Culture and Cultural Appropriation

 Culture

And Cultural Appropriation

by

R.E. Prindle

 

A current issue is cultural appropriation.  One imagines that that means that each culture has certain attributes that are exclusively for their own use.  Distinct somethings different from all other somethings.  On the surface it is a laughable assumption not too different from race, indeed, perhaps identical to it.

Perhaps contingent on the concept is that of ‘diversity.’  Diversity is essentially a concept belonging to the White race that classifies others by race.  Thus Diversity occurs in a White country when blacks, browns and yellows are resident within it, carefully separating those groups in compact indivisible unassimilable components.  Its assumption seems to be that White races are the norm and when colored races mingle with the White races that is called ‘diversity.’

With diversity  then come the notion of distinct inalienable cultures.  While the culture of the White races is universal that of the colored races is strictly particular to each race.

These concepts are in direct collision with the fact that when various cultures and races come in contact with each other they naturally meld.  Darwinian rules apply.

Historically in the US and Europe the White races have been eclectic.  Following scientific rules when Whites see something useful to their own culture or better they adopt it .  Thus, in the US where immigration has been part of the White culture, when immigrants enter the US they become a part of White culture.  White and Black influences can’t be separated, White and Jewish influences can’t be separated etc.  Therefore all those cultures become part of White culture.  Stone Mountain and the Stars and Bars are as much a part of White culture as are Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.  You can no more separate the Civil War and Reconstruction from White peoples’ memories than you can separate Brown vs. The Board Of Education and Martin Luther King. 

At this point Cultural Appropriation enters the equation.  Blacks claim Martin Luther King as their very own exclusive property and King can only be mentioned in terms of which the Blacks approve.  Scientific investigation is annulled and forbidden.  From this writer’s point of view this is Black peoples’ problem. I, and I hope other Whites, are not going to allow certain memories to be severed from our very vibrant culture.

So, with Jews.  Events in their cultural history have a significance that can’t be part of universal culture.  That is their problem.  However the relationship of Jews to non-Jews is a different situation and it can be explored and examined by others.  Thus Whites have a different view of the Jewish relationship to Europe and Europeans than Jews do.  There is no reason for Whites to abandon their cultural interest to please the Jews.

And so it goes with Mexicans, Asians and whoever.  No culture has the right to deny other cultures their cultures.  Difficulties must be fairly ironed out.

At the present time the culture of the White races is the universal culture to which all cultures and races appropriate key facets of their own culture.  English is the lingua franca of the entire world.  Western styles of clothing and dressing have been assimilated throughout all societies.  Western, or White or Aryan, economic systems are the sole viable economic systems on the planet.  Freeways are universal.    Ford’s automobiles are the standard terrestrial mode of transportation.  In fact, it is a Western world.

If one stands up all world leaders for a group portrait they all will be identical except for skin tone.  So, the world has appropriated Western culture.

As the world then has adapted a unique culture what can be appropriated by whom?  At this point the notion of cultural  appropriation seems laughable.  Certain races have even attempted to appropriate certain words for their own use even.

American Negroes for instance have attempted to appropriate the word ‘nigga’ as exclusive for Black use.  Thus while Negroes can use the word freely, if White people, ‘Westerners’ use the word it is a punishable offence.  Jews, Moslems and others have devised the terms in which they can be mentioned and the means of expression.  The others can only use terms of praise but any justified criticism becomes racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic.  The world in compelled to choose to honor and elevate all races but their own.  It is not enough to be neutral.  Therefore one must become Judeophiles, and Islamophiles and Negrophiles, Sinophile or else perish.

This is quite a turn of events since 1954.  The world turned upside down that year.  All cultural norms were disturbed.  While the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, in point of fact recent cultural mores negate the Constitution.  In fact, speech is circumscribed.

While White culture rules the present, White people are denied the dignity of having created it.  That creative effort is now decried as White Supremacy as though White Supremacy were a bad thing that can be disposed of, as it were.  As White Supremacy, as it goes, ruled the world for the last few hundred years that means that non-Whites feel inferior.  Now by as act of magic the roles are reversed.  To erase any evidence of that prior inferiority history must be rewritten, the actual facts discarded and alternate facts created.

Thus, while the true facts are that in space science while the developers  were almost universally White men, we are told, and the propaganda  is spread, that the success of the US space program depended on a brilliant Black female mathematician.  Without the brilliant Black woman the whole space program would have failed.  Thus both Blacks and women are elevated over White men into the genius behind the program.

To question this propaganda is to be ostracized.  Never mind that this Black woman must have culturally appropriated White mathematics and language she cannot be investigated or criticized.

And so it goes.  What actual culture will emerge from these distortions of reality will probably not be good.  Unless one considers Colored Supremacy a good.  To paraphrase Williams Jennings Bryan:  Shall the world be crucified on a cross of Color?