Gucci Is Facing Backlash Again...

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I disagree. Who has the authority to represent a culture? You end up with bizarre and jarring situations like when the Japanese government promotes wearing kimonos and yukatas while US based Asian interest groups attack people online for wearing kimonos or yukatas while staying at ryokan.

Turbans have existed for thousands of years across the Eurasian and African continents in different shape and forms, so saying that putting any turban the catwalk is inherently cultural appropriation and then to say that it's inherently offensive is very damaging in my opinion.

I think what people lose sight of is the specific problems that theories of cultural appropriation were meant to address and how they can be applied in such a way that it makes society better. They weren't meant to be some kind excuse for a lynch mob replacement of blasphemy legislation. The possibility to criticize different cultural practices and religions through subversion of symbols is important and shouldn't be banned in the name of cultural appropriation.

That being said, Gucci is can probably only claim to have had sales, profit and marketing in mind when they made this, not some sort of contribution to the public debate. And it does look a lot like a typical Sikh turban. So they could probably have gone about it in a better way.

The Japanese government may very well promote that, but if my Asian neighbor or friend tells me it doesn't sit well with them then heck yes, I think that person has the authority to say that and I should respect it. I would never use the excuse of the Japanese government promoting it.
 
I knew lots of sikh guys growing up who were bullied endlessly in elementary and high school for wearing turbans. Sikh adults also have faced discrimination for wearing their turbans. And there have been cases where Sikhs were shot a killed in their own places of worship.

Gucci making a turban "fashionable" is NOT okay because Sikhs who wear it for their religion are harmed for it. Period.

Just because Zsa Zsa Gabor wore it doesn't make it okay. Lots of folks got away with cultural appropriation in the past, but that doesn't mean it still flies now.
Preach! People with low IQ and very less knowledge of history, culture and religion should definitely refrain commenting on these kind of topics but meh, what do I know.
 
The Japanese government may very well promote that, but if my Asian neighbor or friend tells me it doesn't sit well with them then heck yes, I think that person has the authority to say that and I should respect it. I would never use the excuse of the Japanese government promoting it.

The Japanese government/Japanese people in Japan have a very different viewpoint than Japanese people elsewhere just by virtue of the fact that Japanese people are the majority in Japan. For them it doesn’t look like cultural appropriation because they don’t experience discrimination, singling out, bullying, etc. for being Japanese. It’s an interesting case to look at, certainly, but I agree indeed that people acting in the west/outside Japan need to worry about what Japanese people who also live outside Japan think more than what the insular country itself is professing/promoting.

All of these issues are not black and white, and they come down to context. If the context where something is being put out (say, a fashion runway) is one where the people in the minority group being referenced are going to be uncomfortable with it, then it’s the duty of people in the majority to listen, learn, and do better.
 
Try to group your debates around Gucci and not firing at each other please

Debate good
Putdowns bad

Last warning:

Slinging mud at each other as though occupying the only righteous path is not the way . Next warning the thread will close.

Try to group your debates around Gucci and not firing at each other please
 
It sounds like perhaps you don’t have an understanding of what cultural appropriation means. Cultural appropriation typically involves people of a dominant group exploiting the culture of less privileged/minority groups, especially when the cultures that are being misappropriated have a historical background of being bullied or face discrimination due to their minority culture.

Your comment is akin to saying people of colour can also be racist towards white people. No, no they cannot by default.

Here’s a good read:

https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-appropriation-and-why-iits-wrong-2834561
Coming as I do, from a culture that has been and is being appropriated by most every other culture on this earth; you must be joking.

And claiming that people of colour can't be racist towards white people is vying for another gold in the Olympics of moral relativism, so excelled in here and on similar threads. I’m sure the young girls in Great Britain sex-trafficked in their thousands for decades in their own country by foreigners of Middle Eastern heritage, and the white Afrikaners in South Africa being ethnically targeted and murdered in absolutely gruesome manners by their black compatriots, will be wholly gratified by hearing this. But why let reality get in the way of crime statistics and lofty righteous ideals of how some are more equal than others.

Still, I'll indulge you. Because by following your take on logic, when you break down the global population by race, it's actually white people who can't be racist towards people of colour as whites are in a very clear minority compared to people of colour.
 
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