Using my lunch break to start a thread.

This weekend I'm planning some more WhiteFolkWork.

I have learned on my DEI journey that sometimes I'm slow to "get it" and come around.

So CW: I will probably have some cringe opinions/thoughts during the process.

Feel free to mute

(I prefer you mute this thread, but if you need to mute or unfollow me, that's valid)

Also: questions I'll pose are intended for me to Search on.

There is no obligation to spend Labor answering. Especially in my thread.

Any mutual who want to make their own threads,

I will try to listen without responding, consider deeply, and learn.

Reminder that there are content notes at the top of the thread: https://twitter.com/stargazer_412/status/1390699816167084036?s=19

The minefield I plan to explore this weekend, is about Cultural Appropriation, particularly in religious / spiritual/ magical traditions.

I already have a mental list of topics to search on.

This PDF download has good background for white people new to the discussion:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.academia.edu/584604/Reclamation_appropriation_and_the_Ecstatic_Imagination_in_Modern_Pagan_Ritual&ved=2ahUKEwiC55XRmLPwAhVFM6wKHRLvDdwQFjALegQIChAC&usg=AOvVaw1hLM2nu3Mx8t6kJYFYtYqC

I've been on social media for a decade, so I've encountered many of the initial concerns.

I agree that:
- Culture is not a costume
- I don't smudge. If I do a smoke cleanse, I avoid white sage.
- I don't have a spirit animal.
- Closed traditions are not for the taking

Coming back to yesterday's thread. It starts here: https://twitter.com/stargazer_412/status/1390699816167084036?s=19

I thought I understood Cultural Appropriation (CA). I'd learned that:

1) It's not for me (WP) to police someone's identity.
2) For closed practices, an interested party should go to the source community, and let that source community make a decision.
3) Follow the money.

It matters who profits from classes, sale of products, designs.

It matters that source communities should benefit from their designs / labor / ideas

In between my two major flub-ups,

I got booted from a third set of Facebook groups for supporting the above ideas, that CA exists and is harmful.

The article I linked earlier touches on cultural diffusion: https://twitter.com/stargazer_412/status/1390818035817140226?s=19

I *think* part of the deeper work I need to do on this, is further

- Deconstruction of the norms & assumptions that I carry
- Research the history of practices. Knowing that conventional Western scholarship misses oral traditions and valid Indigenous knowledge.
- Decolonizing

One question I need to further think about, is this:

How far back in history matters?

I've been assuming that for the so-called America's, 1492 is a reasonable divide.

Do we also consider the interpretatio graeca and interpretatio romana?

They were emerialists.

On my Twitter, I've been emphasizing

that Europe, Africa, and Asia were not isolated from each other in human history.

The Amber Road, the Silk Road... probably an Ivory Road...

(Some) humans have always traveled and always traded.

In "Stamped", Kendi and Reynolds suggest a name for the "first racist."

A name, a time, before which it was not institutionalized.

At the same time, long before that name and that date

There is a history of oppression in Europe.

Most documented are the Jewish people, and the Rromani, Dom, and Lom.

Often by the Church.

I could be missing more.

Even discounting Margaret Murray's theories.

One of my barriers, my hang-up that doesn't let me take knowledge at face value,

Is concern about Urban Legends.

I've become familiar with a lot of the white Urban Legends through the Snores website.

There are a few facts repeated among POC that also sound like urban legends, to me.

One blames the Sphinx's nose on Napoleon, when the evidence is it was already gone by then.

I know it isn't simple.

I believe BIPOC that the bathroom sensors for water, soap, and hand dryers were not designed with melanated skin in mind.

IME, sometimes some of those sensors do not work on my pasty hands.

So then it gets into

"How do we know?"
"Who says so?"
"Is there physical evidence?"
"Is there documentation?"

And estimating dates, times, places...

I care about making my spirituality as ethical as I can.

I am interested in knowing "Truth"... while recognizing that stories serve a purpose.

I know that the question of stealing vs diffusion is not easy. I suspect it rarely has clear answers.

There's another thing I'm aware of from the history of STEM:

Parallel development. The same ideas arising independently in two different places, at about the same time.

Like Calculus. Newton got the credit, but Liebniz also discovered it.

http://amsi.org.au/ESA_Senior_Years/SeniorTopic3/3b/3b_4history_1.html#:~:text=Today%20it%20is%20generally%20believed,Isaac%20Newton%20and%20Gottfried%20Leibniz.

That's enough for right now.

Pretty sure there is more. It can wait.

Possibly later tonight, probably tomorrow.

Today I've mostly been reading & thinking.

Not a lot to add to this thread. Mostly reconsidering my biases https://twitter.com/stargazer_412/status/1390699816167084036?s=19