Cultural Appropriation: An Introduction“Cultural Appreciation or Cultural Appropriation?”A zine on culture, respect, allyship, and racismThis was written in the spring of 2011 in occupied coast Salish territory, Olympia, Washington.

What is cultural appropriation? Cultural appropriation is the adoption or theft of icons, rituals, aesthetic standards, and behavior from one culture or subculture by another. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture. This “appropriation” often occurs without any real understanding of why the original culture took part in these activities or the meanings behind these activities, often converting culturally significant artifacts, practices, and beliefs into “meaningless” pop-culture or giving them a significance that is completely different/less nuanced than they would originally have had.

Why does cultural appropriation happen? Cultural appropriation is a by-product of imperialism, capitalism, oppression, and assimilation. Imperialism is the creation and maintenance of an unequal cultural, economic, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. Imperialism functions by subordinating groups of people and territories and extracting everything of value from the colonized people and territories. In the case of cultural appropriation, culture is treated as a “natural resource” to extract from People of Color. Cultural appropriation is profitable. Objects and traditions (but not the people) of marginalized cultures are seen by the dominant culture as exotic, edgy, and desirable, which translates to profits. Capitalism works best when people are not individual people with celebrated differences, but identical workers, cogs in the machine. Once diverse cultural identities are stripped away, the only culture led to identify with is capitalist culture. This is one aspect of assimilation, in which marginalized communities lose their cultural markers and are folded into the dominant culture. The process of assimilation is sped up when culture markers are appropriated by the dominant culture. Once the dominant culture has access to the cultural markers of a marginalized culture, they are no longer markers of the marginalized culture, and the marginalized culture is gobbled up by the dominant culture.

Why is cultural appropriation so harmful? Cultural appropriation is harmful because it is an extension of centuries of racism, genocide, and oppression. Cultural appropriation treats all aspects of marginalized cultures (also known as targets of oppression) as free for the taking. This is the same rationale that has been (and still is) used to steal land and resources from People of Color, particularly Native people. Put together, the theft of the lands, resources, and culture of a marginalized group amount to genocide. The defense of cultural appropriation is based upon the misconception that race relations exist on a level-playing field, as though racism no longer exists. Systematic racism does still exist – white people have power and privilege in this society, while People of Color are systematically denied power and privilege in this society. There cannot be a truly equal and free flow of ideas, practices, and cultural markers as long as one group (white people) have power and privilege over another group (People of Color). Spiritual practices of Native peoples are particularly prone to appropriation by the dominant culture. This is exceptionally ironic, given that after colonization, it was not until the passage of the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act that Native people in the United States were legally permitted to practice their traditional spirituality. Since the colonization of this continent by

white settlers, Native people have faced monumental obstacles to the free exercise of their spiritual practices, including boarding schools, forced relocation, endless broken treaties, “kill the Indian, save the man” policies, and forced assimilation. So it is particularly insensitive for white people to attempt to justify their/our use of Native spiritual practices when Native people themselves have often been brutally persecuted for the same.

Cultural appropriation is not an acceptable way to honor, respect, or appreciate People of Color. If you wish to honor, respect, or appreciate Black people or Black culture, then you should learn how to recognize, confront, and dismantle systematic racism instead of appropriating dreadlocks, a symbol of the wearer’s commitment to Jah Rastafari and Black resistance to racism. If you wish to honor, respect, or appreciate Native people or Native culture, learn how to listen to Native people when they identify very real problems (and how to confront them) faced by Native people today, such as astronomical suicide and alcoholism rates on reservations or the continued theft of Native lands by resource extraction companies. Many well-intentioned and self-proclaimed antiracists will engage in cultural appropriation in the name of “solidarity.” A prominent example of this is white pro-Palestinian activists wearing keffiyehs, Arab headscarves and symbols of Palestinian nationalism and resistance to occupation. But simply wearing a keffiyeh will not end Israel’s occupation of Palestine. There are many real, concrete steps one can take to support Palestinean liberation, such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. In addition, one must also take into account the very real climate of Islamophobia and Arab-phobia in the United States – people who are perceived as Arab and/or Muslin are treated with hostility, suspicion, and violence, and assumed to be terrorists. This is only aggravated when these people are seen wearing articles of clothing associated with Islam or Arab culture. For white people to wear keffiyehs is to wave around our/their white privilege – white people aren’t automatically assumed to be terrorists. White people wearing keffiyehs are seen as hip, fashion-forward, and worldly, whereas Arab- and Muslim-perceived people wearing keffiyehs are seen as dangerous, Others, and terrorists. Many traditions that have been appropriated from Native people (such as sweat lodges and “medicine wheel ceremonies”) are performed by white people allegedly in the name of such lofty goals as world peace, spiritual mending, and mutual understanding. One of the things needed for world peace, spiritual mending, and mutual understanding to occur is an end to racism. But cultural appropriation is a form of racism, and as long as racism exists, there can be no world peace, spiritual mending, or mutual understanding. Many concrete steps to dismantle racism have been identified by many different people, including recognizing one’s role in perpetuating racism, confronting one’s own white privilege, and attacking the systems of oppression that give white people privilege in the first place. None of these steps require cultural appropriation. And it is unacceptable for white people’s healing to come at the expense of the cultural survival of People of Color.

Cultural appropriation of ceremonies and objects removes and distorts these traditions and things from their original contexts and into gross caricatures that are a slap in the face to the original practitioners of the ceremonies, with complete disregard for the history and present day reality of oppression (usually perpetrated by white people who feel similarly entitled to all aspects of these peoples’ lands, resources, and cultures) faced by the people to whom those ceremonies belong. Cultural appropriation is insensitive and ignorant at best, and blatantly and knowingly racist at worst. Cultural appropriation often perpetuates inaccurate stereotypes about

People of Color - what most white people think they know about Native Americans often comes from inaccurate stereotypes of a monolithic culture involving teepees, sweat lodges, and dream catchers. When these inaccurate stereotypes are perpetuated, they create a mold that white people demand People of Color fit into. When People of Color don’t fit those stereotypes, they are often ridiculed, attacked, dismissed, and marginalized for not fitting into a white person’s inaccurate idea of what it means to be a Person of Color. People of Color - including Native Americans - still exist. Often, the justification used for cultural appropriation is something along the lines of “I just love the way these people lived! It was so simple and beautiful!”, as if they’re all extinct. This tells real life People of Color that they don’t actually exist. Being told you don’t exist is extremely hurtful, and it tells white people that there is no more need for antiracism since if People of Color don’t exist anyway, then of course they can’t possibly be oppressed. Even if you don’t understand why it is hurtful to see various aspects of one’s culture appropriated, or you think there are worse problems that People of Color should spending their time confronting (even though it is white people’s responsibility to confront racism), it is still imperative to listen to People of Color when they identify - and call for an end to - cultural appropriation. As targets of racism, People of Color are the experts in racism, and therefore anti-racist efforts should be directed by the needs identified by People of Color.

Calling each other out for appropriating other cultures (or even navigating less confrontational discussions around cultural appropriation) can be tricky. As always, it’s really important not to assume anyone’s identity. Just because someone has light skin doesn’t mean they’re white. Treating “white” as the default race is one of the many aspects of racism, and assuming that everyone with light skin is white is racist and erasing. So for example, it’s not ok for me to immediately tell a light-skinned person wearing a beaded headband that they’re appropriating Native beadwork and need to take off the headband - that person could very well be Native. That’s why it’s important to talk about this stuff. If you think someone is being appropriative, ask them about it! Sometimes we’re invited to take part in others’ cultural traditions, by members of that culture. It is an honor to be invited to do so, but we also must remember that being invited to take part in something doesn’t give us the right to perform said activity outside of that invited context. Even if you’ve done a ton of research and know all about some tradition you find really interesting, if you are not a member of the culture that practices that tradition, you still have the potential to strip that practice of its original meaning. Where it gets really tricky is with traditions or symbols that have roots in several different cultures. For example, dreadlocks are found in Indian, Buddhist, Rastfari, African, and Celtic culture. Most recently, dreadlocks are known as a symbol of Black resistance to racism and Rastafaris’ commitment to Jah. When white people wear dreadlocks, we/they strip dreadlocks from their symbolism of resistance to racism and a commitment to Jah.

But as a general rule of thumb, it’s not appropriation if it’s from your own culture. So what about white people of Celtic heritage who wear dreadlocks? Dreadlocks are part of their culture, but someone walking down the street would not be able to tell that some random white person with dreadlocks is Celtic. I don’t have any quick and easy answers for this, but I think that context is really really important. I live in the United States, where dreadlocks are not widely recognized as a Celtic cultural marker. All white people have the ability to strip dreadlocks of their symbolism for People of Color, regardless of our ethnicity. Does this mean that white

people with Celtic heritage living in the United States should never wear dreadlocks? I don’t know. I do think it means that the decision to wear dreadlocks must be approached very carefully, and with the knowledge that one must be prepared to engage in continual conversation about what dreadlocks mean for a variety of cultures.

“Fashion's Cultural-Appropriation Debate: Pointless” from The AtlanticBy: Minh-Ha T. PhamMay 15, 2014

Waves upon waves of backlash haven't stopped Western designers from continuing to swipe recklessly from other cultures. Critics should change the subject by examining the histories of what gets swiped—and more importantly, what doesn't.

AP A "Chinatown plaid" jacket in Stella McCartney's 2013 ready-to-wear collection.

Since around 2007, I’ve written about the politics of race, gender, and class in fashion. These writings have been published in scholarly journals and popular media sites, including the research blog I co-founded called Threadbared. As a result, a regular and happy feature of my everyday life involves responding to media and public inquiries about fashion trends, events, or news items that have a distinct racial dimension.

But I have to admit: I’m getting tired of fashion criticism.

This is not because I’ve grown tired of thinking and writing about fashion. And it’s certainly not because I no longer think fashion is an important cultural and social activity.

What I’m weary of is the predictable, limited, and unhelpful manner in which people talk about race in fashion.

Typically, it begins with a fashion event that raises issues of race, gender, or class: a new designer collection in the genre of “exploitation chic,” a blackface/yellowface/redface magazine

spread, the use of people of color as props on the runway, etc. This event, which is almost immediately shared widely online, typically elicits two major responses. Critics bring charges of “cultural appropriation” and implicitly or explicitly suggest that racism is part of why the event happened and is being paid attention to.  Defenders, in increasingly strained tones, take the position of “cultural appreciation.” They say that drawing inspiration from the bodies, cultural practices, and cultural objects of people of color are acts of appreciating, admiring, even loving racial difference and diversity.

The popular chorus of cultural appropriation! cultural appreciation! quickly becomes a performance, in which neither side misses a cue nor forgets a well-learned line. This continues for several days and maybe weeks until it peters out or until the next racist fashion event crops up—whichever comes first. The debate around the event often gets more press and social-media attention than the event did itself, and nobody seems to change opinions for the next go-round.

Of course, I’ve contributed to this cycle. On Threadbared, the term “cultural appropriation” appears 142 times. That’s because critiques of cultural appropriation do have their use. They have been an important strategy, in Richard Fung’s words, “to redress historically established inequities by raising questions about who controls and benefits from cultural resources.” Acts of cultural appropriation often deepen existing divides between haves and have-nots, who’s in and who’s out, who has power and who doesn’t. Commenting on the appropriation of Native voices by white Canadian novelists, M.T. Kelly has poignantly observed, “Again and again, papers have been written, careers built, tenure granted, royalties issued, and yet the people upon whom this is based are left behind on the reserves with nothing.”

Cultural appropriation controversies happen outside of fashion, as well. Debates similar to those I’ve just described have sprung up in recent days around the likes of the Flaming Lips, Miley Cyrus, and the Coachella crowd. Grantland went so far as to name “cultural appropriation” as the pop-culture phenomenon that “won” 2013.  

But there’s a big problem with critiques of cultural appropriation.  They reaffirm the very thing they intend to oppose: white Western domination over and exploitation of culture at the expense of everyone else.

For an example of what I mean, let’s look at a fashion trend that fashion bloggers, journalists, and others unofficially dubbed “Chinatown chic” and, alternatively, “migrant worker chic.” The trend emerged about a year ago during the Céline and Stella McCartney Fall 2013 ready-to-wear shows in New York City. Both collections included looks featuring bright, graphic plaid prints reminiscent of the large plastic woven tote bags that you see all over Canal Street. (It should be noted that Marc Jacobs presented a near-exact precursor to the trend in the Louis Vuitton Spring 2007 ready-to-wear collection, featuring $1,900 tote bags.)

Not long after, the same garments appeared on the bodies and feet of the fashion elite. A series of photographs posted to Phil Oh’s highly celebrated blog Street Peeper showed members of the New York and Paris fashion glitterati wearing the conspicuous design pattern on their skirts, sneakers, tops, and coats. The trend reached peak ubiquity when more affordable versions of the

luxury garments appeared on the shop floors of mass market retailers Zara and TopShop—all featuring the print design that Oh nicknamed, “‘Chinatown bag’ plaid.”

The rich aesthetic and social history of the plaid design is entirely left out of the discussions about its appropriation. The terms of debate block it from view. 

But U.S. Chinatowns are far from the only places where these bags circulate. Manufactured in China and sold for as little as a dollar each, their cheap price tag and their high durability make them popular carryalls for poor migrants around the world. In China, they’re colloquially referred to as “mingong” bags, named after the migrant workers who tote the shiny, bright carryalls on their long journeys between home and work. In Germany, they’re called “Tuekenkoffers” or Turkish suitcases, while in Trinidad they’re known as “Guyanese Samsonite.” In Nigeria, Ghana, and across West Africa, the same bags are called “Ghana Must Go bags,” a moniker rooted in the mid 1980s when the 1983 Expulsion Order in Nigeria gave Ghanaian immigrants 14 days to flee with whatever belongings they could carry. In England, they’re simply “Bangladeshi bags” or “refugee bags,” and in South Africa, where they’re most strongly associated with internal migrants, the bags are known as either “Unomgcana” (literally, the one with lines) in Xhosa or “China bag” in English. A journalist for the British newspaper The Telegraph insists that the sobriquets are “telling” of a plural yet shared experience of being from and wanting to get out of, in her words, “some poverty-stricken hell hole.” But, as I’ll explain, the various names given to these bags conceal more than they tell about the complex mix of sources that make up the so-called migrant-worker-plaid trend.

Public reactions to the Céline and Stella McCartney collections were largely mixed. A writer for Vogue UK cheered Phoebe Philo (creative director of the Céline house) for “reinventing” the laundry bag in ways that were “insanely elegant and very clever.” Hamish Bowles, European editor-at-large for the US edition of Vogue, concurred, calling the collection “supremely elegant.” Likewise,Radar magazine commended the designer for giving the “refugee bag pattern” “a 180 … metamorphosis to high-end.”

But many others saw it as a continuation of the fashion industry’s long history of poaching from marginalized peoples. Diana of the blog Hanger Hiatus views the Céline pieces as an “inevitable” occurrence given fashion’s “rampant culture-sampling.” In a blog post examining street-inspired fashion including the Céline and Louis Vuitton pieces, editors of the academic journal Vestoj: The Journal of Sartorial Matters describe appropriation practices in terms of “smuggling.” They note later on in the blog post that fashion’s appropriations depend on a one-way power flow from the top down: “While fashion corporations are keen to crack down on illegal copying, it’s interesting to note that the ever-fine line between appropriation and copying in high fashion continues to be toed for effect.”   

None of the critics leveling charges of appropriation, though, questioned the basic premise that the collections exemplified a high-low cultural fusion—high culture being Euro-American fashion design, and low culture being Asian street culture. But the truth is that the plaid originates not in Chinatowns, or even in China, or even in street culture. Rather, the design comes from the elite and, indeed, fashionable culture of Indonesian public life where it has been produced, consumed, traded, and sold for centuries.

As early as the 16th century, the Bugis coastal plains people (from the southern peninsula of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi) were weaving, trading, and selling silk sarongs with the plaid motif for indigenous and international consumption. Today, as before, the plaid designs are invested with considerable symbolic meaning for Sulawesians. Elizabeth Morrell’s extensive research shows that the size of the plaid indicates the social and political status of the individual while its simple, open, and repeating pattern is expressive of Islamic principles of “geometry, rhythm, and light.” Often reserved for formal and celebratory occasions, the textiles represent both secular and spiritual forms of Indonesian culture.

Various different plaids being worn by guests and officials at the arrival of the South Sulawesi province governor to the town of Sengkang in 1994. (Elizabeth Morrell)

The textiles were so much coveted worldwide that knockoffs were rampant, Morrell writes in Securing a Place: Small-scale Artisans in Modern Indonesia:

From at least the mid-seventeenth century, plaids were produced in India for European merchants to sell in direct competition with the Indonesian weaving trade, perpetuating the Indian textile producer’s practice of imitating the indigenous styles—including Javanese batik motifs—preferred by specific target export markets … [the red and blue checkered design] was imitated by weavers on the Indian Coromandel coast, in cloth which was “not so well wove, but of brighter colors.”

To compete against the more powerful English and Dutch trading companies (who traded in Indian copies of the textiles), indigenous textile artisans expanded their production to include cheaper and faster versions made of a coarser cotton “polish[ed] with shells and rice starch to recreate the [silky] sheen.” Today, manufacturers of the tote bags recreate the signature sheen of this textile using plastic polymer-based materials.

Many critiques of cultural appropriation proceeds as if there are only two places in the world: “Western capitalist institution” and “slum.” Which, of course, reaffirms the very power relations they try to critique.

This rich aesthetic and social history of the plaid design is entirely left out of the discussions about its appropriation. That’s because the terms of the appropriation debate block this history from view. Responding to Jacobs’s 2006 collection, a blogger critical of fashion’s appropriations resignedly described the Louis Vuitton replica bags as just another example of the industry’s practice of “slumming”: “This is nothing new in fashion; slumming is a trope in the rarefied heights of haute couture. In recent years we have seen much appropriation of the sort.”

Note that while he questions the ethics of the fashion industry’s appropriation of others’ cultural artifacts, he doesn’t question the idea that that artifact originated in a slum. His critique of cultural appropriation proceeds as if there are only two places in the world: “Western capitalist institution” and “slum.” Which, of course, reaffirms the very geocultural power relations he’s trying to critique.

This is the problem with cultural-appropriation critiques. They depend on reductive binaries—“high culture” and “low culture,” and oftentimes, “first world” and “third world”—that preserve the hierarchical relations between the fashion industry and the cultures being appropriated. This is related to the problem with cultural-appreciation defenses. Producers and consumers of culturally appropriated objects often present them as examples of healthy cosmopolitanism, of an openness to diverse global sources of inspiration. But the Indonesian plaid example shows that such production and consumption of “diversity” can often—intentionally or accidentally—obscure the actual diversity and complexity of the cultural object being copied.

Instead of the appropriation discourse, I suggest that critics and designers engage in an “inappropriate” discourse, one that reframes the debate to include all the things that are not carried over when white Western creators swipe from elsewhere. Rather than obsess over whether certain practices and forms of cultural appropriation are “good” or “bad,” “racist” or “post-racial,” respectful or not, inappropriate discourse asks what is not appropriate-able, what cannot be integrated into and continue to maintain the existing power structure of the high fashion system, and why. In doing so, we truly challenge the idea of the absolute power and authority of the West to control how the world sees, knows, and talks about fashion.

The idea that an Asian country like Indonesia might be the deliberate, self-aware originator of a fashion trend, rather than simply the third-world site for manufacturing cheap commodities, is an “inappropriate” one: It doesn’t correspond with the binary of high and low culture at the heart of cultural appropriation critiques. An “inappropriate” critique would point out that Western fashion designers are not only extraordinarily late to this plaid trend, they are following the followers of the trend. By locating the source of their inspiration in the Chinese-made bags (which are themselves based on cheap copies of the Bugis textiles), Philo, McCartney, and Jacobs are following in the tradition of earlier European and Asian trading companies who were already copying this textile. These illustrious Western fashion designers are, in effect, knocking off knock offs. The only thing “reinvented” by the Céline, Stella McCartney, and Louis Vuitton pieces is the notion of the Western fashion industry as the most important site of design innovation—an idea that is itself an invention.

Rather than obsess over whether certain forms of cultural appropriation are “good” or “bad,” “racist” or “post-racial,” we should ask what is not able to be appropriated, and why.

Even without knowing the textile history of the Céline, Stella McCartney, and Louis Vuitton pieces—in fact, taking for granted the Chinatown origins of the prints—an inappropriate critic might ask how Chinatown residents benefit financially and socially from a high-fashion craze that references their cultural practices, everyday lives, and bodies. Does that craze afford them new opportunities to actively and genuinely participate in the fashion system (as designers,

consultants, consumers, or in some other capacity)? Or does it only worsen their historical exclusion? In other words, how deep does the ballyhooed “cultural appreciation” run?

A favorite cliché among fashion elites is that commercialism is a bad word. The idea is that fashion is, first and foremost, art. Questions and critiques that follow the economic bottom line of fashion companies—who profits, how, and how much—are inappropriate. Yet since trying to parse out what is an appropriate trend or not hasn't seemed to help anyone, the inappropriate is exactly what we need right now.

“Have We Gotten Too Paranoid About Cultural Appropriation?” by Clutch Magazineby Britni Danielle

Blue-eyed soul. White girls twerking.  Race-themed Halloween costumes. The new “Harlem Shake.” Non-black folks rocking braid extensions. White women in belly dancing classes. The list of things that have been deemed “cultural appropriation” has grown exponentially over the past few years as people of color have become increasingly vocal about their concerns over “outsiders” laying claim to things they’ve created. But as our society becomes progressively diverse, are some folks just turning into overly-sensitive “grievance-mongers”?

That’s the thesis of a recent Los Angeles Times   op-ed , which argues that the phrase “cultural appropriation” has become a catchall for those looking to complain about White people who enjoy the food, music, or traditions of other cultures.Charlotte Allen writes:Bet you didn’t know that white people eating tacos falls into the category of “cultural appropriation.”

Well, it does now. This past May 5 — a.k.a. Cinco de Mayo — two colleges canceled or significantly altered their annual “Phi Phiesta” taco-bar fundraisers after complaints about cultural appropriation from offended Latino student organizations.

You may be wondering, at this point, exactly what is cultural appropriation? Technically, it’s the process by which one culture adopts and incorporates elements of another: the Romans sculpting Greek-style statuary, for example. But now, it’s become a catchall designation for anything that white people might borrow from an ethnic culture that the grievance-mongers in that culture don’t like.

Some of the cultural appropriation complaints are well taken because the appropriated practices genuinely include mockery of the affected minority group: minstrel-show whites in blackface, for example. Sombreros and fake mustaches might fall into that category. But tacos?As the ethnic grievance industry grows ever more shrill and its spokespeople more thin-skinned, the list of ethnic practices forbidden to whites grows ever longer.

Allen cites a Salon article by Arab-American writer Randa Jarrar titled, “Why I can’t stand white belly dancers,” as proof of how some folks have “overreacted” to cultural appropriation.

In the article, Jarrar argued, “Arab women are not vessels for white women to pour themselves and lose themselves in; we are not bangles or eyeliner or tiny bells on hips. We are human beings. This dance form is originally ours, and does not exist so that white women can have a better sense of community; can gain a deeper sense of sisterhood with each other; can reclaim their bodies; can celebrate their sexualities; can perform for the female gaze.”Many pushed back against Jarrar’s perspective on White women participating in belly dancing, asserting their decision to dance was a result of cultural exchange, not cultural appropriation, but Jarrar was unmoved. She penned another article taking on her critics to task once again.

Let’s be clear. Christopher Columbus syndrome is real, and White folks have been absorbing and profiting off the culture and creations of people of color for years (see: the colonization of Africa, India, the Transatlantic slave trade, and Rock n’ Roll).

But have we gotten too sensitive about labeling the innocent byproducts of living in an increasingly diverse society as “cultural appropriation” instead of cultural exchange?Let’s talk about it, folks.