Appropriate All You Want; We’ll Make More

The notion of “cultural appropriation” eludes me. If someone does something with the intent to offend a culture, then that is a standalone issue. Whether it’s a real issue or just one of oversensitivity is another matter, as people turn over rocks these days to seek reasons to be offended by other people’s conduct. And that, too, is a separate issue.

But if I make guacamole, have I culturally appropriated something? Is it bad? Or do I just like guacamole? And why shouldn’t I like guac, unless it’s made with peas? Guac is delicious, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to eat something that’s delicious. Or is there?

At Pitzer College, Latinas were outraged that white girls* wore hoop earrings, which quickly spiraled out of control.

Pitzer College maintains a free wall where students are invited to paint whatever they would like. A recent critique of white women who wear hoop earrings has attracted far more attention than most writing on the wall — and the debate has escalated well beyond jewelry.

College officials have seen and are investigating written threats — including some that could be read as death threats — against the Latina students who wrote the critique on the wall. And Pitzer’s president, Melvin L. Oliver, has issued an open letter condemning “a cycle of violent hate speech that threatens the safety and well-being of every member of our community.”

What constitutes “death threats” these days is also suspect, especially when expressed as “could be read as.” And then there was the Hampshire College attack on a basketball player for wearing braids, the assault of a student at San Francisco State by a black student for wearing dreads, and the bành mí outrage at Oberlin.

None of these involved anything remotely offensive, but for the fact that one identity group decided that no one else was allowed to enjoy guac because it was all theirs. And they believed themselves sufficiently empowered to defend their right to preclude others from enjoying guac by violence.

It’s not that they aren’t adherents of peace, love and tolerance, as reflected by their hate of hate speech, but when something crosses the line of their feelings of propriety, they’re entitled to be violent. If you don’t understand how any rational person could possibly see the world this way, then you’re just not woke enough.

But these are just silly, unduly fragile college students, impetuous and filled with the power of grown-up academics and administrators telling them that their inability to control their most infantile impulses is their right.  Right? Unfortunately, no.

A painter, Dana Schutz, who is no stranger to the Age of Feelz herself, painted Emmett Till in his coffin, and it was put on display at the 2017 Whitney Biennial show. Schutz, who is white, crossed a line and outrage ensued.

Is Dana Schutz allowed to paint Emmett Till in his coffin? Dana Schutz is a successful artist: Her painting Open Casket is part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, a show whose mission is to indicate the country’s cultural temperature. The painting depicts the dead body of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was brutally murdered.

The piece has become the focus of controversy in recent days; the artist and writer Hannah Black has called for its removal and destruction. She and many others have pointed out that black suffering is not a material that white artists can just make use of, like oil paint or videotape—an argument made in many debates over cultural appropriation.

Note the fourth word in the first sentence of the New Republic post: “allowed.” Clearly, Schutz has a constitutional right to paint anything she wants. But that’s not the type of “allowed” they’re talking about. Want some word salad with your soy-based faux red meat outrage?

In her painting, Schutz has smeared Till’s face and made it unrecognizable, again. The streaks of paint crossing the canvas read like an aggressive rejoinder to Mamie Till Mobley’s insistence that he be photographed. Mobley wanted those photographs to bear witness to the racist brutality inflicted on her son; instead Schutz has disrespected that act of dignity, by defacing them with her own creative way of seeing. Where the photographs stood for a plain and universal photographic truth, Schutz has blurred the reality of Till’s death, infusing it with subjectivity. The angle of the painting’s view is directly over the body as if Schutz is looming in her imagination. The colors are pretty. Looking at it is like stepping inside a dream that Schutz had about Emmett Till in his coffin. Since this case is one so importantly defined by visual legacy and competing narratives, an artist seeking to paint him ought literally to know better.

Hate Schutz’s painting? That’s fine. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about Schutz breaking the law of social justice, the ever-fluid rules of which are determined by the censors of identity. How dare a white woman, no matter how deeply passionate she is, appropriate black culture by her privileged painting of a civil rights icon?

An artist who wishes to work with such a charged subject needs to approach with unmitigated rigor in order to succeed. In her body of work, Schutz does not demonstrate a rigorous sensibility. In her statements about the piece, she does not show any understanding that her own expression echoes Carolyn Bryant’s expression, and erases the story of the victim and his family. When Hannah Black and her co-signers call for the destruction of this painting, try not to interpret them as book-burners doing the work of censorship. Instead, hear their open letter as a call for silence inside a church. How will you hear the dead boy’s voice, if you keep speaking over him?

There’s a chance you might have missed some words in there as your eyes glassed over at the strained string of meaningless words. Hannah Black “and her co-signers” have called not just for the removal of the painting from the show, but its destruction. The demand that a painting be destroyed. Because social justice.

But this clarion call for book-burning isn’t censorship, we’re informed. It’s a call for cultural respect at the edge of a bonfire. If it’s wrapped in a social justice bow, then it’s not at all what it clearly is but something uplifting, sensitive and respectful. Or else.

No matter what rhetoric Schutz wraps around her painting of Till, as she’s just as inclined toward the empty rhetoric of sad tears, white painters violate the rules of social justice by painting black suffering. Of course, if these angry black women don’t like deeply passionate feminist painter Dana Schutz’s painting, one of them could always do a painting that came from a black woman’s hand, which is the only thing that matters, that was better. But then, that would require effort and talent, and the only apparent talent they possess is being outraged.

Don’t like guacamole? Don’t eat it. Like it? Eat all you want. It takes nothing away from anyone else’s culture. And if you feel like eating it while wearing hoop earrings and braids, knock yourself out. It’s not cultural appropriation. It’s just delicious. Eat all you want. We’ll make more.

*It’s been a while, so why not?

40 thoughts on “Appropriate All You Want; We’ll Make More

  1. Ross

    Hoop earrings are a Latina only thing now? Wow, I bet my mother would be shocked to hear she was a cultural appropriator in the early 60’s.

    The whole set of complaints coming from allegedly oppressed groups is getting tiresome. Most of the complainers have no clue about what the real issues are, and could use a good Google session reading about the efforts of activists in the 60’s and 70’s to solve actual real world problems.

    1. SHG Post author

      But if only you believed in social justice, you would understand why all of these things are so critical to the Utopia of good feelz.

    2. David Meyer-Lindenberg

      What pains me about some of this inexplicable shit is the historical ignorance it betrays. Anyone who’s taken an archaeology or Egyptology class knows hoop earrings weren’t invented by “Latinx” people. Pitzer is a liberal arts college: what the hell are they teaching over there?

      1. SHG Post author

        First you steal their earrings. Now you steal their agency and lived experiences? I’m literally shaking.

        1. David Meyer-Lindenberg

          Even Shakespeare’s woke enough to know it’s Latinas who appropriate Egyptian culture.

          O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
          It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
          As a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;
          Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

  2. JAV

    Closest I’ve ever been to being persuaded by the idea of cultural appropriation were the Elgin Marbles. Everything else has been baloney.

    1. Dragoness Eclectic

      Considering that “Latinx” girls appropriated hoop earrings from black women… SJW hypocrisy is strong here.

      “Cultural appropriation” is a good thing; it’s finding things admirable and useful in other cultures; it’s tolerance and even love for people that aren’t just like yourself. If taken to its logical extreme, the argument that “appropriation” is a bad thing to be avoided leads to requiring segregation (or worse).

  3. Jim Tyre

    First hoop earrings, then hoop skirts, then lord only knows what next. It’s the road to perdition, I say.

  4. Turk

    For her next painting, she’ll put her critics in white robes and hoods, gathered around a bonfire of art works.

    Hey, artists gotta art.

    1. Vernon Rene Daley

      Hate speech is a crime and not protected by the First Amendment. By making this suggestion you are aiding and abetting a crime and probably a member of a conspiracy.

        1. TD

          I think (or at least hope) that Vernon Rene Daley was being sarcastic, especially since the only Vernon Rene Daley that comes up when I Google search is a California attorney.

        2. Turk

          Well, in Vernon’s defense, I looked at his lawyer bio and it’s pretty clear that he, umm, well…

          Damn it, I can usually play devil’s advocate and come up with something.

          1. Vernon Rene Daley

            Oh for Christ’s sake. Do you guys not get sarcasm? To be clear. Hate speech is not a crime. Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.

            1. SHG Post author

              That’s the problem with a guy who writes his first comment which could just as easily be sincere as sarcastic. Since nobody has a clue who you are, and there was nothing in your comment that somebody who believed that wouldn’t say. How the hell should we know you’re being sarcastic? Are we old pals? Do we know what you think?

              Poe’s Law.

            2. Vernon Rene Daley

              SHG: So your first reaction when presented with something that could be sarcasm is to go on Twitter and claim that a CA attorney doesn’t know anything about the First Amendment? Please delete your tweet, and we can leave the discussion here where people can draw their own conclusions.

            3. Miles

              Wait. First comment. Nobody knows you. Three elder statesmen of the legal blogging world all think you’re being serious. You say nothing to show you’re not.

              And you’re the victim here? Oh wait, California.

            4. DaveL

              claim that a CA attorney doesn’t know anything about the First Amendment?

              “I could give you my word as a Spaniard.”

              “No good. I’ve known too many Spaniards.”

  5. B. McLeod

    So when Musashi adapted double-rapier technique, he was “culturally appropriating.” The bastard!

    The poisonousness of “cultural appropriation” is simply a means by which members of minority groups can be openly racist, while calling it something else.

  6. Mike Guenther

    There’s a chance you might have missed some words in there as your eyes>s\s< glassed over.

    FIFY.

      1. Mike Guenther

        I was trying to strike through gloss and make it glass, but I’m a computer illidiot.

  7. DaveL

    Wait, I thought “Latina” was an ethnicity, not a race. Doesn’t that mean many of them are, in fact, white women themselves?

    1. SHG Post author

      This is why they don’t let you cisheteronomative white guys wear hoop earrings. You and your social constructs that ruin narratives.

    2. PAV

      Shhhhh! White Hispanics are only white on every second Tuesday of the month, or whichever is most convenient to paint them as horribly oppressed minority or evil privileged overlord, depending on what they do in relation to more victimy victims.

        1. PAV

          They are indeed. The people who make a buck on outrage, not so much. I’ll work on my clarity.

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