You are a cultural appropriator!
I was driving in my car through unseasonably brisk weather today and listening to the radio when a story came on about cultural appropriation. Apparently there is a reggae group in England and when they are performing the lead singer will stop the show if she sees white people wearing dreadlocks and ask them to leave. Cultural appropriation she says and wrong. The journalist asked her if it were any exceptions to her rule. She thought for a moment before answering, “No. It is always wrong.”
“Hmmmm” I thought while chuckling about white people who get dreadlocks while also thinking about surfing.
Our favorite pastime either began in Polynesia or in Peru, depending on who you ask, and was a component of religion or old-school fishing, depending again on those same people. It did not, in any case, begin in southern California or Australia.
And that makes us all cultural appropriators and likely racist.
I think, in a gesture of good faith, everyone at The Inertia should stop surfing. I also think anyone who listens to reggae should stop surfing too. And anyone who prefers açai bowls to ice cream. And anyone who drives a Korean-made car. And anyone who uses, “Mahalo” unless Hawaiian and/or ironic. And anyone who celebrates Taco Tuesday.
It is only right.
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I throw very very loose, relaxed, forward facing, nonchalant shakas. But I’m not from Malibu
What about hipsters wearing mullets? Entertaining or vile?
You’ve missed my point entirely. Bad hair styles and music belong to everyone.
CHAS!!! You kid, but Surf Studies as an academic field has exploded onto the scene, and it has a decided SJW bent. I kid you not – they write formal papers that are essentially indignant academic expansions of the old “you’re a local? You don’t look like a Chumash Indian” quip.
Most of the academics publishing this stuff are Surfrider type millennials who came to our sport in college or after. They longboard/fun board/floaty fish. They are lifelong low intermediates, and, I think, despite the altruistic front to some extent motivated by the jealous fact that they’ll never sit high in a line up. So fuck those dumb ass white construction worker who think they own the ocean because they grew up in it, and make me feel like I’m not in the in group … errr, no wait we mean aren’t we all outsiders on indigenous lands?
First compiled reader was published just this fall.
https://www.dukeupress.edu/…
What’s with the Taboola ads now?
She’s clearly off her tits and doesn’t understand or appreciate the cultural or religious (Leviticus 21:5) significance of Dreadlocks.
At no point in history (and ah vely shot his-tory Rasta haz mon ) did Haile Selassie make such a decree that “:Honky’s no gonna wear da dready mon ! “
the one time he visited jamaica, haile selassie was totally freaked out and scared by the mob of rastas who showed up at the airport to greet him. dude was just an ordinary guy. and he didn’t have dreadlocks himself.
A few things: standing up on a little reed boat (in Peru) is not surfing as we know it. Hawaiians surfed on boards – they created board surfing. Peruvians saying they invented surfing is like saying the bow and arrow creator invented planes. Ok, now to topic at hand: Dreadlocks were worn by celts, vikings, and Germanic tribes . . . but who fucking cares who wears dreadlocks. Jesus Christ. This is biggest problem human kind has: some people think they get to treat others differently due to their “beliefs”: ie, “I’m not making you a cake because you’re gay” or “I’m not hiring you because you’re a black women” or “all Muslims are evil” etc. etc. Basically, 88% of human kind are stupid.
If I don’t manscape my area then my area gets dreads. Then when I’m in my Speedo sunning my bloated body at Lowers it looks like a stuffed a tarantula down my Speedo.
I had dreadlocks for 7 years in my twenties… I blame Martin Potter, laziness and like a true counter culture middle class rebel I also blame my mother, who as a hairdresser inflicted every questionable 80’s cut on my mop.
As an ugly man, it was the only time in my life that girls talked to me, even if it was only asking to buy drugs at concerts.
Cut them off in self disgust after a visit to “rastaville” Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.
Please forgive me.
Preach
I will admit to a much coyer version of The Mobs salty afro as a horny misguided youth for very simalar reasons.
Fuck Nega that’s a grim story mate. I’m still not sure what to do with my trailer park mullet though. I started off a handsome thin beautiful man that could’ve appeared in a Madonna video with Kaipo but now I’m a fat ugly cunt that looks more like a cracked out bikie. That’s life mate.
Andy Samberg wrote a righteous song about your college days Negatron. You toil part-time at Jah Coldstone Creamery?
https://g.co/kgs/asmoCD
Ahhhh, puerto viejo. What a strange place. You can imagine what it’s become now. I also had the dreads for a couple of years, from age 18-20 and they were big, matted and horrendous. I liked them, but cut them off when I needed some major change in life and couldn’t figure out what else to do.
While I believe that there must be some forms of unacceptable cultural appropriation, usually when it involves financial exploitation, most of the examples of cultural appropriation I see people moaning about don’t bother me at all. They’re just a nice mixing of cultures.
”Lin took a different approach, responding with grace both on Instagram and in an essay for The Players’ Tribune. “Hey man, it’s all good. You definitely don’t have to like my hair… At the end of the day, I appreciate that I have dreads and you have Chinese tattoos [because] I think its a sign of respect.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/kenyon-martin-faced-backlash-for-2017-comments-on-jeremy-lin-s-dreadlocks/ar-AA1GrHnU
I would hate to see it now! Passed through after Bocas which was a lovely quiet town (then!)
So Taj surfing with a Mowhawk is basically black face.
Heavy.
Mohawks made famous by Indian culture and Disney portrayals of Indians are tots Scottish and white as fuck.
This comment stinks of racism. Mahalo.
I’m gonna go the opposite way. I’m going to make it a point to culturally appropriate everything as much as I can. If I wasn’t so fat and therefore it would get too hot I would grow some dreads just to piss people off. and I would wear one of those stupid red yellow and green knitted beanies too. Is the name beanie racist???
Only if you’re circumcised.
or ostracised , which I think is circumcised by an ostrich !
Bboom tis.
Bob Marley is half white and Eddie Rothman is from Texas. mahalo
wait, i thought he was from philly. or long beach.
?
You may be right. But I call cultural appropriation nonetheless!
mahalo
agree! chas is going over to make him stop wearing the black shorts and using Da Hui name
she’s absolutely right. white people with dreadlocks are always wrong. except rob machado.
I’m a white guy and I would never trade my high top fade for dreads. Whites with dreads are losers.
Dreadlocks don’t make you racist they just make you a smelly cunt.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for leaving dandruff.
Whoa whoa when did I say I would not fuck a dirty cunt? She would be hotter without the fucken mittens/cardigan combo though surely? Bit of Head and Shoulders would not go astray either. Imagine the crab situation she’s got going on. Little bastards are horrible.
If the mittens are contiguous with the cardie, there’s a serious fluffy fetish thing that is doing it for me. Otherwise please shoot her.
Yeah I think I only want her cos Wardo’s PO said she was hot. She’s one of those chicks ya know.
Mate, have a word with yourself. She looks absolutely bogging.
Globalisation is the trojan horse of cultural appropriation. If I can’t grow my hair in the style of Peter Tosh, may I continue eating Camembert and guzzling Château Latour Pauillac when the bank account is adequately flush?
Gee, I wonder why Winston Hubert McIntosh used “Peter Tosh” as his stage name..
A DVD of Cool Runnings
I love it how we’ve all always known intuitively that white people with dreads are weird and annoying but now we’ve got a term and some whispy intellectual backing to support our disdain. Yes colonialism and imperialism were and are wrong, but all cultures are just an amalgamation of previous cultures, to claim borrowing shit from one that might have one day been oppressed by people who look a bit like you is swinging the scythe a little wide I think
imagine music with no ‘cultural appropriation’ – it would be boring as fuck
but yes, to sum up, white ppl with dreads are usually tossers
I like the way it seems you’re having a serious discussion with yourself here.
I’m glad and lucky that ironic use of Mahalo is legit thanks!
Dreads are the ultimate white person fashion faux pas. Right up there with sweatpants as formal attire.
I’m always fascinated by the term cultural appropriation. It’s almost as if one side didn’t lose and still has some sort of right to object.