RE: Horror on the Horizon - Cultural Misappropriation and the Politics of Oppression
I think this is very important and a very interesting and detailed post.
I was thinking about this this morning actually as it came up in something else recently - I think it's absurd the number of people who get offended on someone else's behalf these days... people who take it upon themselves to be white knights for the poor oppressed individuals who, when asked directly, often don't care in the slightest.
Did you see the social media outrage over the Mexican Mario announcement? The response from many Mexican gamers illustrated this perfectly... they were really stoked to see the stereotypical icons of their culture (which these individuals did not consider offensive in the least) make it into a videogame series as huge and popular as Mario. And those who were so angry?
Privileged non-Mexicans who feel they need a soapbox for every little thing that can conceivably be offensive to someone, somewhere. I'm hoping this is just a passing craze and that most of them will put their energy elsewhere when they find something better to do. :)
Yes, what you are describing has become known as "virtue-signaling", which describes it pretty well. Because they believe the target group (Mexicans in this case) should be offended about their culture being misappropriated, they start trumpeting the social justice ideology so that they themselves look good to their in-group of social outrage warriors. Really beyond ridiculous. And no, I didn't see the Mexican Mario outrage while working on this unfortunately, I looked it up just now and read a few of the reports ... just... unbelievable.
I had to enjoy the comments here including: "As a Mexican, I would appreciate if white ladies would stop "defending" my culture. A lot of us believe it's cool for people to learn about traditions we love, sombrero and fiestas at the top of it. This people have already taken Speedy away from us, they should not take Mario with a Sombrero too." LOL
Your comment about playing white knight is dead on by the way, I will have to include that consideration in a future post. Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
No worries - I definitely stand firmly in this camp. Pretty crazy the way the world has gone so far to the left that it is now being referred to as the "regressive left", and what's happening in the way of blocking invited speakers from talking at universities (the contradiction there is hilarious), how white males are simply born with original sin these days, and how you can basically never do enough to a) make up for the sins of the past, and b) avoid responsibility for something someone did on the other side of the world, that you neither caused nor benefited from.
I really can't see this persisting for too much longer - it's a very vocal minority rather than a huge shift in mindset from a large % of the population. And it really, really doesn't stand up to reason (hence the recent attacks on "truth" and "science", particularly from those in the social sciences who are heavily influenced by (in my opinion very poor readings of) the post-modernist thinkers - leading to statements like "there's no such thing as objective truth", "science is a western construct", and "don't confuse science with truth" and so on.
Just absurd - taking theory about the reading of a text (death of the author, birth of the reader etc) and applying it to matters which are not subjective is just intellectually dishonest and a large part of the absurdity we see today. Where the most privileged and literally the free-est young people that we've ever had claiming to be part of some oppressive system - I really believe many of these people need to spend a year in parts of Africa or the middle-East then come back to their privileged universities with a real understanding of what oppression, intolerance and patriarchy really can be like.