Culturally Informative Essay: What Is A Cultural Appropriation?

“Cultural appropriation” is a phrase that seems to be cropping up more and more over the past couple of years. Social media users and social justice bloggers have been calling attention to the phenomenon in pop culture; recent examples include backlash towards Harry Styles and Lana Del Rey for wearing traditional Native American headdresses in photos and music videos, or black actress Amanda Stenberg’s explanatory video “Don’t Cash Crop on my Cornrows.” This dialogue brings up an important question: are millennials just being too sensitive, or is cultural appropriation a legitimate and problematic phenomenon? Is it ever acceptable to engage in cultural appropriation, and what would that look like? Last month, I had the privilege of attending
But under this definition, wouldn’t everyone be guilty of this practice, as we are constantly crossing paths with people from different cultures? If I go to Purim with my Jewish friends, or wear a sari at my Indian friend’s wedding, am I “stealing” aspects of their culture? It is here that we must make the differentiation between cultural appropriation and cultural misappropriation, or the usage of cultural elements without the acknowledgment of the meaning behind them. Some examples of these would be non-black people wearing dreads or cornrows, non-Muslims wearing the hijab, non-Indians wearing saris or non-South Asians wearing bindis, as – and this is the important part – an aesthetic or fashion statement and not for a symbolic or functional purpose. When I explained this to one of my friends, she immediately made the connection to her own culture, observing that it would be like non-Mormons wearing garments. Individuals, particularly those from a dominant or historically oppressive culture, need to take care in such situations as it can be seen as disrespectful or flippant towards a minority culture’s struggle to preserve cultural