Boston Kimono Exhbit removed over racism.

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I love other cultures and think they are interesting and I love a lot of traditional clothing from other countries. I was telling an Indian friend of mine that I'd love to wear a sari sometimes because it's beautiful but I'm afraid I'd just look stupid in it because you rarely see white people wearing them over here. I hadn't even thought about somebody getting pissed off because of cultural appropriation.

It's freaking ridiculous. Sometimes people think the traditional clothes and style of other cultures are pretty or cool or whatever and they want to wear them. I don't see how that is in any way offensive. It's not like they are wearing traditional sacred things.

I think it's a damn shame when we set our standards for what is and isn't offensive to the level of the most overly sensitive person instead of a middle of the road common sense solution.

I certainly dont get all upset if I see someone from somewhere else wearing something with the rebel flag on it (unless it's a hate group) and I don't get upset when debutante groups in other parts of the country have their girls wear hoop skirts and other antebellum attire. I don't get offended if a restaurant in Minnesota opens and calls itself a southern cooking restaurant, and its owned and operated by people who haven't ever set food below the Mason Dixon line. I don't get upset when someone else wants to take part in my culture. I don't see people wearing things from other countries and using them to promote hate, which is the only thing that bothers me that some people use the flag for.

Did you see the thing about the Instagram photo some kids took of them using a charcoal acne face mask? A guy and a girl put on this biore face mask to get rid of blackheads. It's got charcoal in it which is supposed to help that. They also make a scrub and pore strips with it. My daughter has all that. They took photos of themselves with the mask on because it looks funny. It's the same as the green kind and white kind and blue kind except it's black. It's not blackface it's a facial. They would have thought that blue or green or white looked just as funny and took a pic and posted it. Yet some nutjob somewhere said it's racist and they are offended and the kids were made to apologize. This is what I'm talking about. It wasn't offensive nor intended to be offensive. It just REMINDED SOMEONE of something else that is offensive, so they took offense. The same way that one guy got ripped for saying the word "niggardly" which has nothing to do with race, it just means really cheap and tight fisted. It reminded someone of something else so it must be offensive and the person must apologize.

Dont you think things are going way too far??

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

You know who you never see whine about cultural appropriation? Scottish guys. You'll see guy metal fans of all races and ethnicities wearing kilts. Mainly cause of Guns N Roses I think, but you have yet to hear of a group of Scottish guys protesting it. Know why? Because they realise it's not harming anybody and they don't care, that's why. Nobody has gone to Scotland to take away their kilts because metalheads put them on. Nobody takes away anybody cultural stuff because another group does it either. This is all a grown up, expensive way of running to mommy saying "he's copying me!". It's about as harmful now as if was on the playground.

Everybody else should take a page out of the Scott's book and not complain over things they know isn't hurting anybody.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

Again, here is the panel discussion held at the MFA. A transcript is available at the link:

https://soundcloud.com/napawf-boston-an ... ia-america

My impression of how this discussion went:

1.) No one seems to have any issue with trying on kimono.

2.) Christina Wang, the organizer of the protest, admitted to not wording her sign very well. She complained that the MFA made having a discussion on the issue very difficult, forcing her to use brevity as she made her protest sign.

3.) Japanese- and other Asian-Americans were in agreement that the MFA handled the situation poorly and did not do a very good job providing context for the exhibit.

4.) The panelists were very concerned with the representation of Japanese- and other Asian-Americans in American society.

It seems that many have tried to drive a wedge between Japanese nationals, Japanese-Americans, and other Asian-Americans, making it seem like they were in complete disagreement. I, too, fell for this. But when I looked at this discussion, it became clear that they were in agreement on many issues.

There were differences among the Japanese nationals, Japanese-Americans, and other Asian-Americans, mainly based on different priorities. There is a lot of overlap, too. Japanese nationals and many Japanese-Americans do like seeing their culture achieve worldwide exposure and even some adoption. Asian-Americans, and this includes many Japanese-Americans, are concerned with the legacy of racism in this country, issues like the Vincent Chen murder, and representation. They dislike people using their culture like some kind of exotic joke, like a sideshow attraction, and want to promote understanding in American society as a whole and are tired of being seen as perpetual foreigners.

It's all-in-all a very interesting discussion for anyone that does care about Japanese- and other Asian-American issues.

I don't believe that Asians face significant discrimination or prejudice in this country in 2016, in 1916 it was completely true but nowadays it seems like Asian-Americans get lumped in with 'white' people more times than not so the biggest discrimination their community faces today is in poor communities from other minorities and affirmative action at universities which punishes the success of their people. What some silly college student says about race and racism really has no basis in reality, these indoctrination centers pushing this 'intersectionality' conspiracy theory and victim mentality. Thus we need 'safe space' from all the 'triggers', it's a straight up joke.

Somebody doing "chinese eyes" and donning a stereotypical accent is racist, somebody wearing a kimono or eating sushi is the opposite of racism. That is literally an embrace of their culture, cultural exchange is basis of our entire country. We've really gone full circle, the segregationists are back and they're accusing everyone else of racism! Madness!

NYDailyNews

I know this has nothing to do with this thread, but I saw this recently and thought it was interesting:

naturalplastic,

I'm glad to see that you are getting what these activists are talking about.