By Josh Gelernter
Friday, February 05, 2016
Among the many silly ideas of young leftists who want to
appear good without the hassle of doing good, “cultural appropriation” stands
alone. Since it’s spreading among American undergrads at a bubonic pace, it
deserves a closer look.
According to Fordham law professor Susan Scafidi,
cultural appropriation is “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge,
cultural expressions or artifacts from someone else’s culture without
permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance,
dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious
symbols, etc.”
On National Review Online,
Katherine Timpf has chronicled a smattering of recent appropriation crises:
Westerners eating sushi, studying yoga, wearing toe rings. Professor Scafidi
explains that appropriation is worst when “the object of appropriation is
particularly sensitive” and religious in nature. Like yoga, which began as
religious meditation, or toe rings, which — according to the online magazine Everyday Feminism — began as matrimonial
accoutrements in the Orient.
Something else that has been appropriated from its
religious origins: diatonic music — that is, virtually all modern music. The
major and minor scales began as “church modes,” developed in the early churches
of Europe. Church modes evolved from the Temple music of Jerusalem — along with
harmony, whose first historical appearance appears to have been the antiphonal
hymns sung by the two choirs of Levites who stood and sang opposite each other in
the Jewish Temple.
Young non-Christian, non-Jewish leftists must renounce
music.
Something else that dates back to the Jerusalem Temple:
sandwiches. History’s first recorded sandwich was invented by the Jewish sage
Hillel, who proposed celebrating Passover by eating the commemorative sacrifice
of lamb sandwiched between two soft pieces of matzoh — which reminded Jews of
the exodus — along with bitter herbs, to remind them of slavery.
Jews demand that non-Jews renounce sandwiches. Olive oil,
too; it has deep liturgical significance in Judaism, and history’s oldest
olive-oil samples and presses have been discovered in Israeli archaeological
digs.
Back on the Christian side: Perspective was discovered by
the liturgical artists of Florence, where its development covers the walls of
some of Italy’s greatest churches. Also invented in Italy’s churches and
monasteries: the bulk of the architectural and engineering breakthroughs of the
Renaissance. Not only did most great men of the Renaissance study in Christian
academies, many — like Alberti, and the Fras Angelico and Filippo Lippi — were
ordained. Europe’s monasteries were also responsible for the German friar who
discovered genetics (Gregor Mendel) and the Belgian priest who conceived the
Big Bang (Georges Lemaître).
Of course, it was a Christian — Newton — who discovered
Newtonian physics, and a Jew — Einstein — who discovered relativistic physics.
Jews and Christians invented the majority of modern medicine — antibiotics and
vaccines — and the majority of advanced mathematics. The automobile was
invented by the Jew Siegfried Marcus, and the airplane by the Christian Wright
brothers — who were the sons of an Evangelical bishop.
Christians and Jews demand that young leftists renounce
modern art, science, and transportation.
And the ancient Greeks want drama back, and democracy. A
few young Peronistas think Japan wants sushi back. Perhaps Italy wants pasta
and pizza back, Germany, hamburgers and frankfurters, and Denmark, danishes. Et
cetera, et cetera.
Every normal person understands that every one of us
stands on the shoulders of giants. Newton, Einstein, Aristotle, the inventors
of the danish, and so on. And, though the West gave the East computers and
plastic, and the East gave the West gunpowder and silk, undergraduates have
given us nothing. But that’s not their fault — they’re young and innocent. They
know nothing. You can’t blame an undergraduate for panicking about cultural
appropriation any more than you can blame a puppy for chewing up your baseball
mitt. That’s why these kids are in school — to learn things.
The spineless, weaselly deans and presidents of America’s
universities should try to remember that.
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