Skip to main content

"Amen and a woman" is cultural appropriation

The far-leftist social justice ideology, in its never-ending quest to attack western society and white people, at some point came up with the concept of "cultural appropriation" and, like always, even though it might have had a modicum of reason behind it at first, they took it to an absolute and ridiculous extreme, going so far as claiming that just wearing a dress from another culture, or preparing a meal from another culture, is "cultural appropriation".

However, if we disregard these ridiculous extremes and go to the roots of the concept, an argument could be made at the very least about respecting other cultures and elements in them that have a symbolic meaning to the people of those cultures.

The archetypal example is the Native American war bonnet, ie. the feathered headgear worn by the male leaders of certain tribes. To these people it's not just a decoration, a fashion accessory that's worn merely to look cool. This headgear historically had a strong symbolic meaning and it was treated with respect. Not only was it the symbol of a greatly accomplished and respected leader, but moreover in many tribes it had great spiritual importance.

Treating such a war bonnet as a cheap decorative costume to be casually used with complete disregard to its actual meaning, and then thrown away like a cheap piece of cloth, is disrespectful to the culture from which it originates, and the people of that culture.

Likewise a good argument can be made that the religious symbols of different cultures and religions should be treated with a modicum of respect. If you were to go to, for example, a Buddhist temple and defile one of its sacred objects, like a Buddha statue, this would be a great insult and show of disrespect to the religion, the people who practice that religion, and the culture surrounding that religion.

This may not be seen as "cultural appropriation" in the sense that you took this part of another culture and claimed it as your own, but it could arguably be seen as "appropriation" in the sense that you decided all by yourself what the symbolic value of an object is, ie. none, with complete disregard to what the culture that that symbol belongs to thinks of it, and decided on your own that you are entitled to devalue and deface it, with zero respect to the people and culture who came up with it and gave it a symbolic meaning and value. You, essentially, "appropriated" the cultural meaning, value and importance of the symbol and decided to make a mockery of it.

It's one thing to treat such an object, even purchase or build one, with a level of respect that the people who value it would appreciate. A rather different thing is to disrespect the symbol, with complete disregard to how much that insults the people who value it highly because it's part of their history and culture.

So now we come to the infamous recent case of a Missouri congressman ending the opening prayer of a meeting with the words "amen and a woman" (or perhaps "amen and awomen"). It was astonishingly cringeworthy, and disrespectful.

"Amen" is a Hebrew word that's used in Jewish religion and culture, and likewise in Christianity, which means roughly "it is so" (as in "this is the truth", or "so shall it be"). It's a very integral and ubiquitous part of Jewish tradition, religion and culture, and it has a great symbolic meaning. It shouldn't be even stated, but rather obviously the word has absolutely nothing to do with the English word "men".

This is, arguably, a genuine case of cultural appropriation, in the sense I described above: This congressman took an important significant symbolic word from Judaism and made a complete mockery of it by deliberately distorting its meaning and significance, and sullying it with an identity politics message. He used the word as a pun, completely disrespecting both its origin and meaning, as well as the religion were it comes from.

And, what do you know, it wasn't someone for the "far right", some racist anti-semitic redneck who did this. It was a leftist Democrat politician. Exactly the kind of person who thinks that "cultural appropriation" is wrong. What a surprise.

Comments