The Left’s new racism: cultural appropriation
Thanks to political correctness and multiculturalism, the vast majority of Americans and Europeans would never dream of saying anything negative about a racial or cultural group, other than straight white males or conservative blacks. As to those last two groups, it’s always open season. The rest of us, as I said, have been cowed. But have we been cowed enough? No!!! A thousand time no.
Having weeded out and duly punished all overt statements regarding race, ethnicity or sexual orientation that could in any way be perceived as racist, sexist, or homophobic, the Left was in the scary position of being without a further crusade against free speech. But really, it underestimates the Left to let something little like that stop them.
The newest crusade is the one against “cultural appropriation” (or “cultural misappropriation”). Here’s the sin: no white people are ever allowed to copy another culture.
Harry Styles, the heartthrob singer of boy group One Direction recently put on a feathered American Indian (no, wait, Native American; no, wait, North American Indigenous Person) headdress and Instagrammed the result. It was quite obvious that he was not ridiculing Native American Indigenous People of North America. He was, instead, admiring himself in a warrior’s headdress. The usual suspects, however, went bonkers, accusing him of the newest evil: “cultural appropriation.”
That story is a few days old, and I’ve been hanging onto it, looking for something else . . . and sure enough, I found it. A theater in Philadelphia thought it would be exciting to stage Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as a Japanese Bushido spectacle. Makes sense. For decades, producers have been putting Shakespeare in the Old West, the new slums, an imaginary 1930s fascist England, etc. Shakespeare, after all, has the virtue of speaking to universal human things.
The race mongers, though, were not pleased. A Japanese actor was absolutely furious that white actors would dare to misappropriate his culture:
Summed up: You racist pig, you, for daring to copy aspects of my culture without (a) using only people from my culture and (b) doing it perfectly.
The theater organization responded as expected, groveling and calling for dialogue, instead of telling Hirano to take his hypersensitive self and walk away.
My translation shows who the real racist is: You dirty white people, you. You’re not good enough to aspire to my culture. I disrespect you solely based upon your skin color. Who do you think you are to pretend to be like me?
I think that’s about right.
(Sorry for the brevity, but I have to run.)