The
Rachel Dolezal problem just won’t go away, mostly because Millennials won’t let
it go away. Dolezal, the former NAACP leader discovered to be biologically
white while she groomed herself to appear black – both figuratively and
literally – said in an interview two days ago “I was biologically born white,”
saying in effect that despite this fact she still
doesn’t identify herself as a white person. This has Millennials – those kids
always looking for something to be
offended by – up in arms (again).
By now,
we are already familiar with the glaring inconsistencies of the Millennial
thought process as it is perfectly okay for Bruce Jenner to feel like he is actually a she and grooming himself to appear this way despite being
biologically born a man. Now, perhaps this was okay for Jenner because he/she
was a celebrity (celebrities get away with anything as long as an apology is
issued when outrage is of a sufficient degree) or that the guardians of social
justice feel like Dolezal disguised the fact she was ever white, but what you
never find these supposed guardians doing is asking tough questions about their
beliefs. For instance, what exactly constitutes a black person? According to
African-America writer/director Justin Simien, “Being black in America involves a process of moving through
and adopting from many different cultures. To define what's authentically black
is virtually impossible, as there are as many ways to be black as there are
black people.” Presumably,
this would go for nearly every other ethnicity as well. But if one could define
a black person within the confines of one singular culture, is a black person then restricted
to only behaving as a black person?
If being
a black person comes with a built in identity aside from their appearance, then
so must every other ethnicity. So, if it is wrong to borrow from the black
culture because that culture doesn’t belong to any other ethnicity, it is wrong
for any ethnicity to borrow culture from any other ethnicity and the power
dynamic that is often used as an accusatory device against, say, white people, has
nothing to do with it. Accusers of cultural appropriation have long argued that
minorities such as black people have adapted white culture as a matter of
survival, but this is no longer a necessity in modern day America. So, this
particular argument of theirs is no longer valid as to why black currently
engage in any appropriation of any other culture.
Another
question that comes to mind about whether it is appropriate to borrow from
another culture is whether the culture being borrowed from is the originator of
a given practice. In many instances this is simply impossible to know. Even if
we were concede that black people invented rap music, they did it by borrowing
English and recording technology from white people. As Simien noted earlier,
black culture is not “authentic” but rather an amalgamation. (This goes for
every culture, as well. There is no completely unique culture since human
beings all generally behave the same; this manifests itself in our social
practices. This is, for example, why some kind of spiritualism exists in all
cultures.)
As a logical
extension to the previous question, we might ask if a given practice was indeed
invented by one ethnicity, does that ethnicity claim an exclusive right to use
such that practice? Let’s take hair-braiding, for instance. According to
various sources, this practice originated in Africa anywhere from 5,000-30,000
years ago, spread far and wide, and has undergone many changes depending on the
culture that adapted it. One version of hair-braiding, known in black culture
as ‘corn-rows’ traces its history back thousands of years and appears to have
been a sign of social significance and wealth at some point. So, African
Americans cannot claim a ‘right’ to the exclusive use of corn-rows (much to Kylie
Jenner’s relief, I’m sure). Or maybe they can claim a right because one is
allowed to borrow practices from the people in power, though in this instance I
fail to see what adapting corn-rows would have to do with survival.
Furthermore,
can one claim a right to the achievements of one’s ancestor? Doing so amounts
to thinking ‘we’ won the Superbowl when in fact you, the spectator, had nothing
to do with it. It’s basically riding the coattails of someone else. (Naturally,
people who view themselves as victims often employ this kind of historical
thinking to accuse those who are not a part of their group so that their own underachievements
look benign in their own eyes. To be clear, I am NOT accusing any group in
particular of this.) At any rate, at this point in evolution, no one is a
pure-breed anymore, not that such a thing ever existed for human beings. So, we
cannot accept historical usage of a practice as meaning that practice solely belonging
to any single group.
Bizarrely,
Millennials don’t seem to mind most of the things white people have culturally
appropriated from black people as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with
appearance.* If Dolezal had only acted black instead of trying to look black,
sure, she may not have gotten a leadership job for the NAACP but she would
simply have been mocked by black and white alike and forgotten. The fact that
she tried to look black without acknowledging her ‘whiteness’ appeared as a
mockery of black people. I get that. But the same people vilifying her are the
same people on one hand want to think of everyone as special regardless of
looks or even achievement, but on the other hand want to demonize whites for
simply being white, something no white person ever born had a choice in being. Dolezal
took her identity in her own hands – something usually applauded – but because she
is really white, this is villainous. And thus, the racism of Millennials is
exposed.
[*Nor do
Millenials care if the Chinese, currently the most powerful group of people in
the world, all things considered, borrow cultural practices from the U.S. As a
matter of social justice, shouldn’t the guardians of social justice berate the
Chinese for wearing blue jeans? Americans invented blue jeans so it belongs to
us! Right?]
As I
often tell conspiracy theorists, if you don’t like it, leave. But they never do
that because despite how horrible it is to live in the U.S. these days, no
matter how horrible white people unintentionally contribute to white supremacy
(? You hear this line often in these kinds of discussion), living in the U.S. it’s
still remarkably better than most other places, places where people cannot even
begin to have this kind of discussion.
It is
certainly one thing to appropriate a look or practice to intentionally mock a
culture. Dolezal didn’t do that; if anything she could be considered to be
mocking white people, if white people cared about these things. Black people
certainly should feel a little angry that they are under- or misrepresented in
the workplace and the media and are generally made to feel they need to conform
to Eurocentric beauty standards. Of this there is no doubt. But the only person
that can make you feel like your (natural) identity is being stolen from you is
you. Even if white people all started growing afros tomorrow, an afro on a
black person wouldn’t make that person any less black. I know minorities feel
otherwise, which makes it hard to understand why they don’t invent some other
new look or practice and patent it for use by their own group. Remember that it
is okay to borrow cultural practices from the group in power, so why not try
using the power group’s practices against them. Oh, wait, what? You can’t
patent a look or cultural practice? Gee, I wonder why that is…
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