You Know Who Else Hated Cultural Appropriation?

I see that you are planning to hire someone whose job it will be to prevent “cultural appropriation.” It occurred to me when I read that, that the last official I know of whose job was to prevent cultural appropriation was Hans Hinkel. So who was he? When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, as you may know, every Jew in any cultural position was fired. My father was a young assistant director at the Berlin City Opera and he and his boss, Dr. Kurt Singer, also a Jew, lost their jobs. My father had the idea of telling the Nazis, “Okay, you say we’re a different culture; well then, you logically need to allow us to have our own cultural institutions.” Out of that came the Jewish Cultural League, which was headed by Dr. Singer, and was able to carry on Jewish cultural life with Jewish artists for Jewish audiences until after the beginning of the war. My father directed operas but was also the “inner censor.” The man he worked with to make sure that the Nazis were okay with what was being performed, and didn’t think the Jews were appropriating Aryan culture, was a special commissioner for “cultural particulars” named Hans Hinkel. Now I gather you are taking up the same line of work. From Hinkel to Schlissel, or so it appears.

Unfair? Well, President Schlissel, it grieves me deeply that you seem to have so little memory of the past that you do not realize that the concern about “cultural appropriation” has always been a manifestation of the far-right, of belligerent nationalists, and of fools who have delusions of a cultural purity that simply doesn’t exist. Here’s a story from my grandmother: During World War I, in a sewing circle for the (German) troops, a woman started ranting about the corruption of the German language by French. Another woman (not my grandmother) said, “So, in which Faehnlein is your husband?” The point was that no one had used the word Faehnlein since the Thirty Years War or so; instead the French-based Kompanie had become the standard term. Cultural purism is folly and its genesis is invariably chauvinist and very often racist. So why, oh why, are you encouraging the rebirth of this hateful thing?

And of all places to come up with this bright idea: The United States of America, the country that used to pride itself on being a melting pot. Think about it: If it weren’t for cultural appropriation there would be absolutely no American culture at all. (Okay, maybe Coca Cola.) But should we be ashamed of that? Is the University of Michigan to stand against the whole of American history shouting “stop?” And for what? So that only the right people get to wear hoop earrings, or do yoga? In high school biology we were taught about the “hybrid vigor” that means mutts are healthier than purebreds. In some ways it applies as well to culture. Sure, we Americans mix things from ancient cultures together in the most indiscriminate, amateurish, and silly ways possible. Think “Philly roll” sushi. Jewish cream cheese and lox (itself an American Jewish cultural appropriation according to Michael Wex) and marinated Japanese rice. But that’s good isn’t it? Do we really want to go back to those olden, golden days when we eschewed frozen “Tombstone: Down Home Country Pizza” and, yes, franks and hamburgers (consider the names)? Even the Puritans culturally appropriated like nobody’s business. Remember Squanto and “we call it maize?” Here’s another story: In the novel Mona in the Promised Land, the narrator, a teenaged Chinese immigrant, describes her sister, off at Radcliffe, carefully seeking to tea-smoke a duck in the authentic manner, while at the same time her parents are telling them about this wonderful new duck marinade they’ve discovered, Pepsi Cola. Do we really side with the daughter while chiding her sellout parents?

And of course where crazed identity politics separates and creates anger and distrust (because “outsiders” are foreign and have cooties), cultural appropriation is friendly. If what you want is inclusivity, cultural appropriation is the best weapon in your arsenal. Eat the food of strangers, like the food of strangers, and you begin to like the people, even if you feel their cuisine could be improved by a big dose of ketchup or some marshmallow garnish. Horrifying it may be to purists, but they can cook for each other. Let democracy feed itself as it likes.

Here, however, I can hear you saying, “You don’t understand. What we’re doing here is different. You are thinking of majority cultures excluding minority ones. Here we are including minority cultures by protecting their integrity, so they can feel truly included.” In other words, your examples are of selfish people; we here are being altruistic. Our intentions are good; theirs were bad.

First of all, however noble your intentions are, President Schlissel, the intentions of those you are enabling are the same old cultural purism and exclusivity which you, I assume, would deplore as such. It is narcissism to put your good feeling about your intentions over the actual effect of what you are enabling. Second, the idea that at a certain point “they” will feel adequately protected and we will all sing Kumbaya together is also folly. Identity politics is competitive. The rewards offered to the officially victimized necessarily establish a competition to claim that privileged status. Also there is the inner competition within groups about which elites can represent the group most effectively. “Effectively” usually means “increasing demands.” Examples are easy to find and my guess is that in your position you are quite familiar with how this works. So in encouraging people to be ever more sensitive about cultural appropriation, you are inevitably intensifying bad feelings among groups and promoting competitive exclusivity. (That sounds impressive; how about establishing an “Office of Competitive Exclusivity?”)

Finally, to pull back from the specific policy issue here, the whole tendency of the past 50 years, which seeks to speed up achieving equality by group labeling, group measuring, group preference, group identity, and now even by group exclusivity, has been profoundly foolish. The high-minded elites from the late 1960s down to today have always thought that preference and the consequent encouragement of group divisions were in their control, that they could bring everyone and everything to a harmonious conclusion when the necessary “remediation” had, in their impartial opinion, been done. That was, at a minimum, arrogant, and it was also purblind about how people actually behave when there is skin in the game. They don’t stop on their own and they won’t listen to you—they’ll just call you a racist or a sexist (cf. Professor Weinstein at Evergreen State or Professor Kipnis at Northwestern) and push on.

I would therefore sincerely ask, President Schlissel, that you rethink what you are doing. Appointing someone to stop cultural appropriation is for you, no doubt, just riding the wave of the times, maybe beating a few of your colleagues at big name universities to the punch in the “woker than thou” sweepstakes. But where that wave crashes ought to concern you. Remember Hans Hinkel.

Sincerely,

Fred Baumann

Professor of Political ScienceKenyon College