Driving From the Left

By Robin Siskel

You're all familiar with the left's recent push regarding how it's evil and wrong to "appropriate" someone else's culture, right?

Things such as:

• Only Mexicans should be allowed to have Mexican food restaurants and food trucks, because for a Caucasian to do so would be "stealing" the intellectual property/culture of another race/ethnicity.
• It’s wrong for anyone other than blacks to wear dreadlocks (idiotic on the face of it as blacks "culturally appropriated" dreadlocks from other races, they didn't originate with blacks.
• It’s evil for anyone other than Hispanics to wear a sombrero, etc., etc., etc...

But isn't it amazing that using their own "logic" and "reasoning," it must be evil cultural appropriation for anyone to speak ANY language that isn't native to one's own race/ethnicity, right?

• I mean, for someone who's Chinese to speak English –cultural appropriation?
• A Frenchman to speak Japanese? Cultural appropriation!
• A German to speak Swahili (one of the most common languages in Africa)? Cultural appropriation!

Of course, I bet if we brought this to the attention of the very people screaming "cultural appropriation" the loudest, they'd immediately start turning themselves inside out trying to figure out some way to proclaim that while wearing a sombrero is evil cultural appropriation, using the very language that's most basic to some other ethnicity somehow isn't.

After all, when you use their own reasoning, suddenly it's impossible for people to even talk to each other. And you know, never mind that it's also "cultural appropriation" for minorities to use the various now ubiquitous inventions and discoveries made by Caucasians which make all our lives so much longer and more comfortable - you know, things such as refrigeration, air conditioning, electrical power, automobiles, planes, etc., etc., etc.

Heck, for that matter, how do we ever untangle just who, if anyone, is allowed to use things such as writing, the wheel, boats, etc? All things which we don't even know where they were actually first developed, but regardless, the cultures which first did develop them are long, long gone.

But hey, cultural appropriation! Bad! Evil! Must call it out wherever found and eradicate all attempts at any sort of cultural appropriation! (sarcasm)

Far too many Democrats/"liberals"/progressives don't seem to have any problem at all with strongly holding to grossly contradictory claims and double standards. And they've gotten to be, unfortunately, all too expert at slinging hate, driving wedges, and setting groups against each other with their identity politics and victim mentality.

That's all the left does anymore - try to drive people, but only to exactly to where the left wants.