I am confused as to why it is good or bad or neither. Genuinely confused. Please and thank you.
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Appropriation is when you disrespectfully steal an idea from someone else and use it for your own purposes. For example, if a friend of yours sent you a draft of a deep, philosophical novel they’ve been working on for several years and you decided to edit it into a teenage romance story with dinosaurs and vampires and self publish it online, that would be appropriation. Basically, to tell if something is appropriation, ask yourself two things: was the idea stolen from somewhere else, and is the way it’s being used disrespectful to the originators?
Cultural appropriation is appropriation of not just a single person’s ideas, but a whole culture. For example, Americans have appropriated many things from the culture of the indigenous peoples that originally occupied their land. We use imagery of Native American chieftains for brands of margarine, we name our cities and states after the very tribes they displaced and destroyed, we get tattoos of Native American art without understanding its significance, we talk about our spirit animals like they’re a kind of astrology, when they’re actually a deeply meaningful coming of age tradition for many native tribes.
Often we get into debates over whether something qualifies as cultural appropriation, because whether the adopted usage of some cultural element is “appropriate” kind of falls down to opinion, and often when a group of people feel like their culture is being threatened by another group, they will tend to get offended at any borrowing of cultural elements, regardless of whether they are used respectfully or not.
It is using some element of a culture that is not yours, for your own purposes, which are not the same as that culture’s purposes for it.
Now, cultures mix, and borrow elements from one another, and sometimes the original significance of something gets lost. In my opinion, one big difference is in how you treat or think of actual members of the culture you’re borrowing from. Say you are dressing in a way that is done in black American culture, but you think black people are inferior, and you treat them badly. Using an element from a culture, without considering (or maybe even knowing) its significance in that culture can be problematic as well. This is the problem with white people wearing bindis, or wearing things borrowed from Native American ritual regalia. If a symbol has some meaning to you, it can be upsetting to see someone else use it in total ignorance of its meaning. And if you’re using a culturally important item or tradition to make fun of members of another culture, or to say things that are offensive to them, that’s obviously a problem.
Something that it seems only certain people in the United States and United Kingdom seem to care about. In the rest of the world they’d just look at you with incredulity if you bring it up.
For a start, who exactly “owns” a culture and therefore who can say/claim that something is being appropriated? If people use the term to mean financially profiting off another culture then where does that end? I’ve eaten in plenty of restaurants in Japan that serves different kinds of western or western inspired foods. Should they not be operating?
It seems to me far more about far left hand-wringing and virtue signaling than anything serious.
Cultural appropriation is US white people being mocked for wearing other cultures dress… The rest of the world never have any problems… Nor do the other cultures care… But hey since US is “bad” we have to crucify them
Here is such an easy example.
Hula is a sacred art form for native Hawaiians that is connected to their ancient religion and practiced alongside chants which recount their oral histories and creation myths (equivalent to the Genesis stories in the Bible). When missionaries arrived in the islands in the 1820s, they denounced hula as evil and wicked and convinced they chiefs they converted to outlaw the practice.
The in the 1920s, white people started dancing the hula in vaudeville and sideshows on the mainland to entertain each other and make money, and they did it badly and for laughs. It was evil for native peoples to practice their ancient art form as part of thousands of years of history and tradition, but okay for white people to strip all that way and make a mockery of it for entertainment and for profit.
Notice that it’s not usually the same white people who denounce something as white people who then take it and strip it if it’s cultural importance to make it trendy. It’s not something that one person does and needs to be punished for, it’s a general phenomenon caused by racism and double standards that marginalizes people of color and enriches white people at their expense. I
before the term cultural appropriation was commonly used, there were examples that i thought were worth thinking about. like when paul simon made graceland, he got flak for not putting ladysmith black mambazo’s name on the album even though they were an integral part of the music and style and arrangements. but he toured with them all over the world and made them household names and did a lot of good for the music and people of south africa. same happened with his next album using brazilian music and musicians. there’s a lot of gray areas in reaching into other cultures but it really only feels problematic to me when the intention is to profit from it while claiming it as your own discovery. it’s definitely cringe to see tattoos of chinese characters or specific hairstyles on someone who doesn’t have a connection to the culture but at least it’s an honest attempt to express something meaningful or form an identity.
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