Cultural appropriation
 

Woke’ White Man Once Again Experimenting With Dreadlocks

Justin Bieber is doubling down on his crackhead look, but the controversy is that this look is "appropriated" and therefore a no-no.

I never really understood what the problem with cultural appropriation was, shouldn't it be a compliment that someone is trying to imitate you?

I think it becomes a problem when people appropriate culture without understanding it and taking the trouble to learn a bit about it, which leads to all kinds of misunderstandings, prejudice, accidental and less accidental offense, etc. Also it can feel a bit like cultural imperialism, which can be problematic. But if it's done properly I agree with you, some people probably get offended about it too soon. Idk enough about the circumstances here to judge whether we should be offended at Justin

I think the real question is who cares about Justin Bieber?

Dreads=crackhead. Nice.

He's been dressing like a daft knob for years. This is just another one of his ridiculous looks. But Justin Bieber aside, I've always thought the trustafundian look was ridiculous. The overwhelming majority of white guys with dreadlocks look goofy to me. They usually end up looking more like Sideshow Bob than Bob Marley. :D

This jumped out at me too :rolleyes:

Like a black man in the night.

SpOoOoOoKy

Hey he's got some catchy ass tracks. I don't care what anybody says this song is ****ing great:

^^ That's a good track but, isn't his whole musical style, dress style, speaking style based on cultural appropriation, and not just these recent lock additions? Or was that one thing too many? :/

One person's opinion here, but the issue isn't "being influenced by", it's "stealing for personal gain."

Justin Beiber - especially with Peaches - sounds like he just stole your stuff and is selling it across from your house. He's in no movement associated with any sound like that. He seems to show up and do whatever the Spotify data tells him is most profitable. Elvis always gets hit with the "White guy stealing black music" and I think that's about right. Conversely, as much as I don't like the Beatles I do feel like they enjoyed the music and added their own thing to it.

It's more complicated with things like food, IMO, because there's a lot less personal profit associated with that, but I'm not a scholar on this issue. I just pay attention and read things now and again.

Edit: I forgot to mention, there's no one worse about this than Justin Timberlake. At least Bieber just rips other people off. Timberlake finds a way to add nothing and still water it down somehow.

^ the hell are you on about man, Bieber has been doing like R&B Pop since the beginning, that’s his style and he does it well. People are allowed to experiment with how they dress and physically appear without coming under obnoxious keyboard warrior scrutiny, this thread is ****ing dumb

That's probably more apt. Let's go with that.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-a8019706.html

lol

Any time I see a white guy with dreads I assume he's going to start lecturing me on the utility of hemp

Yeah if Justin Bieber is the guy being used to begin a 'social conversation' then I think your question is answered before you even have to ask it.

Difference being eminem wasn't credited with inventing hip hop lol.

Not really Elvis' fault necessarily... Just saying.

I think cultures are always changing and now, in many cases, rapidly merging. Sometimes change hurts. Generally speaking, I think mimicry comes from a place of love. Beastie Boys came from hardcore, but they fell harder in love with hip-hop and so they mostly wanted to do that instead.

Maybe there's bad appropriation and good appropriation. In my example above, they did kinda fake it until they could make it, but then they became a genuine part of it and added something new to it. They helped take hip-hop to new places and to a wider audience. Maybe that can be said to be good appropriation.

If Bieber or Timberlake or whatever makes a one-song foray into a genre because a producer wants that particular sound for that song, then arguably that's not quite as good.

Still, if a culture - music or otherwise - gets popular, it's gonna reach a new audience and some of them are gonna love it and be inspired. Maybe that inspired person is a teenager in a band or Timberlake's producer. In a way it's a sign of cultural health. It can seem really dumb then when a newcomer who was never part of the culture suddenly sells more than old-timers in that genre. I agree that it's obnoxious, but I also find it a little hard to blame artists or music producers for aiming for success. Arguably, the disappointment should lie with the masses who buy the appropriated culture and make it successful. Best case scenario, it brings in a new audience also for the old-timers.

Anyways, I do find it kind of inevitable. For me as someone who doesn't feel particularly victimized by cultural appropriation, I prefer to just laugh at it. However, even if I can't quite relate, I do respect that some people genuinely find it problematic and wouldn't really argue against anyone making that claim.

Cultural appropriation is when you take from a culture with no understanding or respect for said culture. Like rock being seen as "white" music despite it coming from black culture. White people used Elvis so they could listen to rock music without having to deal with black people. Eminem also gets used that way to an extent but no where near as extreme because Eminem consistently works with black people.

When it comes to dreadlocks and braids it's really stupid because they are culturally ubiquitous and nobody really knows where exactly the hair styles originated from because they predate ancient culture and go well into prehistoric times.

With Justin Bieber I can't really say he doesn't respect black culture because I don't know. I do know that his career came from an Usher endorsement and he's consistently been a huge piece of black culture his whole career. Looking into it he seems very self aware of how he's been influenced by and benefited off of black culture and is fairly vocal about racial justice so he does seem to respect the culture.

Also, notice how the girl writing the article is white.

Lucern, I'd comment again that while purely cynical cultural appropriation exists, it is probably rare. If Bieber doesn't love the culture he copies, his producer, the songwriter or someone else probably does. People want to create something they actually like. Work and life in general is just more pleasant that way.

It's also kinda interesting to see perspectives from americans as americans are very focused on race, skin colour, ethnicity. Because of the US history, I get why that is. I would say that culture shouldn't be intrinsically tied to skin tone. I really like meme theory to explain the evolution of things like language, culture, religion. For cultural memes spreading in the mindscape, the colour of someone's skin doesn't really have to be a barrier to its spread just like it doesn't have to be a barrier to the spread of religions or languages. The idea that one could or should contain a culture to a relative small but deserving minority based on skin tone or whatever is kinda futile. It would be like stemming the ocean tide. It's just gonna keep coming and fighting it will only cause frustration.

You might as well look more positively on it. We're becoming more culturally homogenic, even norwegians and americans. But perhaps it ain't all bad as long as we bring the best parts of our cultures into the mix and leave out the worst.

There isn't one.

The history of not just my country but European colonialism is what really motivated racial lines in culture, or more significantly, black culture. Otherwise you have cultural norms segregated by ethnicity or country so italian culture or japanese culture or Chinese culture but black people had their whole identities taken from them so for black Americans all they have as an identity is black culture. It's the only sense of identity they have left so naturally they are extremely protective of it especially in a country that consistently takes and builds off of it while trying to exclude them.

Majority of the claims are just whiny liberal college kids making something out of nothing for 'woke' points. Usually, as proven by the article, by white people. But then you have people like Post Malone who undeniable made a career on the back of black culture but doesn't want to be lumped in with the culture when it's inconvenient. I think a lot of white rappers have a strange condescending view on hip hop culture as a whole like they tend to be more holier than thou.

Shut up, Cuckbert.

Make me.

The problem here is that there's too much meme value packed into it.

"I didn't garrote Krauts on D-Day to hear you talking that voodoo talk!" - Tom Hanks at Thanksgiving

Whatever the case, cultural appropriation has resulted in a lot of great music that wouldn't exist if there was no cultural appropriation.

Well said fella. Sense at last :cool:

Stolen artifacts are a more concerning aspect of cultural appropriation than people preferring Macklemore to Nas imo.

Like I said I think generally taking from other cultures is a form of cultural exchange which is great, and I agree with Lucem's whiny liberal comment, but he also makes a good point about why taking from other cultures has to be paired with respect for that culture's people. You're a sweetheart, but you dismiss issues with racism far too easily.

So to give an example that you may relate to more: imagine chav culture would become fashionable among typical tory kids. So they'd dress like that etc. just for fun, but they'd still act just as snobbish. That would feel wrong, wouldn't it?

and that's another good point. Taking cool aspects from people's culture shouldn't actually take something away from them

Well they kind of already do in places, they definitely dress, speak and listen to the music but I don't care tbh.

fair enough, not being bothered about that is a heatlhy attitude, but I think people are justified in finding a phenomenon like that a bit insulting. And apart from just causing hurt feelings it can have harmful consequences. Cultural exchange, in the nice sense, happens when you don't only get in touch with aspects of other cultures, but also the people. If you take from other cultures without any respect for the people, you exclude those people from the process. Then it becomes taking things away from a culture, not sharing it. In many cases that's fine because nothing is really lost to you if people copy things from your culture, but sometimes things are lost: like the historical example of stolen art, or people profiting off the copied culture while you get nothing. Or they don't try to understand the culture they take from you, they make it into something else, and then that leads to misunderstandings and prejudice about you.

That video of Machine Gun Kelly dancing on a table for a bunch of record execs while being careful not to step on their laptops and calling it "punk" is exactly what harmful cultural appropriation is. If you don't get why that's offensive I can't help ya.

:eek: cancel that bitch

It's not harmful cultural appropriation though. It doesn't harm black people and in general is just white people doing what black people do. It's not like the Redskins or the Indians sports teams with feather headresses that appropriate harmful stereotypes of Native Americans that allow white people to "own" indigeonous culture in a way that reinforces that they are savages.

And it absolutely isn't the same as minstrel shows that are just straight up "Look at how dumb black people are."

Cultural appropriation is a neutral concept. The context is what makes it potentially problematic. Pretty sure this is why the popular cultural appropriation discourse was so short lived. A bunch of idiots harped on about it for a bit but the nuance necessary for it to be relevant precluded it being any kind of central leftist discourse cause cultural appropriation in general is fine.

yeah that nails it I think

How is this cringe

Most people are cringe.

Especially magical ones.

Nah... Preferring Macklemore is worse tbh