A message from Anonymous

Stop acting like you dislike Princess and the Frog because of the "inaccuracy." You dislike it because you're racist.

A reply from eternal-porcelain-empress

I dislike it because it’s racist to steal a culture’s folk tale and make it your own.

inherentlygloomy:

eternal-porcelain-empress:

inherentlygloomy:

eternal-porcelain-empress:

inherentlygloomy:

eternal-porcelain-empress:

inherentlygloomy:

eternal-porcelain-empress:

inherentlygloomy:

eternal-porcelain-empress:

inherentlygloomy:

No it isn’t. Is Ulysses racist? Is T.S. Eliot racist? 

What do they have to do with anything?

Ulysses is a re-telling of another culture’s folk tale. And it’s also basically all that T.S. Eliot does. (Not really, but you get the point.) Are these racist appropriations?

[The answer is no, btw.]

Honey, honey. White cultures can exchange things between each other. Africans can’t steal White or Asian culture. 

We’ve also taken non-White cultural stories. Who cares? Give me a reason for caring about cultures learning from one another, taking from one another’s cultural practices, etc. Of all of the kinds of cultural intercourse throughout history, sharing stories is perhaps the only truly benign one.

I’m fine with sharing. I’m not fine with taking.

This is silly. There’s no functional difference. We’re talking about cultures, not individuals. Who would one petition for permission? The Ministry of Whiteness?

There is nobody one can petition because it is unacceptable.

No, that’s not why. There is nobody one can petition because culture is a distributed phenomenon. Cultural intercourse of this kind is not only acceptable, it’s unavoidable. This is how people learn.

Cultural intercourse…Nice way of saying cultures can fuck each other without consequences. People learn by exchange. If a black person comes and claims Africans invented democracy that’s not learning, that’s stealing. If cultural fucking is so acceptable then can I wear black face with my kimono as I attend a Native American ceremony and eat tacos?

I mean, sure. Black face is white culture, so you’d be performing white culture there (and it’s in poor taste), but otherwise go hog wild. Why would you not eat tacos at any point in your life? 

It isn’t stealing. It’s just an untruth. You’re letting your (justified) cultural imperialism cloud your judgment. Step back, calm down, take a breath, and think for a moment on whether you really think that taking a story you learned from another culture and retelling it in your own idiom is a bad thing.

It is a very bad thing. My culture is not a prostitute.