Our hypercriticality will be society’s downfall. In recent times, we as humans have become so hypercritical about what we can and cannot do, wear, or say in our daily lives. In a world where we are blessed to endure this transitory, astonishing existence, life is too short to be judgmental about what people are wearing. It should be obvious that what anyone wears should not be a problem to anyone else besides that person themselves. However, our minds are so focused on these minuscule ideas that we create problems for ourselves that aren’t there. This is an ongoing problem known as cultural appropriation.
Cultural appropriation is the adoption of elements from a minority culture by a dominant culture. Cultural appropriation essentially hurts our society because people often cannot show their appreciation for another culture. People have skewed its meaning so that anyone (even minorities) who wears something that is adopted from another culture is enforcing cultural appropriation. This and many other reasons are unfortunately the causes of why our social morality is declining in recent times. Therefore, cultural appropriation should not be a global problem due to its duplicitous nature and the loss of its actual meaning over the years.
Today, many people are convinced that cultural appropriation suggests theft of culture owned by a minority. However, truthfully, nobody necessarily owns a culture, but rather, culture taught the culture that is passed down from generation to generation. We are so glued to this falsehood that we don’t realize that culture is a learned behavior that is transmitted through imitation and emulation. “…culture is a derivative of individual experience, something learned or created by individuals themselves or passed on to them socially by contemporaries or ancestors.” (Avruch, 1998) Nobody “owns” culture, and people constantly borrow from each other and have done so throughout human history, even words in languages, whether privileged or not. It is only human nature to adopt certain elements that we admire. There is a boundary between calling it our own and borrowing cultural characteristics or ideas that we appreciate from another.
127 our experts are availableright now
Living in the 21st century has shown us that our lives despite being in different states, countries, and continents, we are all interconnected. We are far more woven together than any other century in world history, due to the internet and other technologies that make the world appear smaller, and thus, theoretically, our world is getting smaller and smaller as our experiences become more and more interconnected. Because of the interconnectivity of the modern world, whatever we say in the United States can decisively sway how other countries take policy action. Consequently, as a direct result, nothing ever really belongs to anyone’s country or culture anymore because anyone’s ideas are for everyone else’s taking. A good example of this idea is food. While astonishing to most, our most well-known dishes such as burgers, French fries, macaroni and cheese and even fried chicken were not from America. All food is taken from all around the world and despite there being so many changes, we essentially borrow these pieces of other cultures and make it into our own. When people appreciate something that they like, they will try to find any means of borrowing it and well, using it. In fact, sharing parts of different cultures allow us to learn and adopt different ideas. However, due to the skewed idea surrounding cultural appropriation, we are unable to let these ideas flow.
The only way to figure out how our understanding of cultural appropriation has been skewed, we must pick out the problem first. The problem surrounding cultural appropriation is white privilege. White privilege is directly related to this because of the stigma concerning cultural appropriation. The stigma is that what is considered mainstream and culturally accepted is “white”, whereas something different and less accepted is something other than white. Due to this stigma, people who are not white believe that they are forced to change themselves to become more culturally accepted in America. “Skin lightening, skin bleaching, “passing for White,” cultural and media representations of beauty commonly associated with Whiteness or “lightness,” and the plastic surgery industry has all fed into the continuation of notions of White racial superiority…” (Wise, 2011)
They integrate their whole lives trying to change themselves rather than accepting who they truly are. Some jobs won’t hire people who aren’t “up to standards” if their hair isn’t straight or if they don’t have a certain hair color. So, people are more inclined to call cultural appropriation whenever a person with white privilege adopts something “different and less accepted,” and because they don’t face the same hardships that people of color do. Thus, this is the reason that people protesting cultural appropriation want to address to the public. Despite all of that, cultural appropriation does not work in our day and age.
In theory, cultural appropriation advocates discrimination because encourages “separate but equal” values. Instead of allowing people with white privileges to wear clothing or hairstyles in which people of color were confronted with, people with white privileges must also be confronted with the same scorn for these clothing or hairstyles to try to balance the double standards, the definition of being “separate but equal”. In a way, cultural appropriation is somewhat of a revenge tactic against all the people with white privilege. But, if America’s history has taught anything, “separate but equal” never actually equals equality. This further proves that this will never lead to equality since by disdaining women (despite having a white privilege or not) for doing something outside their culture, this is allowing parts of minority cultures to never break the ‘mainstream’ stigma of white culture. Kenan Malik, a writer for the New York Times magazine states that ‘The accusation of cultural appropriation is a secular version of the charge of blasphemy. It’s the insistence that certain beliefs and images are so important to particular cultures that they may not appropriated by others.’
Rather than always referencing cultural appropriation to tackle every issue, we should now demolish the whole system of white supremacy in the first place, and then that way it destroys the idea of white privilege. Instead of allowing these issues to happen, we should confront the fact that our society favors more ‘whiteness’ than something ‘non-white’. Even today, we value ‘white culture’ more than ‘non-white’ culture and in ways, we don’t even think about. ‘…At the social (and socio-cultural) level, an infinite number of stories, myths, nursery rhymes, books, posters, games, school curricula, traditions, sports, and societal experiences have constructed, influenced, and shaped society with an appreciation, and deference for, Whiteness in the form of White supremacy, power, and privilege…’ (Sensoy & Angelo, 2012) So, once we have challenged the truth that we value it more, we can start to endeavor in trying to value both non-white and white cultures equally, instead of enabling reverse racism.
Not only that, but we have to also remember that there is no difference between American culture and non-white culture. To put it simply, American culture is a conglomeration of every person who lives in America. Although it may have started with ‘white culture’, people have learned to change it in any way to make it their own. In fact, even though there used to be a boundary that separated black culture from American culture, why is there even a separation emphasized? Why does there have to always be an issue between whites and non-whites in this generation? We aren’t trying to distinguish ourselves from American culture because we do not want to give the idea that there are racial divisions anymore. In fact, we should be past that. Unnecessarily, it gives off the idea that people who don’t have white privilege will never be quelled.
What we need to do is accept the cultures that have made America how it is today. American culture has its origins in Europe, Africa, Asia, America and elsewhere, where immigrants have essentially molded the culture of this country. In reality, if we had never had cultural appropriation, nobody overseas would be able to distinguish what is American and what isn’t. Being American gives us a sense of pride due to the fact that being American doesn’t just mean a culture of one race. It shows other countries that we are apart of a country that was shaped by not only one race but countless others as well.
In a generation where we are becoming so accepting to new ideas, we need to stop so being less accepting and more positive. While history can’t be broken, we have the power to break these boundaries that have been seemingly placed to stop us from expressing ourselves. As long as people are using it peacefully, then it shouldn’t be a problem. While it may be hard to accept, it’s harder to have the strength to try to fight against it. Eventually, people will realize that cultural appropriation is toxic and unnecessary to our society. Rather than bringing us together, why are we applauding something so negative into our lives? For the social justice warriors who believe that this is “justice”, open your eyes to the bitter truth that it is tearing our social values apart. If we only have one shot at this life, why should we waste it on the inevitable?
