Did Zac Efron commit cultural appropriation by wearing dreadlocks?

It's a slow day. I don't care one way or another, but I thought it might make a somewhat interesting debate. You don't even have to comment on Efron; you can just talk about cultural appropriation in general.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/06/entertainment/zac-efron-dreadlocks/index.html

Apparently, some think Zac Efron has committed the gravest of all sins, cultural appropriation, by adopting dreadlocks as his current hair fashion. His caption "just for fun" also has a few riled up because they say it devalues the history of the hair worn by black people. But is it really their hair though? Depending on who you ask, dreadlocks have Indian, Egyptian and German/Nordic origins. I think this is such a moot thing to get upset over and I honestly think the concept of cultural appropriation is just a roadblock that makes it harder for all of us to get along.

@JustPlainLucas:

Black people don’t have a monopoly on dreads or weaves or anything else. The fact that people clutch their pearls over how somebody styles their hair is worrying to me.

Segmenting things keeps people seeing each other as different. In the end we're just humans...........for good or ill.

people on the Right are WAY more snowflaky then the Left.

get over it, people can do whatever the F they want to with their hair

Hmm...

yes..

just read this board. people complaining about what kind of hair a person has? a woman as a lead in a video game? OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!! the HUMANITY of it all!

yeah, they do far more crying around here

The difference between crying about a persons hair and crying about a person taking a persons child from them are in most peoples eyes....different

They're just responding to SJWs, as they should.

For the same reason we responded to moralist right wingers against GTA for being too violent. This is nothing new, you're just a regressive leftist.

no actually they are literally making up shit that doesnt exist.

there isnt a pile of SJW telling directors what to do with their movies and games , that is stupid. ,maybe 1 maybe 2

but we get these crys about how outrageous it is that a developer do what they want! friggin daily 'oh my god they put in a female lead I am going to kill myself!!!!!!!!!!'

now...what? f*(()) hair style? are you joking me?

@JustPlainLucas: No, but he looks like a douche. White people can have dreads if they want, but there's a big difference between being allowed to do something and being able to pull it off.

-Byshop

No...who came up with this cultural appropriation crap?...so as asian I cannot dress up as a cowboy? or more on topic cannot dye hair blonde or red now? ?

Cultural appropriation is a myth. Why is the left so insane about inconsiquential shit nowadays?

You've been living under a rock.

This was so 2 years ago. Damn SJWs.

Here's a pretty good video on the topic.

I'll make this really simple for everyone. Yes, you can dress up as a cowboy. Other people can then say that you're guilty of cultural misappropriation. That's what can happen when you're in a place where you're (usually) allowed to say what you want.

@Byshop: Your answer is more douchey then Zaks dreadlocks.

Under cultural appropriation black people shouldn't be allowed to use the n word because whites invented it

You got something wrong here, as a "minority" you can do whatever you want.

The idea of cultural appropriation is only when "whites" use "minorities" culture. Like the white girl who got shit for wearing a Japanese dress to prom etc...

But you are absolutely correct it´s complete and utter nonsense, it´s made up by far-leftists who for some reason feel guilty for being white.

Ah yes.....the leftists that scare you. Are they hiding under your bed?

Yes.

No, and anyone that thinks so can take a long walk off a short pier.

I'm just going to put this here:

I'm slowly becoming anti-PC, anti-politicization...if that makes me right-wing, so be it.

As if we needed more evidence proving how backwards society has turned out but now one (majority) needs to go through a checklist before using a hair style or other trait or style commonly used by a minority. There are pressing issues in the world deserving of attention. Hair style is not one.

Oh what a crime against humanity.

Serious question, is it the people on the right complaining about his hair?

What a topic. How about we talk about all the western things adopted by other cultures? Anyone that uses "cultural appropriation" other than to mock the left should be pushed out to sea.

@tryit: lmao! Yea im sure people on the right are bitching about Zac Efrons dreadlocks!

Your side are the snowflakes its been determined at this point. Come up with your own insults. And untill the right creates extortion groups to push their ideas on everyone in the entertainment industry, calls for safe places in public universities, tries to silence everyone they disagree with and starts bitching about cultrual appropriation then you sound like a fool everytime you imply that the ones on the right are the snowflakes.

I'd bet the farm it's the guilt ridden left finding issue. Being even more serious, do we really think conservatives are a fan of this guy? Of course some like him but for the most part those on the right are not fans of Hollyweird and its members.

Ya...I don't see the right giving two shits about this.

If you can call them dreads more like wads of matted hair. White hair is very different in texture and how it will look in certain styles. He chose the wrong stylus lol. I've seen dreads on a white guy they didn't look as bad as this.

This whole cultural appropriation thing is really annoying. No one owns anything like hair styles or clothing styles. People can wear whatever the hell they want and fix their hair any way they want. Jesus, peoples' lives are so dull they have to find shit to be offended about and put down others. Chill out and go watch cat videos.

LOL

I think he's right though. People seem to only bitch when white people wear non-Western clothing and hairstyles or copies non-Western customs. No one cares if a Nigerian wears jeans and a baseball cap. No one cares that the Japanese play baseball. No one cares if men of non-Western origin wear tuxedos or business suits. As far as I know, accusing someone of cultural appropriation is just another tactic being used by a small minority of left-leaning people to shame white people.

@Jacanuk If I remember right, it was a Chinese dress.

Ahh, ok i remember it was some Asian dress. The crazy part here is that actual Asians did not find anything offensive at all about it, and many said they were happy to see other cultures use their dresses.

Although there was something with a Japanese piece of clothing too that blew up on the Internet. I can't remember it's all a blur. It's funny because most of the people getting offended are white. They're getting offended on behalf of non-whites thinking it makes them holier than thou above the rest of us. I think it comes down to politics and narcissism.

Cultural appropriation is a wonderful thing. In my country we now have pizza's from Italy, durum from Turkey, fries from France and Belgium, mashed potatoes from The Netherlands and the past 50 years or so multi-culturalism has been celebrated and we all wanted to copy things from each other's cultures and try it all out and see what we thought of it. And yes: flags are burning. Symbolisms are improperly used. And statues are peed on. Shameful! But also keeping things in perspective.

Most of it's great.

I guess appropriation hints at the people whose culture has been shared, wanting to see something in return? Do they want money? A thank-you note? Don't be so stingy with culture. It's all intermingling anyway. It's like trying to hold on to water. What are you doing? That will never work. We have Turkish, Moroccan, Egyptian, Surinamese, South-African, Belgian people living in this street. They all take things with them from their home countries. I learned about Russian tea a couple weeks ago from a Russian lady. She was happy to share. Was that cultural appropriation? Are the Russians going to be angry now? At me? At the lady? At both? Their customs are being seen and copied and edited by other cultures. And there's nothing we can do about it. That's what happens when you have people from different cultures living together. This world is becoming smaller by the day. Tomorrow we'll be living on each other's backs.

It's pointless bickering.

The only argument I can find that sounds robust is that there is the fear of cultures disappearing. And that could be a shame. That could be something we want to preserve. But other than that, I see no reason to be so precious with our cultures. And cultures change over time. We'll constantly lose and gain things. All cultures changed dramatically over time. New regimes rose. Art went through periods. Techniques were discovered. None of it is static. I guess that's scary. What do you hold on to? You hold on to your principles. Your intentions. You want the best for people. That's what you hold on to. Because that will never have to change. That's something solid you can hold on to, to remind you of who you are. You don't need anything else to hold on to. Let the world flow.

@tryit: "there isnt a pile of SJW telling directors what to do with their movies and games , that is stupid"

Then what do you call this?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0MCm0fYYTp8

Ya, that is the thing about all this. People who are offended are white middle to upper-class teens who get to uni and or just came out of unit with a female studies degree or some other random humanist useless piece of paper.

I saw a article a few months ago where it was discussed if name Washington Redskins was actually offensive and a poll done among native Americans, found that less than 10% actually found the name to be offensive at all.

Wow, that's interesting. I would think the percentage would actually be higher. At least 1/3. I guess most neither don't care or actually like it.

Yup. All the tweets I've seen on it have been from leftists.

Definitely. People need more positive energy in their lives. Cat videos are a great source of that!

I think the biggest issue is the double standard. A white person with dreads is usually seen as a hippy or just "alternative" while a black person with dreads is seen as a thug. Same hairstyle, different perceptions based SOLELY on skin colour.

I wonder if you're talking about the guy who played the shakuhachi before they showed the Ghosts of Tsushima game at E3? People jumped on him without even realizing he was a well respected master of the instrument. They probably still didn't care.

I think that tends to happen a lot more often than not. When media frames narratives, they tend to amplify the vocal minority.

Is it cultural appropriation for black people to use blonde extensions or straighten their hair? Or to play basketball which was invented and originally played by white people?

These people crying cultural appropriation create racists. Seal off your culture and people will see and treat you like an outsider.

Interestingly I googled that and all the European ancestry media polls say they aren't offended by Native American polls come in at 67% saying it's offensive.

The real question is why the **** people are still talking about Zac Efron

what, if anything its the left that are particularly obsessed about what skin colour is styling what kind of hairstyle. Skin colour and the genitals you have and to which genitals it goes too are literally the 2 main things they are overly concerned about.

I think thats just you. Some internalised racism you need to deal with and now you project your guilt on others.

@LJS9502_basic: Well polls aren’t really reliable unless you have a large enough sample size. Considering how low the Native American population is I suppose you could get different percentages across the board. Maybe certain tribes consider it more offensive than others too.

It is a thing, but I wouldn't say it extends to clothing or hairstyles. There are areas where you can certainly get into a very weird area, though. If you try to emulate some element of another culture without trying to understand or respect it then you're getting into problem areas. I'll give you an example:

When I was in my early 20s I used to train Capoeira which is a Brazilian martial art. After training for over a year I had the opportunity to go down to Brazil with a bunch of other American students to train with Mestres down there. In addition to the physical training, we also learned about the music which included singing and making/playing the instruments (I wasn't really as into that part but it's a package deal if you wanna learn the art). While we were making our Berimbaus (the main instrument used in Capoeira music) our instructors told us not to add the colored bands to them that we see the on local examples. The reason for this is because they are not just decorative, but they carry specific religious significance and if you don't follow that religion or understand specifically what they might mean then you just shouldn't do it because it'll actually come off as pretty offensive to the locals. When it's something like that then I think people have a legitimate reason to complain.

-Byshop

You're splitting hairs on the definition. When you're adopting something from another culture that you have no personal connection to, especially without any knowledge or deference to the cultural or religious significance what you're co-opting has to the people of that culture then that's cultural appropriation (especially if you do so in a manner that angers or annoys people of that culture). It doesn't necessarily have to be religious, but I used that as an example because being disrespectful to someone else's religion is a pretty hard thing to argue against.

Basically I think it's alright to borrow elements from other cultures because that's part of how we learn about them and that's how things evolve, but there are ways that it can be done which are problematic. Doing something that pisses off that culture like the examples above would certainly qualify. Other ways that it would be problematic would be in fetishizing another culture.

-Byshop