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#eurocentric culture
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Vicente Albán (Ecuadorian-born Spanish, 1725 - unknown) Inscribed is “Señora principal con su negra esclava,” “Lady with her female black slave,” 1783 Vicente Albán is noted for his idealized paintings of indigenous (Yumbo people) and Hispanic Criollos (people of Spanish descent born in the colonies). Exploring Colonial Hispanic-American culture, he was commissioned by José Celestino Mutis, who wanted to highlight the local society, flora and fruit. - In August 1518, King Charles I authorized Spain to ship enslaved people directly from Africa to the Americas. The Spanish colonies in the Caribbean were among the last to abolish slavery. While the British abolished slavery by 1833, Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873. On the mainland of colonies, Spain ended African slavery in the eighteenth century. - There are no words to describe the horrors inflicted on the indigenous populations. The native peoples in Cuba were completely annihilated. They either died enslaved in the mines or were hunted and killed by the Spanish in the mountains. Some natives themselves jumped off the cliffs, knowing that it would be a preferable fate than being caught by a Spanish soldier. In 1634, the Spanish killed 50,000 Arawaks and captured their chief Hatuey. Before burning him alive, a Christian priest urged him to accept Jesus so his soul might go to heaven rather than hell. Hatuey replied, if heaven was where Christians went, he would rather go to hell.
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just-an-enby-lemon · 2 years
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One of the weirdest ways I noticed the huge influence of U.S and European media in my day to day life was last week and I was playing a game of word relation with some friends and someone said "winter" and the other person went for "christmas".
Now when someone does not follow the them in the game (or use a word that starts with either "c" or "s") they lose and we keep playing until there is only one. And this person didn't lose the round. We all acepted that winter was related with christmas. Even though we live in Brazil. Where is definitivaly not winter in Christmas, specially here on Northwest Brazil, it's early summer and it's very hot. So yeah we now associate winter with christmas even though is 30°C to 40° C outside and I don't know how to fell about it.
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skadren · 3 months
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honestly bothered by the moral panic over seph's new costume in ec. why do you think that standard traditional wear from a non-western culture that shows less skin than zack's swimsuit is "too lewd"?
if you're looking at a 14-year-old's bare chest and thinking "oh my god, how sexual" then the person out here lewding things is you. which is whatever, it's a fictional character, but you may want to take a good hard look in the mirror and examine your own cultural biases before you start a moral crusade against sqnx for "sexualizing" and "exploiting" a fictional character.
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cliban · 1 year
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Hey Jojo fans! Everyone who's arguing about Dragona's gender should probably take a look at Polynesian concept of gender, please! Dragona is clearly poc and might be one of the 'third genders' in various Polynesian cultures (very common - fa'afafine, mahu, etc)
Everyone's arguing this very european interpretation of gender and I'm not impressed :/ lets be mature about this and wait for more episodes and for fucks sake stop slapping gender labels onto a person we've known for One Manga Chapter
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Quick positivity post for trans people who didn’t get more conventionally attractive after they transitioned!
Trans people who look ‘worse’ or ‘the same’ are wonderful and look great actually.
Conventional beauty standards are exclusionary and flawed, and shouldn’t be the goal anyway- the point of transitioning isn’t to ‘glow up’ by becoming attractive, it’s to become more comfortable with yourself.
Trans people shouldn’t be expected to suddenly become conventionally attractive as part of their transition anyway (look as weird and non-cis as you want! it’s your body!), and photos of ’ugly’ pre-transition people who look ‘better’ after transitioning should not be used to justify to cis people why people should be allowed to transition.
Look the way you want (or the way you pass), not the way beauty standards want you to look! The endless quest to become conventionally attractive is a trap and you don’t have to fall for it when you transition.
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andyevej · 26 days
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There can only be one Ra // WIP
still on my grind of never finishing anything
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sweaty-confetti · 9 months
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some thoughts about cultural appropriation
a few important notes before you read this: 
- here, when i say “white,” i am referring to specifically white canadian, white american, and white european, with white european being a rather loosely defined term but typically relating to britain. this is not intended to ignore the existence other white identities such as white south africans, but i am a mixed-race indian+white person who has spent most of his life in the united states and does not have enough experience or knowledge of these identities to make accurate takes about them.
- this is not me making excuses for cultural appropriation. it is a dangerous thing that waters down and erases culture, and should not be encouraged. - this is written in a gentle and hopefully palatable way to white audiences, who i encourage to read this. not every take from a poc is going to be nice-nice about these kinds of things, but this is.
i find it very interesting that when you ask white folks about why they’re so obsessed with certain aspects of culture, the palatable, easily-appropriated ones like native headdresses and whatnot, their reason usually is in the form of “mysticism” and “exoticism.” this is a problem in itself, obviously, tying into the long-standing colonial fetishization of culture, but here’s the bit i actually want to talk about:
when you ask why it’s so “exotic” to them, why it’s so obviously “different and other” at a personal level - it comes from a sense of community.
let me break this down a bit. culture and community are often used as very loose synonyms, and for pretty good reason. a culture is based around the ideas of societal norms and roles, material things, ways of thinking and whatnot - and these all come down to community.
there are certain things that are intrinsic and unique to every culture (even if they are a medley of various different cultural influences), whether they be classical carnatic music in south india, pinakbet from the ilocos region of the philippines, or the ninauh-oskitsi-pahpyaki social role/gender in the blackfoot tribe. even cultures we would consider to “appear” white have these, such as the tales of tuatha de dannan in irish mythology. but the idea of whiteness as a concept does not have these.
whiteness as a concept is a sterilized, “de-cultured” identity that attempts to assimilate most/many folks who appear “white” into a single monolith. this is obviously very damaging and dangerous to many cultures - for example, many ancient celtic traditions have been lost due to the deliberate erasure of these in order to assimilate these people into whiteness.
whiteness as an identity was founded on a basis of eurocentric values and traditions as well as either the deliberate assimilation or erasure of all other cultures and traditions - white supremacy. it still exists like that today (see groups like the KKK or proud boys).
now we know obviously that not all white folks are intentionally racist and a large portion of them genuinely don’t mean harm to poc communities…so why is cultural appropriation so rampant, even in white folks who would otherwise be decent allies to poc?
again, it’s coming down to a sense of community.
i have grown up and lived in the united states for most of my life, and as early as i can remember i have always had questions about the cultural identities of white americans. i’d look at the indian half of me and indian culture that i partook in and experienced, things i cherish such as cooking traditional South indian food, learning carnatic classical music, participating in religious ceremonies, etc. and then i’d look at the white half of me. there was no culture there i could find.
sure, i could look at typically “american” things, such as hamburgers and surfboarding and apple pie, but these fall apart very easily with minimal research. similar hamburger-looking foods appear in europe as far back as the 4th century. bodysurfing/surfboarding has existed in peru, africa and various polynesian countries for thousands of years. versions of apple pie existed in british and french cookbooks as far back as 1390 BCE with influences from the ottoman empire - and apples aren’t native to the americas.
the colonization of the americas and the subsequent reframing of canada and the states as “white” areas is due to the influence of colonization, obviously - and the genocide of millions of first nations people. this was deliberate.
but here is the interesting bit. for hundreds of years, as far back as the pilgrims, cultures that were not fully assimilated into whiteness were rejected and oppressed - even as they colonized.
take italian-americans, for instance. the late 1800s to early 1900s saw a huge influx of italian immigrants to the united states. these immigrants faced oppression in the form of religious and political discrimination (anti-catholic sentiments and anti-communist sentiments). they were often subject to horrible living conditions compared to their american white counterparts as well as violence - one of the largest lynchings in america was the mass-lynching of eleven italian immigrants in new orleans in 1891.
yet today, when we think of italian-americans, we often see them simply as “white.”
a huge amount of immigrants to the united states and canada were forced to give up their original cultures in order to assimilate into whiteness. if not, they were subject to prejudice, discrimination and overall just shitty conditions. for some groups that resembled “white americans” in appearance, such as irish folks and italian folks, this method worked eventually and they were assimilated and accepted into whiteness. for many others due to their skin color or features, such as black enslaved folks or jewish folks, even giving up their own culture still meant they were not accepted as white - they didn’t “look white.” additionally, many cultural groups resisted assimilation and rejected being seen as white.
this is somewhat why i believe so many white americans, canadians, and british participate so heavily in cultural appropriation. it comes from a sense of loneliness, of little to no original culture - and whatever is left has been bastardized and reduced to just “white,” neglecting the cultural nuance.
growing up as a brown-skinned mixed person with heavy ties to the indian side of my culture, i was subject to a fair amount of racism. i remember people asking why my hair was “oily and gross,” and then begging my mom to never put coconut oil in my hair ever again. i remember people telling me that the khichdi my mom had carefully made for my lunch “looked and smelled like fish eggs,” and then only eating bland sandwiches at school. but there is one experience i remember very clearly.
i had a white american best friend when i was very young, from kindergarten to third grade. she never judged me for my food or my clothes or my grandparents’ accent or any other part of my culture and i loved her for it. but i remember having this experience with her one day.
she’d met my grandmother who came to pick me up, donned in an elaborately-formed red sari. the next day, when i sat with her at recess, she said something like, “i liked your grandma’s dress. it was pretty.” taken aback by open appreciation of my culture, i just mumbled a pleased “oh, thanks.” but she didn’t stop there. she said, “my grandma only wears boring clothes, like sweaters and granny dresses. i wish i was indian.”
i said something like, “granny dresses can be nice. you can be white and wear cool clothes.”
“yeah, i know. but any old person can wear sweaters and dresses. they’re just…not from anywhere.”
at the time, i didn’t fully understand her desire to be connected to a specific culture, but i understood in a bit of a detached way. i was always very connected to and appreciative of my indian culture, but look to the white side and i was met with exactly that - a gaping white void. the closest answer i got was “well, your great-grandparents came from germany.” that answer dissatisfied me, although i couldn’t articulate why. now i can.
it’s something like, “but after such a long time, they’re not really german anymore.” i’d seen the absence of culture in whiteness, and how my white friends and family could name a distant time where their family belonged to another culture - but not anymore. now, they were just “white.”
whiteness as a concept strips and sanitizes culture to fit a very, very narrow version of culture - a culture defined on the surface by cheeseburgers and british accents and football and canadian politeness, but dig deeper and you find colonialism, colonization, eurocentricism, racism, and various other systems of oppression.
once again, this is not an excuse for white folks who appropriate culture nor is this me trying to reason my way into approving of it. it’s not, and i’m not. i die a little bit inside every time i see some random hippie on the internet bastardize and water down the concept of chakras. but it is a bit of an explanation, and this is why i have some degree of sympathy for white folks who culturally appropriate.
so, to all white or white-passing folks who read this and understand/relate to it: i implore you this. please, please, please, if you have the time and resources to do so, reconnect with your native culture. talk to older irish folks, or learn about traditional welsh folklore. learn german, or watch documentaries of italian culture. read stories from white-passing native folk, or talk with your black grandparents. please do not lose the culture that your ancestors had to give up in order to assimilate into whiteness. understand that whiteness is a part of you and that it impacts those around you, but if you can, please make the effort to reconnect with your culture. it does wonders for your identity and sense of self.
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browntrait · 9 months
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ik its been 10000 years since i’ve been on here, not in the space to unpack and go into everything that happened in my personal life
but apparently y’all still been racist, colorist and fatphobic since i been gone. disappointed, but not surprised. when will ya’ll realize that centering an aesthetic based around white, beige, “fitness” and wealth becomes exclusionary. VERY quickly. i got so exhausted trying to point out these issues that it made me feel unsafe and distant from this platform. it’s isolating. getting called the n-word HARD er and told to die bc i tried to speak up was ultimately why i knew simblr was not the “community” it claims to be. what benefit is there in a creative space like this when everyone’s posts look exactly the same. y’all wanna use the “everyone has their own style” as an excuse. it’s almost as if ppl create sims that reflect their ideas of beauty standards and their ideas of what’s beautiful in the real world, hmmmmmmmm
anyway, black simmers, keep posting, keep defying and diversifying the timeline. don’t get discouraged and let numbers put limitations on your art and enjoyment. simblr isnt the same without y’all. 
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Dear early archaeologists,
The East exists.
Don’t complain or ignore it. It just does. No one is sorry.
Please do not subjugate it to Western ideals and philosophies. The empires of Asia were some of the most developed and impressive that the world has ever seen. Their political and material culture, especially ceramics and vessels, were internationally renowned and very influential over what you are currently studying.
Please use them as reference in your interpretations of your culture but ESPECIALLY theirs.
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rome-theeempire · 2 years
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I will never understand queer ppl who demonize other queer ppl who don't fit into hetero, eurocentric and cis normative standards like...ISNT THAT THE WHOLE POINT OF BEING QUEER????
Pronouns don't equal gender
Neopronouns have been around for CENTURIES
Non-binary genders have been around for CENTURIES and Bipoc cultures used to honor queer ppl before the spread of eurocentric standard
If you are a queer person who tries to exclude ppl who: use pronouns that you don't think matches their gender identity, Bipoc/neurodivergent/disabled queers, you push the binary onto the NON-binary, and you refuse to use ppls neos
You're the equivalent of a WHITE CIS MALE CONFEDERATE
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phaloplasty · 25 days
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saw a poll asking people's religions and with tens of thousands of results only like 1% were muslim nd that really explains so much of what is wrong w this website 🤧 u guys need Allah.
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pidgefudge · 2 months
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hmm
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niishi · 9 months
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punks are so dumb being like "punk is this specific definition of things and if u don't hit every single check mark you're not punk" acting as if definitions and culture don't change 🙄 it's like they forgot punk started as a white supremacy movement amongst the white working class who refused to collaborate with working class immigrant poc and chose to name them as the reasons for inequality and white working class sufferage. punk is about freedom and community. yes, anarchy is the core of punk. poc/indigenous anarchy is the core of punk. not ur patched jeans or listening to sex pistols smfh. most rap music and blues is more punk than white punk bands. get over yourself.
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kaftan · 3 months
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pet peeve #6738: people saying “Eurocentric” when they mean European
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sarasa-cat · 5 months
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That’s it
I’m going to write that novel
What novel?
Well, it isn’t one I talk about in this space
(except when I make vague blog comments in the tags about the creepy faux-progressive gotcha-game of where I have been stuck living for too much of my adult life)
Oh the gaslighting
The constant gaslighting
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go-learn-esperanto · 1 year
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The planet Themis (where Wilbur and his mother were born in The Stars and Their Children) really was like
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