Note On Cultural Appropriation And Racist Systemic Policing In Canada

‪https://quillette.com/2020/06/27/the-mob-that-came-after-me-is-turning-on-itself-when-will-this-end-who-does-this-help/‬

Me: 

Haven’t read any of the thread.‬

‪Article is excellent.‬

‪I reject virtually in toto the idea of cultural appropriation as anything bad, and I’d distinguish between it and cultural misappropriation, which can take many forms, some criminal, but has 0 to do with the good faith artistic imagining and creation of any others whatsoever. ‬

‪The ultimate logical absurdity of cultural appropriation is that we can only write about ourselves. Only then is 0 “appropriated.” And even that is problematic since we’re formed out of so much cultural context informed by such a variety of cultural sources. Even more so for those who hold to tabula rasa.‬

‪One side point, though: 

“We are grappling with problems that are life-and-death serious: a global pandemic and its devastating economic aftermath, systemic overuse of police force against Black and Indigenous citizens…”‬


‪I disagree that there is “systemic overuse of police force against Black…citizens.” ‬

‪“Systemic” is thrown around so much it becomes more received narrative than fact, more rhetoric than fact. Wouldn’t it be better to say with respect to police force used against Blacks in Canada that the disproportion speaks to a problem, a problematic dimension of policing rather than something that is systemic, which itself relates to the whole of something rather than the part? ‬

‪Consider the number of police civilian interactions in Canada in a year. Might they number 35,000,000, 1/10th of the rough annual number in the US? Cut down that number by any reasonable amount you like. Of all of those, how many are problematic? Of all those that are problematic, how many involve Blacks? Of all those that involve Blacks, how many are so univalent that race is only or predominant factor involved? ‬

‪Answer these questions and I don’t see how anyone fails to distinguish between a problematic discrete part of the system and it as a whole.‬

‪I make no such claim as regards the relation between the police and Indigenous Canadians. That’s much more complicated.‬