Instigator / Pro
14
1524
rating
53
debates
75.47%
won
Topic
#4756
(TRT) Cultural appropriation is harmful and should be actively discouraged.
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...
Bella3sp
Judges
Greyparrot
4 debates /
20 votes
No vote
whiteflame
27 debates /
202 votes
Voted
Lemming
7 debates /
45 votes
Voted
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 20,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Judges
Contender / Con
8
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description
This debate is on-balance.
Cultural appropriation:
the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/
Harmful:
of a kind likely to be damaging : INJURIOUS
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harmful
Discourage:
: to deprive of courage or confidence : DISHEARTEN
: to hinder by disfavoring
: to dissuade or attempt to dissuade from doing something
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discourage
All other definitions should be used in general terms.
Round 1
Realizing I had this made my mood for the day decrease 50%.. One hour... Either way..
Thanks RationalMadMan,
Point:
Case:
This one is completely simple.
1) Cultural appropriation creates negative effects
2) Freedom is not involved
3) Overall it should be actively discouraged
Burden:
This debate is on-balance.
Besides that, pro needs to prove that for the most part cultural appropriation is harmful and should be actively discouraged.
Con needs to prove that for the most part cultural appropriation is harmful and should be actively discouraged.
As pro, I will be targeting how its harmful to the culture ifself.
I do want to remind voters that this debate is not about if people have the freedom to do it, but rather if its harmful.
Defintions:
All from the description of the debate. Any other meanings should be used in there general terms.
Cultural appropriation:
the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
Harmful:
of a kind likely to be damaging : INJURIOUS
Discourage:
: to deprive of courage or confidence : DISHEARTEN
: to hinder by disfavoring
: to dissuade or attempt to dissuade from doing something
Contentions
Let's go with something simple but sharp on the points.
I. Harmful to the culture itself
Cultural appropriation creates the following effects it creates:
- Reinsates stereotypes or create stereotypical views of a culture
- Create discrimination or exploit them that are already discriminated against
Let's go into depth with the two of these specifically.
Stereotypes of a culture
Cultural appropriation is the base of stereotypes of a culture.
When you use people's culture for the wrogn reasons, using them for the wrong purposes it gives the wrong idea towards that culture.
People begin to forget the true intent or meaning behind the culture.
This raises the question: How is it harmful?
I believe it speaks for itself. This is harmfully damaging the reputation, meaning, and orgin of the culture.
Anyone who wants to learn about culture is also affected, it confuses people on like I said, true meaning and orgin of a culture.
Identity
People seem to forget that cultures are peoples identities.
Culture becomes a major part of someone's identity and when you disrespect it, use it in the wrong meanings, it's disrespecting multiple peoples identity. That is harmful.
Identity has and always will be the main person of someones life, and if it gets mistreated, abused, disrespected to a point it becomes harmful to their identity itself it should be discouraged.
Discrimination against people of the culture
Realizing what cultural appropriation does in general:
- When it trivializes violent, historical oppression
- When it rewards some while the creators themselves never get credit for it
- When it spreads lies about marginalized cultures
- When it perpetuates racist stereotypes
Mental health affects with discrimination
"Cultural appropriation can also have mental health effects, Stephanie Fryberg, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, told Health. Fryberg has spent years studying how Native American stereotypes and logos affect Native people.
Through her research, Fryberg has found that sports mascots that culturally appropriate Native American symbols and imagery "decreased [Native American adolescents'] self-esteem, lowered the achievement-related goals they set for themselves, and diminished both their sense of community worth and belief that their community can improve itself," as Politico has reported"
II. Freedom versus harmful
With all that said, in order to protect culture and its values we should actively discourage it.
Disregarding that, this contention is mostly about the idea of freedom versus how something becomes and is harmful and needs to be put down.
Practically speaking, everyone and anyone can do cultural appropriation.
The matter behind this debate is, is it harmful and should it be actively discouraged?
The answer is yes.
I have displayed with my contention on the base of cultural appropriation.
If something is harmful, we should discourage it. That is common sense.
Examples regarding freedom versus harmful:
- You are aloud to (heavily) drink, but it is harmful to the body (and sometimes others) because it affects the body. And because of that, it should be and is a lot of times actively discouraged to (heavily).
- You are aloud to go out in 105 degree weather, and sunbeathe without sunscreen but it harmful because it can cause sunburns (or even skin cancer and most likely you will) and it is actively discouraged because of that.
III. Overall
Typing this when I got four minutes left, so, let's quickly format.
Cultural appropriation has no justification, and is harmful. It becomes harmful to the culture and even the people themselves. Clearly, if something is harmful, we discourage it. I've shown many examples of thing we discourage, and this is the same. Simple as that.
Sources:
Defintion Souces:
Contention sources:
Pro's case is littered with fallacies and mixing around definitions.
I am going to do a super simplistic Round 1 to make Round 2 easier to vote on (and to be lazier in Round 1 too). I also am writing this last-minute and don't care much as this debate is unrated.
All cultures and subcultures only exist due to cultural appropriation. Nobody owns a cultural habit for their genes.
There is this ridiculous idea that people have that you as a race, gender within a culture or member of some lineage have 'ownership' of a cultural trait you do. Whether it's black people saying n-word at the extreme end (which was them appropriating white slavers) or one Indian mimcking the clothing and talking style of another. All cultures, subcultures and the traits associated with them involved mimickery and thus appopriation to even exist in the first place.
The first people in India to cook curries with rice or flat bread were doing something that was 0% Indian at the time. Then, others there mimicked it and decided it was 'Indian'. Yet is it inappropriate and vile appropriation to not only eat curries with rice as a non-Indian but to make it? If you rolled your eyes and said 'of course not' then consider that this may lead to how disgusting you find/make it offending their culture or the diarrhea and at least bloatedness some get from the extremely harsh spices to the stomach being seen as rude and disrespectful given the opinions about curries that will form afterwards.
If you were curious, curries as we know them in south Asia (whether Indian, Pakistani, perhaps Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan) were only in India to the extent and way we know them (especially with the chili levels) because of western influence.
It's not the Brits who did it, many don't know but the Portuguese and Dutch both colonises South Asia before the Brits did (and didn't last just as the Brits didn't, though language-wise and education-wise etc the British surpassed them in influence there). The portuguese brought that sexy spicy South American Chilli over to India and Ceylon/Seylan (now known as Sri Lanka) (back then there was no Pakistan, it was just India).
It is important to realise that there is no such thing as a culture that didn't get appropriated by itself in the first place. I am talking any feature of a culture or subculture you can imagine. Islam in Islamic cultures was entirely 100% appropriated but because it was often forced onto the people, it's not seen as that. In the end the majority in the place took it from the minority but in this case the minority forced and/or encouraged them to (AKA coerced them to which is 'force with encouragement').
The reason this matters is that you need to fundamentally understand that 'appropriating' cultures is actually based on a racist and ethnocentric idea that some group of people 'own' a culture's habits. They don't, never have and never will but they can try to bully and play victim if they wish.
This is seen in many ways. If a Londoner speaks Scottish-accented English it is assumed they're mocking the Scottish instantly but the reverse is seen as a Scotsman trying to blend in and seem sophisticated, it's either encouraged or seen as 'shame you had to give up your real accent for the rich and powerful English'. This is even more severely seen with non-caucasian accents in any white-dominated place and the 'typical caucasian accent' for a region. I must wonder to myself then why if the Londoner or Washington DC resident were to take up a local dialect and language of a poorer area (as in speak Gaelic not Scottish-accented English) then suddenly it's all not discriminatory and is cute and amazing and they're actually looked down on if they keep their accent.
This 'waa waa I am a victim by geneology and ethnicity and you have no right to talk that way' stems from perhaps a very real insecurity over being poorer and less powerful as a subculture or overall culture. By saying 'appropriating' is wrong you are saying your culture and subculture are so inferior to the other that it then is wrong to appropriate. It is actually deprecation of one's own culture and self-loathing at the heart of finding fault with appropriation.
Mexicans who are proud to be Mexican in a genuine, real way find 0 issue with people wearing Sombreros and even jokingly acting Mexican. They will either laugh along with them or roll their eyes and note how these fools are actually submitting to their culture being better by needing to act that way as nothing interesting or funny enough in their own culture existed to do instead, in their own eyes.
This leads me into my next point...
There is something inherently self-loathing at the heart of thinking that appropriating one's culture is 'wrong' or 'unthinkably rude'.
The reality is this:
A black person, even if very rich and wealthy, is 'okay' to completely ridicule, talk shit about and put peachy foundation on their face and act 'white' to mock 'white culture'. This is all considered fine and you are even called 'racist' to not be okay with it or offended. That's the level we are at.
Yet, if the white person did it to the black person in an area that the black person or enough black people feel insecure and hate something about their life (not culture, life) then suddenly it's seen as out-of-order bullying. Women have a similar thing with men actually. It is quite ironic and bemusing that in 2023 a man culturally appropriating women is seen as either a transitional behaviour to womanhood or at least journey through queerness, considering that part of 'progress' was this idea that women were free to act as manly as they wanted but men doing the opposite was weak and wrong. I am not opposing LGBTQ in what I am saying, think harder if that's what you think. I am saying that the line between appropriation and genuine embracing of a cultural habit is much blurrier than people think and the difference seems to lie in how humiliating and deprecating those of the actual 'culture' that originally appropriated it to do it feel.
As I said in my first point, women appropriated each other to have anything 'womanly'. Indians apporpriated both each other and colonists to have what is now known as 'Indian'. I am not saying everything womanly or Indian was appropriated, perhaps a minority of the culture was simply 'innate' (such as skin tone, vocal tone etc) but most of it was apporpriated. Parents within a culture literally want their child to appropriate their culture, they literally need it.
appropriation is as follows:
The additional aspect of 'dominance' or 'without permission' implies that the people feel so insecure that for you to enjoy acting like them is taken as inherently ridiculing and wrong.
Yet, I have pointed out that if black people absolutely ridicule white culture in any area where there is this idea that whites are 'dominant' (which is so racist and ironic to think if you are on the Progressive side of things) then suddenly it's rude.
A man sounding and acting womanly used to be taken as really rude and humiliating towards women as they 'owned' that and it was seen as another example of male 'dominance over women'. Yet over time they realised some men are just more feminine so much so some want to be women... Which is another discussion but my point being suddenly it wasn't appropriation.
I wonder if Eminem had sounded a bit more black-like given that he grew up around black people and had a lot of their characteristic in how he talked, would he then have been seen as racist?
This idea is so extreme that it is becoming considered blackface to even have a profile picture of black people online if you aren't black IRL:
^ In the above we literally get an 'education' on how to even say 'yaas' or use gifs of black people in them as memes to express emotions (that aren't mocking black people at all, just embracing them as a great expression of some emotion in a situation) is so offensive and wrong as a non-black person.
The reason this fascinates me is that as soon as you go to Nigeria, Kenya or whatever nation in Africa you name, the more you appropriate them as a white person the less rude they find you to be (barring mimicking their actual accent or skin tone). They want you to appropriate their clothing, way of talking (as in both native language and slang they have in English), quirks and all of it. They love that. I am not assuming this but I don't have a source that directly says 'Native Africans love white people in their country appropriating their cultures' except they absolutely do, unless it's directly explicitly mockery. In return to said aversion to mockery, they do not mockingly appropriate American or British culture, rather it is done in a complimentary manner. Otherwise they wouldn't even speak English anymore as national languages, would they?
In China, if you do not appropriate their culture to high degrees, you are seen as an insulting, vile foreigner who is arrogant enough to assume you wouldn't take on their culture. This is as true for a tourist their as foreign-looking resident. China is basically 1 7th or 8th of the world. Even if you appropriated their culture in a Western setting for a Chinese restaurant they'd be okay unless it was absolutely purely mocking. In such a situation, they'd just roll their eyes at your idiocy because they genuinely don't find it funny.
My point is that it seems if you realise you don't need to feel inferior to another at all, suddenly them taking on your culture is just a case of rolling your eyes and saying 'get lost'. If you feel inferior to them in the first place and are insecure, then any appropriation they do even if it's done in entirely good spirits and genuine intentions to appreciate aspects of your culture, you will feel hurt and insulted.
Perhaps what we need to work on is why some feel so inferior and insecure, not the appopriation.
Round 2
Yeah. I lost motivation to debate, this is going to (after the tournament) be one if my last debates for awhile.
Now that pro has said I have fallacies, let me talk about theirs.
Also, to clearify, all these definitions I put in my description and I ask voters use those definitions and not cons.
Not only but by clicking on con's link when I already have set definitions, it shows "appropriate" or "appropriation".
I guess con has skipped on rebuttals until this round, or is using his contentions as in-direct rebuttals themselves.
Before we begin:
I asked voters to use my definitions instead of con's that were pre-set before the debate was accepted. And I didn't see a direct challenge to them anyways.
From the description itself:
"..
Cultural appropriation:
the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
Harmful:
of a kind likely to be damaging : INJURIOUS
Discourage:
: to deprive of courage or confidence : DISHEARTEN
: to hinder by disfavoring
: to dissuade or attempt to dissuade from doing something
Rebuttals:
I am going to be short and simple with your arguments.
Let's divide your points (i'll discuss anything I haven't next round):
1. "There is this ridiculous idea that people have that you as a race, gender within a culture or member of some lineage have 'ownership' of a cultural trait you do" (basically: people should be able to do whatever they want, freedom)
2. People need approation to make the cultures that exist today (ex from con: Parents within a culture literally want their child to appropriate their culture, they literally need it)
3. Some cultures want you to do cultural approation on their culture
All three will be discussed in their own sections. Anything I want to specifically cite from con will be in those sections.
These three have a relation to the same idea of cultural approation versus cultural appreciation.
1
Let me restate the definition for cultural approation.
Cultural appropriation:
the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
Nowhere does this say nobody can use these customs, practices, and ideas, etc. This specifically says "unacknowledged and inappropriate" adoption to them. And I think this is where the confusion lied in your entire argument.
I'm going to go in specifics with this idea.
When someone has a culture, if you want to take part in that culture (adopt that culture) you can. Like said, no where does my definition say the adoption of the customs, practices, etc. However, if you are wanting to take part in someone (a group) elses culture, you should respect it enough to learn about it and use the customs and practices (etc.) appropriately.
This argument you claim does not support the resolution:
- It's/it's not harmful
- It should be discouraged
What you are talking about is not cultural approation, and if anything, if they are being respectful and appropriate of the culture, that is called cultural appreciation not cultural approation.
2
Con:
"Parents within a culture literally want their child to appropriate their culture, they literally need it.
So, I can guess that you came across this idea because of your definition you added for approation.
I think there is a difference between the two, and definitely a difference between my definition and your definition for culture approation. I ask that we (you) continue using the definitions already made before you accepted the debate.
Once again, approation or appreciation?
Parent's would prefer you respect that culture, and use the customs in an respectful and appropriate manner. I would assume that no parent would want their children to do cultural approation instead of cultural appreciation.
3
Like i'm going to say in every section: this is cultural appreciation not cultural appropriation.
Culturals do not want you to be unacknowledged or inappropriate use of their customs and practices (etc.) I can guarantee that. I can guarantee they do not want you disrespecting their culture.
Like you said: "In China, if you do not appropriate their culture to high degrees, you are seen as an insulting, vile foreigner who is arrogant enough to assume you wouldn't take on their culture."
I can assure you that they would prefer, and definitely ask that you would be " honoring another culture through exploration and seeking an understanding as a way to honor that culture, beliefs, and traditions."
I have lost interest in debating on this website for a while. The voting is a joke and if it isn't a joke, it's unrated. I am busier irl too but it's a lie to say I get any joy out of this anymore.
I don't think I would have lost this debate but I also think I laid my case out too vague which will force me to need to put high effort in and use all characters this round.
I have an hour left and can use that to do stuff in life, rest, have fun or do a chore for a website that I honestly have become bored of and also frustrated with to the core of my being.
I won't be accepting debates for some time and am partly happy I lost the presidential election as honestly this website isn't popular enough to be worth debating on regularly. All other problems aside, the sheer isolationism of the website has genuinely been the number 1 issue.
This debate is a good topic in theory but in practise it's terrible. 'should not' means at all?
I don't care anymore, have a free unrated win. I honestly can't bring myself to type something, I don't feel an ounce of either dopamine or serotonin (dopamine is happiness surge, serotonin is confidence surge) when on here anymore.
Round 3
"This debate is a good topic in theory but in practise it's terrible. 'should not' means at all?"
I would have had different resolution, but I don't decide the topic name.
--
Honeslty thinking the same. Like said, I won't be debating after this tournament for awhile.
The amount of motivation I have to type anything is going down, we'll see.
Besides that, extend.
Con conceded, vote pro.
Forfeited
I forgot to vote on this...sorry.
"Cultural appropriation:
the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another [[and typically more dominant]] people or society."
That's a flagrant double standard right there. Okay for one, but not the other. Do as I say, not as I do. *facepalm*
Dominance has nothing to do with it.
Human history covers how one culture will adopt aspects of another. It's called "assimilation" for a reason.
If this is harmful, then all black women with straightened hair, or wigs that are straight with colors not naturally common among black women need to stop it then.
Go back to the curly nappy hair that you're born with and be proud of it.
There are multiple examples of how cultures have "assimilated" aspects of other cultures. This accusation of 'cultural appropriation' is pure racist bullshit. More than that, it's childish. It's like to kids fighting on the playground bitching about whose toy is better. and when one is decided is better, they fight for possession over it. The victor being the model of what to follow, so others want the shiny new better toy too.
How would you prefer it? Always willing to change it if someone upfront requests before accepting.
If you're wanting to accept, let me know, i'll compromise. If not, still let me know and i'll consider.
That said..
Looked at verywellmind.com; found a definition.
Would you prefer the following:
"Cultural appropriation refers to the use of objects or elements of a non-dominant culture in a way that reinforces stereotypes or contributes to oppression and doesn't respect their original meaning or give credit to their source. It also includes the unauthorized use of parts of their culture (their dress, dance, etc.) without permission."
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cultural-appropriation-5070458
If not, really, what else do you want as definition? The leverage I see for con is immense, but I guess theres different views.
Feel free to accept, or not.
^ Same thing applies as above for definitions.
The definition I think makes this topic biased. Maybe the topic itself is biased. But, still, in a pragmatic and worldly perspective to these words, defining cultural appropriation as something morally reprehensive(unacknowledged & inappropriate) really gives somebody an edge, eh?