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Is Cultural Appropriation Wrong? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-29
Yesterday, I watched a clip of a young white woman asking why it was wrong for her to braid her hair. The problem with cultural appropriation (IMH), isn’t so much as someone copying a culture, rather it’s that they do not know the meaning of what they are copying and often they copy wrongly.
Think of translation, to be a good translator, you not only need to know a language, but you need to know the culture of the language, so you can translate cliches, nuances, context, meaning not just words (that’s why AI isn’t a very good translator).
Culture is soaked in symbolism and meaning, nuances, context and history, clothing has a meaning, how you wear it has a meaning, when you wear it has a meaning, you can’t just copy someone’s cultural clothing because “it looks good on me”. Lots of people try to speak AAVE, they “think” they know what they are saying but really most do not. Unless raised in a Black American community one does not. Which is why even I as a Black American woman does not do so.
Braids might seem silly to you, but I hope by now everyone knows that braids were used to trace escape routes for the enslaved. Braids have different meanings in different cultures, almost every culture braids youngsters hair. Some cultures do it to signal age and rites of passage. Some cultures use it to signal professions. Some even use it to signal religion or virginity.
When it comes to things like music there’s an added dimension of profitability that’s added to an already fraught situation. People imitate for instance Black musical styles and rhythm and push the creators of said genre out of the way, so they end up getting not only the credit (as they are more known) but also the monetary benefits, they get the glamour and glory, and the original creators get zilch.
Some people take things from other culture to wear them as costumes (in videos, on stage, during Halloween) completely dismissing the values attached to them by the ethnic group, like the headdresses of the Native Americans. By the way you can dress up as a cultural icon for Halloween, just don’t do Black Face if you dress as a Black Icon, because of the history of Black face.
Now the reason why a certain segment of Americans do cultural appropriation without a thought, is because they view culture as dirty word as something the radical left does. Clothing, music, etc… are just passing fads to them. But they do have cultural things to which they attach a lot of meaning… Old Glory anyone? Aren’t there rules about what you can and cannot do to the flag? How about Stolen Valor? See they do know why cultural appropriation is wrong they just never connected it to what’s culturally valuable to them, cause all they hear is “culture” and they start losing it.
#TheAmericanHaitianPoet #Woke #SocialPoetry
Paypal.me/murielvieux (to help Haitian families in crisis)
Muriel Vieux – June 29th, 2025 – ©All rights reserved
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