Lesbians and White Privilege by Andrea L. Dottolo

Author:Andrea L. Dottolo [Dottolo, Andrea L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Google: M28crgEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2014-01-15T03:55:53+00:00

From Shangri-La to Xianggelila

The participation of my Asian American partner in the Losar blunder exemplifies the importance of a system-based model for cultural appropriation. Her opinion as a politically aware and critical Asian American mattered to me, and my own confidence was buoyed by the fact that she too had donned a Tibetan costume to the Seattle event. But once it was revealed that she is not Tibetan, a palpable discomfort pervaded the space around her. Although the Tibetan people in the hall that night were likely to notice her difference from them as soon as she spoke, there are many instances in the context of the United States in which she would be considered a cultural insider just for the fact of her Asian heritage.8 The facet of Orientalist thinking that asserts Asia as an unchanging monolith and reduces people with Asian heritage to one cohesive group is crucial to challenge (Said 1978:347), for it undermines the ability to understand and respond to historical tensions within Asia. To effectively interrupt the practice of cultural appropriation, it is crucial to look both at and beyond legacies of white supremacy to other racial and ethnic hierarchies that reflect and support it.

Within the current political context of the People’s Republic of China, for example, appropriation of Tibetan culture by the Han Chinese ethnic and racial majority is an integral part of Han Chinese hegemony (Harrell 1995). In fact, in order to draw tourists, one city in the Kham Tibetan region has officially changed its name to Xianggelila, in a direct reference to the exotic landscape of James Hilton’s imagination. Although this mountainous town does draw a number of curious international travelers, including a large contingent of white people, the overwhelming majority of tourists who visit the city are Han Chinese (Llamas and Belk 2011).

In the months after the Seattle Losar celebration, my partner and I discussed our shared unease about our costume choices, and analyzed what had happened. Like me, she had relied on the evidence of her experience and relationships with Tibetans to inform her decision. Her silk shirt that evening was a gift from her own stay in Tibet. During her time there, Tibetan friends strove to mark her as different from the Han Chinese with whom they experienced so much tension, and de-emphasized her Chinese heritage in favor of her Vietnamese roots, or the American (read: white) part of her cultural upbringing. Although she was rarely asked by Tibetan friends to question her relationship to Han Chinese hegemony, evidence of this link shaped her daily experiences.

I witnessed this effect during a joint trip back to Tibet. During our journey, we spent a week with Tibetan friends in Xianggelila, where we were both pushed to consider our complex relationships to white supremacy and Orientalist fantasy. Our critical approach to the place did not alter the fact that the streets, parks, and restaurants we visited were designed with people like us—and not our Tibetan friends—in mind. As we watched young Tibetan

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