{"id":5506,"date":"2015-12-01T16:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T21:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/?p=5506"},"modified":"2015-12-01T16:00:30","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T21:00:30","slug":"yogagate-the-downward-dogwhistle-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/yogagate-the-downward-dogwhistle-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Yogagate: The Downward Dogwhistle Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Last updated: December 6th.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Liquid\u00a0Facts, Solid Derision<\/h3>\n

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On Friday, November 20th, the Ottawa Sun broke a\u00a0story<\/a>\u00a0that went viral. The global backlash\u00a0has\u00a0distorted and minimized an issue that South Asian thought leaders in yoga culture have been grappling with for years.<\/p>\n

“Student leaders have pulled the mat out from 60 University of Ottawa students,” the story\u00a0began, “ending a free on-campus yoga class over fears the teachings could be seen as a form of ‘cultural appropriation.'”<\/p>\n

The class was\u00a0administered by the student-run Centre for Students with Disabilities<\/a> (hereafter “Centre”), under the umbrella\u00a0of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa<\/a> (hereafter “Federation”).<\/p>\n

“Jennifer Scharf,” the piece continued, “who has been offering free weekly yoga instruction to students since 2008, says she was shocked when told in September the program would be suspended, and saddened when she learned of the reasoning.”<\/p>\n

The Sun reported\u00a0that\u00a0Scharf was told via email that:<\/p>\n

“Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced,” and which cultures those practices “are being taken from.”\u00a0The centre official argues since many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy … we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In a phone interview with me, Sun reporter Aeden Helmer\u00a0clarified that these quotes came from a single\u00a0participant\u00a0in a 17-page email correspondence between the Centre, the Federation, and Scharf that ran from September through November.<\/p>\n

The Sun\u00a0article concluded with\u00a0the comments of Federation\u00a0official Julie Seguin, which argue against\u00a0the validity of the cultural appropriation reasoning. Helmer\u00a0confirmed via email that Seguin’s quotes were drawn from that same correspondence, which suggests\u00a0that the Centre and the Federation were not in agreement on the issue as it was being discussed.<\/p>\n

Scharf confirmed<\/a> to\u00a0Ottawa Magazine that concern over\u00a0cultural appropriation came from a single Centre\u00a0official, whom she will not name. In the Sun, Scharf is quoted as calling that\u00a0official out as a “social justice warrior” with “fainting heart ideologies”.<\/p>\n

“Social justice warrior” is such a popular pejorative it has its own acronym: SJW<\/a>. In\u00a0Ottawa Magazine, Scharf\u00a0referred to Centre officials as “over-entitled so-called ‘crybullies’.”<\/p>\n

The Sun’s\u00a0“cultural appropriation” scare quotes and\u00a0Scharf’s epithets quickly dogwhistled an internet puppy pile.\u00a0Ottawa Citizen<\/a>, CBC<\/a>, National Post<\/a>, Washington Post<\/a>, Huffington Post<\/a>, Jezebel<\/a>, Macleans<\/a>, Time<\/a>,\u00a0Yahoo<\/a>. Fox Business News had a good chuckle<\/a>.\u00a0The Independent<\/a>\u00a0and the Daily Mail<\/a>\u00a0tittered in\u00a0the U.K.\u00a0There were countless Twitter trails, including one<\/a> from David Frum, who used to write speeches for G.W. Bush.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time the story bounced into the Sydney Morning\u00a0Herald<\/a>, key\u00a0terms\u00a0had bloated: the class had gone from “scrapped” to\u00a0“banned”. That same day, the U.K.’s Spectator completed the flip<\/a>, arguing that expressing concern over cultural appropriation is itself “borderline racist”, and a demand for “cultural segregation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he verdict from trial-by-comment-thread was unanimous: the Centre and Federation\u00a0administrators must be whining fools. Any\u00a0discussion of cultural appropriation in relation to modern\u00a0yoga practice — or anything else — is absurd, laughable, and reverse-racist against white people. Trolls\u00a0squabbled over whether the University administration was Marxist or\u00a0fascist.\u00a0“The inmates are running the asylum,” several\u00a0squawked.<\/p>\n

But an easily-missed\u00a0comment from an unnamed Centre\u00a0administrator trying to push back against an avalanche of right-wing Facebook vitriol suggested that the initial story\u00a0might have missed a key detail.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

I interviewed Scharf herself to follow up. In our forty-minute phone call, she\u00a0repeated her statement<\/a> to Ottawa Magazine\u00a0that in previous years “there were as few as 7-8 people [in attendance] and as many as 60.” <\/span><\/p>\n

But via email, she also added this:\u00a0<\/span>attendance for the class since September had been nil. She blamed the Centre’s\u00a0failure to advertise for the fact that “nobody showed up.”<\/p>\n

The original wording in the Sun article led some commenters\u00a0to believe\u00a0that Scharf had always volunteered her time. Scharf\u00a0furthered this impression in a radio interview<\/a>, saying: “All my classes are free, because to me it’s a passion, and I don’t think money needs to enter into it to be valuable.” But via email,\u00a0<\/span>Scharf wrote\u00a0that in some years she was paid “a small stipend for tax purposes.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Via email, Scharf also suggested that the class\u00a0hadn’t been suspended over\u00a0cultural appropriation concerns at all.\u00a0I asked her to comment on sources that told me\u00a0there’d been complaints about her teaching style and content.\u00a0She denied any such complaints, but then wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

I am very upset that someone’s personal issues with me have been the true\u00a0cause of this, as I suspected all along. This is proof that cancelling the class is nothing more than a PERSONAL ATTACK ON ME.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

So, with just a little digging, it now looks like additional context for\u00a0the suspension may have included low attendance\u00a0and a possible personnel issue involving a position that was sometimes paid. But out of a long\u00a0communication process, the remarks of one official in a student-run service organization have been\u00a0spotlighted\u00a0and magnified.<\/p>\n

By phone, Helmer told me he contacted\u00a0the Centre and the Federation\u00a0for comment on Nov. 19th after hearing of the class cancellation from a source. He spoke with the Federation’s acting president\u00a0Rom\u00e9o Ahimakin. At that point, Ahimakin didn’t bring up any\u00a0concern over “cultural appropriation”.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t seem to<\/span> have a very clear understanding of what the issue was,” Helmer said. They made plans for a followup interview the next day.<\/span><\/p>\n

On\u00a0the\u00a0morning of the 20th, Helmer\u00a0spoke to Scharf, who sent him the email exchange. After reading the comments of the unnamed Centre official, Helmer emailed Ahimakin, asking directly whether the class was indeed cancelled due to concerns over cultural appropriation.<\/p>\n

Ahimakin replied with an\u00a0official Federation statement, which the Sun\u00a0went on to publish, well below the fold.<\/p>\n

Ahimakin said that the intention of the suspension and review was to ensure that the class be made “better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces. … We are trying to have those sessions done in a way in which students are aware of where the spiritual and cultural aspects come from, so that these sessions are done in a respectful manner.”<\/p>\n

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After the controversy erupted, the Federation\u00a0attempted further clarification by releasing an update statement<\/a>\u00a0on November 25th. They asserted\u00a0that the email remarks quoted by the Sun\u00a0were outdated, and\u00a0did\u00a0not represent the official position of either the Centre\u00a0or the Federation. They\u00a0confirmed the low attendance issue, added some detail, and requested relief from harassment:<\/p>\n

The consultation process [on program assessment] has been going on since the beginning of summer 2015 and because of that, the CSD has had a lot a feedback on how to improve the program to better accommodate their members. The statements quoted by the Ottawa Sun were a small-misrepresented message out of a larger conversation around the program. For example, the following concerns needed to be addressed.<\/em><\/p>\n

First, the attendance of the Yoga classes was declining, this program has been running for the past 8 years without any re-evaluation and we wanted to ensure that students’ money and resources were\u00a0being used in a responsible and efficient way to better promote the centre. There were some real concerns about how yoga was not meeting the mandate of the centre, and serving the needs of students with disabilities namely, students with physical disabilities and mobility issues. As the primary goal in the mandate of the CSD is to ensure that activities put on for the service users are accessible, it is our responsibility to address the issues and act upon them.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is important to stress that the Student Federation at the University of Ottawa is very disheartened by the rhetoric being used around our due process to evaluate our service centres as we all take our jobs very seriously and work tirelessly to represent and support our students.<\/em><\/p>\n

We do not condone and are very disappointed by the harassment and violence some of our staff experienced, due to the misrepresentation of our process. Acknowledging that many students are not given access to safe spaces in and around their campuses, the CSD in no way thought that suspending this program for the semester with the intention of improving it for a January return would cause this much uproar. Let us please revaluate this conversation and have a more conducive dialogue around how to make our campuses more accessible to those who do not feel safe.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s unclear why the Centre and Federation\u00a0didn’t originally cite low attendance to to the Sun, although Scharf was aware of the attendance problem. This single\u00a0PR mistake is\u00a0at the root of the firestorm.<\/p>\n

Via email, Helmer tells me that the Sun was unlikely to publish “a story about an on-campus yoga class being cancelled due to poor attendance.” It’s ironic that this is effectively what happened. Except that the poor attendance bit\u00a0was missed in the original story. <\/span><\/p>\n

But then, it was ignored.<\/span><\/p>\n

On November 26th, the Sun\u00a0published a sequel<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0original story in\u00a0response to\u00a0the Federation’s official statement. The angle\u00a0of the\u00a0sequel\u00a0implies\u00a0that the Federation backtracked from the cultural appropriation argument in the face of international ridicule by resorting\u00a0to a doubtful\u00a0claim about class attendance.<\/p>\n

The sequel\u00a0repeats\u00a0that the class was “attended by as many as 60 students, according to the instructor, both with and without disabilities. The CSD has disputed that number in a separate posting on its Facebook page.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0sequel\u00a0fails to reflect that I wrote to Helmer\u00a0the day before — and told him again by phone ninety minutes before the sequel was\u00a0published — that I had Scharf on record confirming that since September, attendance for the suspended class was zero.<\/p>\n

The attendance number wasn’t “disputed” by the Centre. They wrote “no one attended”. So did Scharf, and you’d think she would know.\u00a0Helmer\u00a0was aware of both sources, but\u00a0expressed no concern over the problem\u00a0that the lede of his original article was now possibly\u00a0inaccurate.\u00a0Several hours after the Sun published his sequel, Helmer wrote via email<\/span>\u00a0that “the # of students in the class is\u00a0irrelevant to the story I wrote.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Helmer speculated via email that the Federation’s update statement is “poorly-doctored spin”.<\/p>\n

But is\u00a0it really “spin” when someone else has already decided the terms of the story?<\/p>\n

My own calls and emails seeking clarification from\u00a0the Centre\u00a0and Federation\u00a0have gone unanswered. I stopped after several attempts, because a source told me that they’re overwhelmed with media attention.<\/p>\n

I also figured\u00a0they must be\u00a0too\u00a0busy doing things like actually helping people with disabilities, running the U of O Food Bank and the Pride Centre\u00a0to have the stomach for\u00a0taking yet another call from another reporter\u00a0who might\u00a0decide who speaks for them, what publication deadlines they must serve, and what the relevant narrative\u00a0should be.<\/p>\n

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The politics of a media pile-on can be surmised\u00a0by\u00a0what it leaves out, and what it laughs at. And the effectiveness of dogwhistle language\u00a0can be deduced by how quickly the dogs come running.<\/p>\n

First: leaving out.<\/p>\n

Not a single writer who rehashed\u00a0the Sun story interviewed any actual people with disabilities who attend the Centre’s\u00a0programming to ask how they felt about the class review. Fortunately, Liz Kessler stepped into the gap with this balanced post<\/a>. Kessler was a disabled student at the University of Ottawa who used to use the Centre, and a former official at the Federation. She describes\u00a0the Centre as<\/p>\n

a safe place for me to talk about my disabilities and how it affected my studies. I used their resource\u00a0collection and sought advice from the staff there at the time…. The\u00a0Centre… is not a charity. It\u00a0is run with dedicated student\u00a0union funding, and it is intended to be a service for disabled students, by disabled students.\u00a0If students with disabilities aren\u2019t\u00a0attending the yoga classes,\u00a0it doesn\u2019t seem like a good use of the\u00a0Centre\u2019s budget to be paying for these classes. Moreover,\u00a0since the SFUO does (or did when I was involved there)\u00a0strive to work from an anti-oppressive view point, they should absolutely be engaging on issues of cultural appropriation and acting accordingly. That\u2019s what student union solidarity looks like.\u00a0If you\u2019re not a disabled student, you don\u2019t get to decide whether the CSD is using its funding appropriately.<\/em><\/p>\n

Second: laughing at.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Centre’s comprehensive understanding<\/a> of disability\u00a0presents the kind of nuanced mandate one can imagine generating many 17-page email threads as its officials continually struggle\u00a0to achieve inclusivity.<\/p>\n

It also makes the following commitment to the intersectionality of the issues it is trying to address:<\/p>\n

At the CSD, we strive to create as safe a space as possible for our staff, volunteers, and centre users. We also acknowledge that ableism is not a siloed issue, but one that affects a variety of communities and individuals. In working to dismantle ableism, we also work to challenge all forms of oppression including, but not limited to, heterosexism, cissexism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, queerphobia, HIV-phobia, sex negativity, fatphobia, femme-phobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, racism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, sexism, and linguistic discrimination.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Centre’s Safe(r) Spaces Practices statement was quoted verbatim by the National Post\u00a0to close its\u00a0warm over<\/a> on November 22nd.Within minutes, the Post\u00a0article was reposted to\u00a0the Gun Owners of Canada forum<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Ottawa Citizen republished<\/a>\u00a0the Post’s paragraphs\u00a0the following day. Both the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen are owned by Postmedia<\/a>, the behemoth of rightwing Canadian media. Postmedia also owns the Ottawa Sun.<\/p>\n

The same\u00a0day, Roger Kingkade at\u00a0<\/span>News Talk 770 in Calgary showed\u00a0that the Post’s\u00a0citation of the Centre’s mandate was not exactly serving the goal of narrative depth.\u00a0Kingkade reposted the mandate,\u00a0framing<\/a>\u00a0it with the line: “it looks like they have it in their code to crusade from time to time.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That same day, “Boomer expert, author, speaker, consultant” David Cravit reblogged the Post<\/a> with the intro: “<\/span>The money quote, for me, comes right at the end where the article lists all the \u201cforms of oppression\u201d the Centre for Students with Disabilities is fighting against….\u00a0<\/span>In a world in which terrorists are burning people in cages, crucifying children and gunning down people in nightclubs and cafes, this is what they\u2019re worrying about at U of Ottawa.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Right. Because as long as terrorists aren’t burning you alive, life is good, and it’s totally frivolous and entitled to work against social injustice.<\/p>\n

The 24th found blogger “Dr. Mabuse” calling the mandate<\/a> an “SJW litany, to be recited kneeling.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Strangely, similar\u00a0sentiments streamed in from the heart of the left-coast yoga world. It took San Francisco Yoga teacher and columnist Mark Morford just under a thousand words<\/a> to mock the Centre and Federation several\u00a0times, name-drop\u00a0his Berkeley pedigree, lecture his readership on what yoga really is, and link to his brand. He asserted\u00a0the class suspension was due in part to\u00a0“<\/span>a complete failure on the part of the university to impart sufficient critical thinking skills”. This\u00a0made\u00a0me wonder what class I could take at Berkeley that could teach me how to demonstrate\u00a0critical thinking by\u00a0inventing stuff out of thin air.<\/span><\/p>\n

Via email, Sun reporter Helmer\u00a0emphasized\u00a0his objectivity. “A lot of people are turning this into a left-right thing…\u00a0<\/span>I’m a reporter, and this is a news story, not an opinion column. Many people have discerned a political bias because of the language and tone of some key phrases, but it is not intended to have any tone. And I do not have a bias.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Bias, however, doesn’t just come\u00a0from what one explicitly thinks. It also accumulates in the shadow of\u00a0what one doesn’t know. Via email, Helmer also admitted that the debate as to whether yoga constitutes a form of\u00a0cultural appropriation\u00a0was something “I previously had no idea even existed.”<\/span><\/p>\n

For her part, Scharf’s understanding of the issue of cultural appropriation in yoga has shared the same sharp learning curve. When I asked her if she knew that cultural appropriation was intersectional<\/i> with other equality issues that the Centre and South Asian theorists in yoga discourse are addressing, she asked me to refrain from using made-up words.<\/p>\n

But when I asked her whether she knew that “social justice warrior” was a pejorative used to mock\u00a0equality discourse, she granted that\u00a0“Well, maybe I shouldn’t have used that term, if it’s hurtful towards people trying to do good work.”<\/p>\n

“I’m really an ally,” Scharf said, near the end of our phone call. “I want everybody to be happy, and self-realized.”<\/p>\n

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This much is clear. The Ottawa Sun and\u00a0every outlet\u00a0that\u00a0quoted or plagiarized it\u00a0constitute\u00a0a high-speed clickbait echo chamber\u00a0designed to find what\u00a0it’s looking for, and report on it\u00a0in the language they’ve\u00a0market-tested on its readership. This can only\u00a0distort issues and bolster dominant narratives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s an example. Rachael Pells of the Independent contacted Nigel Walker for his view on the story. Walker is a University of Ottawa graduate and works in a partnership between one of the yoga studios he teaches at and Community Life Services to provide free yoga classes to U of O students around exam times. In an interview, Walker told\u00a0me:<\/p>\n

[Pells] was asking me to comment on the idea of yoga and cultural appropriation. She was trying to get me to support her idea that it was impossible that teaching yoga could involve cultural appropriation, and how this was something that universities were pushing to bring down activities across campuses, and that this was limiting people’s free speech.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

“I tried to stake out a middle ground. I told her that cultural appropriation was something we come across as yoga teachers, and it’s our job to be aware of it. In Scharf’s case, I didn’t know what her classes are like. So my answer was “It’s possible, but I don’t know the circumstances.\u00a0<\/span>When [Pells]\u00a0realized I wasn’t directly supporting the opinion she was presenting to me, the conversation went nowhere.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Walker didn’t hear from Pells\u00a0again, and wasn’t cited in\u00a0her article.<\/a>\u00a0The Independent\u00a0article\u00a0lumped the Centre\/Federation\u00a0discussion in with a list of other supposed outrages involving university discourse\u00a0around safer spaces and trigger warnings. The piece\u00a0topped off\u00a0its list of red herrings\u00a0by suggesting that the class suspension is comparable to the actions taken<\/a> by <\/span>officials in\u00a0the central Russian town\u00a0of\u00a0Nizhnevartovsk this past June to ban yoga, as they said, “in order to prevent the\u00a0spread of\u00a0new religious cults and\u00a0movements.” <\/span><\/p>\n

The article has been shared 25K times, and adorned by dozens of racist and sexist\u00a0<\/span>comments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither Pells nor the Independent have\u00a0responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

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Cultural Appropriation Is Intersectional With Other Equality Issues<\/h3>\n

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There’s something a lot uglier than media hackjobs.<\/p>\n

Deriding\u00a0the very premise of cultural appropriation in yoga — or anything — can be white person catnip. And getting high on\u00a0scorn and outrage is great for obscuring a whole\u00a0range of thorny equality\u00a0issues that strike close to the bone.<\/p>\n

I know this dynamic, because I’ve participated in it. But not any more — at least to the best of my ability.<\/p>\n

When I first became aware, almost exactly five years ago, that some South Asian thinkers\u00a0were challenging the ways in which yoga is being globalized<\/a>, I was skeptical. I got on my high horse to declare\u00a0the\u00a0“Take Back Yoga” Campaign of the Hindu American Foundation to be historically\u00a0na\u00efve, practically inactionable, and too tied up with the powers of\u00a0saffronisation<\/a> to speak inclusively.\u00a0Any educated white person can reasonably argue that these remain good grounds for skepticism.<\/p>\n

But I slowly came to understand that really listening to\u00a0the HAF meant uncovering histories and emotions that all modern yogis should take an interest in if they say they’re\u00a0committed to fairness. Also — I learned that it takes a little more contemplation to admit to\u00a0the defensiveness that lies just beneath\u00a0that first sneer.<\/p>\n

On the way, I spent years flailing through the\u00a0weak\u00a0if\/then equivalencies argued by other white people\u00a0over the past days. <\/span>If one endorses<\/span>\u00a0the\u00a0cultural appropriation in yoga argument, it would\u00a0lead to …<\/span><\/p>\n

white people banned from playing\u00a0the blues, or…<\/span><\/p>\n

Yo Yo Ma banned from\u00a0Bach, or…<\/span><\/p>\n

non-Arabs banned from algebra, or…<\/span><\/p>\n

non-Canadians banned from\u00a0playing hockey. <\/span><\/p>\n

How clever.<\/span><\/p>\n

What these straw man arguments miss\u00a0is that\u00a0the modern\u00a0yoga space, unlike the blues bar or the ballet theatre, is explicitly advertised\u00a0as a universalist site\u00a0of equality to which everyone can repair for self-inquiry and healing. It certainly doesn’t consider itself provincial or nativist. Talking about cultural appropriation is related to\u00a0talking about how that\u00a0advertising can ring hollow in other ways.<\/p>\n

The conversation\u00a0has unfolded through the years. I’ve tried to listen more deeply. I’ve learned from\u00a0Roopa Singh<\/a>, who directs\u00a0South Asian American Perspectives on Yoga in America.\u00a0Nisha Ahuja<\/a>\u00a0gave a presentation at a social-justice-positive\u00a0Toronto studio I taught at. I read a piece by\u00a0Nikita Redkar<\/a>\u00a0on the generational tensions\u00a0at play\u00a0in the Indian diaspora. This helped me understand why white boomers are so mystified by the concern over cultural appropriation. Their own Indian teachers adopted liberal rhetoric in part to help them assimilate into Western culture. But the children of those teachers feel differently about how their natal cultures are now commercialized.<\/p>\n

I also learned from the nuance of\u00a0Prachi Patankar<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Meera Nanda<\/a>\u00a0how\u00a0the cultural appropriation argument can indeed be marshalled by\u00a0regressive and classist agendas aligned with right wing Indian politics.<\/p>\n

If you actually listen to a spectrum of voices, the conversation is complex. Increasingly, it\u00a0has shown me that the issue of cultural appropriation in yoga is inseparable\u00a0from\u00a0examinations of white middle-class privilege, structural racism in yoga and meditation spaces, cultural inequality, accessibility issues, and the creation of safer space. These are the same intersectional issues that have been conveniently ignored in the media uproar. Michelle Goldberg’s deftly-argued piece<\/a> in Slate provides the best example here. She links to\u00a0what is perhaps the key site for the confluent examination of these issues, Decolonizing Yoga<\/a>, only to dismiss it in a single sentence.<\/p>\n

One fine day,\u00a0I was granted an epiphany in cultural sensitivity by an elderly Indian man who was visiting\u00a0the yoga studio I owned in downtown Toronto. He was there for a meditation programme. At a break, he came to the front desk and asked where the bathroom was. I showed him. When he came out, he approached me with a smile and his hands folded in prayer at his heart. He told me that it was not proper\u00a0that I had hung a painting of Krishna and\u00a0the Gopis in the bathroom. I asked him why.<\/p>\n

“It’s Krishna.” His voice was very quiet. “He’s over the toilet.” He said “toilet” very slowly, and his smile suddenly looked tired. My heart sank as I thanked him.<\/p>\n

It was an obvious mistake, once I saw it. But seeing\u00a0it led me to other questions about what I was doing. How much did I really know or care about the Indian roots of what had become my profession? Previously, I’d been smug at thinking I knew\u00a0more than most. But should I be so satisfied, so confident? Learning\u00a0and humility are inseparable.<\/p>\n

Not all white people will have the benefit of being schooled by kind elderly Indian men. They will encounter younger, angrier South Asians. They will face accusations they can’t\u00a0understand, and won’t, unless they take a breath, i.e., do\u00a0some actual yoga, and realize “This isn’t about me personally. It’s about a history of cultural injustice and confusion.”<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

It’s a little\u00a0late, but South Asian voices are beginning to be heard, and allies are speaking up<\/a>. On the 22nd, the CBC reached out to two Indian residents of Ottawa for comment. On the 23rd, Helmer offered\u00a0balance by following\u00a0up his initial reports with a more complex\u00a0piece<\/a>\u00a0that interviewed Toronto-based yoga teacher and sitarist Ram Vakkalanka\u00a0about the possibility that the issue is actually an issue. “The article\u00a0was widely ignored, of course” Helmer lamented via email. <\/span><\/p>\n

On the 23rd,\u00a0<\/span>CBC’s Ottawa Morning offered a penetrating interview with\u00a0Sheena Zain<\/a>.\u00a0In a reprise<\/a> on Ontario Today, Zain said that if people don’t understand what the issue is about, it’s “because they’re not having conversations with South Asians.” Exemplifying how diverse those conversations can be, yoga teacher and environmental engineer Jaswina Dhillon argued a universalist position<\/a> in the Ottawa Citizen. On the 27th,\u00a0Krisna Saravanamuttu added to the richness with this\u00a0ambivalent piece<\/a> in Rabble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s the takeaway. White people need to actually research the cultural appropriation argument before going off on it. If they’re going to write about it, they need to read what’s between the lines. <\/span><\/p>\n

Sure, the\u00a0complaint: “you are stealing from, diluting, and degrading my culture” can indeed be deconstructed by anyone with a humanities degree. Sure, modern physical yoga is a modern Indo-European hybrid. Sure, early 20th century Indian yoga teachers were vigorous evangelists. <\/span><\/p>\n

But the complaint is complex, and proximal to many other complaints.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is proximal to: “racism still exists, you dummy” and “your Orientalism is unhelpful” and “why don’t you fix your own sociopathic Christian spirituality before playing around with\u00a0ours?”, and “you called me a disgusting name\u00a0in high school and beat me up” and “Monsanto is burning down seed warehouses in Bihar.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Really hearing these things doesn’t mean that you have to\u00a0hold tree pose with the exact proper deference towards Hinduism to keep your yoga. Obviously this goes too far. Faking an interest in a spirituality that may not resonate with you is way\u00a0worse in the long run than simply checking yourself. <\/span><\/p>\n

Checking yourself doesn’t mean continuing your\u00a0practice with a frowny-face to prove\u00a0your guilt.\u00a0It means that\u00a0<\/span>doing yoga gives you more reason to learn about the dynamics of life in India and the Indian diaspora — not less.\u00a0<\/span>It means thinking\u00a0a little more, and perhaps\u00a0a little more quietly, about how not<\/span>\u00a0to\u00a0contribute to the general\u00a0asshatery that crowns\u00a0the structural violence of\u00a0globalization. There are many places to start. <\/span><\/p>\n

I started with asking why I didn’t know that a painting of Krishna is felt\u00a0to carry the presence of the divine, and\u00a0that asking\u00a0that presence to watch\u00a0me take a dump every day might rub some people the wrong way. Then, I started asking what my\u00a0<\/span>blindspots might be when reading yoga literature in translation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then I started asking about modern yoga studio culture, and why in Toronto — one of most diverse cities in the world — I rarely saw South Asian students in my studio or any of the studios I worked at. I was studying Sanskrit texts in a small group, and I asked one of my fellow students — he was South Asian by heritage — why Toronto yoga was so white. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t go because I just feel weird in those places. I’m not sure what you’re all doing.”<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t have solutions here. I doubt I ever will, and I’m sure I\u00a0will continue to make plenty of mistakes in my own comportment. And the irony of being another white voice soapboxing on this issue isn’t lost on me. But\u00a0I will keep asking about this issue, because doing so\u00a0trains\u00a0me to look carefully at the\u00a0unconscious and harmful\u00a0assumptions that lurk in the other curves\u00a0of my bubble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Others can ask whether taking that Indian spiritual name and padding your resume with trips to Rishikesh\u00a0has been of benefit to your yoga teaching career. Or whether throwing around\u00a0words like\u00a0“tradition” makes sense when talking about a skill communicated in a 200-hour training.\u00a0Or whether getting a Tantric deity tattoo below the belt\u00a0is a bright\u00a0idea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, white yoga people who consider themselves progressive can ask why, as they\u00a0shared this story around with snarks\u00a0and jeers, they were so easily snowjobbed by a media wave\u00a0that infantilized\u00a0brown people working with complex and interweaving social justice issues? If they\u00a0didn’t know who the Centre and Federation workers were, or where they\u00a0were coming from, why didn’t they\u00a0bother to ask?<\/p>\n

They might ask themselves if their “critical thinking” skills — so well-suited to arguing historical details online or in the lobbies of corporate-owned studios — are being put to good use in\u00a0picking apart\u00a0the emotionally messy\u00a0emergence of a language that\u00a0counters systemic oppression. Or whether those skills\u00a0sometimes\u00a0function to avoid\u00a0critical listening.<\/p>\n

They might remember that, as Kessler points out, “When you accuse a left wing organization of stepping on ‘freedom of speech’, and advocating ‘political correctness’, it basically guarantees that you will go viral.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They might\u00a0remember that anxieties over\u00a0political correctness in the academic culture wars were first\u00a0articulated<\/a> by a cranky English prof who wanted to protect the 19th century canon from postcolonialism. Since then, those anxieties have\u00a0been used largely by the right to denigrate\u00a0the nuanced work of social equality.<\/p>\n

They can ask how much they have in common with the right, that it can be so easy to bond over a clickbait\u00a0headline.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

CORRECTIONS:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An earlier version of this article stated that ‘Via email, Helmer also admitted that the debate around cultural appropriation\u00a0was something “I previously had no idea even existed.”‘ This\u00a0has been corrected to ‘Via email, Helmer also admitted that the debate as to whether yoga constitutes a form of\u00a0cultural appropriation\u00a0was something “I previously had no idea even existed.”‘<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. An earlier version stated that “So, with just a little digging, it now looks like the yoga class might\u00a0have ultimately been suspended due to\u00a0lack of attendance and a possible personal issue involving a paid instructor.” This has been changed to the more accurate:\u00a0<\/span>“So, with just a little digging, it now looks like additional context for\u00a0the suspension may have included low attendance\u00a0and a possible personnel issue involving a position that was sometimes paid.”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Takeaway: White people around the world make fun of the idea of cultural appropriation in yoga. They do it with arguments that ignore South Asian voices. In the process, they obscure the issues with which cultural appropriation intersects: examinations of white middle-class privilege, structural racism in yoga and meditation spaces, cultural inequality, accessibility issues, and the creation of safer space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,21,23,24,66,1,19,28],"tags":[209,465,466,50,467],"class_list":["post-5506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-articles","category-blog","category-featured","category-politics","category-uncategorized","category-yoga","category-yoga-philosophy","tag-cultural-appropriation","tag-dogwhistle-politics","tag-university-of-ottawa","tag-yoga","tag-yogagate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}