I'm kind of agnostic about cultural appropriation at all. I really have no problem with the fact that Americans eat bagels with ham, or sprinkle their conversation with Yiddish words which bear little relationship to the tiny little fragments of Yiddish I picked up from my father's family. And I have no problem with people using bits of Jewish mythology in novels, even if it's garbled. But some of the stuff in
(I probably shouldn't get into this, but I think the recent Cultural Appropriation stuff was mostly not about Cultural Appropriation at all, it was about actual racism. None of the main players were saying, I hate it when white people write about my non-American culture or about characters with dark skin, which was how it seemed to come across to many white readers. They were saying, I hate it when white writers use lazy and offensive stereotypes of my culture and ethnicity. Or, I hate the fact that I barely have a culture because my country and language were wrecked by colonialism.)
But yeah, reading that post I can see how easy it would be to get into a mindset of being massively offended about how my minority culture is treated by the majority culture, and constructing a certain language framework and taking it as an affront when anyone made any remark outside that framework. I don't know if that's helpful or not (
Advertised research jobs:
Applications sent - 3 (Dundee, Oxford, Glasgow). Progress - one guy has asked my boss for references.
Lecturer jobs:
Applications sent - 4 (Birmingham, East London, Teeside, London Met). Progress - none.
Writing jobs:
Applications sent - 1 (PLoS, based in Cambridge). Progress - none. I don't think this one's going to come through, actually.