Last week, a friend tagged me to tell me about a post on Jezebel about cultural appropriation, that happened to feature an old project of mine: the cultural appropriation “Bingo card.”
“Bingo cards” have become a popular way to track and raise awareness about the common phrases and arguments that come up over and over again when certain social justice topics are “discussed” (OK trolled) on the Internet – sexist jokes, feminism, fat people, racism, you get the picture. There’s even a “discussion of Internet Bingo bingo card.”
At some point a few years back, I was really sick of hearing the same old arguments and de-rails come up every time the subject of cultural appropriation was broached on a particular plus-sized fashion community, so I knocked the above out one evening when I probably should have been studying for the California licensure exam or grading papers or something.
Some years later, I found that my scrapbook hosting company had somehow lost the source file for the image – you could still see the thumbnail but the original had vanished. So I was very pleased to learn this week that the Native Appropriations blog, which is awesome in and of itself, had put up an article about it a while back, and still had a good copy of the full-sized image. Which I guess has made the rounds a few places, including into some college courses even.
Anyway, I’m really pleased that it still has a little online life independent of me, and wanted to give props to Native Appropriations for helping to keep it from vanishing into the ether, and to Jezebel (even if they can be oh-so-problematic at times) for giving it a little life this fall.
Dear Dr Addison
I just came across this post in which you are identified as author of the Cultural appropriation bingo card. I would love to able to use this image in a Cultural Property reader I am currently putting together and wanted to ask your permission to reproduce it there. This is an educational text and unfortunately we have no budget for illustrations so we are limited to the number of pictures we can use but I would love to use the card to highlight the popular discourses surrounding cultural appropriation?
Please let me know if you would like any further details,
Yours Sincerely
Dr. Haidy Geismar, Department of Anthropology, University College London.