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This was a helpful insight. I’m still concerned about how candidates’ idiosyncrasies affect turnout and regression to norms, but if this election spoke to Democrats gaining ground in a way that is sustainable, I can be happy about that.
Great episode, I thought the same thing. It’d be like if in the last year I suddenly decided to be a sprinter, trained really hard in that time, and somehow managed to make it to an Olympic final and lost to Bolt by a fraction. Yeah, it sucks that I lost but going from the couch to narrowly losing to the fastest man on the Earth is surely indicative that something important just happened…
I think the cultural appropriation discussion over the last few episodes and listener calls has been interesting, but I think a lot of people are conflating cultural appropriation with cultural exchange (which is fair because there is a lot of fuzziness and debate over the terms). For example, I think the first caller on this episode said something to the effect of: “But I don’t think that I shouldn’t be allowed to do that simply because of the colour of my skin”.
But that’s not really what cultural appropriation means though. Cultural appropriation is probably better understood as “cultural MISappropriation”, with the idea being that it’s taken without regard or concern for the importance to the culture it’s being taken from -like taking a sacred dance or headpiece and turning it into a joke or party costume.
This shouldn’t be confused with cultural exchange, which is when important components of one culture bleeds into the mainstream culture and there’s more of a mutual understanding of what ideas are being used by the adopting culture. So if a white person grows up in a particular culture, and learns to speak in a certain way, then that’s not cultural appropriation. If a white person thinks the way a certain culture speaks is “cute” or “cool” and so mimics it to make a joke or to sell a product or devalues it in some way, then that’s appropriation.
Also, I think it’s important to distinguish between an individual who is appropriating something and a group as a whole appropriating something. This is the distinction that’s relevant to the dreads issue. So if a white person grows up in a culture where dreads are the norm, or they take the time to understand and appreciate the meaning of dreads to certain cultures and wear it respectfully then that’s just cultural exchange. However, there is still the issue of how society treats them differently.
For example, when Miley Cyrus got dreads a lot of fashion critics commented on how “exotic” and “naturally beautiful” she looked with them, but when Zendaya stopped straightening her hair and wore her natural dreads, fashion commentators described her hair as looking “dirty” and likely to “smell like weed”.
So this kind of appropriation refers to traditionally black-related things being viewed as bad, ugly, gross, etc, suddenly becoming socially acceptable and even applauded when white people do them.