Damn, I wrote an essay. On Facebook. About cultural appropriation. It took a long time.

[Bucky]

I just gotta share this. I'm a little reluctant to, tho, because in my experience Americans can't carry on a long conversation about race without blowing up or falling back onto thoughtless cliches about "what all black people" or "what all white people" do and are. So cautiously, I wanna drop this thing into DU for some reactions.

The controversy started over an article called "White Girls - Stop wearing Nameplates. This Shit is for Us". Despite the seemingly shallow title, it's a strong and informative article. Much like how corn-rows in the 80s got called the "Bo Derek look" apparently gold name plates have become a Sex in the City thing.

Being a dude, I really don't care or particularly notice jewelry. But then again, this is not about jewelry, is it?

[font face="times new roman" size="3"]Mabel wasn’t the only girl I knew who rocked a nameplate necklace—she was just the coolest. All the Puerto Rican, Dominican and black girls wore them, and each had their own special take. Mahogany, whose grandma Ms. Helen lived across the street from my family in a single-room occupancy building, had one with bubbly script but no diamonds. Another girl from around my way had a heart decal in her nameplate, and nearly all the girls had a thick squiggly line underneath—a clever decoration to emphasize the importance of what sat above.

Nameplates have always leapt off the chests of black and brown girls who wear them; they’re an unequivocal and proud proclamation of our individuality, as well as a salute to those who gave us our names. The necklaces are a response to gas-station bracelets and department-store mugs emblazoned with names like Katie and Becky. But most of all, they’re a flashy and pointed rejection of the banality of white affluence.

---

The first time Miller remembers seeing nameplates in pop culture was at the end of Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do The Right Thing. Ultimately, Miller told me in a phone call, “The jewelry has some cultural specificity to it, a historical specificity to it.”

The nameplate necklace was always a cultural touchstone of black and brown urban fashion—that is, until Sex and the City, something Rosa-Salas and Flower also noticed. I first began to encounter white girls wearing nameplates in the early 2000s, after the HBO show exploded in popularity. The series’ main character, Carrie Bradshaw, wore a single-plated version of the necklace that had a tiny diamond dotting the “i.” Google “Carrie Bradshaw…” now, and the search autofills to “necklace,” yielding results such as “Unique carrie name necklace related items” and “Personalized Boutique, Inc.: Sex and the City Style.”

---

I asked Judnick Mayard, another writer and friend, about whether she thinks nameplates are appropriative.

“I don’t mind white girls wearing nameplates. Where I grew up {in south Brooklyn}, it just meant they weren’t wasps,” she told me. “Now that there are more of them trying to look like pale Latinas, I’ve become sensitive to it because I’m so used to it being a sign of lower-classness.”[/font]

I strongly recommend reading this whole article. It's moving. But I'm still bothered by the judgmentalism. Who gets to say whether someone born white is "trying to look like a pale Latina"? That seems like a flipside, not an opposition to, the cultural oppression that the writer is denouncing.

When I objected to the thesis that there should be a racial test for jewely fashions, my FB friend, a former student of mine, wrote

I'd have to disagree with you there. I think yes, when it is mocked it is most definitely offensive but we also have to consider how we are viewed in Eurocentric society for certain cultural styles. How are we to feel when POC have a certain cultural style and are judged for it but a white person can wear said style and isn't perceived the same way by society. A Latinx woman in the US, would be mocked and probably thought to be an "illegal alien" if she walked down the street in an embroidered Mexican dress but a white woman wearing this, changes the entire context of the garment. She'd be praised for wearing something like that. Until we are in a society that is truly equal, I think yes, POC should protect their culture.

So this is what I wrote in response.

I'm gonna give this serious consideration, point by point. This runs really long (sorry). But I do believe our culture suffers from a serious lack of respect. So let me tell you a few things I believe first.

1- I believe in the right of the individual to, among other things, self expression.
2- No group should tell any individual "you can't" if they're doing something that harms no one

Wow, I thought I'd have a longer list than that. But I think "If it harms no one, do what thou wilt" pretty much covers it. Okay, here's the long-winded stuff.

1. "we also have to consider how we are viewed in Eurocentric society for certain cultural styles."

-- I hate this, but you're right in many respects. But what you're describing is cultural and economic oppression. I try to say this next thing nicer in a classroom, but I truly believe "fuck what other people think."

And, of course, that makes sense right up until the moment a Hispanic woman is kicked out of a clothing store for wearing the same dress that a white woman could wear and NOT be kicked out. So I agree with that premise. There are many people in the dominant culture that will find instances to use their power to abuse others based on race.

But here's where we part company. If you could wave a magic wand and make all white women stop wearing huipils, that wouldn't solve the problem of racism in our economy. If anything, it would make it worse. The slow natural cultural blending that happens between neighboring societies tends to erode stereotypes and "otherizing" of cultures and people. If you build walls, if you practice segregation, the first thing you protect is the friction and hostility that goes along with making people into "Others".

Understanding and learning from each other can (and has) over time alleviate racism. Resegregating will inevitably have the opposite effect. It reinforces the mostly bogus ideology that people and cultures are separateable and opposed things. Segregation helps racism. But worse than that, it breaks my Rule #1 by people how they can and can't express themselves.

"Until we are in a society that is truly equal, I think yes, POC should protect their culture."

-- I agree in principle here. But the question is "How?" Can you wall off culture? No. Fashion will spread. Recipes will spread. In the restaurant world, Houston is known as a trend setter in fusion foods. There's a Korean burrito truck that I see in the Heights. How can you stop that happening a million different ways in language, fashion, philosophy, and religion?

Cultures are living growing things. You can't lock them up from outside influences or stop them from reaching out and influencing others.

People are gonna blend, culturally and biologically. You can't cork that bottle. But you can call out cultural oppression, like mockery or stereotyping. But if I'm influenced by someone else's culture, that doesn't mean that I'm appropriating it. If I'm not harming it, if I'm not impeding it (because culture is living & growing) then there is no appropriation. If we harm a culture with mockery or policing or cultural genocide, that is certainly evil. But no Lebanese or Mexican was ever harmed by a Jack-in-the-Box fajita pita menu item. Both pita bread and fajitas recipes continued long after the fad went away.

The reality is, there is no "Hispanic culture" or "Anglo Culture" or "Black culture" entirely separated from each other. Once we share a city, we blend. There aren't clean lines along which to segregate. Trying to thought-police what jewelry people get to wear is a fool's errand.

My suggestion is, instead of breaking my Rule #2 (groups not telling individuals what they are allowed to do), we're all better off if we get at the real problem: the disrespect, the discrimination, and the oppression that poisons our shared culture.

When bigots deny economic opportunity, there are legal remedies. Before the abuse takes place, there can be education and raised awareness. But this happens at things like cultural festivals, where people and cultures and ideals blend, not in walled communities where they snarl at fashion trends by people with slightly different genetic lines (and for the record no real genetic differences--as I'm sure you know, race doesn't really exist).

When political oppression takes place, there are also legal and political responses that can and should work on. But the responses will work better if we cultivate allies by sharing our cultures. When my friend Oskar led a protest at Channel 11 last month for shutting out news about the DAPL protests, he had us doing an Indian prayer chant. If the operating rule was "white and black and Asian people can't do this thing" the protest would have been weakened.

When there is cultural oppression, respectful people should speak up. At a Halloween party last night, I politely told a white guy it was assholish that he was wearing a 'fro wig and basketball uniform get-up. Once I got the conversation going, two more people joined in and agreed with me. I hope the result is he does something not-racist next October. That little micro-aggression of mine probably worked because I said his behavior was assholish, not that he was an asshole.

I learned that trick of isolating judgment of behavior from judgment of the person from a white lady. But it would be okay for someone of any race to use that technique. If we want a less judgmental society (which is where bigotry gets its real power), we have to start by being less judgmental.

[Warpy]

1. You'll get flack from elsewhere, but brava!

There's a thing about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. If white women want to spend hours getting cornrows or dreads or wear name tag necklaces, that's their choice, just like it's the choice of some black women to spend hours getting their hair bleached and long extensions woven in. This is just swapping fashion back and forth and fashion statements do cut both ways.

However, there does come a time when imitation can become hurtful parody. Your almost-off-the-edge friend was in that category and I hope people got through to him that maybe next year he should come as an inanimate object or a bad pun.

However, fashion, especially street fashion, is co-opted almost as soon as it appears. My best guess is that the serious inner city bling is being stamped out in cheap brass imitations sold on kiosks in suburban shopping malls. Wearing these is appreciation of a fashion statement the wearers wished they'd been smart enough to come up with but are stuck imitating. No insult is meant and none should be taken.

There are too many really important things that we need to deal with now, like keeping the Klan's candidate out of office so that we can get enough USSC Justices on the bench to reinstate voting rights laws and overturn Citizens United.

[Bucky]

6. Agreed.

For the record, this guy at the Halloween party wasn't my friend and it wasn't almost off the edge, it was black face without the black face. He might've had a particular Houston Rocket player in mind when he came up with the outfit, but the final result was entirely hurtful parody, not a tribute to an athlete. I didn't even come close to making him into a friend Monday night. I got the usual accusation of being PC from him, but I also made sure I kept the conversation from being so heated that it ruined a friend's party.

Like you say, with the stakes so high this year, I'm more interested in winning arguments and allies than getting the emotional high out of a good chastisement.

[kcr]

2. You realize no one is actually trying to codify anything into law, here.

What is so wrong with trying to explain the deep cultural significance of a piece of jewelry and asking white people to take that into consideration when they choose what kind of jewelry to wear? Speaking of thought policing. How is it not thought policing to do what you're doing and tell them they shouldn't do that? It's not as if there were masses of people running around and ripping necklaces off of tearful white women's necks. Please.

It is much easier for some people to say, "Fuck what other people think!"

[Bucky]

4. I see what you're saying. There's a difference however.

Also thank you for reading a very long article.

I'll argue that writing a persuasive argument is pretty different than thought policing.

One thing I like about the article (and that is why I wrote that people read it) is that it does explain " the deep cultural significance of a piece of jewelry." There's nothing inherently wrong with asking people not to dress a particular way. But that's not what's going on here. The author does not then ask white people to "take into consideration" what they wear. It looks like now the article's title has changed, but the URL still retains the original command form of "White Girls: Stop Wearing Nameplate Necklaces."

That's what I was reacting to: the categorizing of permissible behavior by race. This requires the reader to buy into a raft of assumptions about every individual based entirely on their race. It also cuts against human nature to say "don't borrow fashion from other people." Cultural interchange is going to happen. It's a good thing; it creates commonalities among us. Trying to stop it is the work of segregationists.

And yes, of course I know this is not a call for a literal fashion police force. But is trying to persuade people to adopt a kind of fashion apartheid. It's something that I see gaining traction among intellectual progressives. They are right to concerned about cultural mockery, but wrongly don't distinguish between mocking and simple cultural borrowing. It becomes a problem of isolating the progressive message from more casual allies if we chastise everyone who, say, has a dream catcher on their rearview mirror for "cultural appropriation."

Blending of cultures is a source of dialog and understanding, which is the lifeblood of a democratic society. If we put up racial tests to things like jewelry, we shut down the dialog that can lead to stronger bonds and alliances. In any event, barring safety concerns, the rights of the individual will always outweigh the claim of any group to command their behavior.

[Upin]

5. If there were big walls inbetween clearly identified cultures and people...

... this would have more merit.

In the real world, cultures merge in every conceivable way and short of total isolation there's not much to be done about it.

It doesn't seem that healthy in the first place to continue to reinforce the separation of all these different cultures.

[romanic]

7. The whole nameplate thing is being overblown

I saw white girls wearing nameplate necklaces with thier Puerto Rican homegirls back when I was in HS (ten years ago). Keep in mind my hometown had only 21% Non-Hispanic whites, the rest were mostly Hispanic/Black.

The original article is just clickbait nonsense from a no-name author. Your friend should listen to you and learn that you cant "protect your culture" from other groups of people. That's not how culture works.

[cyberswede]

8. Those necklaces were popular in my Jr. High in the late 70s

I probably still have mine.

[LWolf]

9. I found your response

deeply moving, and I agree with it.

I will, when I'm done here, go read the whole article, as well.

This is one of those issues that can make us all uncomfortable, because it moves us outside our conventional wisdom comfort zone and makes us acknowledge points on both sides of an issue. I can see that some are offended by cultural appropriation, and I can empathize. And, if I'm not from the culture in question, who am I to judge whether or not it's offensive?

At the same time, if we are stronger together, and I've been hearing a lot of that lately, we come together. We blend our cultures and ideals. We celebrate both our differences and our commonalities, and we embrace those differences because seeing, accepting, experiencing more points of view gives us a stronger, more complete understanding.

When white people embrace aspects of black or red or asian or hispanic culture, is that disrespectful, or is it a way of coming together, and appreciating what each brings to our common table?

[FrodosPet]

10. I am SO glad I don't like wearing jewelry

It seems to be something else to divide us.

[Quantess]

11. Should women get to tell men they can't wear dresses or skirts or makeup?

How is all of this not categorized under "fashion policing"?

Do natural blondes get to tell dark haired people not to bleach their hair? How about blondes dying their hair black, is that offensive, too?

Where does it cross the line into fashion policing? To me, it sounds no different than plain, old, uptight, fashion cop attitudes.