Buying in

I want to be very clear that my posts here are not the final word on appropriation; there are many facets to it. Some of that should be clear in today's post.

For this round of writing, my thoughts became more cohesive as I thought about "Poca-hottie" costumes.

In general, a costume based on an ethnic identity that you can assume or discard at will has a lot of room for disrespect built in. That is probably why we get people putting on blackface or donning a sombrero from a restaurant and speaking in an exaggerated Mexican accent, or the husband of a former friend putting on a robe and conical straw hat, using his fingers to slant his eyes, and that photo being put on their Christmas card with no embarrassment whatsoever.

With "Poca-hottie" specifically, the costume sexualizes Native American women, taking its name from a story of a child who was kidnapped as a political prisoner, despite her tribe helping the colonizers survive. It doesn't sound so romantic when you put it that way.

What's more, that sexualization persists as Halloween fun despite the problem of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_and_Murdered_Indigenous_Women    

In Canada, the homicide rate for Indigenous women was almost six times higher than the rate for other women. In the United States, 67% of the reported attacks against Native American women are by non-Indigenous offenders, but 70% of the assaults do not get reported.

I can think of two potential reactions to try and play this down.

The first would be "It's not that deep. Take a joke."

I remember some of that from when all of the Native American cast members walked off the set of The Ridiculous Six. 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/06/humor-me.html

If the reason the joke resonates is because it relates to something true, but that truth is horrible, maybe instead of laughing at it we should fix it.

I can also imagine a response about how the vast majority of Halloween costumes are sexualized and women are frequently sexualized, threatened, assaulted and even murdered, regardless of race.

That is true; there is a larger misogyny problem. It can play out differently in different ways by race. 

For example, I suspect one aspect of the MMIW issue is that often you have temporary extraction projects happening near reserves, so you have non-locals coming to tear up the land in destructive ways with no sense of connection to the community, and the work is allowed to be done over objections due to imbalances in political power... I absolutely believe that can make things worse. 

The abuse is built on the history, so knowing that history gives a context. 

Not knowing the history is how you can say, "It's not that deep."

Which is my very long way of saying that a key aspect of appropriation is that you are accepting the marginalization and exploitation, the theft of land and rights.

The racism.

The sexism.

The colonialism.

Note that it doesn't have to be intentional; you can support it through complete ignorance. The anti-DEI movement is doing everything it can to promote ignorance.

However, if you care about justice or fairness or equity, you need to choose to learn, acknowledge, and respect.