What Exactly Is Cultural Appropriation?
Cultural appropriation manifests itself beyond appropriating native practice and culture but also appropriating customs and practices from any marginalized racial group. It proliferates in white dominated countries with a wide range of seemingly innocent and even sometimes respectful intention. But intention is radically different from outcome.
Today cultural appropriation, although sometimes seemingly more benign, includes a wide range of practices often that intersect with micro/macro aggressions. An obvious example is an all white gathering of people celebrating the Day of the Dead or having a margarita “because its Cinco de Mayo”, while at the same time applauding the atrocities on the Mexican border.
Cultural appropriation includes white people with dreadlocks or box-braids, (yes a lot of cultures use braids but each have some distinctive ethically appropriate style) or Kwanzaa, and even some zen or yoga practices. Imagine what it would feel like to Catholics if the Unitarians decided to often dress their minister in papal garb and conduct a high mass with all the sacraments. And note that this example is about varying religious practices within white culture not by one oppressor group usurping practices of the oppressed.
There is a fine and confusing line in this behavior. Eating tacos or Thai food is different from a person of European decent opening an “authentic” Chinese restaurant. Cultural appropriation can continually reinvent itself in surprising and confusing ways. In 2018 a new term was coined on social media called blackfishing” for when white people, particularly women, pretend to be black, like a Rachel Dolezal complex. (see The White Instagram Influencers Pretending to Be Black: ‘My Style Is My Own’). Looking at these sites it would be easy to assume that the women were black, even when they self identify as white. While their intention probably is to encourage and celebrate distinct cultural practices, it still can be very demoralizing for people of color to interact with this behavior. Even something as liberal as “multiculturalism” can feed into this aspect of racism. The concept of the US as a melting pot is about what is able to rise to the top and subsume everything else; i.e. white supremacy. ~rch