Tim Murray by

Steve Ladurantaye: "Ripping off someone's culture isn't funny."

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: The editor of CBC's, Steve Ladurantaye, is 'reassigned' after Twitter comment about cultural appropriation. He apologized for his 'hurtful' comment, which consisted of a pledge, made in jest, to contribute $100 to an "appropriation prize.": Diversifying someone's culture out of existence isn't funny either. Nor is burying it in an avalanche of third world immigration. And it has been the CBC's mission to manufacture consent for this treasonous project. If truth be told, it is the CBC which should be 'reassigned' — to the trash bin. CBC News editor Jennifer McGuire is wrong. It is the CBC, not Latdurantaye's tweet, which is "inappropriate, insensitive and frankly unacceptable." Latdurantaye had it right the first time. But then he caved in to the shame game.adurantaye's effusive apologies and contortions of contrition are too reminiscent of Mao's cultural revolution and Stalinist show trials. The protocol should be familiar. The guilty party is first summarily convicted of a thought crime, forced to resign or stripped of his position, and then made to undergo 're-education.' But ultimately none of his confessions and humiliations will suffice to fully rehabilitate him. He's done. And as the man said, in this environment, we are only one tweet away from dismissal. But it will be a protracted process. Before professional execution, Ladurantaye must first do his community service by reaching out to indigenous groups and work with Mother Corp in other areas. Perhaps he will eventually land a job with Jian Gomeshi making podcasts.I haven't been closely following this farce, but I notice that the premise of the current backlash is that, as Jonathan Kay more or less said on the CBC, "First Nations are a special case." Arguably writers should be able to write about other peoples' cultures and tell their stories but aboriginal stories are a no-go zone. Why?Recently I wrote about "Playing the Indian Card." This refers to the reflexive habit of pro-immigrationists to remind us that "We are all immigrants — except our native peoples." It is intended as a show stopper. Since our forefathers came as 'invaders,' we have no moral authority to oppose migration. End of story. The end game is transparent. It is to de-legitimize Europeans as founding peoples . It's ironic. When it suits the immigration lobby, the narrative is that "immigrants built this country." But when immigration policy is challenged, the immigrants who built this country suddenly become "White settlers" who have no moral right to complain about immigration.Peter Brimelow famously said that you know you are winning the argument when your opponent calls you a racist. But those who play the Indian card most often do so to preclude discussion.Therefore the battle against the no-cultural appropriation rule cannot be successfully conducted without taking on native exceptionalism. Either writers and artists have artistic freedom or they do not. If their imagination and creativity is to be subject to political boundaries in the interest of appeasing one victim group, it is inevitable that others will build on that precedent.What makes the native accusation about cultural appropriation so audacious is that they themselves are beneficiaries of the same. Aside from antibiotics, metal utensils and the wheel, aboriginals 'culturally appropriated' written language. Including the language which native storytellers use to reach most of their readership.The novel in fact was practically a European invention, with the word coming into use in England at the end of the 17th century. As Professor Ricardo Duchesne has pointed out, its roots can be traced back to 16th century Spanish picaresque tales, Elizabethan prose fiction and the translation of ancient Greek romances into the vernacular, and mid 17th French heroic romance. "What British novelists added in the 1700s was a more unified and plausible (down-to-earth) plot structure, with sharply individualized and believable characters, and a less aristocratic (or more "middle class") style of writing." Duchesne quoted Roy Porter to underscore the fact the novel was a product of a distinctive European culture. It was "associated from its inception with individualism and a certain political liberalism." (cf. "Reply to Mark Elvin," , 36.4 (2011))Thus a native telling a native story in the English language using a novel as the vehicle constitutes quite the cultural appropriation, does it not? No matter. Look around you. Everything you see, all the attainments of civilized society, are the result of 'theft.' Get real.If we are not to suffer from all this foolishness, we must launch a two pronged attack. Firstly we must of course call into question the bizarre notion that the only people who have a legitimate right to talk about people of other cultures are people of those same cultures. You know the drill. Gentiles can't write about Jews. Whites can't write about Blacks. Men can't write about women. But questioning the fallacy of this belief is a well-tread path. Writers like Kay or commentators like Rex Murphy have taken that path for a couple of years now.Few if any however have, to my knowledge, taken the second step, which is to question the proposition that "First Nations" in Canada are entitled to a special, hallowed status. It is an attitude that runs through our political culture. One must not only respect native ways, but be seen to publicly revere them. No one should dare to challenge these gods. Failure to genuflect in their presence is as socially and politically suicidal as it would have been to not return a Heil Hitler salute in the Third Reich. It is akin to being caught pissing on a gravestone. Ask Professor Chris Di Carlo. Or Senator Lynn Beyak. All hell breaks loose.Until aboriginals are kicked off the pedestal all arguments on behalf of the "right to appropriate" are futile and secondary. Once we concede that aboriginals in Canada are deserved of a special status, that they should be ceded complete control of 'their' lands and their government, that band councils for example should not be transparent and accountable, that 'Traditional Ecological Knowledge' should co-exist with "Western" science in the classroom, that native oral history should not be contested or questioned etc. — we have lost the argument. We are on the defensive. And the road to our defeat begins with the first grovelling apology.