Ethnicity and culture: Difference between revisions

Ethnicity and culture (edit)

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 Cultural appropriation generally refers to a white person taking something that should only belong to people of color. Generally speaking, the reverse is not cultural appropriation: identities that originated among white people are available for anyone to adopt. This is because cultural appropriation is generally a problem of white oppressors taking substance away from oppressed people of color for their own use. An oppressed people can't do comparable harm to their oppressors. However, it is still a problem for people of color to appropriate from the cultures of different groups of people of color. For example, an African-American nonbinary person is not entitled to call themself Two-Spirit, as this identity can only be adopted by Native Americans. That case is still cultural appropriation.
-It's important to be sensitive to people who seem to be doing cultural appropriation, because while some cases of cultural recognition are easy to recognize, other cases can be complicated and unclear. Sometimes there is dispute about whether a word belongs only to a certain culture, and if so, to which. The word "boi" has many meanings in different groups, and there are currently people of all ethnic backgrounds who call themselves by that word. A person who studies language and tells people how they should talk (a prescriptivist linguist) would say the word should still only be adopted by African-Americans, and that white people using it are very wrong. A different kind of linguist, who documents how language is used, without telling people what to do (a descriptivist linguist), would have a different view. A prescriptivist linguist would say "boi" has had a change in meaning and use, called semantic drift. Another dispute is about the name and description of the nonbinary gender identity [[pangender]], for people who say they have all genders. Critics express the concern that this means that person also has all ethnic genders. Otherwise, such a person should only say they have "many genders," and call themself [[multigender]]. Supporters of the word "pangender" say that by "all genders," they only mean all the genders that they're entitled to, within their own ethnicity and culture.
+Sometimes there is dispute about whether a word belongs only to a certain culture, and if so, to which. The word "boi" has many meanings in different groups, and there are currently people of all ethnic backgrounds who call themselves by that word. A person who studies language and tells people how they should talk (a prescriptivist linguist) may say the word should still only be used by African-Americans. A different kind of linguist, who documents how language is used, without telling people what to do (a descriptivist linguist), would have a different view. Another dispute is about the name and description of the nonbinary gender identity [[pangender]] ("pan" meaning all). Critics express the concern that this means that person also has all ethnic genders. Otherwise, such a person should only say they have "many genders," and call themself [[multigender]]. Supporters of the word "pangender" say that by "all genders," they only mean all the genders that they're entitled to, within their own ethnicity and culture.
 People can do cultural appropriation by accident, not knowing or thinking enough about it. For example, a nonbinary person can easily make up the word "Two-Spirit" or "third gender" for themself, without knowing that these words already had another meaning. It could be an innocent coincidence. Once that person finds out, the right thing to do is to let go of those words, and take up different words for themself.