I am confused as to why it is good or bad or neither. Genuinely confused. Please and thank you.
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People draw the line at what is and isn’t all over the place, trying to understand cultural appropriation from a rules based perspective makes no sense because culture exists within the history we have created.
Cultural appropriation refers typically to majority populations and cultures taking aspects of other minority and typically downtrodden cultures to use for their own gain without sharing those gains.
It’s been happening for years. Rock and roll was formed from black music in the US but was presented as a white cultural movement. In recent years as people have become more aware of what we’re doing it’s had a light cast on it.
Some of it seems stupid to me. Hairstyles have mixed cultures for years and if one culture start wearing cornrows it doesnt deprive the other of the benefits of it. However if a western company uses traditional native American sacred artwork to make t shirts then they are stealing the patterns if they don’t pass along anything to the originators.
I always want to be careful with it because some of the greatest cultural achievements in history have come from mixing of cultures and borrowing of bits and pieces. Think of the fusion dishes, the engineering discoveries that have been shared, the artwork generated from multiple disciplines. Experiencing everything the world has to offer is something we humans can do more than ever thanks to communication being the way it is.
But it’s just about being a bit mindful about it.
There are two answers to this – what it meant originally, and what it means now.
Originally it meant one culture claiming the culture and achievements of another as their own. For example, imagine Culture A, who carved beautiful statues on every street, and Culture B, who have bigger swords. Culture B comes in and conquers Culture A, taking their land. Culture B then starts going to all the other cultures saying “look at all our beautiful statues”. Even if Culture B doesn’t claim to have made the statues, they have claimed makership and ownership of a “collection” and claim credit for maintaining it. The achievements of Culture A have been appropriated – i.e. stolen, see also, the British Museum. Cultural appropriation can also take the form of a culture claiming another is a part of itself – “A isn’t its own culture, they’re a part of our glorious Culture B. Yes, people who call themselves A made the statues, but they’re really just a subculture of B”. See the US’ treatment of Native American culture, or how England treats Scotland, Wales and Ireland. These forms of cultural appropriation are very serious problems and they still happen everywhere, with people being suppressed and forced into constructed national identities that they don’t share.
The other meaning is… nothing. In some circles, especially online on platforms like Tumblr and pre-Elon Twitter, any time a person of one culture was seen enjoying an aspect of another – not claiming ownership or even being a part of it, just enjoying it, like a white person eating Chinese food – some crowds would accuse them of cultural appropriation. This is meaningless and should not be taken seriously.
Edit: to address some criticism and other comments in the replies to this, I’d like to clarify that I’m not dismissing cultural appropriation as meaningless. I’m dismissing the use of it to completely forbid or shame the sharing of cultures in any degree, which is the usage most people encounter (i.e. see screenshot and reposted constantly, rather than running into directly). But that isn’t to say that there isn’t a spectrum. I think we can all agree that the example I gave of a white person eating Chinese food is indeed ridiculous and nothing to worry about – but that’s because Chinese food isn’t a symbol of cultural identity, it’s just a part of the culture. Some things like the wearing of cultural garb (you might consider examples like a white person wearing a durag or a kimono) might be okay with some people of that culture and not others. Historical context is important. A white person wearing a durag or other symbol of black culture is more likely to be unacceptable because of the history of white people appropriating black culture – for example the brutal suppression of most of black culture while stealing and rebranding black music during the rock and roll era: trying to remove the “black” from “black music” to make it palatable to white audiences. A white person wearing a durag might be seen as another attempt to take their culture and strip it of its “blackness”, i.e. appropriating it; or at the very least as showing an insensitivity to that history of appropriation. There is no clear guide on what is or is not appropriation because the entire issue is mired in historical context that different people will consider differently. The best thing to do is to be aware of that historical context and try to get a feel for what’s okay before doing anything. Ask members of the relevant culture for their thoughts and see what they say. Be informed and only then make an informed decision.
Edit 2: This one ~~isn’t~~ wasn’t addressing anything I’ve read (turns out people were discussing that), just a corollary that came to me. It’s important to note that culture isn’t a stand-in for race. The examples I’ve used are all related to racial and national cultures but they are far from the only ones. Cultures form around many things – obvious examples include gay culture, trans culture, disabled culture, deaf culture, autistic culture. And people can belong to any number of these, even within the same areas (being biracial or having multiple disabilities, for example). All kinds of culture are worth considering.
Here in the States, a Purple Heart award is given to soldiers wounded in battle. It’s considered an important part of our culture, and people who wear it despite never being a soldier are considered assholes. Now imagine going to a bar on Halloween and seeing several people “dressed as wounded soldiers” complete with Purple Heart awards. “Look at me! I have no education so I became a soldier and didn’t know how to duck, now where’s my drink?”
That’s as close to cultural appropriation that I can think of for Americans. It’s not just that you’re doing something that’s part of a different culture; it’s something *important* to another culture that we (by accident or on purpose) use in a disrespectful way.
Although rare, some extremists on either side go nuts and say shit like, “Tacos are appropriation!” Food can definitely be culture, but it’s not cultural appropriation to enjoy a tasty taco–because, while no disrespect to tacos, they’re not that important culturally.
This doesn’t happen very often (either real appropriation or accusations of appropriation). As long as the term is authentically used to help us be respectful of other cultures, I have no problem with it.
Cultural appropriation is when someone from one culture uses elements from another culture. That’s it. That’s literally all it is. Whether or not that’s a bad thing depends on other factors. If the use plays into caricatures and stereotypes, particularly if the culture being appropriated has been historically exploited by colonialism, that’s when people start to get upset.
The theory is that dominant groups using non-dominant, often minority, cultural symbols is an abuse of an implicit power imbalance. For example white people wearing dreadlocks to look hip is considered cultural appropriation of black culture because black people wearing dreadlocks sometimes gives the impression of delinquency instead.
My opinion is that this isn’t an actual problem at all. Cultural sharing and intermingling is the basis of civilization – we should be encouraging the spread and evolution of culture rather than gatekeeping it. This has been done for as long as human culture has existed and should continue to do so. Cuisine is the simplest version of this – one of the most popular British dishes is Indian in origin, while the most famous Italian food, pasta, can be said to have been brought by Marco Polo from Asia. Even the example of dreadlocks – this hairstyle had independently been discovered all over the world in ancient times.
Non-dominant groups take culture from dominant groups all the time. We see this as assimilation sometimes or just simply as the natural way cultures evolve. If you look at Asia, the formal wear nowadays is suits and dresses, something borrowed from European tradition. Assimilation isn’t always asymmetrical in power balance either – a prominent example is the Romans adopting Christianity. Another example is the ruling Manchurians adopting Han Chinese culture or language.
In other words – cultural exchange and sharing is a great thing, to be encouraged in almost all its forms. As long as it’s organic and sincere, and not, say, mocking in nature. And no, wearing Native American headdresses is usually not mocking – it’s celebratory if anything. The whole issue is blown up by people looking for ways to be offended and upset – it gives people another avenue to signal virtue.
In its current use, I think it primarily means an out group person benefiting from another culture (out group to the person in question) with indifference to the circumstances of the cultural group from where the “thing” is being borrowed from.
It seems to revolve primarily around “giving credit” and or the originator receiving credit. It doesn’t seem like any cares about “borrowing” from the culture of there is no tangible benefit received (likes, attention, money, etc).
It’s more of a cultural economics phenomenon.
Cultural appropriation is something that is entirely subjective as to what it is, if it is good or bad, and who is at fault – and it is mostly ramped up to cause a storm, very few people really mind (but if you look in some articles or wherever you’d think it was a matter of life and death)
cultural appropriation has fairly negative connotations, and broadly, implies a person uses something of a culture that is not their own and that this is a bad thing (but that’s about it as far as you get before disagreements form)
There is no hard line between cultural ‘appropriation’ and mixing, what one person considers cultural appropriation another would consider harmless mixing of cultures – there is no hard rules or black/white division you can universally apply
It depends on what you define as a culture and what is ‘taken’, what counts as ‘using’ – all of this is subjective which really doesn’t help trying to define the overall term
Some comments have tried to say ‘it is this…’ but honestly it’s not that easy, because what they consider appropriation you (or other people of different cultures) may consider perfectly fine, or it doesn’t apply in all cases
Whether cultural appropriation is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends on how you and your audience define it, which is the problem – some comments have used examples that I wouldn’t consider cultural appropriation at all – and different people often disagree on what (if anything) from their own culture has been ‘appropriated’
It depends entirely on your audience, there really isn’t a “xyz is bad cultural appropriation, but abc is good cultural mixing” list, different people define cultures and the ‘things’ differently, what is good or bad depends on your own view and that of your audience
It’s a made up term that is used to denigrate others that want to share in portions of other cultures.
Oh, a white woman likes the look of dreadlocks and wants to do them to her hair? Cultural appropriation!
Oh, you think an African tribal mask is neat and you want to display it on your wall? Cultural appropriation!
Many people want the world to be a melting pot of cultures and to share in each others experiences/traditions. Others do not want this.
It’s bullshit. You are a collection of your experience and things to which you are exposed. Humans have always adapted things they see to their location and needs. This is why Phoenician pottery was popular in Spain. Don’t fall for limiting yourself to what your parents already had.
It has come to mean that a person from one culture cannot enjoy anything which originated from another. So no more Christmas trees unless you are German. Thankfully, I am part German and will have a nice tree this year, but the rest of you should show me some respect and not appropriate my culture.
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