Funferal

Meditations on cultural appropriation

I like people. I like being with people, talking with them, walking amongst them. I like seeing large crowds enjoying themselves. I like the anarchic nature of people having fun, of unofficial, spontaneous partying.
And yet today, one of the main party days on campus disturbs and upsets me. I hate today! I hate it! I hate it!
Some context for those not at UIUC. Up until a few years ago St. Patrick’s Day always fell during Spring Break here. Not wanting to lose the extra revenue offered by the day the bars began celebrating Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day on the Friday two weeks earlier. You heard me right. Now – and here’s the fun part – when Spring Break was moved to sync with the other University of Illinois campuses St. Patrick’s Day stopped falling during Spring Break – this year it’s on the previous Thursday. But of course, it would be foolish and killing a tradition – we hate doing that here – for the bars to stop running Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day, so today is the day.
Crazy as all this may be that’s not the offensive part – after all, in Ireland we have a May Day holiday on the first Monday in May, rather than on the 1st. In Ireland St. Patrick’s Day is indeed the busiest day of the year for pubs and nightclubs. It’s a public holiday, there are parades, everyone gathers in town and heads to a bar and the partying continues. While drinking is a major part of it – and there are increasing reports of drunkenness in recent years – there is a certain sense in which it is situated within a social and celebratory context. Or at least even if drinking does become the main element of some people’s celebration they don’t claim that drinking is the means by which they celebrate the essential nature of someone (else)’s culture.
Here in Urbana there are hordes of people welling around, heading from bar to bar, or bar to Frat house, or Frat house to residence hall, or whatever. Usually I’d love the buzz. As a friend commented when I described the situation to him “so it’s like Rag Week” – Rag Week being a week of partying (and, officially, charity fundraising) held on Irish (and I think English) campuses each year. It’s great fun, and as here today people miss classes and sit in drunk on philosophy lectures and so on. But problematic as some people may deem the practice it’s not offensive.
I hesitate to make the comparison, but the situation is in certain respects analogous to the ‘Chief’ situation at UIUC. Our sports mascot is “Chief Illiniwek” and recently there have been claims that the ‘Chief’ is actually a symbol of diversity, of a celebration and honouring of Native American Culture. Almost amusingly some supporters of the Chief have claimed that Native Americans protesting against the Chief don’t know their own culture sufficiently well, and should take lessons from the (White) students who have compressed Native American culture to a half-time show during sports games. Of course with the Chief you’ve the added complication of genocide.
I understand that some UIUC students do feel a genuine linkage with Ireland. But come on people. We’re talking about the country that has more Nobel Laureates for literature per head of population than any other country (except possibly some in Scandinavia). Our economic growth was three times the European average for much of the 1990s. We have a language that survived hundreds of years of official attempts to get rid of it, we have a musical culture that has influenced widely and Riverdance, whatever else you say about it, was a global success. Irish inventions range from Milk of Magnesia to the hypodermic syringe, from the steam turbine to the ejector seat and from the modern tractor to the first guided missile.
And drinking a bottle of vodka at 8am is meant to capture this? Anyhow, if you want to drink at 6 or 8am you really shouldn’t need a ‘theme’ to justify it. I’m remembering DrinkAThon ’94 run by some friends when I was an undergrad myself – when you plan to host a party for three days solid that’s theme enough.