A problem of authenticity
Every so often, articles
appear in the British press complaining the English language is being defiled by "
ugly" American additions. Unlike French, which has a body which rules on whether specific words make the cut of officially being part of the French language (i.e., Académie française), English is like Wikipedia: it takes contributions from everyone. The argument put forward by some Brits is one of purity and tradition. There's a resentment of another group has taken something a certain segment feels they have ownership of through history, and created a variation that could be just as popular, if not more, than the original, but done in a way without showing proper respect.
When one adds English words like racism, oppression, colonialism with the appropriate context to the basic assertion in the previous sentence, it takes on the controversy of cultural appropriation and whether it's possible to "steal" a culture. Instead of just arguing over words or the usage of words, it becomes a situation where music, fashion, mannerisms, and even food are sources of contention. On the one hand, the United States is a pluralistic society, and not a single monolithic culture. We are an amalgam of many, many different cultures existing together, whether in proverbial melting pots or salad bowls, to form a diverse collective identity. It's a collective identity which is constantly changing, evolving and growing. However, critics who charge cultural appropriation argue fundamental power imbalances (e.g., the assertion of white privilege) within society make it problematic when Native American headdresses become fashion statements at Coachella, or white artists use elements identified with black culture to sell tracks on iTunes.
Over the last few days, there were more than a few news stories centered around this issue. A now former Spokanne, Washington NAACP head has social media arguing over the terms "transracial" and "transethnic." And Iggy Azalea's music career seems to be teetering on the abyss, with long newspaper articles documenting how she's gone from hit singles and multiple Grammy nominations to a canceled tour and largely being rejected by hip hop culture. In both cases, the matter of it all deals with ideas of race, identity and authenticity.
Continue below the fold for more.
For the last four days, the case of Rachel Dolezal titillated both cable news and social media with a woman "being dishonest and deceptive with her identity." And apparently the deceptions and fraud allegedly go beyond racial identity. But the story has led to a debate online over whether racial identity should be considered as fluid as sexual identity? This particular line of thinking argues race, like gender, is a cultural construct, not a biological one. So if a man like Bruce Jenner can say he identifies as a woman named Caitlyn Jenner, and in an ideal world people respect and accept it, why can’t a white person say they identify as black?
If, for the sake of argument, Dolezal is replicating the C. Thomas Howell experience from Soul Man with the best of intentions, would she really be able to speak from a racial experience honestly? However, the biggest problem with the transracial argument, and what makes it a faulty comparison to transsexuals, is the racial identity switch can only run one way. It's not exactly possible for black people to identify as white in any way that will be meaningful on a societal level.
The issue of whether or not pop culture has "
stolen" from ethnic cultures has been at issue for almost as long as modern pop culture has existed, with assertions Elvis, Led Zeppelin, the Beach Boys, etc., borrowed/ripped off their sound from black musicians. Whether the individual cases rise to the level of plagiarism or not, the underlying predicament that people who believe cultural appropriation is real and a problem see is that white people can use elements of ethnic culture to appear different, edgy, and special. Except for some notable exceptions, white audiences usually won't embrace ethnic artists with those elements in the same way, reduce any message or commentary within those elements to a stereotype, or pop culture creates a white alternative that makes it "safe" for the mainstream. Hence the reason someone once thought it was a good idea to have
Pat Boone doing Little Richard.
A few months ago, actress Amandla Stenberg's project for her history class went viral on the web, including here. Stenberg presented a case which argues black culture is turned into a commodity to be used for white actors and musicians. And in the hands of those white actors and musicians, the mainstream embraces it as "cool" or a new fashion trend, where it's just a generalization to be made about an entire race when black people do it.
Soraya Nadia McDonald of
The Washington Post wrote an
exhaustive piece on the turn in Iggy Azalea's career. This time last year, Azalea had two singles occupying the top two spots on the Billboard 100 chart. Now she's lost her tour after
dismal ticket sales and facing
backlashes over past racist and homophobic remarks made on social media.
To many, Azalea is your standard pop music creation, who does the stuff written for her in the way which is commercially marketable. Others see her as just a rung above blackface, where a white woman from Australia, with a big booty that can be sexualized, goes out on stage and puts on a stereotype of a black woman's voice in performances which "share some essential genetic code with the old-school American minstrel show."
It was just a year ago that Azalea’s “Fancy” was being heralded as the song of the summer, but the past few months have not been kind to Australia’s most famous rapper. She was forced to postpone, then altogether cancel her Great Escape tour when she couldn’t procure an opening act. After being nominated for four Grammys, she failed to win any, but inspired many, many inches of writing from those who hoped that she wouldn’t ... An image problem that may have started as a dark spot on an otherwise promising career has now metastasized into a nasty network of tumors that could derail it entirely — some would say it already has. A highly palpable wave of schadenfreude made its way through the Internet when Azalea’s tour was canceled. It’s not just that people don’t like Azalea, or even that they want her to fail — they want her to disappear.
However, there has to be a line to this sort of thing, because the idea that cultures can't influence other cultures is absurd. And the level of how much bits and pieces of each culture permeates pop culture to become something different is enormous and ridiculous. As my Mexican girlfriend likes to point out to me, Taco Bell is not Mexican food and if we're being strict constructionist on the definition of "food," it may not even count as that either.
There have been white artists who've been embraced and popular within black audiences and hip hop as a whole. No one questions the Beastie Boys influence on hip hop as a genre. When Justin Timberlake collaborates with Timbaland or Jay Z, there's not a feeling of the performance being forced and it being a novelty. But if you get out there like Vanilla Ice doing "Ice Ice Baby" or Miley Cyrus discovering twerking for the first time, it comes off as fake. So, if there is a line, it's probably found in authenticity, since that conveys respect.
But where respect begins and ends is also nebulous, and the deeper one goes down this rabbit hole, the more it becomes intertwined with feelings, opinions, and gut reactions. About a year ago, Sierra Mannie, a senior at Ole Miss, wrote a column which was picked up by Time and caused a bit of a stir online. Mannie wrote that white gay men need to "cut it the hell out" with stealing black female culture, claiming gay men have no right to "either blackness or womanhood."
From John McWhorter at The Daily Beast:
It used to be that we said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But now there is new way to see the matter: Imitation is a kind of dismissal.
But does this idea hold up? I doubt it. If one is seen, and seen in an approving light, one will be imitated. This is what human beings do. The very faculty of language is, to a large extent, a matter of imitation. The idea that when we imitate something we are seeking to replace it rather than join it is weak. Think about it: Does that even make sense? It’s certainly up for debate.
Yet some will insist that we squeeze ourselves into the mental straitjacket and allow this as a “progressive” new take on what it is to be a human in a diverse society. But it won’t work. What’s the evidence? All of human history ... The claim that white gay men are wrong to imitate black women because they aren’t as oppressed implies that black women’s cultural traits are all a response to oppression. But that’s a reductive take on what it is to be a black woman, which would be dismissed as racist if ventured by a white person.
Ralph Ellison was useful on this: “Can a people,” he asked, “live and develop for over three hundred years simply by reacting?” So very much of what it is to be a black woman is simply being someone, being someone beautiful with a particular complex of cultural traits that simply are, for themselves. That isn’t something anyone can “steal.”