In the news

I had an older version of this http://www.mega-vehicles.co.uk/en-e-worker-van.html
Too slow and short a range for travelling but great for tootling around central London and looks like they've upgraded the battery options since then.

I can't find it now but UPS were using big electric vans for a while. Looks like things have come on a long way with options from big manufacturers as well now.

I would need to use it for travelling as well, and the hybrids, which have a proper range and can recharge themselves, are still very heavy and expensive. And the combustion part of the hybrid is diesel, and I will never own a diesel engine.

Without wanting to come across all Pete Hitchens, what's really wrong here?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37821989

depends where you stand on blacking up

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

No blacking up has gone on here???

I hate fancy dress anyway, but there's nothing pernicious about dressing up as an American Indian and a saucy Pilgrim, surely. I would have thought that appropriation - the adoption of sartorial mores as a way of life - was a very different thing to fancy dress?

It's not very nice if you are a cultural/ethnic group that has been pissed on from a great height by another group that is now using your identify as a commercial party thing, with absolutely zero appreciation or understand showed.

[the "official" term is cultural appropriation but that's a whole new ballgame of reading up. If you like reading, don't let the SJW bite there are some very good points and some iffier ones, as always depends on where you read/who comments]

So the Red Indian is bad but the Pilgrim is okay? - because the article implies they've both been offensive in their choice of outfits.

Also, would an Italian dressing up as Jesus be bad, given that he was crucified by the Roman authorities and early Christians were thrown to the Lions?

[As an aside, a good few years ago a friend of mine went to a party dressed as Jesus, and he said the women there were all over him!]

personally, I think dressing up as Jesus is OK, but dressing as a random 1st century Jew might not be.

Would this be different if it was in the UK?

The logic being here pilgrims and Native Americans aren't part of our own internal history of oppression?

Is there actually any "dressing up" which doesn't fall into cultural appropriation?

To what extent are Trustafarian dreds or a social workers' ethnic clothes/jewelry cultural appropriation?

I find the whole thing really interesting trying to see where the boundaries sit on this.

Just thinking about things I've dressed up as for Halloween or fancy dress... one year I went to Halloween as Baron Samedi - which involves the slightly odd process of blacking-up followed by putting on skull makeup. I did it because I love James Bond films, and thought it would be a bit different. I didn't give a huge amount of thought to Hatian Voodoo.

The pilgrim one I have no idea who was offended and why... maybe some history nuts ;)

The Roman authorities aren't in power anymore are they? Italy is host to the Vatican. So I'm not sure that example applies.

Native people still have shitload of issues due to current powerstructures, lack of land for example to live the way they used to and it's not long ago they were forcefully "re-educated".

I've no experience of it myself, only of cultural sexist attitudes (don't get an unwanted pregnancy in NI unless you like spending money and travel to go to England) that are oppressive ("correct term") / pissing on people in a tight spot. So I can imagine where the touchy feeling comes from.

Well yes indeed where do the boundaries sit. Some say dreadlocks are now cultural appropriation (hello?) and on the local feminism forum there was a discussion on Day of the Dead parties in the UK, some thought it was not OK, others thought it was.

I think it's the element of commercialisation with 0 understanding/pretending to be part of a group you are not (Hindu dots) and being done by the group in power that can tick people off. But again not everyone may be offended perse... in your case maybe Voodoo adherents are unhappy, maybe not.

Tough call. I'm ok with you dressing up as a Dutch milkmaid if it helps :P

So the Red Indian is bad but the Pilgrim is okay? - because the article implies they've both been offensive in their choice of outfits.

I think that the Indian/Pilgrim combo actually makes it less bad than just dressing up as an Indian, or a cowboy/Indian combo. In this case you have a sort of social historical comment, rather than just a single reinforcement of a cultural stereotype.

I'm not trying to be reactionary, but a generic American Indian outfit doesn't seem so offensive. Maybe if it was a more accurately appropriated form - of a tribe that was particularly hit hard by the colonisers, perhaps - I could sort of see it.

Seems a little condescending to assume you speak for all Dutch milkmaids no?

;)

@The_Kindness_of_Trees - the response would be, "why is it ok to turn a huge and culturally diverse group of people into one caricatured homogeneous culture based on a degrading Hollywood stereotype"?

Well, that's the thing: they're not making comments, they're just dressing up.

That said, if one of them had elected to go as the Ku Klux Klan. I'd be horrified.

.

Ku Klux Klan. I'd be horrified.

Why?

I don't think that gets you anywhere. Nobody's going to object to caricaturing the culturally diverse people of the British isles as a load of bowler hat wearing, suitcase and umbrella carrying south-eastern English middle managers, are they? And nobody minds too much when we dress in Breton tops, berets and toss a string of onions around our necks. There must be more to this than the mere donning of cliched threads.
Maybe genocide...

I think a key element of cultural appropriation has to be an imbalance in power or some suppression of cultural identity.

In both the cases you've listed you're starting with dominant cultures that haven't been suppressed or forced to change their identity.

That's what I mean. What you said - the turning of a "culturally diverse group of people into one caricatured homogeneous culture based on a degrading Hollywood stereotype" - isn't a problem unless the group in question has been violently subjugated.

True, tongue firmly in cheek ;)

I also can't get the Edam rolling down to a T :P

that's a bit rich coming from a man wearing a Predator mask

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/tory-msp-called-halloween-banned-9160713

Tories 86 Orgreave investigation because presumably it might make them look retrospectively bad. maybe they think Hillsborough was a 2fer deal.

vote tory?

cunt.

The same corrupt police force found to have acted illegally at Hillsborough? Surely they couldn't have been doing the same at Orgreave? Could they?