The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/smith-college-protesters-bar-journalists-from-covering-sit-in-unless-they-support-the-cause/106834

Reporters planning to cover the sit-in arrived at the Massachusetts college’s student center on Wednesday only to find that the protesters intended to keep them out. Alyssa Mata-Flores, a Smith senior and a sit-in organizer, elaborated on the decision to The Republican: “We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate their solidarity with black students and students of color. By taking a neutral stance, journalists and media are being complacent in our fight.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/university-yoga-class-suspended-over-cultural-appropriation-dispute-a6744426.html

This one is interesting. Hopefully a solution that is agreeable (a form of induction that would talk about where the practice comes from and how it has evolved in the last 50 years in the West) can be found and ultimately the class can return - it was both free and for all so v much in the spirit of the best yoga practice I see.

ok that's just fucking stupid

appropriate, but for gods sake be mindful about it.

never thought id say this but these kids need a healthy dose of postmodernism

or just irony, more fundamentally

those motherfuckers better not be serving any bagels at their meetings

amazing

We experienced genocide, and now they are appropriating our breakfast foods

But I mean seriously, without dismissing the entire concept of harmful cultural appropriation out of hand, this is just such a dumb, bad, ahistorical example, like I don't think these people have any idea about, among other things, pre- or post-colonial India, nor the history of yoga either in India or in the West.

"without dismissing the entire concept of harmful cultural appropriation out of hand, "

Rong

evidently nobody was going to the classes so the announcement/spin is just wrong? but anyway yeah, the history of yoga in the west is one of people saying "I want to take yoga to the west" and people in the west being receptive. there's much to say about who exactly was receptive and why and why during that particular window of time, etc., but to just invoke "cultural appropriation" in this context is completely ahistorical (and ignores many claims in source texts about how various yogas are for the good of the whole world and should be adopted by all, etc)

The history of yoga is quite obscure as this article talks about. In the West people like Iyengar travelled quite a lot in the West to teach. Iyengar and the like probably don't approve of everything under the name of yoga but it was through them that the genie got out of the bag and it isn't going back. And I bet they would prefer it to be that way.

otoh it would be nice to have an induction as a gateway to some of the wider context in that environment. I wouldn't ban it first. xp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_a_Yogi

This book is largely about the charge to bring yoga from the east to the west.

damn how many of these stories start w someone writing an email?

but it was through them that the genie got out of the bag and it isn't going back

eh, Crowley was there first iirc although he was not quite the popularizer what with his nutjob satanist rep and everything

xp

These people are going to be pretty busy when they find out about restaurants

everyone knows when those genies get out of their bag it's damn near impossible to re-bag them

oh great, now we've brought genies into it -- the appropriation trail of tears continues

jinni is the correct plural GET IT RIGHT

These people are going to be pretty busy when they find out about restaurants

― Why because she True and Interesting (President Keyes),

Heh

haha didn't know about Crowley but my point stands as he would not be in no way a popularizer.

maybe we can get some gun control passed

yup.

also came across this just now: https://twitter.com/Will_Antonin/status/668872659359440896

and the link within..

honestly i wonder how much of this has to do with the frustration young political activists must feel. to the nascent political activist, the sheer amount of injustice can be overwhelming, and changing things of actual importance seem impossible -- either because doing so requires a level of organization or coordination they're not ready for, or because the opposition (moneyed interests) are too formidable, or because doing so would take too much time, or may even lead to failure or stalemate. so instead, they content themselves with fighting and winning these meaningless battles

"cultural issues of implication..."

did one of my undergrads write this?

xp imagine this has something to do w/ bds as well -- easy, ultimately toothless victories

why don't they just go with "mindless stretching"

xxp

i mean these kids are probably putting this shit on their CV

maybe

but to look at the kids that occupied the police station vestibule here the other week…

they're in it. this isn't applied oppression studies for them.

so i don't see why it can't be for others, even if they protest in connection with a university.

occupying a police station vestibule is awesome, as is basically everything going on at missouri and most of the other campus protests going on atm. i'm RME at the yoga kids

i guess it's unfair to expect undergrads to have that sort of discriminatory ability at their age and stage of learning/understanding. on one hand, it's great that they are applying what are learning from twitter in class to the wider world. on the other hand, it'd be nice if they were able to realize that there are...varying degrees of harm with these sorts of things, and that not all perceived 'cultural appropriations' require this sort of remedial action

the very idea of 'cultural appropriation' in this sense is pretty nagl and the yoga examples just makes that a bit more obvious

xp hahaha ok yeah cmon kids just let people stretch or whatever

seems like a really exciting time to be an activist. imagine organizing something and seeing it in the Atlantic the next week. or seeing someone in another country write about it like an hour later. pretty cool. pretty empowering. this is a unique time in human history to do this sort of thing!

the people writing these articles are just unwittingly promoting this stuff imo.

Swear to God mordy if ur referencing the boondock saints im giving up on u

lol no

I don't really think this has much to do with BDS

i kinda think it does tbh and it explains why an otherwise unrelated phenomenon keeps appearing in hashtags next to blacklivesmatter or occupymizzou or whatever. easy activism.

Nothing really strikes me as new about campus activists declaring semi-meaningless solidarity with unrelated causes (other than it being in hashtag rather than written statement form), but the "cultural appropriation" fight seems to have been taken to levels that were not there when I was in college.

This yoga thing

I sort of *got* the appropriation concept when it seemed to be about privileged white kids adopting hip-hop slang and stuff, but even there I felt weird about it, like you have this pop culture that is being sold to white kids as what's cool and cutting edge but then they should also be shamed for imitating it?

Have agreed with stuff I've read about native american kids challenging clothing companies who put that skull-in-feather-head-dress image on their stuff, mind

Dunno, complicated

i think i'm on record on ilx as being anti the appropriation idea. it goes against everything i've ever learned about how art + music + literature + religion + language works which is it spreads everywhere and touches everything and so fighting against that seems like fighting against how all human culture works. i can understand how infuriated an historically suppressed minority who developed their own culture would be seeing a white guy getting millions of dollars for imitating that culture while they were kept out. but really the bad part of that is that the minority group is being suppressed! if they could freely participate in the economy then who would care if a white guy was influenced by them. but then to apply this to every expression of every ethnic culture in history? it's insane.

well who really owns culture?

i can speak most specifically to what i studied which is eastern european jewish music which had broad and significant exchanges with other local populations and is incomprehensible as an ethnically specific style of music. this is esp true w/ the arts where artists are often the most cosmopolitan ppl in their community.

Have agreed with stuff I've read about native american kids challenging clothing companies who put that skull-in-feather-head-dress image on their stuff, mind

― cardamon, Monday, November 23, 2015 5:10 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I mean I think there's a type of "appropriation" that can properly just be called "racism"? Like calling your team the Redskins or having Chief Wahoo as a mascot is not really just "appropriating" anymore. I do get that there's a mild form of orientalism going on in a lot of yoga classes, but it strikes me as relatively benign, and I haven't actually heard a lot of Indian people say they feel harmed by it, but IDK?

I guess the best Jewish analog would be celebrity infatuation with Kabbalah, which I think is sort of dumb but I also just put in this separate box and don't give much thought to.

idk in the context of i.e. music appropriation is a way for ppl to make money off other people's work

its not so much about when fans use a slang word as it is when a million selling white artist does by using the ideas of the not million selling nonwhite artist (nb this is obviously a simplification—bc its also about the labels benefitting & et al)

which is to say its about ppl being disconnected from the places that could channel their labor into proper remuneration, then that labor is skimmed by others who benefit massively from it...