Before I start, I’ll warn you that I am a privileged white woman who is about to write about cultural appropriation.
Cultural appropriation is a newly acknowledged phenomenon, which leaves it open to multiple interpretations. It came into public consciousness around 2013, the year Miley Cyrus made twerking a thing. She raised questions about whether she was stealing aspects of another culture and profiting off of them.
According to a New York Times article, cultural appropriation is “pretending for fun or profit to be a member of an ethnic, racial or gender group to which you do not belong.” Other sources state, more specifically, it is exploiting aspects of a minority group.
Since then, society has become more aware of the negative impact “borrowing” aspects of different cultures can have. Actress Amandla Stenberg was praised after criticizing white celebrities’ adoption of black culture without defending black lives as police brutality came to a head in the United States. In Canada, music festivals, including Osheaga and Boots and Hearts, banned First Nations headdresses.
It’s important to recognize appropriation within our society, but becoming overly cautious can be dangerous. The University of Ottawa student union’s recent decision to cancel free yoga because of cultural appropriation highlights this.
I’m not going to pretend to understand the spirituality behind yoga, or how frustrating it must be for someone who is Hindu to have to contend with LuluLemon “yoga pants” and water bottles that say “Namaste, bitches,” all because yoga has been adopted (or stolen, depending on your perspective) by the West. But there is still a difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation.
If we take away yoga, what’s next? Carleton itself offers yoga, martial arts, and belly dancing through its fitness classes. Should all of those be cancelled in the name of cultural sensitivity?
And if so, where do we draw the line? As students, we’re constantly being exposed to new cultures. We are encouraged to learn new languages, take history courses on far-away societies, and to go on exchange in foreign countries. Are these activities also culturally insensitive?
When you limit someone’s experience of another culture, you diminish their chances of understanding a culture outside their own. That doesn’t create a more tolerant society. It does the opposite. We don’t get to find that the food with the strange smell actually tastes good, or the music with the guttural singing has historic traditions .
Just because we’re not from a certain culture doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate it. The problem with cultural appropriation is it continues to rob marginalized groups of an equal position in our society by stealing aspects of their culture without fully understanding it. Essentially, cultural appropriation doesn’t appreciate the culture—it only appreciates certain, convenient parts of it.
Truly appreciating a culture means learning its history, and what relation our own cultural experience has to it. That includes understanding that if you’re white, you hold more privilege than those who are not, and you can’t use pieces of minority cultures for the hell of it. But that doesn’t mean closing ourselves off in a wall of political correctness.
In a country dealing with the niqab debate, a promise to aid Syrian refugees, and a call for an inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women, it’s more important to be open to cultures we don’t understand than ever before. That won’t come from cancelling activities for fear of offending others. That comes from open conversation, education, and like everything else, acceptance.
