Cultural Appropriation Revisited (WisCon 31 panel)

Cultural Appropriation Revisited was a two-part program at WisCon 31, a panel followed by a moderated open discussion. It was designed to follow-up the Cultural Appropriation panel from WisCon 30, and included some of the significant leaders of the online discussion that ensued after WisCon 30 (sometimes called the "Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM").

Program description of panel

82 Cultural Appropriation Revisited Part One - WisCon 31 panel

Politics, Race, Class, and Religion•Senate B• Saturday, 2:30-3:45 p.m. : Saturday, May 26, 2007

As part of an ongoing discussion of the issue of cultural appropriation, this year's panel will address what is perhaps the most controversial, and certainly the most discussed, aspect of cultural appropriation in fiction: the use or exploitation of cultures across racial, ethnic, or national lines. Writers and activists who concern themselves in their work with issues of dominant and marginal cultures will discuss the use in narrative of markers and artifacts of cultures that are not the authors' own. Should this be done at all? Where do the limits fall? How is it well done and how poorly done? Sponsored by the Carl Brandon Society.

• Candra K. Gill (substituting for Claire Light) (moderator)
• Yoon Ha Lee
• K. Tempest Bradford
• Victor Jason Raymond
• M. J. Hardman
• Nnedi Nkemdili Okorafor-Mbachu

Program description of part 2 (discussion)

96 Cultural Appropriation Revisited Part Two: Facilitated Discussion

Politics, Race, Class, and Religion•Senate B• Saturday, 4:00-5:15 p.m.

The panel on cultural appropriation at WisCon last year raised issues that were hotly discussed online, and the panel that this forum follows is likely to do the same. This open forum is meant to give you the chance to explore these issues and how they matter to you. Through passionate discussion we can improve our awareness and find the common understanding that lies beneath our disagreements. The open forum will be facilitated by Alan Bostick, who has been practicing Worldwork since 2003. Worldwork is a process-oriented approach to group facilitation and conflict developed by psychologist Arnold Mindell (author of Sitting in the Fire and The Deep Democracy of Open Forums) and collaborators. Attendees are strongly urged to also attend the immediately preceding panel discussion on cultural appropriation.

M: Alan Bostick

Links to reports, notes, etc.

• oyceter (Part One)
• oyceter (Part Two)
• ktempest
• Jackie the view from now

Report/transcript from panel

The room is packed.

Candra: I'm subbing as moderator for Claire Light, who couldn't be here, she couldn't make it because she's sick. She structured this panel to be panelist-driven. There will be 10 minutes at end for audience response. Part 2 of panel will happen after. A discussion afterwards in an entire different panel slot to hash some stuff out. Right now, the panelists will intro themselves, then a few initial questions and go from there.

MJ: linguistic anthropologist. My interest is that scientists working with other cultures and how it can be done ethically with respect for other cultures and whose agency will be involved with all this

Victor Raymond: I'm a sociologist, or will be someday. My background in this is similar to MJ's but also my ethnic heritage, a Lakota tribal member as well as European heritage. I have feet in at least 2 worlds. Cultural appropriation has personal aspect for me as well as professional in character.

Yoon Ha Lee - I grew up in U.S. and Korea. I started out writing Eurofantasy and wondered why was I doing this? Also I was on this panel last year and wrote a LJ post that ignited a very large response.

• audience laughter*

Tempest: I have an interest in this topic b/c of the Internet discussion after the panel last year. Also because when I was growing up I felt very much split between cultures. By the nature of my mom's work I spent times in the suburbs and among kids not in my ethnic background and coded as a white person and then there was abrupt shift when hanging out in city in school year. Oh you're just an oreo, etc. So sometimes I feel like I'm culturally appropriating when I write about black people. What do I know.

Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu Got my Ph.D. recently. (cheers from audience) I am really interested in this topic as the daughter of 2 Nigerian parents born and raised in U.S. Writing in tradition of fantasy and sf but my stories take place in Nigeria. What makes one writer able to product a type of fiction that is "authentic" as opposed to someone else? I'm of Nigerian background, and i've been there — but I haven't lived there! What questions does that raise of authenticity? The issue of boundaries and categories and what makes what authentic is an (...) topic.

Candra. In the interests of having a set of how we're going to take this I'm going to ask each of the panelists to define what are you talking about on a basic level what are you talking about when you say cultural appropriation. Who wants to speak first?

• long pause*

MJ: I guess I'm at the end of the table. Well for me cultural appropriation is the misuse of cultural info for personal gain especially to detriment of people from whom the information first came. For example, patenting varieties of Peruvian potatoes such that the people who originally produced them can't legally use them. *applause* Jungle medicines are a massive issues in Peru. Issues of cultural appropriation in Peru. (...) this helps us ... No you did it wrong. Those people's voices cannot be heard. And the reification that happens with English is that the culture gets defined as being what it was when the anthropologist was there a hundred years ago. Expecting cultures to be the same as they were. Any living culture changes over time. ... the museum mentality of cultures.

Victor: Who here has seen Dances with Wolves. I can't go anywhere without having someone say, "Oh, you're – 's son". Because my parents were leaders in that community. and when that movie came out there was a theater and we brought everyone in from all sorts of different backgrounds and one of the things was there were large sections ... Lakota... talking way too fast. "oh well that's interesting did they get it right?" In some ways they did. As far as my parents were able to report. A few months later my parents were in Omaha and they saw the movie in a theater and people were laughing and joking. And in Omaha people were sitting as if they were sitting in an important event, as if it was about the Important Film of the Vanishing People of Our Land. And I thought "Oh, that was a whole different experience for them." They were treating the movie despite (knowing its source material) as if that were real. That in itself is a problem.

Nnedi: Add to the definition: it's not always a conscious effort to do something bad to a group of people. It can be unconscious. The people who made Dances with Wolves didn't want it to be treated this way.

Andrea Hairston: They fought the Lakota being in. The subtitles... the movie producers didn't want the Lakota in...

Tempest: I'm still confused about what cultural appropriation is. Mainly because it's hard to have a conversation about it. Given what happened on the internet last year. People responding instantly "well I'm not a racist". *laughter* Examples I hear, things like the whole idea of white people wearing dreads is appropriation. Then it becomes a whole other thing because people start talking about their own hair choices. So it's hard to get to the actual cultural appropriation problem, because it gets mired down.

MJ: Any time two cultures touch each other there is an effect. sometimes the (tar baby story?) early contact between spanish and indian (????) bidirectional situationally described. it's complicated.

Yoon Ha: I came into this with a neutral definition: Cultural appropriation is the use of a culture's artifacts, whether for good or for ill.

Victor: It's interesting to hear the range people come up with and the concerns. some of this had to implicitly involve issues of power and inequality and culture as commodity. what we're concerned about is dominant culture use.

MJ: something... no value. If you have written anything about a language or culture then you must immediately provide those who gave you the information a copy of the information. No excuses about how they can't read it. Give the library a copy! It was said to me, "What did you do that for? It's in English, they can't read it! Tough. Anything I do, they get a copy. And people in the (central government) had said (Hakata) is not a language, it's just a dialect. And in response they went to the library and held up a copy of my book and said "Yes it is! Here's the grammar!" and I can think of no better use for my grammar!! *applause* And here is where agency is important. (...) translating the Bible. They have a policy that they will never share linguistic science knowledge with the people whose language they are translating. When I went to Bolivia ... Institute ... I taught Bolivians the linguistics that the SIL had done. so we ended up with 25 Bolivian linguists. My knowledge has to be of value to others or what am I doing here. You need an inside and an outside view! Both! That includes me looking at and aware of my own culture. I sponsored a Hakata speaker to become a linguist. You can only see your own if you can see the other. Attitude of equality among the (Imata), human / non human is the major noun category. If you behave like an animal, that which is quintessentially human - - - language - - - is removed from you, and then no one talks to you. You get absolute courtesy and no information. Years later I found I had behaved like a human. I have read old ethnographies that say the Imata are "suspicious and taciturn". This says much more about the anthropologists than it does about the culture they were studying.

Candra: How can you shift between cultures without appropriating? Can you?

Tempest: The major point for me was that cultural appropriation was not a bad thing. When inappropriate appropriation happens it's because of a person took the frosting off the cake. They didn't do research. In our first week of Clarion we had an incident. One student wrote a story set in some sort of vague future set in China. But it was based on stereotypes. On vague knowledge from (...) We all went around, this is very good and then we came to Claire but she said "This is all very offensive to me because you're dealing with a lot of very basic stereotypes." It was a wakeup call for a lot of us because we all knew (and were operating from) the same stereotypes. All the rest of us didn't notice it. That became the problem, that we didn't notice it. It took Claire pointing it out to us. I felt particularly annoyed with myself, because I notice it as a black person for black characters all the time. You can't just put in someone taking jive and expect that's okay, or put someone in your story who is experiencing the world just as a white person but their skin is a different color.

Nnedi: Positively appropriate. Say you're writing about a different culture other than yours, the main thing to do is to shift your focal point. With your own culture, you're in the center and everything else is outside. You have to move out of your own focal point, out of your own center, and view the world from there. That's what makes it so difficult. Research comes in! If I'm writing about Nigeria. I wouldn't feel comfortable writing about it if I didn't go there at all. I can't finish this novel if I don't go there. The focal point gets shifted. You need a little culture shock. Truely step out of your comfort zone. Not just imagining or research. Step out for real. If you don't you will end up wiht stereotypes and assumptions. Guessing what someone else is like rather than truely experiencing that thing. Shift your focus.

Victor: This brings up an important point. I agree with you 110%. But people need to be aware before that where they themselves are starting from. They need to take the time to figure that out. I teach a race and ethnicity class in a public university. The state is 96% white. Most of my students do not believe they have any culture. *laughter* They do. They are so close to it and so immersed and have no comparison that they don't know what culture they do have. We have to take a moment to remind them the world mostly is from towns of under 200 people. The authors might be of different ethnic origin. It's not their (the students') fault. It is context. The blinders they have on from the time they were born. Also, for them 200,000 people is a big city. For me it's a small town.

MJ: i've thought of appropriation as a bad term. Otherwise it's borrowing. Or influence. Those are my neutral terms. And the assumption of entitlement. That the people you are talking about have an assumption of entitlement that they are entitled to use another culture. For them, white is not a race. Male is not a sex. That is the pure human . . . and "we" can take anything we see. right? That's a very cultural notion. In itself it's the recipe that leads to misappropriation of other people's culture, viewing them as stereotpyical, funny, etc.

Yoon Ha: People think only people in a dominant culture are capable of cultural appropriation. Not true. I'm Korean-American. I'm wearing a kimono, illustratively. *laugther* I don't have magical power that allows me to enter other culture *laughter*

Victor (with mock surprise): Are you not spekaing for all other korean people? *laughter*

Yoon Ha: People are more hestiant to call people of color or non-dominant culture on their appropriations. And that needs to change.

Victor: Focus on people who are writing. Contact with other cultures, is it not possible to make something that actually works? When does it happen right? How do we do that? What works? Notice i'm not defining that "thing" (the thing that works)

Nnedi: You're asking how do you properly culturally appropriate?

Victor: Otherwise we're left in an essentialist position where we can only write what we come out of.

Tempest (to Nnedi) Go ahead, becuase I don't know. *laughter*

Nnedi: Shifting your focal point. How would you write about a different culture without having this problem

Victor: How can writing be informed by this problem in a way that allows a transcendence that .... without having to only write what's supposedly yours?

Tempest: Being able to step out of your own head, just another person not like you, whether or not it's another culture... writers have to learn to do it.

Nnedi: Everything I've written so far, the main character has been black. That's just where I'm at. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I would have a hard time writing a white male character. It would be really difficult.

Tempest: My early stories were written with characters who were not defined racially and were therefore default white. I found that pretty easy to do. I grew up in white suburbia because of that I was told I identified with white people. I was afraid of getting it wrong myself (writing black characters). Being "in" that other culture. It takes baby steps. First of all you have to figure out how to write someone of another gender. Right now i'm writing a novel about ancient Egypt. How do I write about a place i've never been and that doesn't exist anymore! Now you're culturally appropriateing a dead culture, which, who's coming up to object about that? Supposedly dead cultures are plundered by fantasy and sf writers because there's no one to object. Unless the ghost of Aknahton is going to come and kick my ass. *laughter* For example, did they have doors? Could you slam your door if you had a hissy fit?

Nnedi: As a writer I would not "just not do it" Authenticity. What makes a person able to write about something? Let's say I wanted to write a male character. Let's say part of my studying was to hang out with MEN. *laughter* You know? For several weeks! Only men! *laughter* Would I still be able to authentically be able to create this male character? For example Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone. It had a female character who I thought was really authentic! Some people are just really good at channelling other people. (...) I consider myself Nigerian but I wasn't born and raised there so if you look with a magnifying glass it all starts to fall apart. Then things start getting a little shakey.

Candra: Can we talk about authenticity? How do people respond in this context?

Victor: Who is doing the observing? Where is the granting of authenticness coming from? People ask me what it was like growing up on a reservation? I dunno! I didn't grow up on one! I grew up in the inner city and my father was a university professor - does that make me less authentic? If so, if I don't conform to another culture's stereotype of what my culture should be like, then I must not be authentic?! People's backgrounds are more complicated than that.

Aud - You have to define yourself. You can't listen to "them".

Victor: Essentialism. Problem. It puts people who are in the wrong culture in the pedestal. Of oh, you now have the moral force to say something about this. Well, yes and no.

Aud: Can you define essentialism for those of us (...).

Victor: Authority comes from a trait that you possess not anything that you may have some other contact with.

Andrea Hairston: That there is an essential group of qualities that define/delimit femaleness or Asian-ness that if you don't have those qualities, you aren't those things.

MJ: The verb "to be" reifies thing in an absolute sense. What IS an indian, what IS a woman, in an absolute sense. Quite frankly, this is all culturally determined and it's all in someone's head. My granddaughter is of Peruvian descent. Native to Peru (...) It was declared that she could not put American Indian as an identification, in the U.S., because she was not in a tribe.

Victor: The BIA, Bureau of Incompetent Americans. *laughter*

MJ: A lot of this has to do with empathy. How one can imagine the other. Knowledge of others. Agent rather than object. Nisi Shawl's very nice workshop on perceiving the other as also an agent. She did it here one year. All very complicated. But essentialism comes from the Is-ness of English. The verb "to be" is an act of violence. Back to food. Noodles and tomatoes. Italy. Tony Hillerman, mystery author. I bought his books on the Navajo reservation. He grew up with Navajo friends. Personal knowledge there. Authenticity.... Always Coming Home, Ursula Le Guin, draws upon native American cultures, in a repectful way, that does not feel negative at all.

Candra: (...) the ways people react. What Tempest said about growing up in suburbs. I also grew up in a predominanely white area and the only people who have told me I act white have been white people who mean it as a compliment.

All of audience: OoooOOOoooo.

Candra: And how that constructs things...

Victor: Candra you are absolutely right how to be more constructive. okay. *laughter* The problem here is one of, there are cultures in marginal positions and the appropriation that takes place... and that's a dynamic that changes over time. The 15th century Spanish were dominant. Later it changed to English. The problem here in terms of authenticity is so who's making the grant, who's saying that. You can be in the position since art is controversial, particularly when art is done well it is controversial, you have people who are the lord high priests of your own culture telling you that what you're doing isn't right? Then is that cultural appropriation in your own culture?

MJ: It's cultural conflict, which does exist also.

Victor: To take on the other you have to know where you're starting from. I notice in sf we talk about things that never existed.. as if we don't have to play that game.. that's missing the point entirely. Those thing we've created aren't for a galaxy far far away they're for right here and now. We have to pay attention to what culture we're in.

Tempest: Creating people who supposedly don't have a culture but in fact have that default american white culture. The Star Trek effect. There's some people of a different hue. But everybody the same culture. And a new culture, it's like some big revelation. Sisko on DS9 had a culture. And food that his father served to him and a place he came from. Who else in the Star Trek universe? Geordi didn't have a culture. Did Tuvok? On the island of black Vulcans he came from? ***laughter*** Not even attempting to have a culture. They just sort of exist.

Nnedi: Responding to people who question your authenticy. I continue to insist I am what I am. Black people calling me oreo and trying to act white. And then flip side, african-americans saying i'm not african-american enough because my ancestors came on an airplane not a slave ship. Also Nigerians tell me I'm not nigerian. I'm kicked out of every single group I could possibly be a part of. That's why I'm attracted to sf and fantasy. I have that freedom to move around and shift. You can literally shape shift into whatever you want to be. That's what attracted me to it. The freedom and acceptance of it. You don't have so much the question what race are you because you've got aliens in the mix. The insistance on not playing the game. Be who you are. I can partially but not completely define who I am.

Yoon Ha: Going back to earlier point about blending into a monoculture. I became concerned about appropriating. A lot of sf is not culturally diverse. It's less diverse than it should or could be. People become afraid of touching the subject. This becomes a vicious cycle. I grew up reading Piers Anthony or whatever. And I had no concept you could have sf and fantasy that was not white. I write monoculture and I write european fantasy but that's all i've been exposed to but we can't allow that to continue because it's only going to perpetuate itsef.

Victor: We have monocrops and now we have monocultures. Is there a test of this, how does one avoid cultural appropriation? Authors own attitude of first, be careful. Approach with no small sense of trepidation of how am I doing this? First do no harm. But if you have the sense of "Well I'll just pattern a culture on these people! " You might very well make a mistake. That's particularly important in sf and in fantasy where we use these pattern elements of other times and cultures...

Yoon Ha - Even if you've approached with the greatest of care you can still fuck up. You can still get it wrong. You can do it next time. Part of the internet debacle is people saying well we tried so hard why won't anyone give us a gold star? There's not an algorithm where you can follow steps 1-14 and it'll come out right.

Tempest: You shouldn't be afraid to do it .... so I won't. You can't say like, "Well everyone will yell at me I'll go back in my corner." People have to listen to criticism and htink oops I made a mistake and go back and do it differently Not jumping right into "oh I'm not racist" instead think "I didn't quite get it right, I didn't consider this angle, next time I'll think of this." Be wiling to admit that and to listen.

MJ: Every one of us in this panel, we live in the borderlands. Gloria Anzaldua. La Frontera.

Victor: People in our position end up being the cultural translators, interpreters.

Aud: bridges

Victor: In many ways people have places they're on a borderland and that's where we get informative stuff.

Andrea Hairston: Authenticity is an artifact of late 19th cent commodifcation of culture and minstrel shows and authentic Asians and authentic colored people. You (think you can) can recognize them . . . I get to be everything because I am white!!!

Victor: That leads us to some classic examples of getting it wrong. Al Jolson, Charlie Chan, Charlie Chan was never played by anyone Asian. The author locating themslves. If you are always outside looking in, rather than locating yourself within a dynamic context where you will say something and someone will respond.

Andrea Hairston: See (Sarah Jones, Bridges and Tunnels), amazing. She writes poetry... from many points of view and she plays them all... (http://www.sarahjonesonline.com/)

Audience: Anna Deveare Smith

Andrea: Yes!

Guy in back: Would it have been better if charlie chan would be played by asian person? Would it be more right?

Victor: they were treating asianness as an object.

MJ: and keeping asian actors out of jobs

Yoon Ha: But we can't act.

• audience laughter*

Oyceter: I'm Oyceter and it was my blog that exploded and .... dominant culture borrowing from minority then it's appropriation and if it is non dominant borrowing from dominant then it's different. When you are male and white and you are writing a minority voice there is the possibility that you may not intend, but (you may inadvertently end up as the sole voice for the minority culture. I doubt Arthur Golden intended to be the person everyone has read about geisha, but there you go.) (notes in parentheses reconstructed from memory)

Tempest: I as a black woman can write about white people. No one questions it. I get to write about white people without my authenticity being questioned but white people don't say I can't write about them because I don't know anything. White people have the privilege not to know anything about it (transcriber note: about not being white; while non-white people do "have to" know about being white.)

Questions now open.

Guy in audience: I want to talk about ally activism and oppression analysis space. The best place to start if you're from a majority group is go to a workshop on racism or sexism and get some structural knowledge and some history. I hear the panels giving caution but on the other hand don't be afraid. We don't want to homogenize any more. Operating in ally space. I as a man can be an ally by confronting sexism but I can't speak with a woman's voice (Transcriber note: A lot more stuff, I spaced out a bit) I could say so much. (Transcriber note: Apparently so.) Just one more thing. If you're white. If you're being called a racist or sexist or homophobe ... Rather than saying "no I'm not..." white people translate that in their heads to, "I am evil". (Transcriber note: More that I did not transcribe.) Just listen! It's not so hard!

Ellen (aud)  : The word Respect... coming from power and privilege. The difference between pos and neg is fundamental respect.

Jacie: James Bond. Brian Denehy ... Kubla Khan... historical figure... we're in 21st century and that should not even come close to happening. Look at Angry Asian man blog...

Victor: That's better than John Wayne as Kubla Khan.

Johanne: I appreciate how this panel is run. At Wiscon we're feminist aud participation etc when talking about cultural appropriation. It's all about white people jumping in, "I want my gold star I really love china I showed my respect." Poeple need to sit down if you're white and shut the fuck up and listen. I wish that would happen more. All the white people, let's not generalize, but all of them are trying to get Yoon's gold star. Let's just stop that and shut the fuck up.

Tempest: And yes I spent all my time on the blogosphere arguing with people about this and I run a blog called Angry Black woman. And I had to recently create a post on my blog of required reading. Cultural appropriation is one of the topics. People looking for same validation. Whenever someone rolls up I can say go look at this post, these 12 people already said that. When you're talking to people face to face it's easier not to get upset. In a one on one conversation. I wish on the internet people could act more like they act face to face. It would make for civil conversation. I'm glad this conversation started at WisCon and came back to WisCon.

Nabil: I want to give a tip. I ran into in a talk about loaded topics, which is the concept of a gravity well. Something dense, a gravity center nearby, somehthing we want to talk about. We want to talk about cultural appropriation; racism is a gravity well. This is useful. But not exactly on topic.

Candra: Thanks to everyone... and there is going to be a discussion in the next panel slot.

See Also

See also:

• cultural appropriation
• Cultural Appropriation (WisCon 30 Panel)‎
• RaceFail 09