Cultural misappropriation
I really enjoyed this post by Jade on Wai-Taiwan: “Someone Else’s Stew.” It’s a nice piece about the cultural appropriation that all visitors take part in and how it can go wrong.
An excerpt:
Occasionally, it felt like they were speaking as “experts” about the country that they had (briefly) lived in and were outsiders to. At one point someone said, “I don’t know why, but [ethnic group] just loves to eat [type of food] with their meal.”
I cringed.
Several times.
Throughout the entire dinner.
Being mixed but also somebody who comments on Taiwan and its culture a lot, I think I stand as both an outsider and an insider. I come up with lots of theories about the way things work here and try to guess their motivations and history, but basically, my perspective is that of an outsider. I have done my fair share of cultural appropriation during my time here, but I think my experience here and my heritage helps me to seek out the least ridiculous of explanations.
That said, I think cultural appropriation is a process of learning about a culture. Our first instincts are to map a new culture to our own understanding of the world, in order to find parallels. This is a flawed process, but I believe it allows people to “fail forward,” leading to better understanding each time a dissonance is exposed. I think the problem is when you’re early in the process of learning about a new culture and you have to share what you know with others without really understanding that new culture – that leads to lots of cringe-worthy moments.
Categorised as: Feeling White, Feeling Yellow, Taiwan