- Amandla Stenberg
In her video, Amandla points out that cultural appropriation happens very frequently in pop culture, especially appropriation from African American culture. She explains that cultural appropriation happens when white people copy black hairstyles or music types without understanding where they came from or acknowledging the hardships of people who created them, Picking and choosing which aspects of other people's culture we would like to embrace is unfair to those people. We cannot love the fun parts of people's culture without acknowledging and helping to diminish their struggles.
Halloween just passed, and as a holiday it has the most rampant cultural appropriation. Recently, groups have emphasized that their culture is not a costume, but many people still do not understand this, including celebrities. Hilary Duff and beau Jason Walsh dressed as a Native American and Pilgrim couple this Halloween.
After receiving much criticism for their selection, which reduces Native Americans to a costume and ignores the disagreements between Native tribes and early setters, both Hilary and Jason issued public apologies via social media.
Hilary Duff may have learned her lesson, but the plight of minorities in America is still swept under the rug as if it did not exist. As Gaudium et Spes recommends that we use our leisure time, which is a modern luxury to "preserve equilibrium of spirit even in the community and to establish fraternal relations among men of all conditions, nations and races" (61). Elaborate Halloween costumes and celebrity culture in general are products of humanity's modern leisure time. With this leisure, we should promote ideas that help to unify all people. Hilary meant no harm with her selection, but she dehumanized a group of people by using their culture without permission and with disregard for where it came from. This created more division than unification.
GS also mentions using "cultural benefits, especially of this which constitute the so-called fundamental culture lest very many be prevented from cooperating in the promotion of the common good in a truly human manner because of illiteracy and a lack of responsible activity" (60). We are privileged to be able to celebrate Halloween and use spare money to buy or make costumes. We should use this privilege to spread awareness or positive messages, rather than stigmatize already marginalized cultures.
What can be hard for some people What can be hard for some people to understand is that there lack of thought about certain decisions can be somewhat racist and insensitive. By no means does this imply that the person in question really is racist or insensitive, although it can, but it just means that they come from a different starting place, normally one of privilege. We are forgetting to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes to see how it would feel. I do not think that Hilary Duff meant any harm, but it still was harmful. I’m glad she feels remorse and this will probably cause her to think a little longer about her next Halloween costume, but instead of having to figure from our own experiences, the rest of us need to use this as a wakeup call. We really need to be considerate and think through our actions, this includes our Halloween costumes all the way to the comments that we make every day.
ReplyDeleteThere definitely needs to be a bigger sense of responsibility and accountability when it comes to other cultures. It is so easy for us to be lazy and to choose to embrace the parts of a different culture that we find we like the best. However, the truth about other cultures is that there are parts to proud of and parts that allow the ignorance of humanity to shine. It does an injustice to a certain group of people when we only choose one or the other to reflect on. I think that we need to better educate ourselves when it comes to other cultures in order to understand different perspectives and to be better members of society.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post and for your good explanation of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is an issue that happens quite frequently in current times, but it is an issue that I think is often misunderstood so thank you again for this informative explanation. I thought that the final image you included featuring the statement "I wear the stigma for life" was very powerful.
ReplyDelete