This is the second of a three-part conversation about outrage. In the first installment, we discussed  the letter that UChicago sent to freshmen in August of last year in which it stated its position against trigger warnings and safe spaces. Here we consider writer Lionel Shriver’s declaration at the Brisbane Writer’s festival last October, “I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad.”

In a few weeks, we will round out the conversation with a look at Disney’s representation of Maui, the demi-god, which has been accused by some as perpetuating negative stereotypes of Polynesian bodies.

October 2016: Lionel Shriver—How one speech, good or bad, shouldn’t dominate the entire conversation

Monica: The last time we talked about cultural appropriation, we called out J.K. Rowling for being well-intended but appropriative and relatively ignorant of native American culture. Award-winning writer Lionel Shriver’s just announced, “I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad.” Thoughts?

Social media is making people hysterical

Nwando: I haven’t read the full article in detail, but I have to say I am in agreement with the sentiment. I feel totally worn out with the issue of cultural appropriation. What annoys me is people taking it to an absurd level.

Recently there were Black Lives Matters protests in London and some protesters were arrested. They were white. That prompted Lee Jasper, the race relations activist, to say, “It’s cultural appropriation. Even our struggle is no longer our own.” I can’t even get into how ridiculous this is—the idea that people of different races cannot support each other’s struggles—whatever happened to solidarity?

Or people criticising white people for wearing Dashikis to Afro Punk. It’s just ridiculous. At Nigerian weddings, we invite non-Nigerians to wear the “traditional” dress (which is not really traditional in any real sense—on the contrary I think the Nigerian traditional is pretty avant garde, with prints and styles constantly changing depending on which generation wears it). And I’ve been invited to do the same at Indian weddings. It is a celebration of each other’s cultures. And this is something some people can’t see anymore.

Cultural appropriation as an issue is a social media pitchfork-fest because it’s visual and easy to share and for most people, not important or heavy enough to really be a long-standing issue in their lives.

Shifting the focus from outrage to accuracy

Shruti: The more I see these articles of safe spaces and cultural appropriation the more I realize teaching people math does not teach them that the social sciences too requires a similar degree of accuracy.

These terms have now become like depression, thyroid dysfunction and coeliac disease in medicine. Everyone seems to think they have it. “Feeling” that you have it is seen as enough of a reason to declare you are depressed, to cut down gluten, or to blame your thyroid for weight gain. The counter response is to almost always discredit the entire condition all together, as if that is any more logical.  

The only difference is that cultural wounds won’t kill you like ignoring your thyroid till it completely dysfunctions or stuffing gluten in a coeliac’s mouth. At least not literally. Having said that, I find it handy to revisit the definitions of these concepts to see if what I am seeing are actually examples of coeliac disease or an irrational fear of grain—a lame duck justification for mindlessly adopting the latest nutrition fad. So here is a quick primer on the meaning and origins of cultural appropriation.

I happen to agree, though, with both Nwando and the Guardian article about how this has become a tool to stifle any free exchange of ideas and how people have become a bit ridiculous in calling anything and everything cultural appropriation, probably because of a combination of intellectual laziness and a desire to give more credit to a knee jerk reaction than it really deserves.

But I don’t think dismissing the concept will actually solve the problem, and it might exacerbate it. If the humanists who coined these terms required the same rigour clinical psychologists adhere to when diagnosing depression, though, it might discourage this lazy and absurd misuse of terms that are meant to represent something far more serious than white protestors being arrested at a BLM rally.

Hyperbole aside, representation in publishing is a real and thorny issue

Okka: The speech became notorious because of this article, which I happen to agree with. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s not always OK if a white guy writes the story of a Nigerian woman because the actual Nigerian woman can’t get published or reviewed to begin with. It’s not always OK if a straight white woman writes the story of a queer Indigenous man, because when was the last time you heard a queer Indigenous man tell his own story? How is it that said straight white woman will profit from an experience that is not hers, and those with the actual experience never be provided the opportunity? It’s not always OK for a person with the privilege of education and wealth to write the story of a young Indigenous man, filtering the experience of the latter through their own skewed and biased lens, telling a story that likely reinforces an existing narrative which only serves to entrench a disadvantage they need never experience.”

It helps to read both pieces in full.

We have SUCH an underrepresentation of brown and black writers here in the UK, and in Western publishing generally—THAT is why this matters. I completely stand behind this writer who walked out of Lionel’s speech.

Nwando: So I read the blog piece from the person who walked out. Urgggheeedmmm. My brain is really turning round and round on this.

I’m very into this guy Akimbo Comics at the moment. He is a white doctor based in the US who writes these amazing comics. And along with Ben Okri and Angela Carter he writes stories that I just feel are about my life—the deep stuff of my life—not what I wear and what music I dance to. And I love it when he has black women in the comics because I love to see people who look like me in comics, in sci fi and fantasy. I complain about this when I don’t see black women in fantasy and sci fi: it pisses me off.

I want representations of black women in outer space and in fantastical world, so I want writers who aren’t black women to write about people who look like me and have my history. I want that as much as possible. Some people will do a good job of this and some people won’t—some people are better writers than others.

I feel like it’s a separate argument—the issue that not enough black and brown (and female and LGBTQ and disabled and non-western) aren’t being allowed to come through. I don’t think the fact that white writers writing a black female character is the thing that is stopping black writers getting in the writing rooms. In fact I’d guess (on no evidence, just my hunch) that it actually helps. I think it helps that Disney has made its first film set in Africa. I think things like this open things up. It’s not ideal.

I just don’t think it is a negative.

I think if a white writer creates a black female character who is a cliche, the fault is bad writing, not cultural misappropriation.

Okka: Totes fair! I feel that the speech at Brisbane Writers Festival was grating because she didn’t even acknowledge the weird way publishing segregates writers or markets us weirdly based on our ethnicities. She assumed every grievance is a frivolity, when sometimes it really does matter if, as you say, we’re written poorly by people who stereotype us. For example, there are far more stories about Indonesia written from a non-Indonesian writers’ perspective than there are translated books from Indonesian languages. And the stories that do get out are super weird and stereotypical.

So the bad writing is in fact perpetuated by structural inequalities, if that makes sense. I think the issues are linked.

Recently Booker winner Paul Beatty was interviewed about Shrivergate, and said something really important: “I agree—you can write what you want.” But what concerned him about Shriver’s speech was that “all the examples she cites are white writers appropriating other cultures. And it’s not just a top-down thing. It goes in other directions. That’s the thing that I find really hurtful about her perspective: the notion of who’s allowed to take what from whom.” (full article here)

The “real world” is messy; we need to cut people some slack

Nicole: In a full circle kind of way, this attitude that she’s describing is the same one in that University of Chicago letter:

It is often white people telling POC that they should be offended by X event because it’s cultural appropriation, which I think actually is offensive.

Intent must be part of cultural appropriation. You can overcome ignorance, but no person will be 100% sensitive 100% of the time.

Jia Jia: Yeah, I was going to reference back to the Chicago University letter too.

When it comes to socio-cultural issues where there is no black or white, complete right or wrong, I think we have to stay sensitive but not be too dogmatic.

Cut each other some slack—both in terms of the opinions we allow each other to entertain and the language (colorful or not) that we permit each other to deploy (short of deliberate malicious insult). And above all, don’t let one person, thing, speech or circumstance define the entire issue.

Which I think, is both what Shriver’s reacting to and unfortunately a subject of here.  She says that she sells herself as an iconoclast, which means that she will make her point flamboyantly—painting in broad strokes and adopting a provocative attitude. I applaud her for that actually; makes her speeches far less boring. However she spoke at a prestigious event and her voice seemed to tap into the attendees’ innate sense of privilege and their desire to ridicule those demanding more nuance and representation. I blame the audience for interpreting Shriver’s speech through the lens of their own entitlement—they’re being existentially lazy—not Shriver. I don’t know whether she herself actually ridicules the stance of writers and activists who seek representation; her speech, despite its loud style, is more nuanced than that.

I feel that Shriver’s really fed up with how people have liberally appropriated the concept of cultural appropriation for their own personal sensitivities. And I’m fed up with that too. Because it creates noise that obfuscates the issues that really matter—the fact that minority writers and artists can’t find representation for example. Which incidentally, is not Shriver’s fault or any writer’s fault; it’s the fault of what executives believe people want to read and watch; ultimately it’s the fault of MONEY because execs are under pressure to make money.

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By: Jia Jia, Monica Nicole, Nwando, Okka, Shruti
Image via The Maroon Tiger