genderbitch:

smirkingbenevolence: genderbitch: educationforliberation: because i see it’s time to break out this post again……….*sigh* so-treu: first off, note-a-bear has a great post on how those dreadlocks that the Celts were supposedly wearing actually weren’t dreadlocks as we define them today. that’s when shit like historical context and knowing of what the fuck you speak come into play. but here’s the thing. the Celts were a really long fucking time ago. and it was one ethnic group amongst MANY of ancient Europe. now, i don’t do Ancient European Shit so i’ll leave it to someone who does to be a bit more detailed but at the end of the day, if you as a descendent of Europeans (i.e. if you as a WHITE PERSON) can only name ONE. ethnic group. that you are more than likely not directly descended from? that invalidates your argument that dreads/tats/body mod was a European “thing.” Just because ONE group of Europeans at one point did it, *does not make it a part of the culture*. conversely, how many ethnic groups in Africa practice scarring, or piercing, or tattooing, or wear dreadlocks? How many indigenous groups in the Americas? In the Pacific Islands? hint: WAY more than just ONE. a SHIT ton. *more than* europeans ever did. thusly, dreads/tats/mods is NOT a european cultural tradition. it’s just not. repeatedly referencing the exception to the rule does not make the exception the rule. it just makes you an supremacist, appropriating jackass. who’s also a piss poor historian. like, if dreads/tats/body mods really was a European thing, wouldn’t we have seen MORE of that shit? like, wouldn’t maybe early modern Europeans *at the least* still be into it? but no. you don’t see dreads/tats in Renaissance artwork, you don’t see it being worn by King Henry or some shit, you don’t see any baroque-era symphonies with “tattoo” in the title or some shit………like, throughout the cultural products that modern europe has put forth since rome fell, dreads/tats/mods are nowhere to be found, and that would be the place that they would be found. but you know when europeans did start writing about tats? when they starting going to places where brown and black people lived. and there’s a long history behind tattoos and colonization specifically that i’m not going to rehash here, but what do you think made tattoos taboo in western society to *begin* with? it was the fact that the only people who got tattoos were those savage, bestial, filthy natives and the heathen sailors who steered the ships to and fro. racism + classism. plus empire, because colonization was the reason why there were white folks in them brown folks house to begin with! i mean, what cultural European tradition has been taboo in the west? the ballet? the english language? straight hair? like, think about it. if this really was a european heritage, do you really think it would have been as marginalized in western society as it has been? i always think about Woodstock. like, if white folks were ever going to support dreadlocks en masse, *that* would be the time you’d see it. but you don’t. at. all. you know when you do see white ppl starting to rock dreads, tho? after Bob Marley became an international mega superstar. but it’s not appropriation. right. seriously, if you can find me a picture of a group of white people (from either the U.S. or Europe) wearing dreadlocks *before 1965ish*, and they *weren’t* consciously setting themselves off from the mainstream in some way (i.e. a religious cult or something) but wearing them as a cultural expression of their own culture, you win. you win everything, actually. because i’m pretty sure you’re not going to find it. but don’t worry. i’ll wait. ETA: i guess maybe the vikings had “dreads” too? even still, two(ish) ethnic groups a continental/racial tradition do not make. see: the rest of my post. Just adding that Vikings (and the Celts of what is now Ireland, Scotland and several other related areas) never had dreads, they had plaits, which is a braiding partway down the hair strands. Roman art and description may have made it look similar to dreads but the Romans were never known for their accuracy and not being ethnocentric douchefucks. Plaiting hair (not dreads) was certainly practiced by Celtic and Germanic tribes in Bronze Age and early Iron Age Europe and continued into medieval Europe in some of the areas on the fringes of Northern and Western Europe (Ireland, Scotland, Norse areas) Also, tattooing was at least present in some tribes as demonstrated by Otzi the Iceman’s tattoos as well as the Roman name for the inhabitants of Scotland, the Picts. Additionally, the bog bodies from Denmark and other areas in Europe show in some cases extensive tattooing. Here’s the thing tho. The Anglos, the Romans and the other ethnic groups that took power in Europe all worked awful hard to stamp out those indigenous groups of Northern Europe. And chances are most white people have a lot more blood from the dominant ethnicities in Europe than the ones that the Romans and Anglos fucked over. Also, how many USonian and Candian (fuck how many UK present) white people with tattoos are actively involved in those native Northern European cultures? How many of them are active in Pict culture? How many of them are still active Celts? I could see some people of Irish or Scottish descent getting certain specific tattoos (the Celtic Knotwork, certain symbols important to old Pict culture, etc) but seriously, how many people who are white, who get tats, even know this shit much less have the heritage for it? I will bet you the numbers are minuscule. Let’s face facts. Most examples of tattooing knowledge for white people nowadays comes from the colonialism of POC by dominant European cultures. And furthermore, Irish ethnicities and Scottish ethnicities bought into white supremacy. Our ancestors bought into the very group structure that nearly wiped them out to reduce our discrimination by increasing that which POC faced. So using the old cultures and the native cultures of Scotland and Ireland, when many of us of that descent aren’t even active in or know shit about those cultures, as a reason why tats might not be problematic for white people is really disingenuous. It isn’t just insulting and appropriative towards POC either. It’s appropriative and insulting towards northern European native cultures and those active in the Celt and Pict cultures as well, that people with little right to access to those groups are using them as a reason to fuck over POC.

Before I begin I would like to state that I am not justifying appropriation. I recognize and accept that appropriation occurs and I find it deeply troubling when aspects of my cultural heritage are used to silence and oppress POC, and justify theft of aspects of their culture. I compiled this because I feel that if we are going to honestly assess the historical roots of oppression we need to be honestly able to assess our cultural identities and the aspects of that cultural heritage that we bring forward into the present day.

I am generally staying away from the whole ‘white people dreadlocking their hair’ conversation because I have no interest in touching that shit. I regularly volunteer at a folk music festival where a good number of attendees and volunteers have dreadlocks. We call them trustafarians, because they mostly seem to all have large trust funds enabling them to not work and spend a lot of money on clothes, gear and drugs.

Yes the Romans and more recently the Anglos have been the dominant paradigm in Europe but both of these groups are descended from Celtic and Germanic speaking peoples who inhabited Europe millenia ago. The La Tene Celtic cultures of early Iron Age central Europe were not destroyed by later Germanic invaders. They moved westward and interbred with the earlier inhabitants of Western Europe or they stayed and interbred with the new Germanic invaders. Simply because one doesn’t attend the Highland Games, have a particularly Celtic name, and follow some set of ancient traditions does not make any person less Celtic. The Celtic culture of Europe evolved as all cultures do over time. Culture is a living thing and cultures grow and evolve or they stagnate and die.

Every Scottish person is active in Pictish culture because Pictish culture was absorbed into Celtic (specifically Gaelic) culture which in turn fought absorption by the dominant Anglo (Germanic/Norman) culture in the south but eventually was legally absorbed by the dominant Anglo culture while still maintaining a unique Scots Gaelic identity and culture with some Anglo flavors. I could go into more descriptive detail but I think that you get my gist here.

The story of Europe is one of successive waves of migration out of Asia each bringing their own genetic and cultural contributions. Every European (with the exception of highly genetically isolated groups like the Basque and many others) is the end result of the admixture of Celtic and Germanic tribes (and later Slavic tribes) as well as myriad other groups from Western Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

No, not every white person is Pictish, but that is just a well known historical example. Bog people (preserved corpses of sacrificial offerings) on the main landmass of Europe are probably a far better example and one that a far broader swath of white people are likely related to.

I am not at all trying to say that it is acceptable for white dudebros to get 'tribal’ tattoos or Maori style tattoos or anything else along those lines. That is offensive and appropriative. It is especially offensive and appropriative when they can access their own cultural heritage without hurting anybody and find similar but different practices. What I am trying to say is that while in the last 800 years nearly all mainstream European cultures have ostracized members of their societies as 'primitive’, 'crude’, or 'uncivilized’ for practicing tattooing, scarification and (at least for males) long hair plaiting techniques there is earlier historical precedent (especially in the far west and north of Europe) for such practices.

The recent acceptance of tattooing, scarification, piercing, and 'ethnic’ hair care by white people is certainly problematic in many aspects. A lot of these things are not part of the dominant paradigm of white Anglo culture and at best were most recently practiced by a despised underclass in Anglo culture. Part of the white cultural obsession with these things is that they are seen as edgy and taboo because white culture sees them as being ethnic and something practiced by POC.

Yes, Irish and Scottish peoples bought into an oppressive system and like many others groups before and since who have bought into 'whiteness’ they have perpetuated cultural genocide against POC. I don’t believe that tattooing and plaited hair (which was the original crux of my argument) count as cultural appropriation when there is ancient precedent. Doesn’t that make it about reclaiming an aspect of our culture which was (violently) suppressed by the dominant paradigm?

The largest ethnicities that comprised US census responders in 2000 were as follows:

German 15.2% (Germanic and Celtic)

Irish 10.8% (Celtic specifically Gaelic)

African American 8.8%

English 8.7% (Germanic and Celtic)

American 7.2% (I don’t even know what the mean by this, maybe “We’re 'Merkans!”)

Mexican 6.5%

Italian 5.6% (Celtic and Germanic)

Polish 3.2% (Germanic and Slavic)

French 3.0% (Celtic and Germanic)

[First Nations] 2.8%

Scottish 1.7% (Celtic predominantly specifically Gaelic)

Dutch 1.6% (Germanic and Celtic)

Norwegian 1.6% (Germanic some Celtic)

[Scots-Irish] 1.5% (early product of Anglo imperialism German transplanted to Scotland transplanted to Ulster Plantation in Ireland to breed out the Catholics)

Swedish 1.4% (Germanic some Celtic)

That is in total about 125,000,000 white americans of predominantly Germanic / Celtic descent with about 60,000,000 just of Scots, Irish, English, or Scots-Irish descent alone.

Statistics take from the U.S. Census 2000.

Is it disengenuous to say that most of us have can claim Celtic cultural ancestry when most of us can?

It is rather essentialist to state that tattooing and hair plaiting is always appropriative. Dreadlocks however are always appropriative. White Americans with dreadlocks are not reclaiming an aspect of their Celtic heritage when they do this, they are stealing something from oppressed POC. This however does not mean that common tattoo motifs in white culture cannot be appropriative in a of themselves. It also doesn’t mean that there isn’t a HUGE amount of body mod culture that focuses on appropriating the cultures of POC and being celebrated for doing so. I just want to ensure that we keep the complexity of the subject and cultural heritage in general in mind.

Nothing that I have stated here should be used by white people to justify appropriation. White people you have your own shit, use it.

When you (white appropriators) use these facts to justify cultural theft you are being racist and you are engaging in an oppressive power structure and you are doing it needlessly.

(via punlich)