I have mentioned multiple times that I am taking an introductory course to dance and culture, and it was the class that I was looking forward to the most at the end of this summer. I hate it now, but that's not the point. I was supposed to write an essay comparing two dance cultures. I forget what the other one was now (this was about a month ago), but I remember the second culture was Muslim. As in, traditional, original Muslim belly dancing.
I didn't know whether belly dancing was one word or two, so I just typed it into the search bar, no spaces, and hit enter, knowing Google would either correct me or present websites and articles that showed the correct spelling. As it turns out, belly dancing is two words.
I was about to go back to writing my essay when a link with a special little title caught my eye: "
Why I can't stand white belly dancers."
So naturally, I clicked on it to see what it was really about, because surely, Salon wouldn't publish an article that was actually so blatantly racist, right?
Holy frick.
Sit your sanctimonious butt down, Randa Jarrar, and listen up because you done pissed me off and s***'s about to get real.
I am a systematic person, so I will go down her ridiculous article in order. If you chose not to read the article (which I highly do not advise), that's fine because I'll be quoting her absurd comments anyways.
Google the term “belly dance” and the first images the search engine offers are of white women in flowing, diaphanous skirts, playing at brownness.
Playing at brownness? You think they belly dance to try to appear brown? You really think they belly dance, not because it is enjoyable, or because it boosts their confidence, but because to appear brown is a desirable trait in America? I don't know where Jarrar got the idea that belly dancing is accepted by society, because the words that first come to mind to describe belly dancers are not very nice: slut, prostitute, stripper. The whole the-more-skin-you-show-the-less-intelligent-you-are thing. You think they want to appear this way?
The term “belly dance” itself is a Western one. In Arabic, this kind of dance is called Raqs Sharqi, or Eastern dance.
I fail to see how this matters in the slightest. A rose by any other name is still a rose, right? Maybe if it were translated to something derogatory, then there would be cause for complaint. But belly dancing, or as Jarrar say is properly Raqs Sharqi, actually involves undulations of the torso. It's just a literal name. Besides, this is hardly the first case that a culture has taken a word in another language and changed it to make it easier to remember. Heard of wontons, shampoo, or parka? All these words are anglicized. "Westerners" are not targeting your specific culture, so don't pretend to take it so personally. If "Western" people had kept the original name, you 'd probably bash them for mangling the pronunciation.
It goes the other way around too; in Chinese, the characters for sofa (an English word) are pronounced "sha-fa" and sandwich is "sa-ming-zh." The characters are just used phonetically. If you translated it literally, it would come out as gibberish. The French liked the word "shampoo" so much they adopted it, but French-ized it to be "le shampooing" (and "aprés-shampooing" for conditioner). It's not just "Westerners" that are the criminals (by Jarrar's definition of criminal). All countries do it for the sake of simplicity.
... A white woman came out in Arab drag — because that’s what that is, when a person who’s not Arab wears genie pants and a bra and heavy eye makeup and Arabic jewelry, or jewelry that is meant to read as “Arabic” because it’s metallic and shiny and has squiggles of some kind — and began to belly-dance.
Honey, this is called stereotyping. If you're going to take personal offense at indirect stereotyping, I don't know how you go through life without being offended by something every day. When I went to my Chinese cousin's English lessons years ago, Americans were depicted as pistol-wielding, chaps-wearing, ten-gallon-hat-donning cowboys in her textbook. Dutch people've got their clogs, the Irish are shamrocks and leprechauns, Kenyans have tribal patterned clothes, and Brazilians are scantily-clad revelers. All these stereotypes come from a truth, or what was once a truth. If the world identifies Arabs with beautiful women in genie pants and a bra, that's hardly the worst thing they've associated with Arabs.
She was not a terrible belly dancer. But she was incredibly thin...
I actually didn't have too much of a problem with the article up to this point, because most of what Jarrar said held a grain of truth. But this line was the start of my anger. So, just because she's thin, she's not allowed to dance? Just because she wasn't born with curves, or because she prefers her body to look slimmer, she's not allowed to dance your dance? By Jarrar's logic, girls with cup sizes above C can't dance ballet anymore. Short, slender guys can't dance hip-hop. Tall girls older than 16 can't do gymnastics.
Please. Don't
ever blame someone's natural body type, something they had zero say in choosing, as the reason why they can't try something new. Judge the girl on her actual belly dancing skills and not the way she's built - and by that, Jarrar actually complements her. Slenderness does not always equal unhealthy diets. There are a lot of thin women out there who wish they weren't, so don't put them down even further and tell them, "No," because of your unfair generalizations on body image
.
Western, or white women, were beginning to take over gigs in Egypt. These women moved there out of an obsession with belly dance and are now appropriating it from local dancers.
This sounds so hilariously familiar. All the American nationalists who are against immigration, because immigrants are taking up jobs and occupations that the nationalists seem to think belong as a right to those born in the U.S. Do they realize their ancestors, who were immigrants themselves, nearly exterminated the first local population in their rush to stick flags in new ground? Nationalists: those who fear that immigrants will do to them what they/their ancestors did to others. My point is, Jarrar is acting like those nationalists, who seem to think that the people of the culture have a monopoly on who gets to learn, practice, and participate in that same culture. If there's a demand for white belly dancers instead of native belly dancers, what's to stop the "Westerners" from going out there and making bank as the supply? It's sad, yes, that it will take many job opportunities away from Egyptian women, and I feel sympathy for them, but no one ever said life would be fair.
And say "appropriation" one more time. I dare you.
"Would you wear a dashiki and rock waspafarian dreads and take up African dance publicly? Wait,” we’d probably say, “don’t answer that.”
Yeah, actually. Snigger all you want at them, but some people do that. Why? Is it really your business what other people do, as long as they don't hurt anyone else? I took a Ghana workshop in my dance class, and learned the basic steps and the music that accompanied them, but the best part was that our leader put a lot of emphasis on sharing knowledge and awareness. He said when he was growing up in Ghana they were required in elementary school to learn the names and locations of all 50 states of America. Do you know the 47 continental countries of Africa? No? Then stop being a hypocrite and referring to all the different dance styles in Africa as simply "African." Do you even realize you are doing to the continent of Africa what you say others are doing to belly dancing? Do you hear yourself generalizing? "Dashiki" and "dreads" are about as encompassing of the African cultures as genie pants and bras are to yours.
Women I have confronted about this have said, “But I have been dancing for 15 years! This is something I have built a huge community on.” These women are more interested in their investment in belly dancing than in questioning and examining how their appropriation of the art causes others harm.
In your haste to name those women the criminals for being selfish, you yourself are revealed to be even more so. You are clinging to the dance style, practically screeching, "Mine! You can't have it!" These women find pride and happiness and, as they say, a community in a part of your culture; you should be flattered it has had such a positive effect on them (As they say, mimicry is the highest form of flattery). As a person who has struggled nearly all her life in finding a group of reliable and trustworthy friends, I can't help but despise you for trying to take that away from someone else.
And you said appropriation again.
Definitions will always differ, but Wikipedia says that the meaning of "appropriation" in art form is this:
In the visual arts, to appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects (or the entire form) of human-made visual culture. To me, it has a rather neutral connotation here, neither good nor bad. Technically, Jarrar is correct in her usage. But what she has done is to twist it into a crime. News flash: Globalization is a thing and there's no stopping it. There is absolutely nothing wrong in learning about the cultures outside of one's own sphere. In fact, lack of knowledge about other cultures is shameful in today's society. I've read enough of how people like to generalize about the obliviousness of Americans to politics and norms in other countries. In your eyes, the white woman just can't win, can she? If she doesn't know of the nuances of your culture, she is ignorant and disrespectful; if she tries to learn and even integrate herself in it, she is butting in where she shouldn't.
Find another form of self-expression. Make sure you’re not appropriating someone else’s.
There is nothing she can do to self-express, then. If the only culture she can express herself in is her own, then there are so many opportunities for discovery lost, and such a narrow channel to choose from. Besides, are you saying Europeans can't also be Buddhists? Can people of only white descent learn ballet? I hope not, because then you can go ahead and try to tell Misty Copeland to hang up her pointe shoes and only pursue African dances. Dance is about technique, dedication, and yes, self-expression. Not ethnicity or race.
Stop saying that word, I swear. Your objection ought more to be to the misappropriation of the culture where people turn it into something vulgar, demeaning, or offensive. Perhaps those who dress up in skimpy belly dance garb for Halloween. Don't focus on those who actually take it seriously.
This dance form is originally ours, and does not exist so that white women can have a better sense of community; can gain a deeper sense of sisterhood with each other; can reclaim their bodies; can celebrate their sexualities; can perform for the female gaze.
I'm done. I'm so pissed off I don't trust myself to respond to this without including vulgarity.
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I found a real article and video also responding to this horrible opinion on cultural appropriation:
This article Jarrar wrote could have been an opportunity to span a cultural gap. Instead, she wants maintain the divide. Why? As I've previously stated, globalization is a huge aspect of nearly any society today. People get bored with their own cultures, I know I do. I love learning about the history and values of countries/cultures other than mine, not only because I find it interesting and worth knowing, but so that I don't say the wrong thing and offend people. I think it makes me a better, more rounded person, much like the way students at most colleges are required to take core classes not pertaining to their major. People are to be encouraged to sample other cultures, to learn that it takes all kinds of people to make a world, but those like Jarrar essentially say it is now "appropriation" if one doesn't stay in their lane culturally.
Which is, to put it bluntly, f***ed up.
I understand the need to preserve cultures. I think what Jarrar was trying to do was to protect her heritage (heritage because she was born in Chicago - irony) from becoming a watered down joke, in which case I would have fully supported her. I keep using Chinese examples, and I apologize, but I know I would hate it if the only things the Chinese were remembered for were Chinese New Year, the zodiac, communism, and character tattoos. A lot of people only know what the media tells them about Muslim culture - which isn't very much, or very broad. But Jarrar is attacking the wrong people. Instead of targeting those who are actively diluting her culture - those who think of it only in terms of stereotypes - she criminalizes those who are supporting it in its original form and spreading the proper knowledge. This huge flaw in her argument crumbles the whole thing.
The sharing of art forms - theater, canvas, dance, music - can unite the people on this Earth. It creates understanding among people of different backgrounds. Sing what you can't say, dance to put to physical form the intangible, paint to let others into the pictures in your mind. Ignorance and its promotion should never be supported. If you don't want to learn about the world - fine. That's your prerogative. But don't stifle other people's harmless curiosity.
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“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent.”
- Jim Jarmusch
“It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."
- Jean-Luc Godard
I am about to board my flight home, so I shall end here:
Reverse racism is still racism.
*steps off soapbox*
