Deconstructing Racist Comments left on my Cultural Appropriation video

See me dive into the racist, sometimes masquerading as the opposite, comments my video on Cultural Appropriation got and how white fragility works

If you’ve seen my latest video on how Cultural Appropriation hurts Modern Witchcraft, and you had the idea of going through the comments, you might have encountered few but peculiar ones that seem to suggest the mere discussion of cultural appropriation is what actually harms witchcraft, how white practices should be closed too (white exceptionalism) and my personal favourite: racism against myself to try and invalidate my points.

Since people seem interested in understanding how I analyse and put issues into context, I thought this critical thinking exercise might be worth sharing. So whilst on Sunday 2nd March I will have a video out discussing the overall topic and addressing how all these comments try in different ways to do the same thing (shut me up), I thought maybe you’d like to see the in depth version.

So one by one, what do these comments claim to say on the surface and what do they actually try to achieve? Do they stand the reality check? (This post is super long, you might not be able to read it in full as an email so it’s worth checking on my substack in full)

@J.J.DoeArt • 1 day ago

I would like to point out one thing that I never see anyone talks about. I myself am white, but people tend to forget that there is just as much diversity in cultures and heritage in white people as there are in people of colour, and in an effort to prop up and show the respect to the cultures of POC that they deserve, rightfully so, they tend to downplay and trivialise the culture of white people. I myself am of various bloodlines, including Russian Jewish, old Celtic royalty and as I explore my bloodline in my practice I am finding a strong bloodline connection to Viking heritage, particularly in connection to Loki. I am not saying to close off open practices, if anything I think this is valuable to keep practices alive, but I am saying that there seems to be a bit of a double standard that white people are all lumped together when we have a very wide variety of different bloodlines. Just a bit of food for thought, a native american medicine man who is an expert in their practices of their people is no more or less valuable than a white nordic priest who's whole bloodline has lived in Scandinavia for generations and is an expert in those practices and traditions, but just for being white, in these kinds of witchcraft circles the nordic priest is more likely to face scrutiny and accused of cultural appropriation if they show interest or knowledge of anything outside what is perceived as their race because they are white. White people may have a bloody history of oppressing others, but that doesn't mean that they, in some cases, have also been oppressed throughout history too and it does not make their heritage and culture less valuable. Closed practices are of course closed for a reason, and that needs to be respected, but unfortunately due to how history played out, most of the open practices are white and as such are, unintentional as it may be, misrepresented and trivialised the most.

TL;DR just because white people do undeniably have societal privilege, that does not make them immune to having their cultures disregarded trivialised, misrepresented and disrespected due to nothing more than the fact that they are white.

This is an example of White Exceptionalism I literally discuss in the video. It’s the kind of white pagan that considered themselves progressive and might not touch practices that don’t belong to them, but the only lens they apply is their white entitlement so all they get from closed practice is the exclusivity, not the preservation aspect, so they try to apply the same kind of exclusivity and elitism to their own white practices. Let’s break this down, because in my naivete, for a second, I thought at most, this person was simply repeating reverse racism talking points without understanding how they were doing that. Then we got into the “Bloodlines” and actually that made it obvious these were all washed down talking points, exactly as shown in Amy Hale essay on how the New Right tries to recruit in pagan circles with exactly these methods.

the culture of white people

The culture of whiteness exists only in opposition to non-white, and that was a choice of white people. Professor Meghan Tinsley, Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities at the University of Manchester, explains this in detail in her article “Whiteness is an invented concept that has been used as a tool of oppression”. Give it a read. It’s neat. In short: it was actually a European invention in the 1600s because all the small states of Europe were fighting each other too much rather than the people from outside Europe, so the concept of whiteness as in opposition to those not from Europe, was created to try and rile people under an umbrella to focus fighting efforts on “the other”. The very lamentation of “the culture of white people” being dumped into an umbrella, is a making of white people. Much like, when men rights activists scream that men are at the receiving end of more violence than women (not true) the answer is always: STILL AT THE HANDS OF OTHER MEN!

I explore my bloodline in my practice I am finding a strong bloodline …

You might already smell something is wrong when this person talks about blood, and how that blood curiously only connects them to deities and royalty. It’s a dog whistle and white people tend to be the only ones that focus on Blood as entitlement, while practices of people of colour tend to be based on shared culture and experiences. The entitlement that comes from the “Blood” is discussed as problematic in the essay by Amy Hale “Marketing "Rad Trad": The Growing Co-Influence Between Paganism and the New Right” featured in Bringing Race to the Table. The “ennoblement by blood” is the best excuse nobles in Britain found to place themselves above the populace claiming closeness to divinity just as the king was anointed by God. That’s where the use of blood as unquestionable value comes from. I invite you to notice that Blood is also something you cannot work on. It’s something given to you from above (literally an ancestral line) that you have no say about but that, according to this vision of the world, gives you entitlement, quite literally coming from royalty and blood. Blood historically was the easiest way to enforce a divine right and eliminating any need to prove one’s own worth. Fun fact: you still find that need of white people attaching themselves to the value of blood in modern vampire romance novels, where the white heroines (Bella Swan, Sookie Stackhouse, Diana Bishop, Elena Gilbert, etc…) are self insert of their authors, usually white women who find themselves at a point in life where the promise patriarchy made them, has not been fulfilled. The promise being: you just need to be white to be automatically appreciated and loved and find a man whose love and power will elevate you too. The promise of course states also between the lines: accepting these conditions also means you accept that the ladder of patriarchy that sees white cis het able rich men at the top and you will help us enforce that against anyone who comes lower than you in the ladder. Welcome white feminism. The issue between the lines is that this kind of white woman does not understand having to “work” on oneself to be appreciated, and so “blood” becomes a metaphor for “whiteness”: something a man can love about them to obsession that’s absolutely not a merit, that is not about their goodness, kindness, anything that might have learnt because that would imply merit. They cannot understand “working” for something. And Tiana is the only Disney princess that has a job… (can you tell I have done research on this? I had planned a video essay on “pick mes” and “not like the other girls” based on vampire heroines since 2021)

there seems to be a bit of a double standard that white people are all lumped together when we have a very wide variety of different bloodlines.

The simple presence of the word “bloodline” again, tempts me to lump this with the previous point. However there’s something worth highlighting here. Once again, this is something that white people have done: lumping all heritage and cultures (bloodline is again a dog whistle I will not indulge) of Europe under the umbrella of White to other and fight people of colour so that they wouldn’t feel as guilty about colonisation and slavery. Now that we have this historical context we can see how the attempt at self victimisation, as if people of colour made white people a monolith, is problematic. We could have a talk about how Christianity has a lot to answer for destroying and cannibalising spiritual practices across the world, and that might be a discussion worth having. In the context of a video about white people appropriating shamelessly practices that don’t belong to them, and myself literally calling out the white privileged behaviour of centering oneself with sentences such as “why can’t I have stuff exclusive to me like people of colour have!?!”, that’s not the place for that. If nothing else because those very same cultures that face dilution in the assimilation to Christianity then benefitted from the colonisation and slavery Christianity supported and enabled (see missionaries work). We know this because those who rebelled, the Heretics, were all exterminated. See my previous video on The Opposite of Capitalism and Silvia Federici’s historical recount of witchcraft as rebellion to capitalism in Caliban and the Witch (also available on the internet archive for free)

but just for being white, in these kinds of witchcraft circles the nordic priest is more likely to face scrutiny and accused of cultural appropriation

My spouse and I have mulled over this for a while because even taking wild guesses we cannot find even anecdotal, let alone systemic example of Norse practices being accused of cultural appropriation? If we are talking in general about white people, then es, as they should face closer scrutiny, because cultural appropriation is a consequent step of colonisation and every white person who has benefitted, consciously or not, from colonisation, is likely to not have the awareness to realise the world is not made for them when history is written by the winners and every portrayal of whiteness in media, history, museums and every form of culture, paints whiteness as the standard. The very fact that a white person that claims bloodline connecting them to a Norse divinity and Celtic royalty goes to show how much scrutiny this way of thinking should undergo. It’s the failure to understand how equity and equality work and a wilful disregard of the responsibility the entirety of Europe has towards any non-white culture they tried to annihilate through colonialism and slavery. Specifically the false argument they are trying to make here is: if practices of people of colour can demand protection, why can’t white practices claim the same? It sounds like equality on the surface, tit for tat, right? But where it immediately crumbles is when you put into the historical context what non-white practices had to endure to survive and get to still exist today in any form, versus the Norse experience of adaptation and syncretisation to Christianity. Both were oppressive, only one led to genocide, care to guess which one? Hence why Equity, different from Equality, seeks to elevate everyone to the same level, regardless of the means that need to be given to different cultures to achieve that. In practical terms it means that yes, White practices will be exposed to more scrutiny when it comes to cultural appropriation because, whether the individual understands it or not, they benefit from a system that has stolen, pillaged and r*ped for their benefit, and they do not face the erasure that practices such as Santeria, the various forms of VooDoo or any Native American Tribe practice had to survive. Quite literally: your privilege is showing.

but that doesn't mean that they, in some cases, have also been oppressed throughout history too

See above the point of Christian assimilation / Cannibalisation versus Colonial Genocide. The damage of slavery and colonialism is quantifiably measurable and catastrophic. If you can trace your “bloodline” back to whatever entitlement you think that gives you, that shows itself how the system is still veered on your side, because you even have something that the system recognises as valuable like “royalty” or whatever else. Most African-American people cannot trace their ancestry to more than an African region, and none of those can claim anything remotely positive recognised as such by the system because the system still looks at Africa today as a just a raw materials provider, quite literally an open wound it extracts value from. Reflect on that from your royal lineage.

most of the open practices are white and as such are, unintentional as it may be, misrepresented and trivialised the most.

Systemically, this is provably wrong. Which is not to say that anecdotally this person hasn’t encountered mockery of the Norse pantheon or practices. But I’d wager there’s not an equivalent as socially damaging as being of Africa heritage and having people throw them banana peels or making monkey sounds while they mock dance around them in what white people perceives “savage” tribes do. Until they experience that (those are my own anecdotal examples of real life experience I have) and see the system shrug at it, claiming the same oppression as non-white cultures still undergo to this day, is disingenuous at best. DARVO at worst (an acronym for "deny, attack, and reverse victim & offender")

due to nothing more than the fact that they are white.

Reverse Racism is a dog whistle. Racism is based on an imbalance of Power. White people hold the power in this system. You can see in the judiciary system, in the prison system especially in the US, in everyday life when people had to change their “foreign-sounding” surnames to start getting Job Interviews. So no. By saying this you fail to acknowledge you live in a system that gives you privilege every day just by the fact you were born in a certain “blood line”, quite literally a genetic lottery, and then are just demanding everyone recognises and hails you as a lottery winner even when they have learnt Lottery winnings are not earned. White people are put under scrutiny because they have abused their white privilege, which they literally made up to make themselves look better than non-white people (see the first article linked by Professor Meghan Tinsley), and don’t like the lens being put on them because as always, To the Privileged, Equality feels like Oppression.

Final Thoughts: was this person well or ill intentioned? Seeing the swayed talking points that borrow from the idea that racism could be applied to white people, ignoring completely that racism requires power to be enacted, and seeing how many of their talking points are of fascist derivation, I’d say this person was aware and ill intentioned, hoping to sound reasonable to lure white people into the idea that “see? we are victims too! so we deserve the same care and protection warranted to other cultures!”. No, white people haven’t been systematically oppressed and erased by anyone else than other white people. This is seeking that definition by excluding others that I talk about in the original Cultural Appropriation video.

@redlunatic2224 • 2 days ago

As an easter european person, this topic is actually quite interesting to me. I generally agree with the points made here, but I want to make a couple points.While I simpathise with the want to protect closed practices, I can't avoid thinking of my own ancestry and how much of that culture was erased by christianity and wonder if cultural appropriation would be a better fate. I'd rather see americans rocking baseball caps with our ancestral symbols than feeling culturally orphaned as I do sometimes. This is not to say people shouldn't protect their culture, or to give lisence to any outsider to spread it carelessly, but to keep in mind that the other extreme can also be very dangerous.Besides that, can we stop categorising people into "white" and "people of colour"? This only serves cultural appropriation, letting people take for themselves ethinicities they don't share blood nor culture with, and to homogenise and otherise everyone else. Yes, being white passing does have some privileges, but the moment you open your mouth and your words don't carry the right accent, most of it crumbles to dust. I also think it's just nice when people are more specific when talking about cultures I'm not familiar with. For example, I have a very hard time parcing pre-colonial american cultures precisely because they're all lumped into a huge "native american" sack. That's 2 huge continents worth of cultures!Keep up the good work!

The issue here is the false equivalence (out of ignorance or ill intent I cannot quite say) of Christianity absorbing and cannibalising folk practices to the invention of whiteness to genocide people and enslave them that non-white cultures has to endure since the 1500s. It also brings in Colour Blindness which is a tool white people use to claim equality when in reality the issue it covers is the lack of understanding of the oppression of people of colour and the advantage that, as white people they have, whether ware of it or not. I’d like to believe this person, contrary to the other examples brought here, is actually well intentioned but ignorant due to their personal view of the world being limited to their experience which suggests to me with foraying into research they might understand and grow. There is indeed an issue though when, starting from a limited, ignorant point of view, we still make our anecdotal personal experience sound like facts just because it’s our whole (limited) experience.

I can't avoid thinking of my own ancestry and how much of that culture was erased by christianity and wonder if cultural appropriation would be a better fate.

Yes, a lot of folkloric, pagan and basically anything alternative to the catholic church was persecuted in Europe and not only (see the crusades) and we could have a discussion about Christianity, its cannibalisation of pagan cultures and gods into saints, its despicable missionary work that continues to this day. However, as we are speaking about the actual erasure, extermination and ultimate genocide of cultures at the hands of white colonisation, it seems at best disingenuous to use the word “erasure” to describe the work of Christianity in Europe where survival through syncretisation, especially when stemming from Catholic practices, was the most common outcome. That is shown in the “heretic” folk magic practices and the cult of saints still present today and in the fact that the Inquisition ironically, prosecuted less people overall in the catholic countries of Spain and Italy, than people were prosecuted as heretics and witches in the rest of Europe. I recommend Caliban and The Witch by Silvia Federici for more specific data on that.

The second part where they wonder if cultural appropriation would be a better fate, gives us a great example of anecdotal versus systemic. Whilst this person might genuinely believe, based on their knowledge and understanding, that they would have preferred to have the practices of their ancestors being culturally appropriated rather than lost, there seem to be a false implication here, in the idea that cultural appropriation lets a practice survive. I think the examples we have, from White Sage being harvested almost to extinction and definitely to the point Native American tribes that use it for smudging, or the bastardisation of practices imported from Yoga and Tai Chi to the point where white authors don’t even bother mentioning that’s where they originally found practices such as Square Breath (Sama Vritti in Pranayama Yoga) or the Ball of Energy exercise coming from Tai Chi, these go to show that once white people touch and appropriate something they curiously, likely due to that need for exclusivity, make it harder if not impossible for the original practice to continue, or even retain memory of its origin. In short, these examples show that, what is appropriated, is detached from its origin so profoundly that given enough time, any connection or reference to it is lost if white people go unchallenged, and so there would actually be no folk practice to be found once culturally appropriated. The anecdotal belief of this person is based on a misunderstanding of the verifiable effects of cultural appropriation which leaves nothing behind. On top of it, it’s the person’s preference much as it’s presented as reasonable fact, and we know, on a community level with general agreement that cultural appropriation is not an alternative to erasure, it’s a step towards it.

can we stop categorising people into "white" and "people of colour"? This only serves cultural appropriation, letting people take for themselves ethinicities they don't share blood nor culture with, and to homogenise and otherise everyone else.

I wish I could underline or highlight more the first part where the ask, supposedly in the name of solidarity or more fragmented diversity, the request is to stop categorising “white” and “people of colour” as opposites. Ok, there’s work to unpack here. You might have heard this argument before, usually coming from white people that claim this division in terms is what creates racism, that we’re all human beings and that’s the vocabulary that saws division and the adjacent step is of course to say that “they don’t see colour”. Which as known problematic take which you can get a taster of here, is the implication of what this person said. When they were made to notice that, they doubled down leaving no doubt to what they meant:

Frankly, I feel like you misrepresented quite heavily my 2nd point. I have never said anything akin to "I don't see colour". I do. I know full well there is a divide there, but it is a divide imposed and enforced by racists. We should acknowledge it exists and fight against it, but part of that fight is to try to avoid incorporating their partterns of thinking into our own. Otherwise, we will just keep reproducing the same mechanisms of oppression.

To the Vocabulary-sawn division the answer is: language exists to describes something that is already there and needs a name, not vice versa. This causality is reversed in a nonsensical way in this comment.

While there is a benefit of the doubt I can give on the importance of recognising the identity of individual non-white cultures, just as a person of colour shouldn’t be expected to become the spokesperson for all people of colour when in a group with people who all happen to be white, there’s also a thing people of colour are aware in terms of solidarity against oppression that actually, in the UK took the form of what was known in the 1970s as “political blackness” where, for the sake of fighting the oppression all people of colour face in a white supremacists country, people of colour would stand with each other under this umbrella. This never meant losing their own individual cultures or identities as much as this movement included people from India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, Africa, you name it. The all simply knew that there’s strength in numbers and considering the power of white people in a system created by and for them, this alliance under the term “Black” -even when it included people of Asian or South Asian heritage- showed exactly that. If we want to focus on inclusive language today’s preferred term is Global Majority exactly because, on a world scale, all the non-white ethnicities overtake by number white people. There’s a lot of white fragility about that of course and problematically, one of the arguments I’ve heard against it, that usually always comes from white people, is exactly the one used in this comment: that we are not the same so why do we stand together. This “divide and conquer” strategy was also the way the UK Government went after the Caribbean and south Asian communities, giving them different issues to divide their priorities and fight the strength in numbers that political blackness brought to people of colour in the UK (for more information on that, the wonderful book that is Queer and Trans People of Colour in the UK: Possibilities for Intersectional Richness by Prof. Stephanie Davis is actually free on Kindle. it is one of the main resources I use when building Intersectionality trainings.)

The short version is: the communities of people of colour know liberation is collective. You can have the outlier black person that votes trump and allows white supremacists to tokenise them in an effort to be accepted and in the delusion they will be “spared” by being “one of the good ones”, but on a community scale, we know how to prioritise liberation from white supremacy, and the only ones that want to emphasise our “different cultures” do so in an effort to make us lose that strength in numbers that we need to dismantle the current system of power that has whiteness as its pinnacle. While we might ask for a change of terminology such as moving from BAME (Black, Asia or Minority Ethnic) in the UK to Global Majority, we do so in an effort to decolonise the lens that describe as always less than and removed from the Eurocentric point of view. A similar effort is currently ongoing to replace the acronym MENA to describe the Middle East and North Africa to SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) as it’s not only more geographically accurate but it ends the description of places as existing only in relation to the position of Europe (the middle east is only to the East of Europe and to be named after its position relative to Europe is an orientalist if not directly colonial way to describe the area)

There was a bit of back and forth on this point between myself and the original commenter on the use of what they described as “divisive language” and the idea that labels are damaging and they presented the example of the LGBTQ+ community. Again, they presented as fact the idea that the acronym and definitions of sexual and gender identities were imposed on the queer community and therefore should be shed. As a queer person, let me tell you, this is again provably false. The most evident example is the Q in LGBTQ+ which stands for Queer, which was born as a slur which has now been reclaimed by people to mean “outside of the expected”.

[Queer] entered the English language by the early 16th century, when it was primarily used to mean strange, odd, peculiar or eccentric. By the late 19th century it was being used colloquially to refer to same-sex attracted men.

from: Reviled, reclaimed and respected: the history of the word ‘queer’ in The Conversation

I don’t know if the original commenter is just ill informed or actually ill intentioned but their repeated ignorance at best, misinformation passed as fact at worse, really wore off my good faith at this point, especially after their insistence that labels divide us, despite being presented with the fact that, to eliminate labels like “people of colour” in opposition to ”white” while the system is still racist, would only deprive us of language to describe the oppression we face systemically.

Final Thoughts: Was this person ill intentioned? They self describe as a leftist and what I think the issue at hand might be is that, they ignorant in matters that affect non-white people, and they simply extended their experience of marginalisation to think it must cover the non-white experience as well, but rather than expanding her solidarity through sympathy, they simply stop at their own anecdotal experiences and reactions. They would personally prefer cultural appropriation for the practices they think are lost, so must everyone. They don’t understand labels because they don’t see the privilege whiteness gives them even as an eastern European person, so they think no one should care about labels. They basically seem to have the presumption to believe their limited experience of certain kind of marginalisations must represent the totality of marginalisations or can be applied uncritically. In short: they don’t realise their ignorance and are arrogant about what they think they know because it’s their own experience.

rosiemuller5255 • 8 hours ago

I agree that there is cultural appropriation especially in wicca but i disagree with the it tends to be a white people thing,yes the white men who have made all of these mordern religions are the problem ,but its a people thing not a race,there are cultures from classed white races that are appropriated, at the end of the day if we do not see each of us as equal and educating people the segregation will always be in play, we all bleed red and we are all the same species at the end of the day.

I understand the privilege I'd never say there isn't differences but I like to advocate and treat everyone based on personality and not colour meaning educating and promoting a way of equality ,I'd never say that there isn't a difference in how people of different races are treated becasue in some places there is blatant racism of all cultures,in terms of the craft I prefer to see each person as who they are ,of course I will listen and try to understand, but blaming white people as a general term dosnt help the equality movement as it may encourage racism towards white people (honestly I do feel like some definitely need to be personally reminded of what happened and happens today so they aren't ignorant) but I don't see myself as racist or a coloniser inherently as a white person

The entire basis of this comment is once again benevolent colour blindness to cover the discomfort white people have to understand they are privileged, they have benefited from colonialism, and if they acknowledge that privilege they’d have to state actively supporting and elevating people of colour, which they see as hard or extra work they are not interested in. It also develops into the fear of Anti White Reverse Racism which is a dog whistle of white supremacy literally fearing that minorities would do onto them, as white people have done to minorities for centuries. So there’s cognitive dissonance between “we are all the same, racism doesn’t exist” but at the same time “I don’t want racism to be done to me”.

we all bleed red and we are all the same species

The argument here is another flavour of Colour Blindness applied to race.

Color Blindness ideology assumes that everyone is treated as equal with no regard for race. This perspective denies the negative encounters that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) face due to their race. It also ignores their unique perspectives and their cultures.

One who subscribes to the Color Blindness ideology may believe that they are supporting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), but they are doing the opposite. When you refuse to acknowledge one’s race, you prevent yourself from being able to fully understand racism and its impacts. As a result, you cannot address the inequities that stem from racism.

from: Inclusive Language Series: Color Blind

Further Reading: Racial color blindness

blaming white people as a general term dosnt help the equality movement as it may encourage racism towards white people

Reverse Racism cannot exist in this system. When you hear about it at best the person is regurgitating white supremacists talking points without any critical thinking, at worst they are dog whistling.

Belief in reverse racism is widespread in the United States; however, there is little to no empirical evidence that white Americans are disadvantaged as a group.^[7] Racial and ethnic minorities generally lack the ability to damage the interests of whites, who remain the dominant group in the U.S.^[8][9] Claims of reverse racism tend to ignore such disparities in the exercise of power,^[1][10][11] which most sociologists and psychologists include in their definition of racism

From the Wikipedia article on Reverse Racism

The TL;DR is: to the privileged, equality feels likes oppression. Hence demanding recognition of racism is not something that white people want to acknowledge, while simultaneously worrying about anti white racism. seems like they can’t decide if racism exists or not and how to justify themselves in being privileged but also classifying being called out as racists as… racism itself.

samuel56551• 1 day ago

All cultures borrow and learn from each other , it's called being human . Modern occult practices have influences and origins in a multitude of cultures , or did you imagine " witchcraft " ( versions of which could also be said to exist in all cultures ) developed in a vacuum ? The casting of circles is found in ancient Mesopotamian sources , and it's use entered the Western tradition from the grimoires which are largely Meditteranean in origin . Is that cultural misappropriation ? To single out a relatively modern practice like burning white sage as " misappropriation " is to ignore the hugely syncretic nature of all Western occult traditions . How about no more Kabbalistic references , " cutural misappropriation " from Jewish culture ?

This is Whataboutism and again False Equivalence to understand the difference between an Institution like the catholic church who absorbs and cannibalises from cultures, with the aim to annex them, which means it recognises the existence of these cultures as valid and human, to the issue of colonialism where the concept of whiteness was created to mean “elevated” so that anyone non-white was considered savage, infantile and downright animalistic. Fearing the black Body is a great source for that.

To single out a relatively modern practice like burning white sage as " misappropriation " is to ignore the hugely syncretic nature of all Western occult traditions

Another example of a white person conveniently lumping together culture merging and syncretising with genocide and erasure. In this case it’s even more blatant because they openly refer to “the hugely syncretic nature of all Western occult traditions”, keyword: western. And the issue is that western practice steal. When lucky we are here to tell the story of how the goddess brigid became cannibalised into saint brigid but that still just speaks of an institution, the catholic church, taking what they want when they want. The lens missing is the racism. Any non-european culture was approached with a colonial mindset that seeks to take not with diplomacy but with extermination. The entire concept of whiteness created at the time of the slave trade was for white people to “other” anyone non-european and to justify themselves treating non white-people like chattel. To ignore this shows the white fragility of the argument and the failure at whataboutism because no, colonial genocide is not the same as religious oppression when “convert or die” wasn’t even given as an option, because colonialism promoted a process of infantilisation and dehumanisation of anyone non-white to the classification of “savage” perceived closer to animal than human. White people, even heretics burnt at the stake, never underwent that process.

How about no more Kabbalistic references , " cutural misappropriation " from Jewish culture ?

I actually think we should have a discussion about the Cabala in modern witchcraft, the influence of the heretic sect of the Cathars in it, and if -before how- it can be practiced by non jewish people. This still does not validate the previous false equivalence.

chrisj5505 • 1 hour ago

I think the biggest problem with modern witchcraft is that woke radical activists try to view it in light of their own socialist Marxist ideologies. If we really want to be authentic we would only work with plants that grow in our local regions. That means get rid of all herbs from Europe and Asia from our practice. Then we would have to erase all European folklore and myths. So bye bye Wicca and neo-paganism. As they largely came from Indo-European sources. Then we would be left wirh grimoires and ceremonial magic. Which we would have to eradicate as they drew from the Bible and Middle Eastern sources. Then we would have to eradicate the Bible because it drew from Babylonian Egyptian, Persian sources. You would have no craft left. Every culture learns from other cultures there is no pure culture. Great civilizations mingle and share ideas. Many cultures contributed to the collective knowledge which has become modern witchcraft. This should be celebrated not canceled to suit sensitive Marxist extremist ideas. Should we not celebrate diversity and rejoice thst many cultures have shared their wisdom to bring human beings forward as a species? Why would we want to go back to a sort of tribal puritanism?

More False Equivalence or culture clashing / merging before the time whiteness and therefore racialisation was invented, and attacks based on racialisation to “other” and describe that other as animalistic to justify inhuman behaviour is the crux of the issue in the modern cultural appropriation done by white pagans. This is a conservative person with a clearly colonial mindset, made obvious by their racist dogwhistle using “woke” as a pejorative, wanting to both protect their right to grow their practice whilst at the same time disregard any respect they would be owing to other practices. It’s an example of Orientalism and curiously, uses as gotcha things I agree with but they evidently thought I would be hypocritical about? Yes we should discuss the appropriation of Wicca and The Golden Dawn,

woke radical activists try to view it in light of their own socialist Marxist ideologies.

yes witchcraft is marxist because if focuses on respectful community uplifting and support. And woke used pejoratively is a racist dogwhistle.

The phrase "stay woke" has long been used in Black communities to indicate staying alert to others' deception--especially law enforcement--as a survival mechanism, but in 2014 "stay woke" became common usage among Black Lives Matter activists after the police killing of Michael Brown, bringing it into the wider lexicon.

From: What Are the Origins of the Term 'Stay Woke'?

That being clarified let’s look more in this:

if you think that finding the true source of information devalues that information maybe we should look into why that feels like a problem to you? The entire point to be against cultural appropriation is to not erase the past, to make it available for people to know and learn. and yes, to know and learn that wicca is incredibly white and appropriative and people might find it more useful to look into the work of Margaret Murray on the dianic cults of the 9th century rather than the pick-and-choose of rituals that Gerald Gardner

Many cultures contributed to the collective knowledge which has become modern witchcraft. This should be celebrated not canceled to suit sensitive Marxist extremist ideas. Should we not celebrate diversity and rejoice thst many cultures have shared their wisdom to bring human beings forward as a species? Why would we want to go back to a sort of tribal puritanism?

Again, like in another comment, the conflation of culture exchange with genocide and claiming the result is the same “for the best of humanity” is just regurgitated colonial mindset and survivor bias.

The “marxist extremist idea” here is giving credit and asking permission to not disrespect or denature practices that, if they survived genocide, they are endangered.

Ivytheherbert • 5 hours ago

I have to disagree on the reasons for European paganisms being open (although I agree they are open practices). These are the main reasons why:1. These practices did not survive cultural genocide, and were destroyed as practices. All that remains are echoes in some folk beliefs and any texts that later Christians decided to preserve. The modern practices are revival movements, not surviving lineages of the original beliefs. Additionally, this loss is well-documented. This means taking part in modern practices isn't misrepresenting an existing marginalised group, and isn't taking attention from practitioners who were raised in the culture. Additionally, the groups that used to practice these religions have largely rejected them.2. There is no agreed correct way to follow any branch of European paganism. This makes closed practice impossible, as there's no metric of who is a legitimate practitioner and who isn't. 3. There's historical evidence that pagans would have shown reverence to deities from other pantheons while travelling, and evidence for deities migrating across pantheons due to cultural contact (Isis being worshipped by Romans is the main example). This indicates that historically, the original practices were open.

Thit is more False Equivalence of the subjugation of European folk practice to colonialism (do people not study colonialism and the slave trade????), a fundamental ignorance about european folk practices and some kind of intellectual dishonesty the historical argument for open practices which ignores the modern framework that exists since the invention of “whiteness” in the 1600s and therefore the reframing of certain practices that are therefore connected to racialised people, such as kemetism.

These practices did not survive cultural genocide, and were destroyed as practices. All that remains are echoes in some folk beliefs and any texts that later Christians decided to preserve

The first point here has already been discussed and from previous comments I hope I have explained well enough why Christian erasure and cannibalisation does not even remotely compare with colonial genocide. We can talk about Christianity as an issue amongst white culture in Europe before the slave trade, what we are talking about in cultural appropriation that this equivalence forgets (because white people lack the experience so they don’t think it matters) it’s Racialisation. The Othering of non-white people and the likening to savage / infantile / animals whom the white colonisers and slave traders did not have to consider as human and therefore had no qualm murdering and selling as chattel. That is not in any way something white people can relate to, and that’s ok. It’s just for them to listen, learn, and understand why, if they are white and born in Europe of the US, they have privilege now that still benefits from that genocide.

There is no agreed correct way to follow any branch of European paganism. This makes closed practice impossible, as there's no metric of who is a legitimate practitioner and who isn't.

Would that it were so simple. In these very comments we can see how people (the northerner, the whiter, the more entitled) try to claim bloodlines to deities and royalty exactly to legitimise their practice through sheer elitism. Another less white supremacist example but still problematic is certain folk magic practices in Italy such as certain kinds of “segnature” which are supposedly passed through the bloodline. Anything that comes from something you cannot earn or learn aims to establish a hierarchy of unquestionable power over others. Families who go along with the belief their power is in the bloodline do not do so to preserve their folk practice from bastardisation but to elevate themselves amongst their villages and culture of reference to have power over them. See the wheel of privilege for that.

There's historical evidence that pagans would have shown reverence to deities from other pantheons while travelling, and evidence for deities migrating across pantheons due to cultural contact (Isis being worshipped by Romans is the main example). This indicates that historically, the original practices were open.

the historical argument to millennia ago I hear often, usually from white practitioners of kemetism. if it’s because of ignorance or ill intention I’ll leave you to judge. What they all fail to do with the historically open argument is understand how the framework changed with the concept of whiteness and racialisation that was developed, again, in the 1600s. If in roman times the concept of race and therefore racialisation and racial oppression as we know today could not apply, after the 1600s and the slave trade it does, so any reconstructionist practice should take into consideration the framework of oppression we work within now along with the traditions of the practice. and if they decide to claim the “cultural exchange” of roman, Grecian and Egyptian people of two thousand years ago, even after learning about the concept of whiteness invented in the 1600s, maybe it’s worth asking themselves why. I know the answer is “convenience” to them if they don’t have to face their privilege in being able to not trace or consider the origins of racism, but that’s another demonstration of how they white privilege benefits them.

@herenowchacha

You pretending to not be white is the ultimate cultural appropriation.

activistwitch I'm sure you conveniently miss the eye roles from poc when you try to appropriate their identity, lol but hey as long as you get to tick that extra box on the "oppression wheel" who cares what they think

you hope I get logic and common sense out of the world? Thankyou for that compliment. Your seven paragraph response is Your white fragility at being called out. race is not biological it's phenotypic and I hate to break it to you but the only people that would put you in the poc category are other white people who are cosplaying poc. It does not surprise me that you have so many videos with "as woman of colour" in the title it's almost as if you have to remind people of it for some reason

and no actually white people are not the only people who think white women are white.. if you have an interaction with a poc and then they have to describe you to someone else again I hate to break it to you but they will describe you as white and it's not at all vague.

and what exactly are you putting into the world other than being a Rachel Dolezal tribute act? Cosplaying poc is one thing, but accusing others of cultural appropriation whilst doing it is god level audacity

This is an “Ad Hominem” attack, which means attacking a person’s character in the hopes to invalidate their argument. The idea that if they can make the audience believe that I am a liar about my identity, then the lie can be extended to my research and the value of what I said about cultural appropriation. I Understand that, by openly talking about my acknowledgement of my white passing privilege at times in the video I basically signalled that to be a potential point of contention which this person decided to attack me hoping for an emotional reaction. Anything to use something other than actually engaging with my argument in the hope that the attack to me as a person could remove authority from what I said and basically told me to “shut up about my experience” in one of the most classic racial attack people of colour experience.

You pretending to not be white is the ultimate cultural appropriation.

In the very video they are commenting on I state I have white passing privilege, but I am Arab, so I fail to understand how this accusation even works. I am not pretending to not have white passing privilege, I acknowledge it in the very video, along with the explanation as to why, that white passing privilege and having been raised by the white side of my family makes me partially understand “white guilt”.

race is not biological it's phenotypic and I hate to break it to you but the only people that would put you in the poc category are other white people who are cosplaying poc.

Let’s talk whiteness and authority, because as said at the beginning, this is just convoluted Epistemicide.

Epistemicide can be used in light of a coloniser destroying the existing knowledge systems of the colonised, to replace them with knowledge systems controlled by the coloniser. (source)

My presumed “whiteness” is used as a stick to beat me, to remove authority from me and basically tell me “shut the hell up”. Yet whiteness is universally recognised and identifies with authority. In other words, were I white I would not receive this literal racial attack that attempts to questions my authenticity, my lived experience and the systemic oppression I face daily while literally perpetrating it anecdotally. Again, I only ever saw white people attack me for not being “of colour” enough when I educate them, while dark skinned people educating them get attacked for things like their hair not being professional. All these attacks aim to remove “professionality” therefore “credibility” to what we say and bring. Also notice how this sentence structure aims to repeat part of what I say, but changing the meaning: in the video I say the only people talking about my white passing privilege are white people. In this comment this person says the only people that would instead put me in the category of people of colour would still be white people. To the distracted eye we might be seemingly saying similar things enough. That’s a step in the direction to make you question not just who I am, but what I say, which is the crux of the argument really.

if you have an interaction with a poc and then they have to describe you to someone else again I hate to break it to you but they will describe you as white and it's not at all vague.

this reminded me how white people look to classify and put people in boxes according to their own discrete view of the world. Thinking how someone would describe me, my supposed “whiteness” or “white passing” has never ever been mentioned. You want to describe me? I’m the fat person with blond curls and usually the weird outfit. How interesting that someone would think of first describing someone by their skin colour. To clear any doubts, there are white passing and visibly people of colour in Glitter, even to indicate them to others it has never happened that anyone describes them first (or at all actually) by skin tone. Why that priority lives rent free in the minds of white people?

what exactly are you putting into the world other than being a Rachel Dolezal tribute act?

I’ll admit, I had to look this up. Rachel Dolezal is apparently a white woman, born of white parents that passed herself for black and sought positions of power within that community. When found out she rightfully lost those. The crucial point to discuss on matters of authority and loss of it is the community of reference. Rachel Dolezal was removed from positions of power within the POC community by People of Colour. In this instance yet again, it’s white people claiming i’m too white to talk about POC issues, but the poc community I have in real life has actually been the one that had to explain to be “Babes, you’re not as white passing as you think you are”. This is to say: it makes complete sense that white people would prefer anyone speaking against them and in defense of people of colour to “shut the hell up” because we inconvenience them. In try to remove authority from what I say by virtue of what they have decided I am or not to suit their needs, they also established themselves as the authority that can “oust” me from my own POC community, removing once again authority from people of colour that instead embraced me, because simply I am one of them.

This ironically gave me the excuse to find the work of doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics Alanah Mortlock discussing transracialism. Her interest stems from the fact she herself is mixed race and therefore light-skinned. Her work will comment better than I could about the supposed accusation of being “a white woman, born of white parents, posing as a person of colour”, if nothing else because once again, I don’t have that experience being a person of colour who was raised in a white country who never allowed me to forget that.

regardless, knowing I will always be questioned, that’s why I bring research and bibliography which stand on their own. So in reality, the answer to these ad hominem attacks on my identity (besides the fact this very attack would not be addressed to a white person) is: if I were white, my argument would still be just as valid because I know better than bring you personal anecdotes (that as a person of colour are always consider not valid enough) so I bring you bibliography and sources instead. If I were white my argument would be just as valid, people would just listen to it more.

Cosplaying poc is one thing, but accusing others of cultural appropriation whilst doing it is god level audacity

This is the last comment they left because evidently I pushed them to admit openly their ad hominem: that by trying to question my identity as a person of colour they hoped to make every argument I presented in the video as invalid. As I said in the last reply I gave them, I still must take it as a compliment if attacking my identity felt easier than attacking my arguments. They must have been really well built?

Anecdotally, I have only ever experienced identity erasure justified by “white passing privilege” aimed at me by white people. Along with them, I am the only one who ever questions the possibility I might be “too white passing to belong”.

Final Thoughts: in the alt right playbook series, the episode about “Never Play Defense” shows exactly this behaviour. It keeps moving the goalpost, and most importantly, plays to the audience, not the interlocutor. This started as a dig at my supposed “white passing” privilege, because I myself admitted in the video it’s one of my insecurities white people feast on. And this proceeded to do exactly that in an attempt to affect me emotionally. As a person who puts their face and shares their life on Youtube, an ill intentioned person has access to a lot of information, not only practical but especially emotional to try and attack me with.

Contrary to my free sharing of information about myself, this one who left comment after comment going from accusing me of white passing privilege to actually being white and cosplaying my Arab identity, this is not even a fully formed person for the information they share. They have a nickname, they have a random picture. There is nothing to know and therefore to attack, but that also should suggest that, despite saying demonstrably false things as if they were facts, they also hold no authority despite the language they try to use.

It’s the presumed legitimacy and weaponization of language with the use of scientific sounding words (biology, phenotypical) all to repeat enough times and hoping that it sticks in the mind of whoever reads those comments that not only this person is white passing, they are actually white and here fooling you, lying to you. And if I can convince you she lied about her identity, the step to extend that lie to anything they have said about cultural appropriation is automatic, so why should you care about respecting non-white practices?

Follow the money, or in this case, follow the smell. If trying to delegitimise a person of colour, accusing them of whiteness while none of the treatment they get is the treatment a white person receives, if at the end the only loss that delegitimization would achieve is to leave practices of people of colour less defended and more prone to abuse and thief at the hands of white people’s entitlement, then maybe let’s reflect on what sawing such doubt about the very person I am intends to achieve.

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if you read this far, you’re more dedicated than my brain which spent 12 hours compiling this. Do the thing youtubers ask people to do, leave a plant or a fist or whatever emoji as a comment cause truly, thank you for the devotion.