Five things white people should know about cultural appropriation [View all]

[gollygee]

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/5-things-white-people-cultural-appropriation/

If you’re Katy Perry, for example, you believe it’s A-OK to don corn rows and gel down your baby hair, put on some long fingernails and so-called sassy mannerisms with a “blaccent” and slang to portray how you believe certain black women behave and speak. But when you do it, as a white artist, you perpetuate a long legacy of white cultural theft—in addition to bypassing all the racist and misogynist insults those black women must contend with on a daily basis. That includes being called “ghetto” by white (and other) people, typecast as a welfare queen or otherwise told that your natural hairstyles and expressions are inferior and unwelcome. These are symptomatic of slavery and segregation in America and, yes, this really still happens every day. And it’s cultural appropriation.

As writer Tamara Winfrey Harris expertly notes over at Racialicious, it’s the oppression that causes the intense offense that many people—mainly white people—seek to explain away rather than critically question.

A Japanese teen wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a big American company is not the same as Madonna sporting a bindi as part of her latest reinvention. The difference is history and power. Colonization has made Western Anglo culture supreme–powerful and coveted. It is understood in its diversity and nuance as other cultures can only hope to be. Ignorance of culture that is a burden to Asians, African, and indigenous peoples, is unknown to most European descendants or at least lacks the same negative impact.

And what makes cultural appropriation all the more infuriating for people of color rests on the fact that other people—white or not—can take off their costume and return to everyday life without the discrimination or stigma commonly associated with those cultural expressions. Just because you may find any elements of another culture or subculture to be awe-inspiring, or even have an odd fetish or fascination with it, using those expressions dispensibly is an insult that comes with a long history and trend of racial and ethnic discrimination and prejudice. It’s insulting to say the least.