A word on cultural appropriation
Cultural appropriation is a real thing. You might not think so, because you aren’t a racist. Or, you are a racist and think that everything belongs to you, because you have the right to it. You don’t.
Culture is defined as “a way of life of a group of people — the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, and are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.”
Appropriation is defined as “the action of taking something for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission.”
Combine those two, and you get cultural appropriation, which in short means people in dominant cultures taking from other cultures that have been oppressed by said dominant culture.
This is not the same as cultural exchange, where people mutually share with each other without the context of a power dynamic. This is also not the same as cultural assimilation, where oppressed cultures adopt elements and traits of the dominant culture to make life less of a struggle.
Now that we all understand exactly what the term means, let’s get down to why it matters, and why it’s plain wrong.
Cultural appropriation trivializes violent historical oppression. For example, the Washington Redsk*ns have refused to change their very offensive team name. Why? To them, it’s “honoring the Indians” and “keeping to tradition,” both of which are a slap in the face to a community that’s been systematically targeted by genocide, slavery, and colonization, the effects of which have lasted through generations. Not to mention the name Redsk*ns comes from a time when white people were paid to kill Native Americans and used their scalps or even genitalia (to prove their sex), aka “red skins,” as proof of their “Indian kill.” Now, we use it to rake in money for the NFL. We should be ashamed of this, not celebrating it. We don’t have a team called the Alabama Nazis, do we?
On a more personal level, cultural appropriation lets people love the culture of minorities but continue to oppress them. For all you queers out there who loooooove to eat Chinese food, but joke that they need to speak English instead of “Engrish” is the easiest example to give.
If that didn’t strike a nerve, let’s give a more privileged example. A bachelorette party rolls up to your local drag show, complete with tiny penis straws and a sash. They are very vocal about how fun, and exciting this bar is, and everyone is sooooo nice and beautiful. Then they vote against trans bathroom rights, or your sacred marriage equality. They are appropriating our culture while keeping us among the oppressed.
Are you catching on? Because I could rattle off lists of examples why cultural appropriation is very real, and very wrong.
This is a call to action. Educate yourself beyond the history that you learned in school, because most of that is surface-level lies to paint America in a beautiful, whitebread portrait.
This isn’t me telling you to drop the sushi like we dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. I’m not telling you to stop braiding your hair the same way those scalpless Indians styled theirs. I’m not telling you to cover up your tribal tattoos.
I’m asking, no encouraging you to educate yourself and be thoughtful before using things from other cultures.
