Notes

(a) it creates stereotypes


1a. causes ignorance and leads to making presumptions about the culture's individual’s characteristics

Stereotypes are fixed and oversimplified images or ideas about groups of people. Stereotypes, which are typically negative in nature, tend to lead us to respond to individuals based on unsupported assumptions about groups to which that individual might belong. Stereotyping diminishes our ability to “see” the uniqueness of the individual. By stereotyping, we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that we ascribe to all members of that group.

https://docustory.tcnj.edu/themes/stereotypes/




3a. leads to racist ideals and actions being seen as ok

The power of the White majority to decide what is valued as "normal" or acceptable, and to impart subtle and often unconscious messages about what is "right" and what is not, is especially critical when we consider children. Kenneth Clark found that, by the age of three or four, children develop opinions about their own racial groups based on socially prevailing ideas and other expressions from the dominant culture—in spite of the fact that the child may have had no direct experience with another racial, ethnic or cultural group.

https://www.uua.org/multiculturalism/introduction/misappropriation/37852.shtml





2a. it leads people to not be aware of what's offensive

Before it became a racist stereotype in the Jim Crow era, watermelon once symbolized self-sufficiency among African Americans. Following Emancipation, many Southern African Americans grew and sold watermelons, and it became a symbol of their freedom. Many Southern whites reacted to this self-sufficiency by turning the fruit into a symbol of poverty. Watermelon came to symbolize a feast for the "unclean, lazy and child-like." To shame black watermelon merchants, popular ads and ephemera, including postcards pictured African Americans stealing, fighting over, or sitting in streets eating watermelon. Watermelons being eaten hand to mouth without utensils made it impossible to consume without making a mess, therefore branded a public nuisance.

https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans








(b)_________gives credit to the appropriators instead of the actual creators_____________________________________________________________________


1b. It allows appropriators to change how the history of the appropriated is seen and prevents the history of the appropriated from being seen from their point of view



A section in Fabius' book is devoted to the most frequently asked questions about henna. The first question is "Why is this five-thousand-year-old art form suddenly enjoying such popularity in the West today?" The answer Fabius gives is revealing:

"While it is true that mehndi might be the most recent ancient art form to be discovered in this day and age, for many well-travelled Europeans and Americans, mehndi certainly isn't new. Morocco and India have always been popular tourist destinations and the practice of mehndi is everywhere to behold, in marketplaces and outside of tourist attractions like the Taj Mahal. So when mehndi made the headlines in the States, then Europe, for many it struck a chord; one that brought back pleasant memories of exotic holidays in faraway places."(8)


https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2267918481?searchid=1669472096&accountid=5362



2b. It allows the dominant culture to control the viewpoints

In american pop culture, blackness is associated with coolness. Whites are drawn to the mainstream social constructions of black culture as a sign of rebellion.

Colonizers are fascinated with all aspects of Black Culture—whether music, language, style, or nonverbal expressions.


It’s easy for white people to adopt Black Culture when they don’t deal with the consequences of Blackness in the united states.

White people have the choice to adopt “Blackness” when it’s cool for them to do so—they aren’t subjected to the everyday, colonial violence that occurs for being Black in the united states.

https://blackhammer.org/2020/04/27/white-consumption-of-black-culture-is-rooted-in-white-supremacy/





3b. It takes away the significance and hardships carried with the origins of the appropriated thing


However, the celebration of Irish culture is often associated with going to an Irish bar while wearing the color green and seeing how many beers an individual can consume in one evening. This is a wildly derogatory and culturally insensitive interpretation of a holiday with true national and religious significance.
By picking and choosing particular aspects of a cultural holiday purely for their entertainment value, the increase in its marketability clearly illustrates how easy it is to forget how inherently disrespectful it is to override the meaning of what someone else’s history and culture mean.


https://collegian.csufresno.edu/2019/03/americans-tend-to-disregard-cultural-appropriation-during-popular-holidays/









(c)It obstructs the identity of different cultures(AA and blacks)




1c. it trivializes violent historical oppression

“Kids sneered at it, asking me what ‘disease’ I had. I avoided wearing henna to school after that for many years,” Mehta says.
Some years later, pop singer Madonna popularized henna in the United States by sporting it in her 1998 “Frozen” music video.1 Singer Gwen Stefani also wore aspects of Indian culture such as bindis — a decorative mark or jewel worn on the middle of the forehead by Indian women, especially Hindus — on red carpets and in music videos in the 1990s. Suddenly, it appeared that cultural Indian symbols were ubiquitous.

https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2022021100




3c. It allows white people to spread mass lies about African Americans

For centuries, White culture has decided what is perceived as the ideal body image for women. In most instances, the perfect body was the opposite of the shape of a Black woman. The Black woman’s curvaceous body was defined as obese or masculine. Black women were presented as “Mammie” types, unattractive, overweight, and unfit for anything more than physical labor or wearing a handkerchief and smiling on a pancake box. Exaggerated depictions, like that of a bent-over Black woman with a large buttock, were the representation of all Black women. Hence, Black women were subjected to body shaming for centuries.

https://www.edi.nih.gov/blog/communities/anatomy-black-woman-my-body-beautiful





2c. It allows whites to steal from blacks without any repercussion or credit given
Elvis Presley

Last month, sisters Khloé Kardashian and Kylie Jenner came under fire for their respective fashion lines. Independent black lingerie and bodysuit designer Destiney Bleu publicly called Khloé out on Twitter for purportedly ripping off her designs and using them for her denim label Good American. Two days later, Khloé’s legal team issued Destiny a cease and desist letter claiming her designs were “inspired by the 1990’s [sic] and are evocative of clothing worn by Cher and others at the time,” Refinery29 reports. Khloé then went on to say that both she and her team were unfamiliar with Destiny's designs and had never heard of her.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/kylie-jenner-khloe-kardashian-stealing-black-designers/amp














A recent New York Times piece cheers on cultural appropriation. In it, Bari Weiss argues appropriation is what drives American culture. Since the beginning, we've taken bits and pieces from other cultures in order to create something fresh and new.

https://thetylt.com/culture/can-cultural-appropriation-be-a-good-thing