The conversation surrounding cultural appropriation has been so severely mutilated by white âalliesâ that the original intention behind that conversation has become almost unrecognizable in most social contexts.
To explain what I mean, the conversation around cultural appropriation was started by black and native people to discuss the frustrations we feel at being punished socially and financially for partaking in our cultural heritage while white people could take, I.e. appropriate, aspects of our culture that we are actively shamed for and be heralded as innovators. It was about the frustrations we feel when the same white people who shamed us would take our culture and wear it as if they were the ones who created it while still actively shaming us for doing the same.
The original push behind naming cultural appropriation and having these conversations were so that we as a society could evaluate why we were punished for our heritage while white People were not. It was supposed to be about seeking solutions. The idea was to create a society where we could celebrate our cultures with impunity. It was never about telling white people that they âwerenât allowedâ to do certain things. We did ask that white People stop doing certain things because they werenât doing them respectfully and were not invited to do them, but the primary reason we asked them to desist was to reclaim the things they had stolen and to reassign them culturally back where they belonged.
White âalliesâ saw these conversations happening and instead of trying to aplify our own voices or even try to learn about the complexities behind why we were saying what we were saying, they instead began screaming over us and creating a narrative that was hardly even the bones of what we originally set out to say. It was like they took the conversation we were trying to have, completely decontextualized it, and stripped it of all itâs nuance in order to gain social currency by seeming progressive.
So the conversation around cultural appropriation went from âThis aspect of our heritage belongs to us and we find it egregious that we are shamed for it. What steps can we take to address the racism thatâs creating this situation as well as rehome the things that have been stolenâ to âyouâre not allowed to do that because if you do that youâre racist, we donât really understand why thatâs racist but youâre not allowed to do that and if you do that youâre a klansman no exceptions. So youâre not allowed because becauseâ
At the end of the day, did I like the fact that sally was wearing dreads? No. But my primary concern was not that sally was wearing dreads but rather that sally could wear dreads and I couldnât. THAT was the intended focus of those conversations. It was about addressing the inequality. It was about us. Now the conversation is just about sally and were completely forgotten.
White People are always asking me what they can do to help. You want to know? Stop talking. Aplify our voices and shut the fuck up because you all have pretty much derailed this conversation and many more like it to the point that we no longer are trying to make steps to understand and dismantle the racism around cultural appropriation and instead are just using it as social shaming tactics.
TL;DR: read my post. Most things worth learning about canât be summarized in the bullet points of a buzfeed article. Donât come into academic circles and complain because everything hasnât been conviently summarized for you. Stop pretending that things arenât accessible to you because you refuse to do the intellectual labor that is learning.
