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Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

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Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#351

Post by headcanon »

drumhead wrote: post #62

Adele, the singer, was photographed at the Nottinghill Carnival (a massive Carribean street festival over the August bank holiday in London) with her hair in Bantu Knots and wearing a bikini top in the colours of the Jamaican flag. As soon as it was on twitter the you started getting tweets from Black Americans about cultural appropriation, but this was met in turn by fierce opposition from African and Carribean post…

What is appropriate to adapt from a particular culture is itself a cultural issue. The reason this is an issue here in America is because of the problematic ways that we adopted elements of other cultures in racist and demeaning ways, without understanding the deeper meaning behind them.

Some examples:

- Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Black Americans were historically referred to as "Boy" "Girl", or "little" as a demeaning statement of class. "Auntie" and "Uncle" were reserved for older Blacks for the same reason. Use of Black figures as mascots for these brands is a form of cultural appropriation. [1]

- Cleveland Indians logo (other sports teams as well).

- People wearing Sioux (Lakotan) headdresses as fashion statements, which is offensive because that was a thing you had to earn in that culture.

Americans (and literally every culture) appropriates everything from food to clothes to language. Thats not inherently bad. It gets bad when you commercialize and propagate negative stereotypes about cultures that you have historically subjugated.

However, nuance is hard. So on twitter we have people who have embraced the mantra "Cultural Appropriation is bad" and go about shaming every little example of it without understanding the deeper meaning behind them (see what I did there? We're not that different than what we hate). This culture of shaming is itself a form of cultural imperialism.

[1]: https://www.blackvoicenews.com/2008/01/24/boy-uncle-and-aunt...

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#352

Post by caffeine »

dafoex wrote: post #267
luckylion wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The melting pot metaphor was replaced by a salad bowl, wasn't it? Assimilation (which is the melting pot) is now considered a crime against humanity and the whole "separate but equal" is the new hotness.

And you can't argue with salad because its healthy, and we are too fat, and we aught to be trying to live longer lives even though there's no incentive for most of us to prolong our misery.

I hope you don't mean that!

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#353

Post by Udik »

onion2k wrote: post #75
HowFarFallen wrote: post #26

>I have privilege as a White person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice about it … I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery). I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean and #AtatianaJefferson). I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#Jonathan Ferrell and #RenishaMcBride). I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark). I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards). I can play loud mu…

But why is it so common in the BLM movement to rally behind violent criminals on the receiving end of justifiable responses? Are you seriously trying to assert that ending someone's life is a justifiable response to them shoplifting or trespassing? No doubt these are crimes, and the people doing them should not have been doing them, but the suggestion that the inevitable outcome is someone dying is completely ridicul…

> they never don't end up getting killed. That only seems to happen in the US

But then is the problem racism or simply police violence, which is both a product and a demand of the whole of American society?

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#354

Post by caffeine »

secondcoming wrote: post #115
vergessenmir wrote: post #18

I'm not sure that american views are being imposed on US (I'm in the UK). Rather they are being adopted by us without criticism. This makes conversation about race a confused jumbled incoherent mess. The bigger problem as I see it is more class-oriented than race centric. This should be a discussion on social mobility, which in my opinion is the best in the western world for minority communities. The race discourse i…

Adopted or pushed? The BBC is fully on board with importing the US leftist narrative.

Not sure why this accurate observation is being downvoted?

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#355

Post by human_person »

drumhead wrote: post #62

Adele, the singer, was photographed at the Nottinghill Carnival (a massive Carribean street festival over the August bank holiday in London) with her hair in Bantu Knots and wearing a bikini top in the colours of the Jamaican flag. As soon as it was on twitter the you started getting tweets from Black Americans about cultural appropriation, but this was met in turn by fierce opposition from African and Carribean post…

I think context is really key here. A friend (who is a descendant of slaves) once told me that one reason hairstyles in particular are are such a sensitive subject, they were literally the only piece of culture/heritage people were able to bring with them on slave ships.

When families were ripped apart it it was a connection/ritual they could hold onto no matter what. Fast forward to the recent past and black people are still discriminated against because of their hairstyles. Some progress has been made in the past decade[0] but black women are still told their natural hair is unprofessional or unattractive and they are required to spend large amounts of $$, time and pain (styling techniques often require high heat/caustic chemicals) in order to be acceptable to corporate America.

Can you imagine the frustration of then watching wealthy white women be celebrated/complimented for adopting these hairstyles? One of the only cultural links you have to your ancestors, hairstyles you've been discriminated against, punished, and harassed for wearing?

[0] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/19/more-stat...

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#356

Post by blaser-waffle »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #254
coldtea wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn't. American I presume? You have full rights to use elements of our culture from this here part of Europe (not that you ever asked our permission, you use them anyway. But it's not like we care either...).

No, your presumption is wrong and I'm Scottish. Everybody has the absolute right to use elements of others' cultures – and using them in a disrespectful or exploitative manner is something that I find distasteful and think its reasonable to object to.

Define disrespectful and exploitative.

There are some obvious cases that I think no one on HN would argue. But to use an example from above, Adele had a Caribbean-style look, and definitely got press and clicks because of it -- indirect, but definitely profiting. Is that exploitative?

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#357

Post by charlescearl »

oedmarap wrote: post #209
drumhead wrote: post #62

Adele, the singer, was photographed at the Nottinghill Carnival (a massive Carribean street festival over the August bank holiday in London) with her hair in Bantu Knots and wearing a bikini top in the colours of the Jamaican flag. As soon as it was on twitter the you started getting tweets from Black Americans about cultural appropriation, but this was met in turn by fierce opposition from African and Carribean post…

I'm from the Caribbean and I can attest to this. We're always baffled at the neuroticism of America's obsession with identity politics and tribalism, especially as it relates to race and culture. In my country for example we have six distinct races/ethnicities, from indigenous to post-colonial. When either has a celebration or period of cultural remembrance, we openly dress, cook, and celebrate in the same manner. Th…

My spouse grew up in Botswana. Despite living a few miles from the site of the first known location of a religious ceremony of our species —- in other words a place of transcendent human history, of Black history —- it was always the colonizer centered in her formal schooling. An anecdote that in my experience in the Caribbean and in Africa ( I am most familiar with southern Africa) the process of decolonization still has so very far to go.

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#358

Post by JdeBP »

ccapo wrote: post #285
doctor_eval wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an attempt to lighten the mood a little, I would just like to relate a quick story about a restaurant I saw while visiting Liverpool many years ago. It was called, "Jamaican me Hungry". :)

Was it a Jamaican and Hungarian restaurant, because that would be awesome! I would try a Jerk Chicken Goulash in a heartbeat.

Carribbean, and it appears to be a Raggas franchise now.

* https://www.raggas.co.uk/

Lark Lane, Liverpool seems quite apposite here. Two Turkish restaurants, an Italian-American one, a Mediterranean one, a Thai one, three Chinese takeaways, a burger place, an Indian restaurant, a Tandoori house, a pizza place, a middle-eastern restaurant, a Greek restaurant, and two bistros.

One of the takeaways is a vegan "Chinese chippy" named Woo Tan Scran.

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scran#English

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#359

Post by charlescearl »

I think that the article was so insightful in complexifying the experience of racism that Black people still encounter across this planet. There are a 100 million ways of existing in a Black body in this world. I am reading Yaa Gyasi’s amazing novel Transcendent Kingdom which in a semi-autobiographical way, explores the complexity of a Ghanaian scientist who grew up in a Pentecostal family in Alabama. I would also recommend listening to the author’s recent Fresh Air interview. There are many threads here in the manner of “the American obsession with racism”. Different does not mean “does not exist”. I wonder if the commenters have digested C.L.R. James or Walter Rodney. Haiti is still waiting on reparations from France, Namibia is still waiting on reparations from Germany for genocide. The list is long.

Re: Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

#360

Post by kgabis »

gambiting wrote: post #345
kgabis wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need slaves from Africa if you can enslave your own people through serfdom.

In Poland pretty much all land owners, anyone of any wealth and intelligentsia were killed either by the Nazis or the Soviets. It's as if the US had a purge 70 years ago and anyone of any means was killed or sent to a labour camp. US still reaps the benefits of both slavery and the past and ongoing discrimination of its minorities - Poland on the other hand does not. First the Partitions of Poland have erased the cou…

I'm not blaming Poles for it (being a Pole myself), just making an observation.
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