Authenticity, Germanness, cultural DNA and appropriation, and Trumpism and German-Americans

As usual in a blog post like this, I'll tie all the threads in the header together.

Let's get started on that.

Muenster, Texas, has a Germanfest spring “Germania” heritage festival, and has had it for 45 years now, consecutively, minus a COVID interruption a year ago.

I recently saw a person who currently lives in the Metroplex but was born in Germany. He had several comments about the authenticity, or lack thereof in his mind, of the Germanness on display at Germanfest.

That started with the pronunciation of the city, noting that auf Deutsche, to use English values for vowels, it should sound like MOON-ster and not MUN-ster. And, on that one, he’s right, or more right than wrong. I pronounced it that way myself the first few weeks I was here, and quickly realized I was basically a party of one. (It actually should be between MOON-stir and MIN-stir with the first syllable kind of swallowed.

 I have seen places that still do an even deeper dive into German heritage. Having lived in Michigan, the town of Frankenmuth comes immediately to mind. Fredericksburg here in Texas, of course.  That said, we’re not in Michigan or the Hill Country, Toto, and we’re also not in Nordrhein-Westfalen. 

He is right about the number of things Germans have contributed to the world as a whole and to American culture in particular. A couple are even more Texas-specific. He said four Germans died at the Alamo and that the chicken-fried steak is a riff on German schnitzel. I’ll take his word on the Alamo, and I can buy the schnitzel idea, as Texas Germans may have adapted Wiener schnitzel, but this isn’t guaranteed. 

Some other things he aren’t necessarily so authentic themselves, though, or, to rephrase, they’re authentic to some ethnicity, but not necessarily that of Germans. 

Budweiser beer? The original is from the town of Budweis, as its called in German. Nice German name. But, it’s in today’s Czech Republic and Czechs call it České Budějovice. In fact, American Budweiser, though it’s continued to fight trademark battles in the European Union, does not own the “Budweiser” name over there. The Czech town actually had two breweries originally; the larger, which had today’s European Budweiser, was Czech-owned in an area of mixed linguistics. Linguistic divisions do not necessary reflect “ethnic” or “subethnic” divisions. See Switzerland, the North Tyrol and many other places. 

Some of the food items at Germanfest have become authentic but weren’t at one time, because they didn’t even exist, at least not in Germany. Potatoes? Almost as iconic in German culture, with German potato salad and other things, as in Irish lore. (My dad says that my great-grandpa Schneider used to end his saying grace prayer at the start of dinner with an immediate transition to “Kartoffeln bitte.”) More than 500 years ago? Not authentic, of course, because they only existed in the “New World.” 

Ditto on sauerkraut.

Other things? 

To current German residents, quite authentic, though perhaps not to our correspondent. Currywurst comes immediately to mind. It has a specific invention date of 1949, and was inspired by British occupation soldiers in Germany. Since then, under the influence of Turkish immigration, the sausage for currywurst at many locations its halal-pure, the Muslim equivalent of kosher. 

But, doorknob forbid a German-American admit cultural appropriation. In fact, among European white ethnic and subethnic groups, German-Americans voted for Trump more than any other. Maybe, as with Serbians over Kosovo, there is something such as cultural DNA. It got knocked out of Germans in Germany after 1945, but, if anything, flowered yet more strongly here. On the other hand, per our correspondent, maybe it didn't get knocked out of all Germans, either.

As for promoting heritage tourism? Well, neither the city of Muenster nor our correspondent is allowed to have their cake and eat it on my pages. 

Compared to Frankenmuth or Fredericksburg, Muenster is second-class on such heritage tourism, even as a new move-in to the town wants to build a whole German market and biergarten centering condos and shit around it. (That said, for now at least, said idea seems to have bit the dust.) In other words, to use some German words, said person wants to peddle some ersatz schmaltz with a capitalist bullshit smile painted on it. 

But, since cultural appropriation DOES happen (but not in an SJW tsk-tsk way), said Metroplex correspondent doesn’t get to tut-tut everything in Muenster, either. And, as for tut-tutting “German pizza” (I didn’t try it, or even look for what was on it), our correspondent missed out on something from his heimat: Alsatian flammekueche. And, to finish completing the circle? Some varieties of this product have Munster cheese in addition to fromage blanc or crème fraîche for the sauce. 

Well, the circle isn’t quite yet complete. Munster cheese, and yes, that’s the correct spelling, is named after the town of Munster, in Alsace. (Alsace may be part of France today, but for 1871-1918, and before that was part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1648. It has nothing to do with the German town that was the source of Muenster’s founders.

In short, an authenticity that is frozen in amber is no authenticity. I suspect that for many German-Americans, that's part of being frozen in amber in general.

To move to another culture, is somebody going to call flour tortillas inauthentic? Well, pre-Columbus, they are, just like potatoes for German Sunday lunches.

Back to the complainer one last time.

He referenced other inventions or other Germanic contributions to America and the world.

One was the car. But, Wiki says the first steam-powered "horseless carriage" was invented by one of those damned Frenchmen, Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, back in 1769.

The second, albeit not by name, was Wernher von Braun. How he got to the US, and of course, the degree of his ties with the Nazis, use of slave labor, etc., were overlooked by our correspondent.

Essentially, parts of the complaint looked like they could have been written by a Stalinist claiming the USSR, or Mother Russia, had invented the radio, TV, etc., Or else by a BJP/RSS disciple of Narendra Modi today.

Thoughts on cultural appropriation for graduation, beyond

The Utah student rocking the qipao or cheongsam dress for a prom a couple of years ago still sticks in my mind, and other things have added to it since then, namely claims that certain foodstuffs are also cultural appropriation.

The claim is usually, though not always, raised by social justice warrior types. And it's usually an ahistorical claim that:

• First, believes that cultural appropriation is evil, rather than simply borrowing; that
• Second, from this, cultural appropriation (like racism) can only be done by a colonial / conquest culture; and
• Third, within this, that it's usually done by Euro-white culture, like racism — thereby ignoring a long history of East Asian racism, Indian caste-connected racism (the Aryan conquest was 3,500 years ago, and they themselves weren't "white" by skin color anyway), and more.

Let's start with the dress.

First, the fact it has two different names should tell the SJW types they are a bit off base. (But it won't.)

Second, the fact that it was originally Manchu, not Han Chinese, should say more.

Third, the fact that it further evolved in southern China in the first half of the 20th century after the fall of the Manchus — and said further evolution happened under Western fashion influence — should say yet more.

Fourth, per all of the above, the fact that modern Chinese (other than some Chinese American SJWs) were OK with it as a prom dress, or even saluted it, should say yet more.

That said, I haven't seen European Americans of the SJW persuasion giving up ice cream et al because Marco Polo expropriated them from the Chinese. Or spaghetti because tomatoes were expropriated.

Speaking of, let's go to food.

The so-called "Columbian Exchange" went both ways. Europe got tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes and maize, above all, from the Americas, and eventually, yams from sub-Saharan Africa.

BUT! The Americas got back meat livestock, wheat, dairy livestock and other things. And yams from Africa. And both Europe and the Americas got soybeans, sesame and more from East Asia.

This is cultural appropriation, SJW-ers.

So, are you going to give up that chimichanga or burrito because of the beef, or chicken, and the flour tortilla? Or if you're vegetarian, is tofu now verboten?

Do you admire Navajo rugs? Well, again, you're in trouble. While South American Indians had alpaca wool, and the Hohokam of the Gila River did have the forerunner of today's Pima cotton, the Navajos had nothing for weaving until Spanish sheep.

Or if you're Indian-American, are you going to give up any of your India-Indian foods with appropriated chiles in them? Ditto if you were a Chinese-American complaining about the qipao — have you given up your Szechuan food because of American Indian chiles?

What is mislabeled "cultural appropriation" is actually "cultural interaction."

As for the parallels with racism? As I said on a Patheos page of a secular humanist who may be a bit SJW — not all racism is "institutional," and non-institutional racism can be and has been practiced by member of any race against members of any other race. She admitted tribalism exists, but still seemed to want to hang on to the idea of almost all racism being institutional in nature. And, even if we allow for China, or Japan, being colonizers themselves, she was focused on white racism in Latin America.

Anybody who knows a lot about East Asia knows there's a shitload of racism there that originated almost entirely independently of white folks, too. (Well, other than, especially with China, some of it being directed AGAINST white folks.)

The SJWs will then say, "But Columbus passed on European diseases." That he did. Though not as a genocide. (However, wingnuts, Sir Jeffrey Amherst DID try germ warfare against Indians in 1763.) And the New World gave syphilis back.

David Frum offers his own thoughts.

Will Saletan fires both barrels at the #GMO antis

Little of this is new to me, and Grist has had a kinder (and gentler) more in-depth look at some aspects of GMO fear, and more in-depth debunking.

Saletan focuses on a few big cases in a long-form takedown. Beyond plain fear, one thing he adds, and adds in much depth, to what Grist writes, is the flip-flopping of the organized wing of the anti-GMO movement. The worst example of this that he shows is anti-GMOers touting the use of Bt sprays while opposing Bt GMO crops. On top of this, the organized antis then lie about how heavily Bt sprays are applied.

Why?

Well, Saletan doesn't get into this, but the commercial organics subset of the organized wing of anti-GMOers itself makes healthy profits and profit margins.

In other words follow the money — and not just, and not necessarily, Monsanto's money. When organized anti-GMOers oppose golden rice even after it's modified, AND after being told that the poorest farmers will get it to free, money has to be part of the equation.

So is ... cultural imperialism. As with Greenpeace at the Nazca lines, a certain type of white Westerners thinks it knows what's best for others. Worse yet is when they and their defenders refuse to admit they're committing cultural imperialism.

Finally, although I support the Green Party with my voting as an alternative to the Democrats, things like this are why I'm not a member of the party, and will never be until it changes its stance on some issues.