THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CULTURAL EXCHANGE AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

“RUBBING OFF” Canada has long been known as a multicultural and, more recently, as a cultural mosaic.

“RUBBING OFF” Because people from hundreds of different ethnic backgrounds make up the nation’s population, it’s not surprising that at times cultural groups rub off on each other.

“RUBBING OFF” Canadians who grow up in diverse communities may pick up the dialect, customs and religious traditions of the cultural groups that surround them.

“RUBBING OFF” Cultural appropriation is an entirely different matter, however. It has little to do with one’s exposure to and familiarity with different cultures.

WHAT IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION?

DEFINING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Cultural appropriation typically involves members of a dominant group exploiting the culture of less privileged groups--often with little understanding of the latter’s history, experience and traditions.

DEFINING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Accordingly, socially aware people tend to frown upon this phenomenon.

DEFINING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University, defines cultural appropriation as follows:

DEFINING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION “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...”

DEFINING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION “... 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.”

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN CANADA In Canada, cultural appropriation almost always involves members of the dominant culture (or those who identify with it) “borrowing” from the cultures of minority groups.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN CANADA Indo Canadians, African Canadians, Asian Canadians, Aboriginal People generally tend to emerge as the groups targeted for cultural appropriation.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN CANADA Black music and dance, Native fashions, decorations and cultural symbols, and Asian martial arts and dress have all fallen prey to cultural appropriation.

WHAT ARE SOME RECENT EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION?

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Musicians such as Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Miley Cyrus and Pharrell have all been accused of cultural appropriation.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Madonna, for instance, popularized the form of personal expression known as Voguing (1990), which began in black and Latino sectors of the gay community. Madonna has also used Latin America as a backdrop in a music video and appeared in attire with roots in Asia.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Gwen Stefani has faced criticism for her fixation on Harajuku culture from Japan (2011). She has used in her photo shoots, concerts and videos the Harajuku Girls who are four Japanese and Japanese American backup dancers.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Gwen Stefani stated, she’s been a fan of Japan and its mix-and-match fashion sense since first visiting the country with No Doubt in the mid-’90s; “The truth is that I basically was saying how great that culture is”.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION In 2013, Miley Cyrus became the pop star most associated with cultural appropriation. During recorded and live performances of the MTV Video Music Awards in August, the former child star began to twerk, a dance style with roots in African-American culture.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION “On stage as well as in her video she used the tedious trope of having black women as her backing singers, there only to be fondled by her and to admire her wiggling derriere,” Freeman pointed out.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION “…Cyrus is explicitly imitating crunk music videos and the sort of hip-hop she finds so edgy – she has said, bless her, that she feels she is Lil' Kim inside and she loves ‘hood music’ …”

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION “…and the effect was not of a homage but of a minstrel show, with a young wealthy woman from the South doing a garish imitation of black music and reducing black dancers to background fodder and black women to exaggerated sex objects.”

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Pharrell Williams is apologizing to his fans after appearing in a First Nation headdress on the cover of a fashion magazine. Fans were quick to express their anger after the release of the Elle UK magazine cover.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION Williams is known for his fashion choices including odd headgear, but fans say this latest stunt is not just outrageous, it's offensive.

EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION "I respect and honour every kind of race, background and culture,” Pharrell said. “I am genuinely sorry."

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM?

Cultural appropriation remains a concern for a variety of reasons. For one, this sort of “borrowing” is exploitative because it robs minority groups of the credit they deserve.

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? Art forms, music forms, etc., that originated with minority groups come to be associated with members of the dominant group.

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? As a result the dominant group is deemed innovative and edgy, while the disadvantaged groups they “borrow” from continue to face negative stereotypes that imply they’re lacking in intelligence, creativity and more.

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? In addition, when members of a dominant group appropriate the cultures of others, they often reinforce stereotypes about minority groups.

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? When singer Katy Perry performed as a geisha at the American Music Awards in November 2013, she described it as an homage to Asian culture. Asian Americans and Canadians disagreed with this assessment, declaring her performance “yellowface.”

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? The Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Yang said that her performance did not celebrate Asian culture but misrepresented it entirely.

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? He found it particularly problematic that Perry dressed as a geisha to perform the song “Unconditonally” about a woman who pledges to love her man no matter what.

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? “The thing is, while a bucket of toner can strip the geisha makeup off of Perry’s face, nothing can remove the demeaning and harmful iconography of the lotus blossom from the West’s perception of Asian women — a stereotype that presents them as servile, passive,” Yang wrote...

WHY IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION A PROBLEM? “...and as Perry would have it, ‘unconditional’ worshippers of their men, willing to pay any price and weather any kind of abuse in order to keep him happy.”

WHERE DO WE DRAW THE LINE?

TO CRITICALLY PONDER Where do we draw the line between “appropriate” forms of cultural exchange and more damaging patterns of cultural appropriation?

THE LINE: “APPROPRIATE” END DAMAGING? To be honest, I don’t know that there is a thin, straight line between them.

THE LINE: “APPROPRIATE” END DAMAGING? But even if the line between exchange and appropriation bends, twists, and loop-de-loops in ways it would take decades of academic thought to unpack, it has a definite starting point: RESPECT.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT Cultural exchange is not the process of “Here’s my culture, I’ll have some of yours” that we sometimes think it is. It’s something that should be mutual.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT The fact is, Western culture invites and, at times, demands assimilation.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT Not every culture has chosen to open itself up to being adopted by outsiders in the same way. And there’s good reason for that.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT “Ethnic” clothes and hairstyles are still stigmatized as unprofessional, “cultural” foods are treated as exotic past times, and the vernacular of people of color is ridiculed and demeaned.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT So there is an unequal exchange between Western culture – an all-consuming mishmash of over-simplified and sellable foreign influences with a dash each of Coke and Pepsi – and marginalized cultures.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT So as free as people should be to wear whatever hair and clothing they enjoy, using someone else’s cultural symbols to satisfy a personal need for self-expression is an exercise in privilege.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT Because for those of us who have felt forced and pressured to change the way we look, behave, and speak just to earn enough respect to stay safe, our modes of self-expression are still limited.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT For instance, many people whitewash black slang and use expressions they barely understand as punch lines, or to make themselves seem cool.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT Another example is when people shirk “ethnic” clothes in corporate culture, but wear bastardized versions of them on Halloween. costume-costumes-stereotypes-cultural-appropriation- hall/ costume-costumes-stereotypes-cultural-appropriation- hall/

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT Or when the fashion industry uses ethnic motifs in the new fashion lines. conversation-on-fashion-cultural-appropriation/ conversation-on-fashion-cultural-appropriation/

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE IS NOT There is no exchange, understanding, or respect in such cases – only taking.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN LOOK LIKE

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE This does not mean that cultural exchange never happens, or that we can never partake in one another’s cultures. There needs to be some element of mutual understanding, equality, and respect for it to be a true exchange.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE Cultural exchange can look like this = engaging with a culture as a respectful and humble guest, by invitation only.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE If, instead, you try to approach another culture as a mooch, busybody, or interloper, you will be shown the door. It’s that simple.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE There are so many things that have been chopped up, recolored, and tossed together to make up Western culture that even when we know things are appropriative in some way, we find them hard to let go of.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE “Is this [insert pop culture thing, hairstyle, tattoo, or personal behavior here] cultural appropriation?” That’s a question we have to educate ourselves enough to, if not answer, think critically about.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE We have a responsibility to listen to people of marginalized cultures, understand as much as possible the blatant and subtle ways in which their cultures have been appropriated and exploited, and educate ourselves enough to make informed choices when it comes to engaging with people of other cultures.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE This isn’t a matter of telling people what to wear. It’s a matter of telling people that they don’t wear things in a vacuum and there are many social and historical implications to treating marginalized cultures like costumes.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE It’s also not a matter of ignoring “real” issues in favor of criticizing the missteps of a few hipsters, fashion magazines, or sports teams.

WHAT CULTURAL EXCHANGE CAN BE Cultural appropriation is itself a real issue because it demonstrates the imbalance of power that still remains between cultures that have been colonized and the ex-colonizers.

THE FUTURE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE AND THE DEMISE OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

FINAL THOUGHTS Cultural appropriation highlights the power imbalance that remains between those in power and those who’ve been historically marginalized.

FINAL THOUGHTS As such, a member of a dominant group can assume the traditional dress of a minority group for a Halloween party, a music performance and so on.

FINAL THOUGHTS Yet, they remain blissfully unaware of the roots of such dress and the challenges those who originated have faced in Western culture.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITY Your responsibility is to educate yourself, listen, and be open to reexamining the symbols you use without thinking, the cultures you engage with without understanding, and the historical and social climate we all need to be seeing.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITY See the additional reading: Is Your Halloween Costume Racist?