Category talk:Cultural appropriation

Wicca

So... is Wicca and related junk a form of Cultural Appropriation? Because I'm not even sure that said culture ever even existed prior to the 1950s. CoryUsar (talk) 19:39, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I think religious-type usage can be difficult to call as appropriation since syncretism in religion has a long and wide history (e.g., Catholicism, Sikhism, Cargo Cults, etc.). It's an easier call when there is either is blatant financial gain (books, movies, TV) or false claims of ethnic identity. Bongolian (talk) 19:50, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

So, what about Rastafaris? There's a bunch of stuff stolen from Judaism and they claim to be the "real" Jews. They would count as CultApro, right? CoryUsar (talk) 20:06, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has formulated the concept of cultural appropriation into a coherent ethical principle. For the wiki, we should be recording what other people are calling CA, not discovering it on our own.Ariel31459 (talk) 20:30, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I would say yes regarding Rastafarianism, but others could disagree. I saw a white (probably ethnically Jewish) Rastafarian long ago at a Reggae concert, so there's definitely an element of that (here's a Tamil-Norwegian person[1]). Given that there's a very strong back-to-Africa ideology in Rastafarianism, Rastas without African ancestry becomes a rather weird concept. Also, the vast majority of Jamaicans can probably trace their ancestry back to Bantu-speaking West African populations, yet the Rastafarian focus is almost exclusively non-Bantu Ethiopia in East Africa. Bongolian (talk) 20:36, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Pop culture is borrowing from the stylistic form of the Rastafarians. Here is the problem: Rastafarians want to be popular in the sense of presenting an attractive life-style, and they also resent others commodifying their culture. The objectives quickly become incoherent. Ariel31459 (talk) 21:07, 15 January 2021 (UTC)