A lot of Europeans find it weird how white Americans still identity with their European ancestry. Like saying they’re italian or irish or whatever. I don’t have any real connection to the countries my family came from but it still interests me to learn about them. Of course at this point I’m such a mutt it doesn’t really matter. I know my grandpa drank scotch because he knew we’re part scottish, I do the same. There’s some polish on my mom’s side and we would have pierogi at family gatherings, so I eat pierogi pretty often. I don’t do these things because I’m scottish or polish though, I do them because they remind me of my grandparents. I think that’s a good enough reason. Start your own traditions, build your own version of culture and pass it along to whoever you can. It’s fine.
i mean i sometimes feel like an imposter even though i have czech citizenship cause i cant spell czech words worth a shit
also i feel like a lot of ‘cultural appropriation’ in most cultures is frowned upon because you have no connection to the culture. this is a bit different from liberal cultural appropriation because they just say ‘never do it’. but if you learn the language, understand the customs, and are polite, most cultures i think of are super down for more people getting into and carrying on their traditions.
Yeah I have a challenging relationship with cultural appropriation. I mean obviously the pic in this post looks pretty fucked up, but I don’t think it’s necessarily bad for people to explore cultures outside of their personal backgrounds or even adopt some of the aspects they find interesting or develop some kind of meaning with. It’s good to call out when people do it in bad taste, but I think there’s a lot of shaming people for genuinely absorbing parts of foreign cultures and expressing it.
I think my biggest gripe is when white people become yogis or whatever to cash in on the popularity of an otherwise shit upon culture.
