MetaFilter (metafilter) wrote, @ 2017-07-27 09:15:00 |
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http://www.metafilter.com/168445/Now-is-t
I was on-board, more or less, with the anti-cultural appropriation arguments when they mostly centred around condemning the use of racist stereotypes in halloween and fancy dress costumes. Dressing up as 'default Indian woman' or 'stock Chinese man' almost always has the unwholesome whiff of racist cartoons about them, often only serving to promote absurd stereotypes, disrespectful by nature. If I had a penny for every time a kid in school or in the park pulled the corners of their eyes up and shouted "ching chong chang" at me, for instance, or for every "oh but what about maths?" comment I received when I said that my favourite subjects were art and literature... Even as a kid I wanted this stuff challenged. But I also never for a second believed that the way to challenge these instances of ignorance, and ignorant othering, (which is essentially what they are) is to fence off areas of culture to be the sole preserve of specific peoples, based on some kind of birthright.