Is "Becky" a bad word?

Is good hair blonde hair?

Iggy Azalea wants nothing to do with the drama surrounding the 'Becky' line from Beyonce's newly released album Lemonade.

In a series of tweets on Monday, the 25-year-old criticised the word for being a negative stereotype of white women.

In Beyonce's track Sorry, she sings about a cheating lover - prompting many people to assume she was talking about Jay Z having an affair - and tells him to 'call Becky with the good hair'.

'Becky' is a phrase that has been known to refer to a generic white woman with straight hair, and Iggy implied that the term is racially insensitive.

'Don't ever call me a Becky,' she tweeted to a fan, before stating that she was criticising the phrase and not Beyonce.

She then tweeted to another user: 'girl BYE. do you know how many time ppl have called me BECKY? it didnt have any kind of positive intention behind it. dont start.

'Generalizing ANY race by calling them one sterotypical [sic] name for said race. i personally dont think is very cool, the end.'

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I guess nappy hair is more bother if you want to do anything with it

Three cheers for cultural appropriation

There have been many instances recorded on this blog where uses by mainstream Americans of images associated with minority cultures have been condemned because that constitutes "cultural appropriation".  So the takedown of that idea by Jeff Jacoby below is timely

FOR SEVEN YEARS, the Center for Students with Disabilities at the University of Ottawa has sponsored free on-campus yoga classes, a popular program taught by a professional yoga teacher from the city's Rama Lotus Yoga Centre. To the reasonable among us, free yoga for special-needs students may sound innocuous and gentle. But not to the vigilantes of political correctness, who successfully pressured the university's student government to suspend the classes as an intolerable instance of "cultural appropriation."

According to the Ottawa Sun, the disabilities center confessed its thoughtcrime in a public statement. While yoga may be "accessible and great for students," it said, that doesn't excuse the "cultural issues of implication" involved. The societies where yoga originated "have experienced oppression, cultural genocide, and diasporas due to colonialism and Western supremacy [and] we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practicing yoga."

For votaries in the left's High Church of Perpetual Dudgeon, nothing is safe from the outrage machine. Yoga is just the latest addition to the list, and if you don't understand why it's insensitive, racist, and neocolonialist for disabled students in Canada to take a weekly class in mindful stretching — well, get thee to a reeducation camp.

Everywhere these days you can find the harpies of cultural correctness ginning up a controversy over someone else's wrongful "appropriation." They denounce Australian hip-hop sensation Iggy Azalea for rapping with a "blaccent." They demand that Selena Gomez apologize for donning a bindi. They fume when Americans embrace foods from Asian or Middle Eastern societies while "ignoring . . . oppression faced by those communities." They howl when white models wear their hair in cornrows. They slam gay white men for adopting black women's gestures or expressions.

"Appropriation occurs," lectures "Hunger Games" actress Amandla Stenberg, "when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated, but is deemed high fashion, cool, or funny when the privileged take it for themselves." Stenberg is only 16, so her self-righteous tone may be a function of adolescence. It's typical, though, of cultural-sensitivity zealots who are quick to complain when people reared in one culture take on elements of a different culture.

But the complaints are humbug. Cultural appropriators shouldn't be chastised. They should be cheered.

All culture is "appropriated." All human societies, tribes, religions, and nationalities have been influenced by others. Ideas and tastes aren't the exclusive property of any group, and they can no more be confined behind rigid cultural or geographical boundaries than they can avoid shifting over time. Obviously it is never right to gratuitously give offense merely to be offensive. But there is nothing gratuitous about borrowing from other people's cuisine or dress or music, especially when it is done with appreciation and enjoyment.

All culture is 'appropriated' and all societies and nationalities are influenced by the traditions and tastes of others. Here, Japanese pianist Yukio Yokoyama poses for photographers in Tokyo before embarking on a marathon performance of Chopin's piano music.

Writing in The Washington Post recently, Ruth Tam described "the shame associated with immigrant foods" like the Cantonese dishes she grew up eating in her parents' Chicago home. She recalled her mortification at being told by a classmate that her house smelled of "Chinese grossness." Today, many of those dishes have become trendy; foodies flock to upscale eateries to try them. Yet instead of celebrating the swelling popularity of foods she has always loved, Tam is angry. Those fashionable diners are indulging a kind of "discount tourism," she snaps. "American chefs . . . use other cultures' cuisines to reap profit."

What a blinkered mindset! Human cultures aren't sealed beakers from which no particle must be allowed to escape. We all have the right to draw from each other's wellsprings of tradition and art, knowledge and lifestyles. Not just because imitation can indeed be the sincerest form of flattery, but because "cultural appropriation" is how we progress. We learn, if we are fortunate, from the experience of others — we are enriched by their contributions, deepened by their insights, broadened by their disciplines.

Yoga, like all culture, belongs to everyone, and it is no thoughtcrime to say so.

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I cooked a curry last night -- rather badly.  Should I be condemned for "appropriating" a major symbol of India?

Another Southern tradition is incorrect (But of course!)



We read:

"State NAACP President Edward Vaughn objects to having Mobile's Azalea Trail Maids as Alabama's only group in the upcoming presidential inaugural parade, saying they remind him of slavery days - a characterization that Trail Maids supporters decry. Vaughn said he thinks that Alabama will be a "laughingstock" at the Jan. 20 inauguration. He made his comments in a front-page Montgomery Advertiser story published Thursday.

Vaughn suggested that the Trail Maids' costumes - hoop dresses with matching bonnets and parasols - reflect the state's slavery past and have no place at the inauguration of the first African-American president, Barack Obama.

This year's Trail Maids include eight black members, two maids of Indian descent, one Asian and 39 whites, said Andy Marasca, president of the group. Marasca said he learned of Vaughn's concerns from local media.

"The Trail Maids do not represent the Confederacy or antebellum times but reflect the beauty of Mobile and its 300-plus years of fascinating history," commissioners said in a statement. The first Trail Maid court was formed in 1949, according to the group's Web site.

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I must say that they look a bit over the top to me but I am a long way away from Alabama.