The other day, a white SF State student with dreads accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ by a black student. The incident, as reported by ABC affiliate KSBW, was caught on video on the school’s campus Monday. Witness Nicolas Silvera caught it on film and uploaded it to YouTube.
KSBW describes what happened:
In the video, she accosts her fellow student in a hallway of a campus building.
“You’re saying I can’t have a hairstyle because of your culture? Why?” asks the incredulous dreadlock-coiffed student.
“Because it’s my culture,” she says.
Cory Goldstein informs her that dreadlocks we’re “in Egyptian culture” and asks rhetorically “Are you Egyptian? Nah, man, you’re not.”
The woman throws that right back at him. “Are you Egyptian?” she asks. “Wait, where’s Egypt?”
But the man won’t be drawn into a discussion of Mideast geography.
“You know what, girl, you have no right to tell me what I can and cannot wear,” Goldstein says while trying to pass her in order to go up a flight of stairs.
At this point the woman grabs Goldstein’s arm in an attempt to stop him.
“Yo, girl, stop touching me now,” he says, before shaking free. “I don’t need your disrespect.”
He then storms off. Meanwhile, the woman confronts the videographer, saying “Why are you filming this?” and reaching for the camera.
No charges were filed, and the University says it is investigating.
Cultural appropriation, as Wikipedia will tell you, “is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture.” No big deal normally in a world where syncretism rules. Cultures cannot avoid the influence of surrounding cultures, after all, and the same is true of religion and of language.
Jezebel talked to Fordham University Law professor Susan Scafidi, the author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, who explained that cultural appropriation is “Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission.”
“This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It’s most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects.”
This normal process then becomes a much bigger issue when it is the dominant culture – in this country, white culture – taking from an oppressed culture.
If the incident in SF doesn’t make enough of a point, how about this in-your-face episode of what we might call “cultural misappropriation” by Victoria’s Secret:
Some countries, like France and Iceland, prefer their languages pure. The German band Rammstein wrote a 2004 ode to American cultural imperialism called “Amerika” which features the band dressed up like Native Americans. Rammstein speaks of Coca Cola and the Wonderbra, of Santa Claus coming to Africa, and and Mickey Mouse standing in front of Paris – the Paris most of us know as the center of French culture. The song concludes that “we’re all living in America” and that, unsurprisingly, “this is not a love song.”
Yet Fox News wants to pretend that cultural appropriation, like racism, is something they’ve never heard of.
Juan Williams had an encounter with Greg Gutfeld and Eric Bolling on Fox News’ The Five Friday about this latest incident of cultural appropriation, and Greg Gutfeld, to one’s surprise, announced that “you don’t own anyone’s culture” and that therefore, “cultural appropriation is a hoax.” Juan Williams told him that though it did not bother him, “Cultural appropriation is very real.”
Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:
ERIC BOLLING: Cultural — this is a new one for me, Greg. Cultural appropriation. People own culture?
GREG GUTFELD: I hate both of these people equally. Cultural appropriation is a hoax. You don’t own anyone’s culture. In fact I guarantee everything that that black woman was wearing has been appropriated from some other culture, made from somewhere else. But then, white young guys with dreadlocks, it’s a lifestyle on their head. You know that they drink soy milk. You know that they play drums on the beach. You know they have a hacky sack and you know they have a trust fund. And you also know that they pretend like it’s not a big deal but they’re dying for to you ask about their dreadlocks. And it stinks.
BOLLING: Juan, does a white guy in dreadlocks offend you? Do you feel he’s appropriating your culture?
JUAN WILLIAMS: Not at all. I mean, I find it odd sometimes — and I do think it’s very real. Cultural appropriation is very real. But I mean, you know where I think it’s real? It’s like rap music. Which I, ya know, every time I say to people, you know who’s the biggest consumers of rap music are? White people. Teenage white guess. Why do they love it? I guess it’s teen rebellion or something, and they say stereotypes about black people are rebellions and violent.
BOLLING: So are white teens in the suburbs, they’re appropriating black culture?
WILLIAMS: What?
BOLLING: They’re appropriating it or just enjoying it?
WILLIAMS: No, they’re taking it. I think, they’re in their car and rapping about over-sexed and violent.
GUTFELD: What about Darius Rucker doing country music?
WILLIAMS: That’s country music. That’s a different thing.
GUTFELD: He’s appropriating white music.
WILLIAMS: That’s a different kind of appropriation if you think of like Elvis or Blue-Eyed Soul, like Hall & Oates. And I love Hall & Oates.
Leave it to Fox News to play the ignorance chord and suck all meaning from the dialogue. It’s what they do. It’s what their audience wants. Actually thinking about real issues doesn’t help anyone, is the Republican mantra, one extending all the way to Congress, as I showed last night.
Cultural appropriation is as old as cultures coming into contact with each other. There is an example of Phoenician appropriation of Egyptian culture in the British Museum, though in this case the Phoenicians cannot be said to be the dominant culture. The Hittites of Asia Minor did not even use their own language, let alone their own gods.
And the Romans appropriated everything they came into contact with to the extent that Roman writer Juvenal expressed himself eloquently on these prudish Roman attitudes by saying that the Orontes had flowed into the Tiber, which speaks of influences born of decadent Antioch, on the river Orontes in distant and exotic (to be read as ‘decadent’) Syria.
Many white people (if not only white people) are cultural insensitive. We lack the context of the meaning of objects in their native cultures. We might think it “looks cool” and you sometimes hear white referred to as “vanilla,” not only by whites, who have lost contact with their ethnic roots, but by blacks. You can find rural schools full of white kids in love with rap music while entirely lacking the cultural context of that music. You can even find, paradoxically, schools full of Native American kids doing the same.
The incident in San Francisco was a clear case of assault, and a hair-style, or even cultural appropriation is no excuse to assault somebody. That is not to say that the problem does not exist. At the very least, people should be aware of what they’re doing, and of the potential implications. As Jezebel recommended, do some research. In a world where cultural genocide is a very real thing, awareness is never a bad thing.
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