Karthik. He was clearly not Mexican, I’m not even sure he had met anyone who was Mexican, but he operated a (tasty, but not super authentic) Mexican restaurant in Chennai.
How about the restaurant Cocoa, which served ‘Italian’ food? Italian in quotes because it was neither authentic or good? Or the various Chinese or Japanese restaurants? Many of these were small food shops or stalls, do those arguing cultural appropriation in the white persons case have the same level of issue there?
Point being is it is a continuum and not absolutes. While specific examples can be very displacing and problematic, the mere existence is not, de facto, a problem.
Because taking influence and enjoying the output of other cultures is not a bad thing. And the idea that I could only ever open a restaurant serving burgers and fries is absurd. Because otherwise what right would I have to make an Italian, French, German, or even British restaurant?
This is a silly tangent. Someone could be the most passionate person in the world about food. Their making money by exploiting someone else is still wrong.
I mean, I know you don’t believe it’s exploitative:
But it’s not about ownership. It’s not that Asian people “own” Asian cuisine and are therefore the only ones who can make Asian food. It’s about who benefits from the make and sale of Asian food. In a society where Asian voices are already marginalized, it’s wrong for someone who is already in a position of systemic power over people from Asia to profit further off that power imbalance.
I’d say whatever kind of restaurant doesn’t further entrench white supremacy or lopsided social dynamics. I’d say what I said before: if his intent above all else is to show his appreciation for the food, he should probably just not open a restaurant and should instead find a way to actually appreciate and lift up the culture that birthed it rather than make a buck off it. I know you’re trying to play some game where we list out all the different dishes and ascribe each one an originating culture, but I don’t really want to play that game because it’s not the point.
I’d pose a counter-question though. Why is it necessary that this (we’re presuming white) chef must have allowance to profit off all types of food? Why is it that the only way he can show his appreciation for other cuisine is to profit from it?
Just kidding, I’ll play. Mac and cheese, seven-layer dip, and those little sausages in barbecue sausages are the only good white people are allowed to sell. I will not be taking any follow-up questions on this matter.
Little of both, I guess.
Like the 1-click buy patent? No, man, that’s not reality. It’s not the reality in copyright, either, you can’t even say how many chords I can play before I plagiarize, or exactly how much of a characters I can copy, or what is satire and what isn’t. It’s nuanced, because context matters.
And so is exploitation, for much the same reason that you’re removing untagible connections people have with it. And, yes, it means people are going to make shit up too. That’s why there’s an academic field and you should discard random people, not discard that there’s a thing that affects culture that shows up out of the ether and is unmistakably good, that being the transformation that creations go through.
I don’t know. I’d think in food, don’t pretend to be “authentic” and it’s fine. I still have no idea what actual Chinese is. But when it’s Japanese inspired, they called it fusion.
But in the period where the Redskins are gone, and Aunt Jemima changed it’s image, and so on, arguing that it isn’t a thing that affects people is behind the times.
There’s more people saying nothing is a problem. Unless it’s an academic failure, who cares about stuff people say?
I actually like your examples because I think the power dynamics are different in different places and thus create different frameworks. An Indian person opening a Mexican restaurant in India is different than a white person opening a Mexican restaurant in Idaho. At least, I view them differently.
What… are you saying here? Is this sarcasm?
Oddly enough, even if the person originated in the region in question, there is a question about the authenticity of it simply based on the region’s tastes and the ingredients available.
Growing up in the Netherlands, “Chinese” food was heavily influenced by Indonesian dishes, because of colonialism. It is a vastly different experience from the Chinese take-out that is everywhere in the US.
Both seem to be operated by people of Chinese origin, or descendants of it (there are also Indonesian restaurants, but sadly, I didn’t experience many of those growing up in the Southern part of the Netherlands). I very much doubt either of them will be recognized as truly authentic.
In any case, Cultural Appropriation feels like Porn. It’s almost impossible to define, people just seem to know it when they see it. And people can be wrong.
And what would those cuisines even mean? Some of the most iconic ingredients in italian food (at least as recognized in many other countries) are ingredients that originally came to Italy through various colonialist practices.
Does that mean that Italian food itself is inherently cultural appropriation?
That’s why i asked the question if “what’s ok?”, because any answer to that question exposes an unsavory underbelly of obviously racist thought processes, where we are trying to dictate what actions are on for people based on their ethnicity or race.
Dude, if I make that food, it’s MY food. I’m the one who put in effort to make it.
You put in absolutely zero effort. The fact that you are Asian doesn’t mean anything at all. You have no claim of ownership in even the smallest way. You contributed nothing.
Oh, so white people can’t be chefs at all! They should just help other people. Did that sound reasonable to you when you typed it?
You don’t want to play the game, because you have no answer to the question. Or rather, you don’t have an answer that doesn’t sound insanely racist when you say it out loud, right?
The idea that “white people” can only cook “white people food” is nuts, and you should feel bad for thinking it. And the same goes for anything else. What kind of dresses can a white woman wear? What kinds of songs can a white person sing?
Ignoring the fact that such limitations are obviously racist (or xenophobic) on their face, any attempt to make any kind of concrete delineation becomes even more absurdly bigoted in that it inherently would depend upon some sort of racial or cultural stereotype. What are we talking here, flavorless potato salad, little house on the prairie dresses, and country music? Wait, we already covered that country music was cultural appropriation! So, what, maybe classical music? Is that ok? It’s it white enough? But it’s not American, so if the guy is American then what is he limited to, as to not appropriate european culture?
Because he’s putting in all the effort of producing it! Why wouldn’t he?
Why would you, or anyone else, who is contributing nothing at all, be the person to decide whether he is allowed to cook food?
You can’t just flip it around and say, “why should people be allowed to do things?” In a free society, we do not need to affirmatively justify all of our rights to act. You have to come up with a reason to limit those rights.
It literally is reality. If someone can demonstrate prior art, then a patent is invalid.
That’s literally the law.
Why? If the restaurant is good, what does it matter?
Do you feel the same way about Germans making Pizza?
What if I started a restaurant that sold Naan Bread, would that be a deal breaker?
No, I mean, if some people make up problems while a much more significant amount of people that dwarfs that amount ignore the ones that exist, I’m not gonna care. I might if it’s the direct cause that actually affects someone at some point.
Which is a great way to argue. I present an example of something that wasn’t, and you argue that it isn’t, because the courts said so. If I presented an example that was, it’s the system working perfectly to correct injustices.
The system is perfect, it has no flaws, everything has been measured and properly accounted for, it can only be failed; it is only cracking at the seams because people can’t accept that simple fact.
Read on, then, but you’ll find that the answers don’t matter to him. They will always be insufficient.
Yes, quite.
I’ve always wanted to start a restaurant, but I just don’t have the talent for it (or the work ethic), so this conversation about people not being allowed to start restaurants is really depressing.
You tried to suggest that the 1-click buy patent was invalid, and am indication that prior art didn’t invalidate parents. That’s not correct.
Honestly, prior art is the easiest way to invalidate a patent, in cases where it actually exists. All you need to do is show the existence prior to the patent filling.
A harder invalidation, which perhaps is more in line with what you are thinking, is the notion that you can’t patent sunny which is “obvious”. Being “obvious” involves a much more subjective assessment, especially after the fact. Most inventions seem obvious AFTER someone invents them.
But this is separate from the notion of prior art, and you cannot claim intellectual ownership of ideas that are already disclosed in the public view. (This is actually why companies like IBM release journals with tons and tons of new ideas every year… They are ideas that ibm doesn’t want to patent, but they want to put into the public eye so that prior art is established and no one else can patent them later.)
So, no, actual intellectual property regarding novel ideas created by individuals are not the same as broad cultural facets like cuisine or fashion, which are not created or owned by anyone.
Because the answers, in this case, were ridiculous.
I suspect you would find, under examination, that Scott read neither the questions nor the answers, and was merely injecting mindless snark.
Well, as a dirty European, I remembered there is actually a list of foods that are, indeed owned.
It’s not exactly the same thing, and not exactly for reasonable reasons, but, yes, owning food is actually a thing.
Those are actually to protect specifically marketing of goods though, right?
Like, i can’t make sparkling wine and SPECIFICALLY call it champagne… But i can still make sparkling wine.
The same thing goes for something like tequila… It’s only tequila of is made in a certain way, and comes from a specific region in mexico. That’s fine.