Cultural Appropriation: a confession of guilt.
I (when I was younger...and stupid) used to think that the discussion of cultural appropriation was a well-meaning, modern backpedaling towards a type of aesthetic segregation. Now I can see it is just the necessary process of karmic adjustment. A way for pride to be excluded from those who seem to not have the necessary responsibility and discernment to use information that is not their birthright (White people).
It still is a landmine field but one, as white people, is part of our cultural inheritance. Our birthright is a kind of guilt from ages of ignorance and genocide. The danger of it is ignorance is also part of our privilege. We are born into a world where we think that we are above the karmic wheel. That we can undo the past by letting other people tell stories about how they were wronged and somehow that will undo every terrible thing that is our heritage. You can't wash away the blood of our past with good intentions. Good intentions do not make us exempt...but it is a step in the right direction.
I am self-educated. My parents taught me how to read and I taught myself everything else. I was "homeschooled" and did not learn how to read until I was almost twelve. I have paranoid schizophrenia, severe depression, anxiety, and compulsive thoughts from OCD. That is my story to tell. I want to be an author and I feel I should be able to write a book about anyone and anything I want. Considering that I rely on Grammarly to correct the errors others wouldn't make... then I can say (without a doubt) I am not ready to live up to the responsibility of representing people so out of my realm of experience.
One solution I have tried several times was to write post-human stories. This also means they are set in a post-racial world. This isn't the dream for every person on this planet...because some of them have a right to feel proud of their heritage. Some people have for generations been the best part of humanity, all the while being denied their claim to that right. I regret my one attempt at a black-American character. I was trying to write a criticism of racism and fell flat on my face in the mud. The novella was written after a year and a half long psychotic episode right after I got disability and meds. It was badly written and an embarrassment and crossed the line into racial caricature. I regret it and only bring it up because it's my story... I can't undo it any more than we can raise the dead or right the wrongs of the past. But still, we as a species have to put one in front of the other and let people tell their stories because to silence our guilt leaves only damnation.
It still is a landmine field but one, as white people, is part of our cultural inheritance. Our birthright is a kind of guilt from ages of ignorance and genocide. The danger of it is ignorance is also part of our privilege. We are born into a world where we think that we are above the karmic wheel. That we can undo the past by letting other people tell stories about how they were wronged and somehow that will undo every terrible thing that is our heritage. You can't wash away the blood of our past with good intentions. Good intentions do not make us exempt...but it is a step in the right direction.
I am self-educated. My parents taught me how to read and I taught myself everything else. I was "homeschooled" and did not learn how to read until I was almost twelve. I have paranoid schizophrenia, severe depression, anxiety, and compulsive thoughts from OCD. That is my story to tell. I want to be an author and I feel I should be able to write a book about anyone and anything I want. Considering that I rely on Grammarly to correct the errors others wouldn't make... then I can say (without a doubt) I am not ready to live up to the responsibility of representing people so out of my realm of experience.
One solution I have tried several times was to write post-human stories. This also means they are set in a post-racial world. This isn't the dream for every person on this planet...because some of them have a right to feel proud of their heritage. Some people have for generations been the best part of humanity, all the while being denied their claim to that right. I regret my one attempt at a black-American character. I was trying to write a criticism of racism and fell flat on my face in the mud. The novella was written after a year and a half long psychotic episode right after I got disability and meds. It was badly written and an embarrassment and crossed the line into racial caricature. I regret it and only bring it up because it's my story... I can't undo it any more than we can raise the dead or right the wrongs of the past. But still, we as a species have to put one in front of the other and let people tell their stories because to silence our guilt leaves only damnation.
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