The Ghettoes of Avonlea

 

Parks Canada has a new ten-year plan to revamp Green Gables to present “cultures not currently presented at the site, e.g., Acadian, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) … and new narratives, perspectives and voices.”

This is an example of real cultural appropriation. Anne of Green Gables, a cornerstone of Canadian culture, is being hijacked to present instead random ethnic subcultures not relevant to the story, that do not appear in the books.

This is as offensive as if, say, the recreated Huron village at Ste.-Marie-Among-the-Hurons were staffed by interpreters dressed as Anne, and the longhouses featured tableaux from Avonlea. It is disrespectful of this aspect of our shared Canadian culture, and seems to want to detract from it. It seems to want to make it something foreign to our own experience.

Anne seems still to be shunned because of her red hair. Gingers are still discriminated against; probably more than ever.

Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Theft

 

About Jill Biden’s Christmas tap dancers: I love tap dancing. These guys were pretty mediocre, and made up for lack of footwork by dramatics, flailing and props. Which is against the aesthetics of tap dancing, which is supposed to be elegant and understated, looking effortless. The actual taps also did not seem to correspond to the dancing: they seem to have been overdubbed, hiding any flaws in the actual dancing. But what really offended me was the website of the troupe, which made tap dancing out to be a uniquely “black” or “African American” art form.

This is what real cultural appropriation looks like: not just taking and imitating the best from another culture, which is simply how civilization progresses, but lifting something from someone else’s culture, then claiming it is yours without attribution.

It seems obvious to me that “tap dancing” is the American variant of Irish stepdancing, not much further from the original stem nor more unique than Ottawa Valley stepdancing, or Quebecois or Metis clog dance. Even in America, it is not especially identified with blacks. The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes have always don tap dance; Gene Kelly and James Cagney, both Irish-American, were among the greatest tap dancers; as were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Yes, there have been great black tap dancers. But can anyone share a video of some traditional dance form in Africa that looks anything like tap dancing?

For purposes of comparison:

The Zaoli Dance from the Ivory Coast bears some resemblance to the footwork of tap or step dance---but it was invented in 1950. The influence probably came from Hollywood to Africa here, not the other way around. Interestingly, one of the dancers seems to perform in whiteface.

Bill Maher on Cultural Appropriation

 

American Cultural Hegemony

 

Folks on the left in many lands, including Canada, loudly lament about cultural imperialism and the “hegemony” of American culture.

This is nonsensical. 

They also lament about “cultural appropriation,” of course. Which is to say, if someone else assimilates American culture, Americans are doing something wrong. But if Americans assimilate another’s culture, Americans are doing something wrong. Only Americans seem to have free will.

What is culture? It is a collection of tools for living; systems for creating the best possible life for a group of people. 

If you went to the hardware store to buy a tool, what would be the most important consideration? Would it be whether it was made in your home town?

In principle, everyone on earth should have more or less the same culture, apart from what is dictated by varying local conditions: the best of everything. If they do not, it is only because of lack of communication, lack of initiative, and prejudice.

What is American culture? 

Because it is a nation of immigrants, the United States has been able to pick and choose the best tools from many parts of the world.

When you think of American culture, what do you think of? Aside from works of individual genius, you think of pop music, with its heavy rhythms, jazz music with its improvisational style; hot dogs, hamburgers, ketchup, pizza; cowboys and the romance of the West; and the democratic ideal.

The rhythms of pop and the improvisation of jazz are from Africa, mixing with Irish and other European traditions. Hot dogs and hamburgers are German; pizza is Italian; chili is Mexican; ketchup is from Indonesia. Cowboys are from Mexican/Spanish culture, with a mix of native Indian traits; the word “cowboy” is a translation from Spanish.

The same is true, to just about the same extent, for the same reason, of Canadian or Australian culture. It is also true of British culture—not due to immigration, but because England is a nation of traders, who went out into the four corners of the world and brought back whatever they found useful. Tea from China, curry from India, potatoes from the New World.

In the end, of course, not least because they share this openness to the world and to new things, the UK, Canada, the USA, and Australia are not really separate cultures. The differences are trivial, and are diminishing daily with improving communications. 

The three things we might claim to be the distinctive contribution of the Anglosphere, not imported from elsewhere, are the concept of liberal democracy, the mechanisms to produce it, and the doctrine of human rights, one the one hand, which have deep roots but owe a great debt to John Locke; the concept of the free market mechanism and free market liberalism, which again has earlier roots, but is largely from Adam Smith; and empirical science, which we owe to Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton.

I do not think there is anything wrong, frankly, with foisting human rights, democracy, free markets, or science, on anyone. These are simply the best tools available. Not being of English ancestry myself, I do not feel oppressed by them. Frankly, I would feel oppressed by not having them.

What we have here is not “American culture,” but an expanding world culture. Its lingua franca is English, but other elements can come from anywhere. 

A world culture must have a lingua franca. Language is a tool to communicate. The best language is self-evidently that which has the most speakers; and we should all desire and promote one world language.

As our communication improves, we are seeing our world culture enriched by more elements from more lands. Fifty years ago, it would not have included anime, or chicken tikka masala, or K-pop, or tacos. Now everyone knows them, from Saudi Arabia to Santiago.

To worry about the loss of other cultural elements is regressive. If a thing is abandoned, it is probably because it could not compete with something better; and because people freely chose against it. This is a little thing called progress. Adam Smith, John Locke, or Francis Bacon could explain.

Megyn Kelly and Redface

Megyn Kelly is now in trouble, and has chosen to publicly apologize, for arguing on air that she saw nothing wrong with wearing blackface for Hallowe'en. Rumours are that she will be fired.

Here is another example of the clear and present danger to our democracy from arbitrary restrictions on speech. It is, surely, at a minimum perfectly reasonable to make such an argument. It must not be ruled intolerable without being addressed. Or we will never know whether it is wrong.

If it is intolerably racist for a European-American to dress as a black celebrity for Hallowe'en, is it then intolerable to dress as Mulan, because she is Chinese and your are not? Like Princess Jasmine, if you are not Middle Eastern? Like Santa Claus, then, if you are not Greek? Black dancers in New Orleans' Mardi Gras traditionally dress as American Indians. Are they being intolerably racist? Dutch Christmas festivities traditionally feature a blackface character, Black Pete. Is the Dutch nation so racist? 

I expect the response will be that blackface has a unique history of mocking and making fun of black culture. If true, this need not be obviously relevant to one's Hallowe'en blackface; it seems hypersensitive. But even this much is not obviously true, as this blog has pointed out in the past. The American tradition of minstrel shows in blackface can be at least as readily explained by a popular belief that black music and black musicianship was superior to white, as by any intent to mock blacks. Historially, minstrel shows were at least as popular among black as among white audiences. They were banned in much of the antebellum South as anti-slavery propaganda.

True, the minstrel shows featured comic characters, who appeared in blackface. But if you are going to put on a variety show, and the musicians are all blackface, and many of them also do comic routines, this is more or less inevitable, and would be awkward to avoid. To do so would seem instead to be deliberately saying something racist about either blacks or whites.

And when it comes to the tradition of comic characters on the stage, whiteface is far more common than blackface. The classic clown makeup demands both whiteface and red hair. Ethnically, whom does that suggest? Probably Irish folks, like Megyn Kelly. 

Why then are we not at least equally up in arms about this appalling racism towards historically oppressed northern Europeans? Why this black privilege?

A Compilation of Leftist Views on "Cultural Appropriation"

Grey Owl.

Reading my friend Xerxes’s column is a valuable window on left-wing thought. He wrote recently on cultural appropriation. This week, he printed responses from readers on the topic.

I am herewith appropriating their comments in order to analyse them. This counts as fair dealing, I believe: for research purposes and for comment.

Xerxes:

I got letters of support for my views about “cultural appropriation.” [He, uncharacteristically, did not take the usual leftist line, and refused to condemn it.] But I noted that they came, mostly, from white males. Who are, of course, the dominant social group that minorities and marginalized rebel against.

Me:

If you stop and think for a moment, that is lucky for the rest of us, and selfless and generous of white males. Just suppose if they started objecting to anyone else “appropriating” anything developed by white males, like so many other groups do.

Want a list?

Fortunately, however, some of these “white males,” at least, still believe in the brotherhood of man.

Xerxes:

X, who describes herself as “Dweller on unceded Algonquin territory,” wrote, “Please add to your analysis the context of colonization on Turtle Island. This is what matters in the recent debates. Not ‘freedom of expression’ or quid pro quo. Abandon those. Forever. Please.

Me:

Excuse me. Unless she is simply being incoherent, she just called for abandoning freedom of expression, forever.

No. She is a Nazi.

You can see what the alt-right is on about.

Xerxes, again quoting X:

… “At a larger level, please give up on reconciliation. It is a proposition fueled by white liberal guilt.”

Me:

Right. She is also against reconciliation. Instead, she demands “decolonization.” She does not say what this means.

She is declaring war to the death. Just so we’re clear.

Xerxes (quoting another reader):

“Our laws protect your words or your invention based on their ‘fixed form.’ They don't protect a people's stories or cultural practices, so the non-Indigenous have appropriated them and don't see the problem: after all, it's *legal* to rewrite my story in your own words or manufacture your somewhat-modified version of my widget.

Me:

Dear Reader is confusing two things: the moral aspect of imitation of another’s work, and the idea that you own someone else’s work because of your race. The first is just morally and legally dubious; the second is an unrelated and obviously immoral claim.

The latter is the claim made by those who condemn “cultural appropriation.”

It is, among other things, extreme racism.

Xerxes (still quoting the same Dear Reader):

“… those who dismiss cultural appropriation as ‘political correctness’ show a definite lack of empathy. They don't get the point that they may be misrepresenting what they appropriate, violating a religious taboo,”

Me:

Interesting to hear someone on the left express concern about violating a religious taboo.

Currently on Facebook, for example, I see protests against the Trump entourage because, in posting a photograph of the NATO leaders’ wives, they failed to identify as such the male gay “wife” (or “husband”) of Luxembourg’s PM. This is supposedly “homophobic.”

Does it not matter that even including him in the photo "violates a religious taboo" for not just one, but most or all of the world’s major religions? Matrimony, after all, is a sacrament.

Religious rights must be allowed fully and equally to all. Not just to preferred groups.

Xerxes (quoting the same reader):

... or even -- and this is a sore point-- blocking the way for the people who can tell the story from lived experience and full awareness of its meaning.

Me:

This is a classic straw man argument. Blocking the way? Nobody ever, anywhere, has argued that aboriginal writers should not be allowed to write, or should not be published.

Actually, of recent years, we have instead heard aboriginal writers complain instead of being taught English and how to write. That’s the residential school thing, for example.

Xerxes, quoting Dear Reader:

“… the reality is that it's (still!) hard for a non-majority-culture writer to get his or her stories published.”

This is perfectly counterfactual. The reality is that everyone is fascinated by Indians, and there has always—always—been a healthy market for anyone claiming to reveal aboriginal culture. An obvious example currently is Joseph Boyden. Do you really think he assumed an Indian identity because he thought it would make it harder to get published? Did Grey Owl? Elizabeth Warren? Iron-Eyes Cody? Carlos Casteneda (“Don Juan Maquis”)? John Neihardt (Black Elk Speaks)? Ward Churchill? Jamake Highwater? Hyemeyohsts Storm? Zane Grey?

For all of North American history, claiming to be aboriginal has been a clever if dishonest way to get published.

The problem rather has been a shortage of competent aboriginal writers to meet the demand. In the end, you have to be able to write. Even today, most Canadian (status) Indians do not finish high school.

Xerxes (Dear Reader):

“The loudest voices in favour of the ‘Appropriation prize’ were certain middle-aged white males not noted for sensitive journalism.”

Me:

This is a deeply racist observation, and a profound assertion of privilege. As well, of course, as a classic ad hominem.

Some are not allowed opinions because of their sex or race? Uppity white males, shut up?

Xerxes:

Y, ..., seems to have followed the controversy closer than I did: “It was NOT the idea of people from dominant cultures writing about non-dominant cultures that was at the root of the dispute. It was the idea of an award for such writing that offended people, and rightly so, because as several people pointed out, such an award would become another way for (mostly) white, (mostly) male authors to receive kudos at the expense, or perceived expense, of people of color and/or women. The consensus was yes, please, learn and write about cultures not your own, but no thank you, no awards.”

Me:

The problem is that the awards might go to someone of the wrong sex or race?

The author apparently believes that art should be valued not for its quality, but for the race and sex of the person who created it.

This is racism of the most pernicious sort.

The Crime of Cultural Appropriation

If  "cultural appropriation" is really going to be taken seriously, one of the first casualties will have to be Emily Carr (aka 'Klee Wyck'). It was her whole shtick.

The National Post has just run a truly demented piece lamenting cultural appropriation.

The piece’s hero, Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, is approvingly quoted as saying that “the Canadian cultural industry” has been “stealing … native stories as surely as the missionaries stole our religion and the politicians stole our land and the residential schools stole our language.”

The unspoken premise here, apparently taken to be self-evident, is that learning something new is a matter of losing something.

The solution to her concerns is obvious. Education is bad. Knowledge is bad. Why waste money on it? Stop educating aboriginals. And stop them relentlessly appropriating a foreign culture: ours. Canadian culture, which she has proudly identified herself as not a part of.

And we definitely should not buy and read any stories written by aboriginal writers. It is all a dark plot, evidently, to deprive us of our culture.

Note too the dishonest identification of the opposition as “the Canadian cultural industry.” The usual imaginary fat capitalists with diamond rings on every finger and in silk hats. The reality, of course, is that the targets here are Canadian writers and artists, generally not a terribly solvent lot. People who put up with a great deal of material self-sacrifice, on the whole, in the hopes of enriching the lives of the rest of us.

This is an attack on culture itself.

Peter Kulchyski, a doubtless poverty-stricken professor at the University of Manitoba, adds:

“By simply saying, ‘Oh we love your culture. We’ll have you dance during our Olympic ceremony. We’ll have you say a prayer before our meetings, but we haven’t actually substantively changed the fact that the economy is based on extraction from your lands, and we’re going to continue doing that,’ basically it becomes, at best, a hollow gesture and, at worst … your culture becomes something for sale.”

Right. No problem. No public money then should go to supporting aboriginal cultures. We wouldn’t want to convey the message that it was for sale. Government money should be only for supporting Canadian culture, and if aboriginal culture has declared itself not a part of it, it cannot and should not represent Canada.

Emily Carr, "War Canoes"

Problem solved. Everybody happy?

But note too the illegitimate claim here to others’ property. Kulchyski is not talking about mineral extraction on Indian lands, for which the reserve government is always well-compensated. They are even currently compensated, for no good or legal reason, for mining anywhere within hundreds of kilometers of a reserve. Kulchyski is suggesting that this is not enough: all Canadian land still belongs to Indian bands, despite the fact that they sold it long ago. And despite the fact that the bands are merely legal entities, corporations, their current membership bearing only arbitrary relation to the people who once held rights in those lands.

This may not be cultural appropriation, but it is certainly illegitimate appropriation of what belongs to others.

As to culture not being a thing for sale, excellent. From now on all books written by self-identified “aboriginal” authors, and all painting or sculpture by aboriginal artists, is free for the taking. It goes without saying, I guess, that no aboriginal person cares about money. 

Emily Carr, "Kitwancool"

No problem.

So what’s the beef about “cultural appropriation,” then? If anyone paid for it, that would be an insult, after all.

Keeshig-Tobias’s final word is “Your imagination comes right up to my nose, and if it goes any further, then I push back.”

An interesting use of the legal adage, ““Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

And telling here. Nobody’s imagination can possibly connect, after all, with Keeshig-Tobias’s nose. Unless you reject the entire point of the legal principle, she is in the wrong.

Rex Murphy, thankfully, has weighed in against this attempt at cultural larceny. Unfortunately, his defense is marred by an unfortunate ignorance of the culture he defends. This, by the way, from a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford. It illustrates how badly we have neglected it.

He points out, rightly, that empirical science is a European invention, so that any aboriginal who avails himself of its benefits while complaining about appropriation of his own culture is a perfect hypocrite. But he confuses it by supposing everyone is Italian (and not bothering to check, either):

“Were this not so, the Italians, whose illuminati Galileo, Copernicus, Tyco Brahe, Kepler did so much to beget modern science, would have a case against every PBS special on the Cosmos for appropriating their science.”

There is only one Italian on that list.

Then he seems to think that Dante is not Christian:

“Virgil fed on Homer, Dante on Homer and Virgil. Milton, saturated with a knowledge of all three, with Paradise Lost re-imagined the epic in a Christian context.”

Ouch. Such an idea would not be possible to anyone who had the slightest knowledge of Dante--even as much as the titles of his major works. 

Dante's Inferno

We need better cultural education in this nation. We need more cultural appropriation on all sides. Obviously.

My own final word: who here is guilty of an illegitimate “cultural appropriation”? Only, and dramatically, those “aboriginal” artists who have the gall and the avarice to try to appropriate to themselves an entire culture they had nothing to do with: all the works and inventions of aboriginal artists and thinkers of the past.

Any honourable person must stand up and resist. It is, truly, a crime against humanity.

Appropriate Appropriation

Newly-elected Micmac leader appearing in "traditional dress," 1971.

It is getting crazy back in Canada. A third prominent editor has lost his job for dissenting on the issue of “cultural appropriation.” That’s Steve Ladurantaye, editor of The National on CBC; following Jonathan Kay of The Walrus, and Hal Niedzviecki of the Writers’ Union.

Actual Micmac traditional dress, 1860s.

Most disturbing is how all three needed to publicly apologize for their opinions, before being fired or resigning anyway. It is all like the public confessions under Stalin, like the Maoist purges, or like Ingsoc in 1984. You had to die; but only once you had fully admitted your thought crimes and professed your love for Big Brother. Ladurantaye will even apparently have to undergo reeducation sessions.

Yet—and perhaps this was the true nature of their crime—the point made in Niedzviecki’s original editorial was just about self-evidently true, if anyone read it.

He pointed out that without cultural appropriation, it would be first and foremost “indigenous” authors who would be unable to write. They, more than any of us, are trying to understand and offer insights into a culture not their own.

Iroquois appearing at exhibition in Buffalo in 1914, with traditional feathered headdress and traditional teepees.

To begin with, they are writing in English about a culture the language of which was not English. In doing this, they are showing one culture through the prism of another. And the prism into which they are appropriating is Canadian English-language culture, not some aboriginal one. I think it can also be taken almost for granted that their own first language is English, not Ojibwe or Cree. They are writing novels about a culture that new nothing of the novel, a European invention. They are writing about a culture that had no writing.

Because it had no writing, we know little or nothing about it. We or they. Their guess is about as good as yours or mine as to what it was, really. They are, fundamentally, modern Canadians like the rest of us. They have watched the same TV shows, seen the same movies, played the same video games. If they write of a separate Canadian aboriginal culture, they are making it up as they go along, not reporting of something that has been. Any of us could do that equally well, so far as our cultural context goes.

Joseph Brant in traditional Mohawk dress, 1820s.

No cultural appropriation, no First Nations literature.

Choose one; you can’t have both.

Niedzviecki’s other point was that cultural appropriation is a good thing. Heck, it what fiction is in the first place: writing about experiences that have not actually happened to you. Accordingly, any objection to cultural appropriation is an objection to fiction writing itself.

Traditional Iroquois longhouse. Someone is making things up.

And so any prize for literature--the Nobel Prize, lets say—is always a prize for cultural appropriation. While the usual advice to “write what you know” is sensible—when you do not, you run the risk of looking foolish to someone who knows the subject matter better than you—conversely, the ability to write convincingly about a person remote from your own experience is the mark of a truly fine writer.

Let’s consider a few examples:

Shakespeare almost always set his plays in a foreign locale; most often Italy. This was a natural draw for audiences, then as now: we want to see something new, something exotic. We want cultural appropriation, and without it books are boring. Other than Italy, Shakespeare wrote of Scotland, Denmark, Moors, Jews, ancient Romans, ancient Greeks, ancient Egyptians; and did a brilliant job of always understanding them from the inside. That was his greatness.

John Milton, devout Puritan, famously managed to get under the skin of the Devil himself, and see the creation from his point of view, in Paradise Lost. An imaginative tour de force.

Jonathan Swift wrote of foreign lands in Gulliver’s Travels, including Japan and Formosa, barely known at the time. Sinbad in the Arabian Nights, Homer in the Odyssey, Apollonius in the Argonautica, Valmiki in the Ramayana, the Chinese classic Journey to the West, and a million other exotic tales have done the same. Starting with the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first known work of literature in the world.

Culture is cultural appropriation.

There is Byron’s epic, Don Juan. Byron could be accused of ignorance of the Spanish culture he appropriates: he rhymes “Don Juan” as if it were an English word. Yet it is still considered, rightly, his great work. And do you suppose Coleridge had really been to Xanadu, and met with Kubla Khan? And what of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?

Opera could not exist without “cultural appropriation." Aida? The Mikado? Disney’s animated fantasies follow the same formula: each an insight into the aesthetic of a different culture.

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea was another scandalous piece of cultural appropriation, which probably won him the Nobel Prize. John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, seeing life through the eyes of Mexican peasants, was made into a celebrated Spanish-language film in Mexico. Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel for The Good Earth, life through the eyes of Chinese peasants.

English-speakers can see themselves reflected in the writings of Joseph Conrad, a Pole, Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian, or in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. Did either ever strike any of us as illegitimate on those grounds? Was it wrong of Samuel Beckett to write in French? Western Europeans see themselves interpreted by the Japanese in Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle. Where was the uproar? Canadians have been appropriated in Proulx’s The Shipping News. I saw no protest.

And then there is the genre of historical novels. All illegitimate, then?

The aboriginal writers might have cause to be upset, perhaps, if portrayals of native people in Canadian or world literature were insensitive or prejudicial. The issue would not be cultural appropriation, but there would be an issue of prejudice. This is not the case. Thanks to the noble savage archetype, images of the First Nations in our shared literature have almost always been highly flattering.

No, cultural appropriation is a problem for about the opposite reason. The problem is that “Indian culture” as it exists today is really not much different from mainstream culture. Mostly just the experience of poverty and welfare. This is why the difference must be exaggerated. It must be artificially maintained that nobody can understand or write about it who has not lived it.

But the proof of that is simple: do they? And have they, successfully? Which is to say, do people buy and want to read the books? If they could not, convincingly, there would be no need to protest “cultural appropriation.” To protest cultural appropriation is to admit that they can. Indianness is a profitable field to farm, literarily, it is a current and popular subject, and has always been popular with readers, and so, out of greed, some writers want to put a fence around it.

But we should not allow that. Not just because it is destructive of fiction as a form. Not just because it is destructive of culture. We should foremost because it is objectively immoral. We are all brothers, and ought to seek to understand each other. This fuss about “cultural appropriation”artificially emphasizes our differences.

Jumping Through Hoops

Ancient Minoan fresco

It is, I am informed, no longer okay for “white” people to wear hoop earrings. This is cultural appropriation.

Students recently spray-painted “White Girl, Take OFF Your Hoops!!!” on a campus wall at Pitzer College dedicated to free speech. Alegria Martinez writes, in The Claremont Independent, “Why should white girls be able to take part in this culture?”

Another Minoan fresco.

Problem: the first hoop earrings of which we have record were in Sumeria and Minoan Crete. Both, for what it is worth, “white” cultures. By this logic, it is black girls who must now take off their hoops. Along with their jeans, blouses, shoes, glasses, and any plastic or metal. And stop using English, for heavens sake!

Is this what Martin Luther King was about? Segregation did not work well last time. And, frankly, cultural appropriation has tended, historically, to work mostly one way.

Sumerian jewellery.