sometimes you speak because you don't know who is listening

[tielan]

A nice white lady wanted to make an 'African quilt'. Her son said it was racist and culturally appropriative. She posts to an FB Quilting Group asking for opinions on the matter.

The opinions are pretty much what you'd expect.

I posed the questions of "is it just African fabric, or are you trying to represent Africa?" Along with, "African culture is very broad and varied, is there an aspect or area or region or tribe you're going to be highlighting - or will it be 'Africa, an exotic and foreign land, full of sweet, primitive peoples'?"

I did say that she was free to do as she pleased, but if she wanted to truly think about the possible racism in a quilt about Africa then here were some things for her to consider.

I haven't received a reponse from the OP yet. I don't expect I will.

Considering she posted on a Nice White Lady quilting group on FB, instead of, say, asking a black quilter? I'd say she just wanted reassurances. Which she got in spades.

There were at least 10 responses before mine - all reassuring - and at this point 15 responses after. At least one person told me I was overthinking it. Which, maybe. But only in the context of all these Nice White Ladies underthinking it because to confront their own complicity in the idea of Deepest Darkest Africa, Land Of The Tribes and Clans, And Generic Bright Colours And Geometric Patterns and not in a country of a thousand different cultures and backgrounds and histories and complexities which get overlooked so a bunch of Nice White Ladies can go "oh, but isn't Africa pretty" is entirely too uncomfortable.

Still, my purpose wasn't either to be the fly in her ointment or to make her think, but to open up the conversation beyond what they were expecting. I can only hope that there might be people on that group (several thousand strong Nice White Ladies of Australia) who will think about this a little deeper than just "if there's no intent to be nasty, then surely nobody can have any objection to it".

Now I have to find a way to post about this in my quilting blog, such that a few people might actually think about these things.

Comments

[bladespark]

I sometimes wonder at the small worlds people live in. "Africa" was one vaguely brown-colored thing with lions and mud huts to me when I was a teenager in a really sheltered upbringing in a teeeeny tiny town in nowheresville Utah before the internet existed in a meaningful way.

I feel like people over 16 who think that now must live under a rock.

[tielan]

I kind of understand that thinking - after all, if you don't have the time or any reason to go looking, and nobody teaches you and you're not taught that you need to learn, then you don't know that you're lacking in knowledge.

Sometimes I wonder who I'd be if I hadn't turned up on LJ and been schooled by friends in a time when people were more willing to cut an oblivious idiot slack. And the truth is that I might have been like these Nice White Ladies who simply Don't Get It.

[aome]

Same. One of the things about the recent upheaval is finally realizing how little I really "get it" even though I really thought I did.

[kore]

I recently had to tell someone that no, Africa is a CONTINENT, not a COUNTRY. (I dunno what they thought all those little coloured spaces with borders on the map were. States??)

[aome]

There are a LOT of people who think that, unfortunately.

I was actually thinking to myself yesterday that I should learn more about Africa, starting with "all those little coloured spaces with borders." I know European maps, Asian maps, etc pretty well, overall (I live in the US) but I would currently fail an African map test pretty miserably. Need to do better.

[kore]

There are SO MANY people who think that, WTF! It's like thinking "South America" is a country.

I wouldn't be able to name most of the countries now, but in junior high the history teacher hung a big full-colour map of Africa right by the front chalkboard where we saw it every day next to his notes. Near the end of the year he gave us a pop quiz with a blank map, and when almost none of us could fill it in, told us that education wasn't just about what we were told, but what we observed. He gave us another chance with the pop quiz a week later (with advance warning) and everyone did MUCH better ("Okay, Egypt is up on top because of the Nile, Madagascar is the island, South Africa is on the bottom....").

[lynnenne]

It's like thinking "South America" is a country.

This does not surprise me at all. As a Canadian, I can tell you that many, if not most, Americans think that North America is just the USA. Once, when my family was vacationing in Florida, we literally had a person ask us, “Canada? What state’s that in?”

I’ve never gone to school in the US. But from the outside looking in, it seems like elementary and secondary schools suck, and it doesn’t even matter whether they’re public or private. Americans learn jack shit about anything outside their own borders, and many don’t even learn that.

[kore]

US public schools are notoriously horrible. I certainly don't remember learning much about even the US civil rights movement or the causes of the Civil War in school. (For some reason, seventh grade was all highly sanitized local New Mexico history, eighth grade was some kind of bizarre survey course that focused mostly on the Great Depression and WWII, and by ninth grade I had dropped out.)

[ladyjax]

I give you a lot of credit for trying. There's a lot for the NWLs to unpack and I suspect more than a few of them are just not up to the task.

[tielan]

I know. But I have some space to at least try to make the question nuanced, and to expand the conversation.

(And I really appreciate your patience and the patience of others in taking me through these realisations a dozen years ago and more. xo)

[mara]

Yeah, there's probably a way for a Nice White Lady to do a quilt representing some portion of Africa (research and educating herself and really learning about one region or culture) but chances are good she's not planning on that.

I'm still wincing over the congresscritters wearing kente cloth. That was super embarrassing :(

::sigh::

[james]

For me, I would ask first what fabric, where is she getting it from. Is she buying "African inspired" fabric made by a white owned company, designed by a white person, who just want to make some money off this cool design? Or is she buying African fabric that is designed by, made by, owned by, people living in Africa (or perhaps immigrants from, but who are making fabric from their culture)?

That is where a lot of appropriate comes from -- Nice White People wanting to "celebrate" a culture, but their dollars aren't going *to* that culture, but staying in the Big White Capitalist Machine.

(Besides, if you buy a fabric made by, designed by, etc, the person in that culture - presumably they want you to buy it and use it!)

[havocthecat]

I mean, I was just thinking that a kickass Black Panther quilt, for example, would involve fabric from all the cultures who were used as inspiration for the tribes of Wakanda, and research into that fiber would be amazing.

(It's not even that hard to research. Wikipedia is a great starting point when you don't know anything, and from there - well, you can go down a rabbit hole from there. I've researched Indian and various Middle Eastern fiber arts before, there are endless rabbit holes to go down on cultural textiles, and I'm an amateur.) And there are places that you'd be able to source that fabric from, I'm sure, which would have that actual authenticity where the money would be going to that culture.

If I were, in fact, a quilter, which I am not. But I could see that being a truly amazing quilt, and that's, like, White Lady Quilting 101 if you're a fan and you know little-to-nothing about the textiles of cultures from Africa. To be clear, as an example of what I would do if I were going to go that route, not as "this is something someone should suggest and/or definitely do."

[kore]

....OMG, now I really want a BP quilt. I can't even sew on a button.

[havocthecat]

Right? I'm so not a quilter, though, and imagine how many hundreds of dollars the fabric would cost. But it would be amazing, and you could do the quilting and binding with that vivid blue that T'Challa's suit lights up in?

I need to stop now, knitting is enough of a fiber art for me.

[kore]

YES aaaaghghgh it would be so pretty

Not unrelatedly, this BP official vid is so beautiful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQbjS0_ZfJ0

[kore]

This also comes up a whole lot with "Indian" (sic) clothing and jewelry and kachina dolls and oh ghod the fake headdresses, in the US Southwest. It is in fact possible to support marginalized cultures by buying stuff!....just probably not from retail chains. /o\

[kore]

A nice white lady wanted to make an 'African quilt'.

//FACEDESK

[aome]

You raise very valid points, but I admit I sometimes get frustrated with accusations of "cultural appropriation." If something about another culture is beautiful and interesting, then why is someone else not allowed to take part? I understand that people should understand the cultural significance of what they are doing/wearing/etc because that's important. But the world is global, and we partake of other people's cultures all the time, from food to music, and THAT isn't considered cultural appropriation. I consider it that only if a) a person is blindly adopting something without any idea of the culture behind it and b) if they are claiming it to be part of their OWN culture.

/unpopular opinion

[thothmes]

I’m a Nice White Lady from Vermont, one of the whitest states in the U.S., but I have Palestinian family, have lived in Greece as a kid, and have an adventurous foodie family who have traveled around the world and worked to recreate the delights they encountered out there in the wide world and at ethnic restaurants all around. I see nothing wrong with any of that, and I don’t think non-whites have a problem with that happening in the home either.

There are problems, I think, with the fact that a Nice White Lady with a cooking show cooking ethnic delights is seen as exploratory and broad minded, while a person of color who wishes to do the same sort of show on classical French cuisine is asked why they are not presenting “their own” cuisine. That’s a problem

OTOH,I got piled on once on the interwebz for stating that a certain traditional Japanese dish did not appeal. This was, apparently very judgy and White of me. I meant it in the same sense that cauliflower, pickled pigs feet, and haggis, all things my genetic and cultural heritage would call my own, do not appeal to me, but my interlocutor did not see it that way. This also is a problem.

I think it’s just very hard, if one is born outside the dominant culture, to be patient with the way your own culture can be appropriated and adopted by the dominant culture, when you face the dual expectation that you will assimilate into the dominant culture, while being expected at the same time to stay in your own lane and not excel or stand out too much in your achievements in that dominant culture, and then watch Nice White People explain your culture as different enough to visit, but never special enough to be invited into the circle.

I try to remember how hard that is, and recognize that I’d probably feel a little tetchy if I had spent so much of my life swimming upstream, when folks like me are handed an outboard motor and a lifetime supply of gas. I guess I figure it’s up to me to research that fine line, not burden my non-White friends to teach me, although I’m very grateful to those who have, and that I’ll get it wrong from time to time, and need to apologize.

I think the problem is less in the exploring than in the carting it home and declaring it yours like the Elgin marbles when you find it.

[lynnenne]

Thank you for speaking up.