feotakahari

My thoughts on cultural appropriation are driven by my opposition to a kind of fatalism I see in authors like Chang-rae Lee. To them, the culture of your biological parents is your nature and your destiny. You must live by their rules, or else you’re denying yourself, which will inevitably leave you as a hollowed-out husk of a person. Cultures can’t be mixed, nor can they be learned, and they certainly can’t be escaped. Whatever culture you inherited by blood will remain with you until you die.

If you think this sounds suspiciously similar to those “race realist” nutjobs, you’re not wrong. The only difference is which specific culture they see as inherently tied to their own bloodline.