Making a Melting Pot
The Case for Cultural Appropriation
Monday I read an article on the Bulwark, written by Charlie Sykes, regarding the refusal of publishers to publish Richard North Patterson’s most recent book. You can read it here:
Richard North Patterson is one of the most successful novelists of the past 50 years. He’s a very GOOD writer, which is one of the reasons for his success. Most publishers would love to have the opportunity to publish one of his books. Well, I’ll let him (and Sykes paraphrasing) describe the situation:
But wait, there’s more.
Patterson is releasing the book in installments you can find on his substack here:
richardnorthpatterson.substack.com
One of the things good writers excel at is empathy. They try to put themselves in others' shoes and write from that perspective. We read the best writers because they are so good at it. They consider subtlties, gestures, minutiae we would often overlook and incorporate that in the details of a character, a setting, or a plot.
So it is appalling that those that claim to be representing empathy bar writers from publishing works describing such points of view based on identity demographics. Opening up minds to different perspectives is one of the greatest attributes of good literature. Good writers know this and express it to expand the minds of the readers. Some truly great literature has come from people, not of that demographic, describing those within it:
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s grim details of slavery from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Mary Shelley’s depiction of egotism and the power of God in the hands of man in the form of mad scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
Alexandre Dumas, writing of the white, french aristocracy in The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Three Musketeers even though he, himself was black.
Stephen King, taking the perspective of a female protagonist in two of his best novels, Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne.
Pretty sure J.R.R. Tolkien was not a Hobbit.
For crying out loud, William Shakespeare often wrote about different countries he had never been to, and from the view of female heroines in his plays.
Taking these perspectives as a writer helps open up the reader to viewing it from those perspectives. If you are a fan of a particular author, it exposes you and expands your perspective on things without you even realizing it.
One of the most profound examples of this comes from Little Richard. The flamboyant singer was relegated in record stores to the R&B (“rhythm and blues”) section where other black performers of the day were. Pat Boone1 covered those songs played to a white audience and sold a lot of records. But what that really did was expose a whole new audience to Little Richard as a performer, and they started listening to his other songs as well, turning him into an early rock superstar. To many, Boone had “appropriated” Little Richard’s music, but to Little Richard, he was the greatest marketing he could have hoped for in the day.
There are those that think any kind of appropriation is awful, that cultures should be distinct and that everyone should stay in their own lane. This to me is absurd. Taken to its extreme it ensures a cultural segregation that ensures nothing but uneasy tension between all groups, never intermixing ideas and exchanges. Appropriation is how we interact between cultures; a good idea isn't confined to just one group of people; when obseerved by others outside it gets people to relate and understand the differences which make cultures fascinating. Music, art, food, and yes writing, help provide a mosaic that people outside a sphere can appreciate and emulate.
I get how a group of people would want to take ownership of a particular style they originated, but truly good ideas are never owned-- they're copied and improved and fused into other good ideas from elsewhere. This is how culture evolves and grows. In short, appropriation assures a melting pot, while opposing it results in a putrid melange of ingredients that never mixes flavors. Similarly, I get why groups would want to keep the opportunities to discuss their own cultures for themselves; however, for others to get a sense of what lies on the other side it requires someone writing about it from the outside, on one side of the fence or the other. The more genuine and authentic you can make it, the less the cultural identity of the author matters.
Some really great things in the world people appreciate were appropriated and perfected by cultures not where they originated. Everyone associates pasta with Italy, but it really was a dish that Marco Polo brought back to Italy from China. People often associate chocolate with germans and swiss, but it was originally taken to Europe from the Incans. The act of taking baths originated in the Middle East Muslim culture and was taken back to Europe by Holy Land pilgrims during the Crusades; it soon became clear hygiene was one way to fend off the Black Death ravaging the continent. Don’t even get me going on how songwriters, filmmakers and other forms of artists copy, pay homage to, attribute, or flat out plagiarize good ideas, techniques, methods, sounds and images for their own creative works. Inspiration knows no cultural bounds.
It also happens other cultures appropriate our own. Fast food restaurants are now common all around the globe; the fastest growing chains in China and Japan? Kentucky Fried Chicken. American business culture has been emulated everywhere. American music and film form a global cultural backbone. It turns out some of our best export, and greatest tie to the rest of the world ensuring American peace and hegemony, is American culture. Other countries appropriate it as their own in their own way.
That is not to say all appropriation is good. Because it orginates on the outside of the culture looking in, it can often result in offensiveness and caricature. This is what happens when sports teams adopt Native American names as mascots and motifs. People will defend it saying they are demonstrating appreciation for them, but often those attributes and stereotypes are simplistic and more offensive than they are paying homage. Likewise, there can be a tastelessness when certain items are appropriated for monetary or marketing gain, or to advantage the wealthy at the expense of the cultural identity. Taking something and watering it down from what makes it special always feels inauthentic, but it also exposes it to a greater audience who later want to experience the real thing. Lastly, when it comes to individual artists, the original authorship can often be overlooked; for instance, Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel were written by Otis Blackwell, not Elvis Presley. We should always remember to give credit to those that really deserve it.
But getting back to Richard North Patterson; if you are a fan of his novels, reading this story might expose you to some of the problems African-Americans face, such as in voter suppression and in unequal enforcement of the laws. It may broaden your mind to read more about the topics in a nonfiction context, perhaps reading some of the Supreme Court cases documenting racial disparities. It may open you up to reading some impressive books from African-American authors, such as Colson Whitehead or Toni Morrison. You may watch films hitting on the same themes, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time to Kill2 or Just Mercy. That in turn may get you to watch Spike Lee’s great works, Malcolm X and Do The Right Thing. And you will have been better off for having taken the opportunity to do so.
Or, you can simply ignore it out of some kind of cultural snobbery, frightened off by a growing chorus on the far left and far right that cross-cultural exchanges are summarily bad, and stay exactly the same.
It’s your choice.
PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories
Malcolm Gladwell is one of those people that takes an idea and really gets you to think about it in different contexts. His episode “In a Metal Mood” discusses the idea of cultural appropriation at length, talks about Pat Boone and Little Richard, and discusses the appeal of Taco Bell. I highly recommend it.
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/in-a-metal-mood
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
So many of the things we associate with “America” aren’t exactly American. We often say “As American as…” Well, these aren’t American:
Apple Pie; nope, its from Britain.
Hot Dogs; nein, German
The Star Spangled Banner; the music came from an English drinking song.
Democracy; nope, the Greeks beat us to it 2000 years earlier
Cowboys; nada, Spanish vaqueros existed long before they did in America.
Fireworks; credit the Chinese with that.
Blue jeans; Levi Strauss was Bavarian, and created them based on what miners in Europe did, using the denim tents 1849 gold rush miners used as fabric.
America, being the mix of ancestry and heritage that it is, is founded and succeeds because of its cultural appropriation. To mix these things together is inherently American.
PurpleAmerica Cultural Criticism Corner
We often talk about how America is a melting pot. America can only become a melting pot if cultures swirl, intermix, fuse and incorporate the best of all the individual cultures. Those that complain about appropriation prevent that. Their idea is to keep America a stew, with everything together but nothing really mixing. Both have their attributes, but many of the problems we have as a society is that cultures haven’t mixed.
America is at its best when everything mixes. Reminds me of a song by Live from their first album Mental Jewelry, “Beauty of Gray."
“This is not a black and white world, to be alive I say the colors must swirl. And I believe that maybe someday, we will all get to appreciate the beauty of gray.”
Outstanding Tweet
Footnotes and Parting Thoughts
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Whom Malcolm Galdwell referred to as “the whitest, squarest person alive.”
It should not be lost on anyone that “A Time to Kill” would not be publishable today based on the very same standards Richard North Patterson is talking about in his article.