I think a BIG part of the reason the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation so often get blurred with white people is because of how we are taught about different cultures in school, ESPECIALLY in elementary school.
Like, thinking back to my elementary education in the mid-90's in a small rural town and the way we were taught about other cultures was basically like..."here's some really shallow, surface-level explanation of [insert any culture]'s customs. Let's engage with it as a fun activity!" The whole "melting pot" idea was really romanticized and sold to us as an absolute good, with no attention paid to the negatives.
And looking back on this now as an adult who has been educating myself, I can see how absolutely backwards and awful that is, but like...I didn't know this stuff as a kid, and there wasn't really an easy way to access that kind of information back then. This was in the early days of a internet. There was no social media. And that kind of stuff just wasn't talked about in small rural towns. There were only 3 black kids in my entire school district at the time I was there. All of the teachers were white.
So having a white teacher teach all of their almost entirely white student body a bastardized, white-washed version of another culture's customs, and encouraging them to engage with/in it... You get conditioned to think about other cultures in a weird way. Like, I've always had an appreciation and reverence of different cultures. I like learning about how other people view and navigate the world, traditional dress, history, religion, customs, etc. But I still really have to fight against the instinct to automatically want to engage with/take part in other cultures because that's what I've been taught to do.
Like, my intent is always to be respectful and to learn. But I have to fight against this idea that's been engrained in my head that taking part in something from another culture is ALWAYS the respectful thing to do. Because it really depends on the culture, the situation, and the context! And my first instinct CAN'T be that it's automatically okay for me to take part.
This is what it means when people say that everybody is racist because our society and institutions are inherently racist. I've absolutely engaged in cultural appropriation in my life, and that's a hard pill to swallow because in came from a genuine place of appreciation and reverence. It's so easy to do racist things without racist intent because the educational framework of how we teach children to engage with other cultures is in and of itself racist. The road to Hell really is paved with good intentions.
Basically it's like this:
What I Think I'm Communicating: "I want to show you that I am appreciative and respecting of your culture by experiencing it with you and learning it from you."
What I'm Actually Communicating: "I feel entitled to take part in this whether it's appropriate or not because I'm white."
This is why teaching Critical Race Theory and Racelessness Theory in schools is so important. And this is why the Right is so opposed to it being taught. Because the way things are taught now feeds into white supremacy and that's their bread and butter. And the most insidious part of this is that it creates white people who engage in racist behavior, and they don't even know they’re doing it. And when they get told that it's racist, they resist and react because they didn't have hateful intentions.
I'm guilty of this, and that was really gross of me. It's really easy to be so preoccupied with what your intentions are that you don't give enough consideration to how your actions affected the other person and really listen to them. Especially when your intentions and your actions don't align and you're completely ignorant to that.
What I had to learn was that yes, intentions matter, but that doesn't mean that someone has to automatically forgive you if you hurt them. Intentions matter in the sense that your intentions should inform how you handle the situation. If your intention is to be respectful and to learn, then you need to be respectful and listen to them so that you CAN learn. Apologize for the offense, and ask how you can modify your language or behavior going forward. Research and educate yourself. Don't get offended and defensive, apologize and listen.
Learning and Un-learning these things take time and unfortunately no ally is perfect and going to get it right every time. The best that anyone can do is to do the best with the information you have, to listen, and to always be willing to learn more.
I honestly cannot recommend Khadija Mbowe and Tee Noir on YouTube enough. Their videos are amazing and great resources for learning.
