In the latest proof that progressives have gone bat-guano crazy, American author Lionel Shriver was met with hostility as she took on opponents of cultural appropriation.
On September 8 at the Brisbane, Australia Writers Festival, Shriver faced criticism for her keynote address condemning critics of cultural appropriation. The New York Times claimed her speech “belittled the movement against cultural appropriation.”
During the speech, Shriver warned about the movement and attempts to prevent authors from creating characters of other ethnicities for artistic purposes. Not surprisingly, she faced much backlash.
Her speech was censored on the festival website, because of course, no disagreeing with mainstream leftism allowed. In addition to making a statement withdrawing the festival from Shriver’s comments, the festival’s director, Julie Beveridge, organized a right of reply gathering in order to provide “a platform for meaningful exchange and debate.” Now, if Shriver had stood up and spoken out against cultural appropriation, the same right of reply session would have followed, right?
Yassmin Abdel-Magied, an Australian writer with a Sudanese and Egyptian background, walked out of the speech due to its “celebration of the unfettered exploitation of the experiences of others, under the guise of fiction.” She described the speech as “a poisoned package wrapped up in arrogance and delivered with condescension,” and then went on to say, “The reality is that those from marginalized groups, even today, do not get the luxury of defining their own place in a norm that is profoundly white, straight, and patriarchal … ” Instead of reveling in the influence other groups have had on American and other cultures, criticizers of cultural appropriation move to segregate each group into its own closed off box.
One attendant of the festival approached Shriver after the speech and shouted,” How dare you come to my country and offend our minorities?” Urging others to embrace different cultures is apparently an offense to the Australian minorities that Shriver did not actually mention in her speech.
So diversity = good, but cultural appropriation = grave sin? It’s difficult to keep track of what liberals want.
Full story on cnsnews: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/lauretta-brown/author-lionel-shriver-defends-cultural-appropriation-any-story-you-can
