But to take hiphop as representing anybody’s ethnic, cultural tradition is maybe a little heavy handed. Certainly helping your daughter to appreciate it is no more appropriating black culture than giving her an appreciation of Jazz, Blues, or Rock and Roll.
.-= Eddie Offermann´s last blog ..Visual Effects Pipeline Projects and Interapplication Communication With Maya =-.

So, I’m mostly with dotlizard, Nina, and Rita–it’s not the white person’s job or right to say when we’ve moved far enough from the past of racism. We can do our best to judge people by the content of their character, and not their outward appearance.

I think that, since you are a smart and thoughtful mom, you will make sure there are opportunities for your children to learn about respecting people’s cultures and traditions. I think you can avoid “bad cultural appropriation”.

So, good luck. Let Hala have joy and fun. ;p
.-= Al_Pal´s last blog ..Sensitivity: I have it. =-.

I think our generation just has to look our kids in the eye and say, “So, that dance you’re doing? It started out this way and here are some YouTube videos of the greatest hip-hop dancers in the world, and when you get older, we’ll watch some movies about hip-hop if you’re still into it so you can learn about how it came to be.” She’ll notice and ask questions the same way my daughter keeps asking why all the ballet words are in French or why all her black friends at school have braids.

I think pointing out how things started, giving culture its due respect, is a good thing. And then, you know, hip-hop away.
.-= Rita Arens´s last blog ..This Tattoo Is Fifteen Years Old =-.

What I have learned at almost 30 is to stop assuming whether something is offensive or not. I don’t think this means that white children shouldn’t dance HipHop, or that a black person shouldn’t dance the Viennese Waltz if that’s where their heart is. I think it means we need to stop believing we don’t live in an incredibly complex, multi-layered world and ask “Is this all right?” or at least think “What is the price, the downside of this?” when we make our decisions, and that we should get better at holding on to what makes us uncomfortable so as not to silence the other side.

If someone says “You doing my cultural dances doesn’t offend me, it flatters me” then Hurray! So much better. But if someone says “Actually it does bother me, because it feels like a lot of cultural appropriation that has gone on before” then I think we should be able to hear that too and keep holding it in mind even if it makes us uncomfortable.

I don’t think the right answer is to segregate into Your Culture/My Culture but I think part of the right answer is to keep talking to one another and attempting to find a middle ground.

I can understand the drive to just want to be a good white person and live in peace and not have to break your brains about the past, why can’t we all just get along, lalalalala. I think we all do the best we can, but I don’t think we should get the right to award ourselves medals for our own open-mindedness. Other people should be the juries and judges of that.

So, in that way, I don’t think as white people we get the luxury of saying when it is time to move on. I think we do, and should ask things like “So how can we redress things to make things better, or more fair now?” and listen to the answer.

I fear if we teach our children to just rush out and embrace the world without considering permission or consequences then they will just grab the world in a chokehold in their enthusiastic affection.
.-= Nina´s last blog ..Interludes =-.

I will be blunt: the people who are tired of the issue of race coming up, and who think everyone is much too sensitive and should just put it all behind us and move on, are for the most part white people who think they have behaved well and deserve to be considered the “good white people”, as opposed to all those screeching racists out there. Also, saying you’re color-blind is an insult … and untrue.

So no matter how tiring all this sensitivity may seem to some, it’s way too early in the course of understanding the complexities of race and culture in society to be done with it.

So, Erin, you’re doing the right thing, listening, and being overly sensitive. Being underly sensitive is still a bad thing. Yes, even now. And for a while to come.
.-= dotlizard´s last blog ..the pharyngeal jaw of a moray eel (illustrated, and demonstrated) =-.

I listened to you on Saturday in Reno (I’m the guy with the Rotary problem) and while I enjoyed your discussion and generally like you for your mind, I have to respectfully disagree. I have a four year old boy and my greatest hope is that he can focus on the ‘right now’. Culture is history and while it’s good to remember the past as we figure out the present, the past shouldn’t limit what we can be tomorrow.

Culture divides people and that is never a good thing. Culture says this defines us separate from you and you can never be one of us. I live in Nevada where only 14% of the residents are native and they love to claim they are somehow better than everyone else because they are a native. It is BS and I don’t listen to it.

Finally, culture is arbitrary and temporary. It is defined by someone who says from 1782 to 1853 we were from this part of the world and our people did dances this way and we ate this food, etc. Who were you before 1782? Why isn’t that important?

We are more than the sum of our parents, grandparents, etc. and dang it, our children should be more than we are. Let her dance and have fun. She and her friends have a great new culture to make.
.-= Paul Kiser´s last blog ..Fortnight: Chapters 1 & 2 =-.

I sometimes tire of living in an country that hyphenates it’s citizens.

.
.-= Lucretia M Pruitt´s last blog ..Living Life Out Loud =-.