Alright, so I know you’re thinking: “Oh God, the last thing I want to watch is another video about cultural appropriation, especially one by some sissy cracker. I can’t stand it anymore.”

Well, I can’t stand it anymore either, but I think I’ve got some fresh takes, so, just give me a chance.

I think this is a really complicated and nuanced topic, and that’s why I’d like to start by saying, unequivocally, that cultural appropriation is always wrong and immoral.

[la barca de oro]

Halloween costumes are often presented as one of the main examples of cultural appropriation, specifically whites who think it’s okay to go to parties dressed as a chinaman, an Indian, señoritas picantes, a Jew or a black.

But to me this isn’t even cultural appropriation, it’s caricature and racial stereotyping. In order for someone to appropriate a culture, they need to have some kind of basic understanding or admiration of some part of that culture. 

Gringo motherfuckers dressing up as hombres con burros aren’t appropriating Mexican culture, they’re making a mockery of it. We should be able to agree that shit is racist before even having the conversation about cultural appropriation.

And the same goes for Native American mascots and sports teams. It’s not appropriation; it’s the reduction of an already mostly exterminated culture to a racist cartoon caricature. I mean, the Washington Redskins—the name of the team is a racial slur. It has nothing to do with appropriation, it’s just good old-fashioned racism.

And if you’re thinking, “but why aren’t you upset about sports teams that stereotype white people? SJW hypocrisy exposed!” I respond that when Native Americans repopulate North America, wipe out most of the white people, impose their own social, political, and religious institutions, and confine the remaining whites to ghettos, and then call their sports team the Chattanooga Honkies—well then I’ll join your white lives matter protest rally.

But until then, if you’re offended by the Minnesota Vikings, here’s what you do: you learn the elder futhark alphabet, you use it to write a letter of complaint on a scroll, you take it via longboat to Iceland, and you set yourself on fire and drown yourself in the fjord, because no one gives a shit about you or your hypothetical problems.

I guess the distinction I’m making between mockery and appropriation could be summed up this way: a white guy wearing a Rasta hat with fake dreads for Halloween is caricature, while a white hippie with actual dreadlocks is appropriation. Or is it?

L-l-l-l-l-et’s talk about white people with dreads. I guess I should take this opportunity to disclose a secret. A dark secret. A bad, bad secret.

I used to be a white person with dreadlocks.

In fact, I think I still have them. They’re in a box, somewhere. Don’t ask what’s in these jars. What’s in the box??

So first of all I’ll say that for the two years I had dreads, I got nothing but compliments from black people. In fact, it was the white people who couldn’t fucking stand them. But I acknowledge that it could be a sampling error. You know, maybe the black people who were offended were too polite to accost me and kept it to themselves.

So one of the arguments against white people wearing dreadlocks goes that white people take locs out of their original context and erase their meaning. But is that true? I don’t know, it seems to me that dreadlocks have a totally different cultural meaning for white people. It’s like a hippie thing, not a Rasta thing. 

And hold on, is it even a mainly a Rasta thing for black people? Like, how well-versed is Lil Wayne in the teachings of Haile Selassie? [CLIP] I guess he does a Jamaican accent sometimes. Is it appropriation when black Americans do Caribbean accents? (I honestly have no idea, I’m gonna wait for black people to figure it out.)

Wagwan YouTube.

Another objection to white dreadlocks has it that black people often face workplace discrimination for wearing locs, while white people like Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus are celebrated for them. But it’s really only famous white people who are celebrated. (And by celebrated I mean they face widespread public mockery and shaming). 

When I had locs, people would tell me I should get a job at Tower Records, because that was the only job you could get if you were a white guy with dreads. 

Also, it was 2006, so Tower Records was a thing. [Tower Training video montage]

[vaporwave] It’s all in my head, man, it’s all in my head. What the fuck—[Bob Marley, me with dreads montage]

How soon hath Time the subtle thief of youth stolen on his wing—

It seems to me that the real problem here is racist employers forbidding black employees to wear natural hairstyles. And you know who I bet would be natural allies against that type of employer? White people with dreadlocks. Let’s take to Twitter and start a firestorm of public shame! White people with dreads are great at that. Let’s tear these fuckers down!

Seriously, though, I guess I just think that getting angry at random white people with dreads is directing justified frustration at the wrong targets.

Now, I want to talk about some examples of cultural appropriation that I think actually are prooooooblemaaaaatic.

In the mid-1960s there was a cultural event known as the “British Invasion,” in which four plucky chaps from Liverpool attempted to overthrow the communist government of Cuba by launching an invasion that was defeated in three days by Castro’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. In the aftermath of these events, an English band called Led Zeppelin made a fortune selling covers of black blues songs to white Americans.

Now, this is kind of a subtle point so I want you to stop [bleep, meat] for five seconds and pay attention. I have no problem with the fact that Led Zeppelin played blues songs. Blues is a genre where, traditionally, there was no such thing as plagiarism. Everyone played everyone else’s songs, and there wasn’t really a robust notion of authorship. The problem with Zeppelin is that they gave themselves songwriting credits on the albums for songs written by black blues musicians. Now, many of these songs were public domain, so it wasn’t an issue of copyright infringement. The issue instead is appropriation, exacerbated by the fact that the source material originated with an underprivileged demographic that for the most part didn’t gain anywhere near the remuneration for their work as the white appropriators. The fact that Zeppelin profited off recording these songs without even having the decency to give credit is pretty shitty.

But, to be clear, my problem with it is that they profited without giving appropriate credit, not that they performed the songs in the first place. Other white blues musicians, like Stevie Ray Vaughan, have been a lot better about this. And I got no beef with Stevie. In fact, I like to get filled inside with his Texas Flood, if you know what I’m sayin. Aw yeah! Give it to me.

I disagree with the view, held by some SJWs, that white people shouldn’t borrow things from other cultures. For one thing, I think this idea depends on Wagnerian-cum-Hitlerian ideas tethering culture to race. In reality there are no clear boundaries between “black music” and “white music.” Led Zeppelin appropriated the traditional blues song, “Gallows Pole,” but that song itself turns out to have centuries-old origins in Scandinavian folk music.

Cultures are perpetually in flux, and there’s constant interchange between them. Miscegenation is the norm, and I’m glad it’s the norm. I like it when different races exchange fluids. Oh God, did I say fluids? I meant cultures. How embarrassing.

I mean, do you want to live in a world where Eminem, Zeppelin and Stevie only sing Wagner? I mean, I guess that’d be pretty badass, but it’s different from the way things are and I hate it.

I should acknowledge that cultural exchange often isn’t as innocent as I’m making it sound. History for the most part isn’t the story of cultures peacefully trading ideas. It’s the story of people fucking killing and enslaving each other. And obviously under those conditions, there’s a power imbalance that’s reflected in the way that cultures are exchanged. And appropriation is one of those reflections.

But it seems that the alternative is cultural segregation, and that’s even worse. I think it ultimately redounds to the general good that dominant cultural groups try to understand everyone else, and imitation is part of that understanding, even if they oversimplify things and fuck it up a lot of the time. It’s good advice to be aware that you probably don’t understand other cultures as well as you think you do, and that profiting off the cultural products of disadvantaged groups is potentially exploitative.

But this idea can be taken too far. When we’ve got Lena Dunham telling white people to not eat sushi and yoga classes being cancelled for fear of cultural appropriation, it might be time to dial down the offense-taking a little bit and embrace cultural miscegenation like the cucks we are. What I’m really trying to say here is I like watching black men bang my wife.

If you liked this video, why don’t you appropriate it? But it’s only okay if you like, subscribe, and give me your money.

Also, like I said at the beginning of this video, this is a complex topic and I probably got something wrong. If you disagree with me, leave a comment or, if you’re afraid of being dog-piled, send me a message on Facebook.