Class Struggle Involves Contrasting Ways of Appropriation Art and Culture Explain

Source: Everyday Feminism

So, you lot but walked into a Halloween political party. You call up you're wearing a kicking-ass costume, but instead of giving you a compliment, someone tells you that your costume counts as cultural cribbing.

And you remember that's a ridiculous allegation. You? Doing something racist?

You didn't have hateful intentions, and so yous don't know how you could have a negative impact. Plus, nobody likes being told that they "tin can't" practise something, and you feel similar this person's saying y'all tin't wear your costume – fifty-fifty if you don't hateful to hurt anyone.

So if you're wondering what the large bargain is nigh cultural cribbing, I've got y'all covered.

Read on for some perspective on why people might get upset if you borrow from another culture.

What Cultural Appropriation Is (And Isn't)

In short: Cultural appropriation is when somebody adopts aspects of a culture that's non their own.

But that's only the most basic definition.

A deeper understanding of cultural cribbing also refers to a item power dynamic in which members of a ascendant civilisation take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant grouping.

That's why cultural cribbing is non the same as cultural exchange, when people share mutually with each other – because cultural commutation lacks that systemic power dynamic.

It's also not the same as assimilation, when marginalized people adopt elements of the dominant culture in club to survive conditions that make life more than of a struggle if they don't.

Some say, for instance, that non-Western people who wear jeans and Indigenous people who speak English are taking from dominant cultures, besides.

But marginalized groups don't have the power to decide if they'd adopt to stick with their customs or try on the dominant culture's traditions just for fun.

When the terminal living survivors of massacred Indigenous tribes are fighting to save their language before it dies when they exercise, and Native students are suspended for speaking in their own Ethnic languages, mirroring the abusive United states of america boarding schools that tried to wipe out Native American cultures upwards until the 1980s, it's articulate that not every person who speaks English does and so past choice.

In other words, context matters.

Which means it's not almost proverb that you, every bit an individual, are a bad person if you lot advisable someone else's culture.

Information technology'southward a complicated outcome that includes our histories, our current situation, and our future, as we act to eliminate oppression, instead of perpetuating information technology.

So if yous're still baffled about why people would become upset about this issue, consider the post-obit contexts.

one. It Trivializes Trigger-happy Historical Oppression

To you, it can experience like a big deal to have to surrender something you've borrowed from another culture and incorporated into your life, especially if it's meaningful to you in some way.

For example, owners and fans of the NFL team the Washington Redsk*ns have largely come to the defense of the proper name, pulling out every reason including "honoring Indians," "keeping to tradition," and "y'all're beingness likewise sensitive," in reaction to Indigenous activists calling for the cease of Indian mascots.

The fans and the NFL are emotionally and financially invested in the name and don't want to take extra time and coin to modify information technology. And that makes sense.

Only consider this: When violence systematically targets a group of people through genocide, slavery, or colonization, the resulting trauma lasts through generations .

And so here's what's at stake for the Native people: The term "redsk* north" comes from the fourth dimension when the colonial and state governments and companies paid white people to kill Native Americans and used their scalps or even genitalia (to prove their sex), aka "reddish skins," as proof of their "Indian impale."

Given that history, is it a surprise that so many Native people are angry about football fans who recollect they're "honoring" Native people with this mascot and their excuses?

We should be ashamed of this fourth dimension in our history – and nosotros should be working to heal the damage from it.

Simply instead, the NFL (and other sports teams) insist on jubilant the genocide of a people for fun and profit.

ii. Information technology Lets People Show Love for the Culture, Merely Remain Prejudiced Against Its People

White people don't ask to be born with privilege, but what they cull to practice with it is another story.

In the San Francisco Bay Surface area, I witness people taking what they similar without wanting to acquaintance with where it came from all the fourth dimension.

Here, contempo transplants to the area write Yelp reviews in search of "authentic Mexican food" without the "sketchy neighborhoods" – which usually happen to be what they phone call neighborhoods with higher numbers of people of color.

The Yelpers are getting what they desire, at least in terms of the neighborhood, as gentrification rapidly pushes people of colour out of their homes, and white-owned, foodie-friendly versions of their favorite "ethnic" restaurants open upwardly.

That's how it goes with cultural appropriation: not sharing and so there'due south more for everyone, but taking advantage of the ability imbalance between groups to take more for well-off white people, and less and less for poor people of colour.

And this tin can happen because we live in a world in which racist white people can essentially say "Nosotros want your stuff, just we don't like you" by taking people's traditions while being biased against who they are every bit a person.

Cultural appropriation shows that you don't have to like a person or respect their identity to feel entitled to take from them.

So is every non-Mexican who enjoys a skilful burrito guilty of cultural appropriation? Say it own't so! That would include me and near anybody I know.

Merely at present that you know that popularizing "ethnic" food can be ane fashion to impairment a grouping of people while taking from their traditions, you can think well-nigh ways to satisfy your international food cravings without participating in that harm.

3. It Makes Things 'Cool' for White People – Merely 'Too Ethnic' for People of Color

The United states is a white-dominated society, and for proof of that, search no farther than the way immigrants, Ethnic people, and people of color are criticized for the things that distinguish us from white Americans.

For example, standards of professionalism hold back all kinds of people who aren't white men. As a Black woman, there are many jobs that would bar me if I wore cornrows, dreadlocks, or an afro – some of the most natural ways to continue up my hair.

So for me, wearing my hair naturally is a meaningful declaration that I believe in my natural beauty. It's risky to brand this proclamation in a society that says I must aspire to whiteness have value.

Compare that to fashion magazines' reception of white teenager Kylie Jenner'south "epic" cornrows or "edgy" dreadlocks.

When Blackness women have to fight for acceptance with the same styles a immature white adult female can be admired for, what bulletin does that ship to Black women and girls?

It says that our natural beauty isn't beautiful at all – and that our features are but appealing when they're adopted by white women.

iv. It Lets Privileged People Profit from Oppressed People's Labor

Supposedly, in the good ol' United states of A, we're all complimentary to pursue the capitalistic American dream of building our own wealth.

But in reality, it'south not that uncomplicated.

For many people, barriers like classism , racism, and xenophobia mean they don't accept the right look, language, or position of privilege to earn income with their culturally specific tools – and notwithstanding oftentimes, white people can turn those same culturally specific tools into profit, thereby hurting the community they're borrowing from.

So, for case, say a middle-class white woman gets into Native American spirituality, and sees the take a chance to start a business concern based on what she's learned. That might seem innocent enough. She has an interest, and she wants to make money off of it. That's the dream, right?

Only the problem is that in order to sell her products, she has to participate in a discriminatory arrangement. This system includes federal government policies that brand it hard for Native people to start their ain businesses, as well as a professional person civilisation in which white women and middle class women can fit more easily than poor Native women.

Then while she profits, the Native women she adopted her products from live in deep cycles of poverty and unemployment.

So white women dominate the industry of New Age materials with watered downward versions of Indian spirituality practices, drowning out the Native voices speaking upwards about what Native communities demand to survive.

In her fantastic essay "For All Those Who Were Indian in a Old Life," Andrea Smith breaks down how all this plays out when white feminists claim Indian spirituality and "want to get Indian without holding themselves accountable to Indian communities."

Someone with white privilege and class privilege has other options for earning income, so they don't have to resort to profiting from someone else'due south labor or civilization. And the risks involved for marginalized people testify that it'southward more ethical to pursue another path.

5. Information technology Lets Some People Become Rewarded for Things the Creators Never Got Credit For

Who comes to mind when you think of rock and coil?

Is it a white person?

Who do you call back started stone and roll? Is information technology Elvis Presley, the and so-chosen "King of Rock and Roll?"

Surprise! Stone and scroll came out of the blues and was initially largely shaped by Black artists. The problem was that in the 1950s, racist white people were articulate that they didn't want to back up a Black creative person. So approximate what they did.

The record manufacture found success with pop white stars who molded a mainstream await and audio afterwards Black artists their racist white audiences would never back up. Sam Phillips, the record executive who discovered Elvis, summed it up when he apparently said, "If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars."

And while Elvis never claimed to have started it (and was articulate about the Black artists who influenced him), our media has rewritten history to claim that Elvis invented rock and roll. And now it's hard to think of rock and roll ever having been music that came from the Blackness community. Have you ever fifty-fifty heard of Sister Rosetta Tharpe?

This tradition of "borrowing" from Black artists and promoting white artists over more than talented Blackness artists continues to make the record industry billions today .

When Iggy Azalea gains fame and fortune through Blackface fake, Black folks and hip-hop fans rightfully become upset. When Macklemore won four Grammy Awards, even Macklemore 'south dislocated and thinks Kendrick Lamar should have won the Best Rap Album.

Scan the nominations for many major award shows for an idea of how much whiteness represents greatness in the US's cultural consciousness. Then rethink the myth that the people who make it are successful because they're the hardest workers.

6. It Spreads Mass Lies About Marginalized Cultures

People say that sharing between cultures is supposed to assist the states larn, just cultural appropriation is teaching us all the wrong lessons.

Oftentimes, our most common reference to something atrocious totally misrepresents the truth, making usa call back it'southward all in practiced fun.

For example, if you think nigh the real story of Pocahontas , having your girl pretend to be her on Halloween is pretty disturbing. The real Pocahontas, whose given proper name was Matoaka, was abducted equally a teenager, forced to marry an Englishman (not John Smith, past the way), and used as propaganda for racist practices before she died at the age of 21.

And information technology almost feels like that propaganda never ended, every bit our pop lessons on what happened between colonizing settlers and Indigenous people depict Native people as savages, or as happy, mystical characters, or as entirely absent.

Nosotros don't hear the real stories, and most of u.s. don't alive with a straight connectedness to their suffering.

Does the truth matter, when it comes to a piddling girl just trying to savor a holiday? You might think it does if she wanted to dress up equally someone whose tragic truth is more familiar, like Anne Frank.

They're both girls with harrowing stories. But more of us believe that trivializing Anne Frank'due south life is in very poor taste. Can you imagine the outcry if Disney tried to romanticize her diary by aging her into a young woman with a dearest affair with a Nazi officeholder and a happy ending?

At present imagine if that Disney flick was mainstream culture'due south main reference for the Holocaust. And if it was marketed to Germans, who were told that the historical figures who oppressed the Jewish people were their state's heroes.

Creepy, right?

How tin can so many of us exist then undisturbed past some victims' stories that we can plow them into costumes?

That shows privilege – and a huge failure of our educational system. We shouldn't dismiss injustice to human action on that privilege.

7. It Perpetuates Racist Stereotypes

As Dr. Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations puts it, "You are pretending to exist a race that you lot are non, and are drawing upon stereotypes to practice so."

Katy Perry, for instance, said that her performance as a geisha during the 2013 American Music Awards was an homage to Japanese civilisation. But she completely misrepresented what she claimed to be honoring – and used a huge platform to perpetuate negative, all-likewise-mutual stereotypes about Asian women.

With her single "Unconditionally," Perry sang most undying love while playing up the prototype of a passive, submissive sexual object of an Asian woman.

For her, it was just a character – but this stereotypical epitome has existent consequences for Asian women in the The states. Their experiences with dating, racialized sexual harassment, and fethishization reveal that white men actually expect Asian women to live upward to the "exotic geisha girl" stereotype of being sexually submissive and docile.

Lauren Smash described her experiences in "Yellow Fever: Dating Equally an Asian Adult female" like this: "It is dehumanizing at all-time to constantly exist compared to a stereotype and to have people chasing you not every bit a person, but as an embodiment of the stereotypes that they use to define you."

At the stop of the day, Katy Perry got to take the costume off and render to the millions of dollars it helped make her and to the people who run into her as a dynamic man, and not just a demure caricature.

Asian women, on the other paw, have to deal with the racist and sexist social norms that Perry helped perpetuate, which is what happens when the but mainstream prototype of your sexuality is a negative stereotype reinforced constantly by cultural appropriation.

It's certainly not harmless or respectful to misrepresent people'due south culture and spread the toxic myths that harm them.

8. White People Tin can Freely Do What People of Color Were Actively Punished for Doing

Information technology can feel like a slap in the face to see carefree white people enjoy the practices your ancestors were penalized for.

Information technology's also an unsettling reminder that the process of taking our practices from united states of america isn't over, as white folks end upwardly having more access to our practices than we exercise.

The sweeping tendency of yoga in the Usa is an example of this.

Did y'all know yoga was once banned in Bharat as part of the "racist and orientalist narratives" that characterized Indian people equally perverse heathens who had to adapt to Western means? The bands of yogis who resisted the ban rose upwardly to claiming the oppressive British rule.

These days, it seems like yoga'southward everywhere, and practitioners don't have to challenge the rules of the government to reach it. It can bring up some sensitive feelings to say that non-Southward Asian people who do yoga are appropriating culture, because the practice benefits many people throughout the Usa.

But y'all know who's not benefiting from the commercialization of yoga like middle class white women are? The South Asian people for whom yoga has a deep cultural and religious significance.

A touching moment in this discussion with South Asian yoga teachers from South Asian Art & Perspectives on Yoga and America (SAAPYA) shows one woman'south tearful caption of how the elders in her community don't accept access to the yoga studios dominating the industry of a practice and then important to them.

As Susanna Barkataki writes, dividing yoga from its true roots and purpose, and from the people who had to fought to keep it live, means "eventually eradicating the truthful practice, as was accomplished in many places under Britain'south occupation of India."

There's a reason the British used attacks on yoga as a tool for oppressing an entire country of people. Removing a culturally significant source of wellness and spirituality is ane way to rip autonomously critical connections that assistance people survive.

That's what the commercialization of yoga is doing to Due south Asian people today – increasing white people'southward admission, while continuing to accept it away from people who had to fight to go on it alive in the beginning place.

Barkataki as well says that this doesn't mean white people can't practice yoga.

But if you're doing it in a way that contributes to excluding Indian people from it , prioritizing white practitioners' desires over South Asian people'due south needs, or making white people the epitome of yoga, y'all're part of the problem.

9. It Prioritizes the Feelings of Privileged People Over Justice for Marginalized People

1 of the master objections to avoiding cultural appropriation comes downward to "free speech."

Yous should have the right to limited yourself however you want to – and y'all exercise. Nobody can forcefulness you to stop taking things from other cultures. The marginalized people whose cultures are appropriated don't have the institutional ability to force you lot to stop, even if they wanted to.

Merely claiming that the dominant civilization has a correct to take freely from disempowered groups sounds a lot like the lie of the "white man'southward burden" from the by. Colonizers used this concept to claim they had a "duty" to take state, resource, and identity from Indigenous people – trying to justify everything from slavery to genocide.

Nosotros have a lot of work to do to heal from the bear on of oppression from the past through present twenty-four hours. Many examples of cultural cribbing may seem like non a large deal, or like nosotros should have "more important" things to worry almost.

But changing oppressive everyday norms is a huge role of the work. It's one of the ways we tin can help end the fashion society dehumanizes, erases, and ostracizes people of color.

If the choice is between your freedom to article of clothing a costume because it could be fun, or an indigenous grouping'south ability to maintain the sacredness of a tradition that helps them resist damage, information technology's articulate that skipping the costume puts you on the side of anti-oppression.

And, hint: That'south the side you want to be on.

***

I'm not maxim yous automatically tin't enjoy Mexican food if yous're not Mexican, or do a yoga-inspired practice if you're not Indian, or utilize any other culturally specific practise in the US.

Merely I am encouraging you lot to exist thoughtful about using things from other cultures, to consider the context, and learn near the best practices to show respect.

Maybe y'all've worn a costume you didn't know had a violent history, or you had the intention of honoring a culture in a way you didn't realize was offensive. Or you learned about these oppressive histories, but you're just now realizing that what y'all learned wasn't fifty-fifty close to the entire truth.

So now, what'south your next step in incorporating this information into your anti-racist work?

Challenging stereotypes? Calling out appropriation when you run across it? Spreading the discussion nigh the dire need to change the inaccurate mode nosotros learn about oppressed people's struggles?

At the very least, you lot know y'all have alternatives to disrespecting cultures that aren't your own.

Don't keep making other cultures invisible under our society's "melting pot" ambitions. Make room for all of us to thrive by having fun without oppression.

Maisha Z. Johnson is the Digital Content Associate and Staff Writer of Everyday Feminism. You lot tin can find her writing at the intersections and shamelessly indulging in her obsession with pop culture around the web. Maisha's by work includes Community United Against Violence (CUAV), the nation'due south oldest LGBTQ anti-violence organization, and Fired Upwards!, a plan of California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Through her ain project, Inkblot Arts,Maisha taps into the artistic arts and digital media to dilate the voices of those often silenced. Similar her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter @mzjwords.

bensonexced1967.blogspot.com

Source: https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong/

Share this post