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You may think glaringly offensive items have nothing to do with you or your closet. "I would never buy an offensive item or appropriate something from another culture," you might say. "That'll never be me."
But it helps to be sure.
I've seen blond Caucasian women wearing henna hand tattoos or cornrows with dashikis (traditional African caftans), and American tourists posting selfies while wearing turbans with embroidered caftans in the Middle East. I can't help but wonder if they see these things as colorful, disposable accessories that can be amusingly donned and then ditched.

In general, I don't believe those people are malicious or intend to hurt anyone when they borrow the symbols of a culture that isn't their own. But when you wear another group's cultural signifiers head to toe, it can create the impression that you see them as a costume. It's demeaning.

Being white and wearing a dashiki might be interpreted as problematic; wearing one with cornrows or dreadlocks in your hair almost certainly would be.

We have a term within the Black community: "Christopher Columbus-ing." It's taking something from a marginalized group and renaming it to claim it as your own. Or, as the Washington Post's Clinton Yates explained, it's "showing up someplace and acting as if history started the moment you arrived."

When Kim Kardashian wore cornrows or Fulani braids - a hairstyle with deep roots in the Black community - but called them "Bo Derek braids" (a reference to the blond-and-blue-eyed movie star who wore them in the 1979 movie 10), she was met with outrage. Black people I know were like, "No, these are cornrows or boxer braids! We grew up with this! These are styles we get as kids!"

Kardashian more recently wore traditional Indian bridal forehead jewelry to a Sunday church service, prompting one Instagram commenter to remark, "I love how this is from the Indian culture and no recognition [is] given whatso[e]ver."

Remember Miley Cyrus's 2013 makeover from Hannah Montana to twerking, grill-flashing, hand signal-throwing, bandana-wearing, tongue-thrusting Bangerz hitmaker? As Dodai Stewart wrote at the time for Jezebel, Cyrus "can play at blackness without being burdened by the reality of it ... But blackness is not a piece of jewelry you can slip on when you want a confidence booster or a cool look."

If you don't understand cultural appropriation, imagine working on a project and getting an F and then somebody copies you and gets an A and credit for your work.

Privilege and erasure are at the heart of any discussion about appropriation. It's not that Kim K or Miley Cyrus meant to offend with their hairstyles or jewelry. Their intent may very well have been homage.

But as non-Black and -brown celebrities, they have the privilege to wear the looks associated with another person's culture when that person can't necessarily wear looks from her own culture without suffering some type of fallout. Sometimes I wish I could wear those "Bo Derek" cornrow braids because I just want my hair off my face.

But what does it signal when I wear them as a Black woman? It denotes that I'm ghetto or that I'm likely not educated. Maybe I'm into rappers and I smoke weed. I don't have the license to wear this particular hairstyle as I want to. Kim Kardashian, however, can wear it any day of the week and walk into an office or a business meeting, and no one is going to think she uses drugs or lacks sophistication. No one is going to fire her or Miley, or kick them out of school for wearing these hairstyles.

I read a quote on Instagram (posted by New York City hairstylist Tenisha F. Sweet) that said, "If you don't understand cultural appropriation, imagine working on a project and getting an F and then somebody copies you and gets an A and credit for your work."

Sarah Jessica Parker wears a turban in Abu Dhabi in Sex and the City 2 - and it's fashion. But a Middle Eastern or Indian or other minority woman wearing the same turban in the US has to worry if someone is going to think she's a terrorist or a palm reader or whatever other stereotypes are associated with wearing a turban.

In America, turbans are often associated with danger. Comprehensive research out of Stanford shows we exhibit automatic biases - heightened since 9/11 - against those wearing turbans, are more prone to perceive innocent objects held by the turban wearer as weapons, and, in video games at least, shoot at them more frequently simply because they wear turbans. But no one is going to worry that Sarah Jessica Parker might blow up the plane. She actually has the privilege to enter most rooms and spaces dressed any way she likes without people attaching stereotypes to her.

I know a Middle Eastern young woman who wears a head covering for religious reasons. When she goes out, she thinks twice: "Maybe I should show a bit of my hair or wear more makeup so I seem less threatening?" These are the second thoughts that some people have to consider when they're trying to display their own culture. Others only have to think once.

Privilege isn't about what you've gone through; it's about what you haven't had to go through.

Privilege is a touchy subject, because it puts the people who have it on the defensive. (And that's pretty much all of us, since we all benefit from one form of privilege or another.) As activist Janaya "Future" Khan so powerfully explained in a viral video, people have explosive reactions to the word "privilege." They feel defensive because they themselves have almost certainly been marginalized in some way; they too have gone through heartache and trauma at the hands of others.

But, as Khan clarifies, "Privilege isn't about what you've gone through; it's about what you haven't had to go through."

This much I know: In order to work through these issues, we have to hear one another, to see one another's humanity, to acknowledge one another's hurt. We need understanding at every level. As Roxane Gay writes in her book Bad Feminist, "We should be able to say, 'This is my truth,' and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist."

On the fashion front, what is someone who loves lots of different cultures to do? Are we as individuals "allowed" to wear only the native styles of our ancestors? Should everybody just shop at the Gap and call it a day? I'm not discouraging anyone from being inspired by other cultures, and I don't think we should water down our looks for fear of the thought police.

It comes down to the spirit in which you wear a garment - and whether that spirit communicates respect versus condescension.

There are super-simple ways to be sensitive without sacrificing style. Personally, I love wearing kimonos. I recently gave a lecture on their history at the Newark Museum. I was fascinated to learn how the garment has evolved over millennia, and how even today in Japan, there are strict rules about how a kimono has to be tied and folded. When I wore a kimono for that lecture, I made it my own. I paired it with black over-the-knee suede boots and minimal accessories. In other words, I didn't wear wooden clogs or style my hair in a shimada, the way that Vogue editors styled a white model for a famously appropriative and incendiary 2017 spread. Again, it's culture, not costume.

But the line differentiating the two isn't always clear. Reaction was mixed when a Caucasian high school student wore a cheongsam to her senior prom. It's important to note that her hair, makeup and accessories were tasteful and subdued. One angry observer tweeted: "My culture is NOT ... your goddamn prom dress." But the popular opinion in China, per some press reports, was to celebrate the teen for her stylish choice.

There is no law on whether or not it's acceptable to wear a cheongsam if you are not Chinese. It comes down to the spirit in which you wear a garment - and whether that spirit communicates respect versus condescension.

The line between celebration and appropriation gets crossed when there is the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices or ideas of one group by another, typically more dominant group. It comes down to whether you're aware of a look's cultural history, whether you give credit where it is due (as opposed to renaming the style), and how you honor whatever you are borrowing.

So borrow away - just be conscious about it.
The next time you're thinking about wearing an item from another culture, here are some tips for what to do:
Are you Halloween-ing it?

When you wear cultural items head to toe, it can seem like a Halloween costume. Mix in other elements as well.

Educate yourself

Do a little research into a garment's cultural history before you wear it. I'm not saying pull out a book and read a whole history of boxer braids or the kimono. But google it. Do your due diligence by looking into a style's historical meaning, so you're not walking around inadvertently renaming or disrespecting something.

Be respectful

If you are wearing a spiritually significant item from a culture other than your own, don't behave in a way that's antithetical to that culture's values and customs. Of course, we are all free to do as we wish - as my friends might say, "Who's gonna check me, boo?" But I personally wouldn't wear a hijab to a bar or a bindi with a bikini. I would be careful not to dishonor the symbol.

Ponder your privilege

Think about whether someone else would encounter bias if she wore the style you're considering. If a member of the culture that originated the look were to wear it, might she suffer for it? If the answer gives you pause, rethink whether your fashion statement is worth it.
Excerpted from the new book Watch her TEDxFIT talk here: Dress Your Best Life: How to Use Fashion Psychology to Take Your Look and Life to the Next Level by Dawnn Karen. Reprinted with permission from Little, Brown Spark, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Copyright © 2020 by Dawnn Karen Mahulawde.

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When is it OK to wear an item from another culture, and when is it appropriation? How to tell

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It's fine to choose styles from other cultures; the key is to be conscious about what you're doing. Fashion psychologist Dr. Dawnn Karen provides some thoughtful advice.

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Hair is not an easy thing for a woman to manage, day to day. And tangles aren't our only trouble. In recent times, hairstyles have increasingly become a politicised, racialised issue that women are expected to have a stance on.

Some argue that when white women braid or wear their hair in cornrows this is "cultural appropriation", while black women are asked to show race allegiance by keeping our hair natural.

Recently, the US actor Amandla Stenberg accused some white female celebrities of cultural appropriation for wearing hairstyles usually associated with black women; there was heated debate over Kylie Jenner's cornrows; and this week the BBC is running a debate series on the "political issue" of African women's hairstyles.

This is a case of some women wanting to dictate to other women how they should wear their hair

I do understand the symbolism of hair, especially to black women who, like black men, have had to endure taunts and insults about their natural physical appearance in the past. However, in the words of India.Arie: "I am not my hair." And no woman of any colour should feel the need to defend her choice of hairstyle.

While I appreciate the arguments in favour of black women taking pride in their natural hair, I can't help feeling that the politics of hair is fast becoming another issue that exacerbates the racial divide. It has also become a case of some women wanting to dictate to other women how they should wear their hair. If they don't comply, it means they are "trying to be white" or "cultural appropriators", as the case may be.

In an era in which mixing, matching and borrowing are fundamental elements of fashion worldwide, an era in which we are trying to emphasise our common humanity, do we really have to insist on particular hairstyles being the exclusive ownership of a certain race? I had hoped such days were long gone.

I choose to wear my hair natural not because I suddenly discovered how evil hair relaxers are, but because of my hair texture. I also choose to wear weaves, style my kinky locks into an afro when I'm feeling hip, or to go braided just to take a break from the daily bother of managing my largely uncooperative hair. I choose to celebrate the freedom of swinging between hairstyles, and if women out there of any race choose to adapt my styles, I have no qualms about that. If white women want to wear their hair "the black way" I see it as a cultural export, not appropriation.

It's akin to wearing blusher as part of my make-up routine - I love the subtle brightness of colour on my cheeks, illusory as that may be, but this should not be interpreted as a desire to be something else. Theoretically though, as a black woman I could also be accused of appropriation because visible blushing isn't meant to be apparent on dark skin like mine. This would mean me having to reconsider my whole make-up routine. The horror!

I'd also have to ditch the crochet braids I sometimes love to wear above my cornrows because my natural hair texture is quite coarse and nowhere near the pretty curls of the synthetic braid extensions I use on occasions. But I refuse to be apologetic or feel disloyal to my race for my beauty routines and extensions.

Cultural appropriation in America can be audacious. Just look at the Ku Klux Klan | Michael W Twitty

We women often complain of being judged by men on our appearance rather than our achievements. To instigate heated discussions about which women are allowed to wear certain hairstyles seems to me to be playing right into the chauvinist narrative of a woman being defined by how she looks and what she wears.

It is a tricky affair to start marking out cultural territories in the realm of fashion because this raises unending questions. What if white women raised an objection to black women wearing wigs or extensions with silky textures, pointing out the similarities to their own hair? Would such battles leave anyone with a sense of fulfilment?

Politicising the issue of hair is wrong. Women have fought for the freedom to make their own choices for centuries. Why do some women now want to take over the role of men in dictating to us how we should or shouldn't look? It is important a woman's conception of beauty isn't dictated by society, black or white, female or male. All that will do is to undermine the self-confidence of some women and build walls between us.

Race issues can have a quicksand effect, but experiences are powerful in shaping individual perspectives. If, for instance, Rachel Dolezal wants to wear her hair "black" or "dress black", is she really hurting anybody by doing that? I honestly can't see how.

It is good there is more notice of what black women can achieve with their natural hairstyles. What doesn't make sense is the constant bickering over what qualifies as "black" hair. So whether you decide to wear cornrows as a white woman or do the big chop and transition to natural hair as a black woman, it's up to you and not the hair police. As for me, my hair roots - however they're styled - do not in any way make me disloyal to my black roots.
Topics

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Why the fuss over a white woman having a black hairstyle? | Sede Alonge

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Hair is not an easy thing for a woman to manage, day to day. And tangles aren't our only trouble. In recent times, hairstyles have increasingly become a politicised, racialised issue that women are expected to have a stance on.

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From viral dances to 'American Dirt,' author Lauren Michele Jackson explains the difference between creative evolution and cultural theft.

Oscar Wilde famously said, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." It's telling that second half of the quote has been erased, inverting Wilde's pithy insights into the inferiority of impersonation into a lofty justification of mimicry. Yet the impulse to mirror those around us goes beneath the surface of things. Copying is not always a conscious choice. It begins on a neurological level with the mirror-neuron system, an involuntary and automatic response to help us negotiate the world by creating physiological and emotional connections with others.

Since being first discovered two decades ago, scientists have begun to investigate the role mirror neurons could play in the imitation of language, sounds, actions, and ideas. Taken out of the laboratory, we can see this phenomenon play out in everyday acts of appropriation such the viral transit of the latest word or turn of phrase, a fresh new ingredient or cooking technique, a dance move or pose that seamlessly works its way into pre-existing choreography. Appropriation, it seems, is a profoundly human impulse.

"I think appropriation has a bit of a bad rap," says Lauren Michele Jackson, author of the new book White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue...and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation (Beacon Press). "The word itself is just indicating an instance of transport. It's making something appropriate to another purpose. We appropriate things all the time without our knowledge. A lot of the art and cultural forms that we depend on and love could not exist without appropriation."

"Appropriation triggers a powerful public response when mediocrity and privilege intersect."

Jackson cites hip hop as an enduring example of appropriation in many forms. Born in the Bronx in the early 1970s, hip hop sprang forth as a new style of art, music, and dance invented by teens who blended shared elements of multi-ethnic Black and Latinx communities while remixing the past and present. "Hip hop emerged out of cross-generational, cross-cultural, cross-racial, and cross-national forms of cultural appropriation, mixing, and acculturation," Jackson says. "We don't tend to think about appropriation in those contexts. We usually only talk about appropriation in flagrant cases, but in and of itself appropriation is not the big bad. It is something that cannot be stopped, prevented, or fought against. As long as people are living, breathing, and talking, making, and creating things, appropriation will happen and it ought to happen. That's the way art evolves."

Yet the conversation around appropriation is fraught with the pain of larger wounds inflicted by systemic practices stemming from the colonialist mindset, constituting a virulent form of intellectual and cultural theft. "The area where appropriation becomes an issue is when you look at the imbalance in power in society and start to observe who gets to call claim to a certain intellectual property, who gets to be credited for things that they make or innovate, and who doesn't," Jackson says. "The problem isn't appropriation; the problem is the de facto inequality that suffuses the American landscape and a global context as well."

Social media has amplified the conversation around appropriation as groups historically relegated to the margins have become integral voices in shaping the mainstream discourse. With a panoply of perspectives weighing in everyday, it seems as though every week another celebrity, fashion house, or influencer makes headlines for appropriating other cultures in a manner that exposes the power imbalance.

"'We don't really talk about people who depended on a Blackness of their own imagination to become the avant-garde,' [Lauren Michele Jackson] says."

In 2020 alone, we have witnessed the debacle of American Dirt, the novel by white American author Jeanine Cummins who received a seven-figure advance to write a fictional story of a Mexican woman forced to become an undocumented immigrant living in the United States with her son, inspiring members of Latinx communities nationwide to call out the predominantly white publishing industry. More recently Jalailah Harmon, 14, was finally given credit for creating the Renegade, one of the most viral dances online after her moves were copied and shared on TikTok uncredited by popular white influencers. This is to say nothing of Chet Hanks's egregious patois accent flouted on the red carpet at the Golden Globes, which he defended as only a man born into wealth and power could.

Appropriation triggers a powerful public response when mediocrity and privilege intersect, creating another blatant cultural rip-off. "I think it's a matter of [being] conspicuous and inconspicuous," Jackson says. "Miley Cyrus twerking on stage is very conspicuous. Meanwhile we have musicians like John Mayer and Ed Sheeran who owe a debt to genres and styles of music that were invented and innovated by black musicians and black traditions of the past, but we're not talking about that all the time because it's not as conspicuous. There is a certain element of virtuosity that allows certain appropriative gestures to go unremarked upon. If you do the thing well and you're good at it, we have other things to talk about your art besides where your influences come from."

Jackson contrasts the controversy surrounding Dana Schutz's 2016 painting, Open Casket, which depicted the corpse of Emmett Till, to the exaltation of Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. "We don't really talk about people who depended on a Blackness of their own imagination to become the avant-garde," she says. "We don't really talk about quieter instances of appropriation because we'd be talking about everything."

But it might not be the worst thing if we did. Picasso's appropriation of African masks reflects the political and cultural climate of the time, when the Global South was largely colonized and its art was described as "primitive" - a term used throughout the greater part of the twentieth century by major white-owned institutions. Exploring and exposing the unconscious and conscious acts of appropriation allows us course-correct inequality in its many forms and give originators what they have rightfully earned. Honoring the creative impulse invites us to take greater responsibility not only for what we make, but to delve deeper into those who have inspired our ideas as well as hip other people to the original source material. Though it's become commonplace to usurp other people's ideas for personal gain, Wilde long ago warned, "Everything popular is wrong."

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Cultural appropriation is bad, but we wouldn't have hip hop without it

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From viral dances to 'American Dirt,' author Lauren Michele Jackson explains the difference between creative evolution and cultural theft. Oscar Wilde famously said, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." It's telling that second half of the quote has been erased, inverting Wilde's pithy insights into the inferiority of impersonation into a lofty justification of mimicry.

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When the powerful appropriate from the oppressed, inequality is exacerbated.

Clockwise from left: Miley Cyrus performs on her 2014 Bangerz Tour with a "bobblehead" of writing partner Big Sean; rapper Eminem holds his 2000 Video Music Award for video of the year; anti-hip-hop rapper Macklemore performs at the 2013 Sasquatch festival.

The word ​"appropriation" gets a bad rap. Centuries old, it denotes an act of transport - some item or motif or a bit of property changing hands. An artist might appropriate an ancient symbol in a painting or a government might appropriate monies through taxes to fund public education. Taking only the root of the word, the meaning seems clear. To make something appropriate for another context. In some circles, the word is still used this way. But colloquially? Not so much.

The debate over cultural appropriation rages on. It was not too many years ago that former Disney star Miley Cyrus, suited in unicorn pajamas, rattled her waist in an online video that went viral, prompting America to find language and meaning for what exactly was happening, the language with which to encounter this white girl who so loved black dance.

I recall a similar anxiety emanating from the pop music takeover of Eminem. At the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), the rapper, sporting close-cut bleached-blond hair, entered the theater in a white ​"wifebeater" (offensive, if not inaccurate) and loose gray sweatpants, trailed by dozens of white close-cut bleached-blond lookalikes. At the time, Eminem appeared to be the portent of hip-hop's future - artists, critics and other protectors of the genre worried about the next coming of Elvis, worried that Eminem might catalyze a transformation of rap similar to what long ago happened to rock ​'n' roll, and to jazz before that. They weren't so wrong. Thirteen years later, the VMA for Best Hip-Hop Video was awarded to a white anti-hip-hop rap duo from Seattle named Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Those same 2013 VMAs invited Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus to jerk and jive to the riff of a song that would later incur payment of court-ordered royalties to Marvin Gaye's estate for borrowing without permission.

From Halloween costumes to Cinco de Mayo parties to the Washington Redskins to decorative bindis and other music festival fashion, an avowedly more conscious generation of people is tasked with taking seriously all kinds of cultural masquerade. Yet the more popular - and accusatory - the word ​"appropriation" has become, the fewer people seem willing to understand the meaning behind it. Where it briefly seemed obvious that dressing up as a person of another race to the point of stereotype is not okay, as I write this, the country is in the midst of forgiving and actively forgetting the surfaced photograph of a state governor costumed in either blackface or Klan robes. (The governor refuses to disclose which partygoer in the photo he is.) After years of being chastised for wearing sombreros and Native-like headdresses, white people feel indignant. They are paranoid that people of color see appropriation in everything.

Appropriation is everywhere, and is also inevitable. So long as peoples interact with other peoples, by choice or by force, cultures will intersect and mingle and graft onto each other. We call hip-hop a black thing and it is, indeed, a black thing, that also emerged in neighborhoods where black and brown people homegrown and from the South, from the islands, melded together to produce the music of their experiences in shared poverty and community. Early rap was itself an appropriation of another generation's sound- funk, soul, disco - repurposed for something different and new. The idea that any artistic or cultural practice is closed off to outsiders at any point in time is ridiculous, especially in the age of the internet.

Most everyday acts of appropriation, done unconsciously, escape our notice: the word that works itself into your speech because your best friend sprinkles every other phrase with it and where they got it from they don't even know; the yoga pose you sink into after a workout; the way you shimmy when your favorite song comes on. Said the eminent cultural theorist Homi K. Bhabha, ​"We can never quite control these acts and their signification. They exceed intention."

So, if appropriation is everywhere and everyone appropriates all the time, why does any of this matter?

The answer, in a word: power.

Leading discussions about appropriation have been limited to debates about freedom and choice, when everyone should be talking about power. The act of cultural transport is not in itself an ethical dilemma. Appropriation can often be a means of social and political repair. Examples include cakewalking on the old plantation, poetic verse mastered and improved upon by the descendants of those beaten or worse for the crime of literacy. Ask any book of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar or Gwendolyn Brooks or Terrance Hayes how insurgently wonderful literature can be when black poets experiment with the forms at their disposal, even the ones that come from Europe. When the oppressed appropriate from the powerful, it can be very special indeed.
And yet.
When the powerful appropriate from the oppressed, society's imbalances are exacerbated and inequalities prolonged. In America, white people hoard power like Hungry Hungry Hippos. In the history of problematic appropriation in America, we could start with the land and crops commandeered from Native peoples along with the mass expropriation of the labor of the enslaved. The tradition lives on. The things black people make with their hands and minds, for pay and for the hell of it, are exploited by companies and individuals who offer next to nothing in return. White people are not penalized for flaunting black culture - they are rewarded for doing so, financially, artistically, socially and intellectually. For a white person, seeing, citing and compensating black people, however, has no such reward.

Take, for example, the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Since 1932, the exalted Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan has hosted exhibitions boasting whom it considers the most cutting-edge artists on offer. The Biennial is a shortcut to the heart of the art world and therefore to the art world's race problem. In 2014, the museum promised a show that would ​"suggest the profoundly diverse and hybrid cultural identity of America today." What its curators, Stuart Comer, Anthony Elms, and Michelle Grabner- all white - failed to mention was the scarcity of artists of color with work on display.

The exhibition included paintings by a so-called Donelle Woolford. Donelle Woolford is not the name of an artist, nor even of a real person, but the comic avatar of artist Joe Scanlan. Scanlan, a professor of visual arts at Princeton, is a white man. Donelle Woolford is a black woman - sort of. She is a deceit. Her black womanhood relies on how much credence one lends to a name that denotes a concept. Her name was ​"appropriated," in his own words, ​"from a professional football player I admired" (a former Chicago Bears cornerback, Donnelle - two n's - Woolford).

Included this way, Donelle was one of nine black artists out of 103 artists in total, or 11% of the black artists chosen for the Biennial. ​"Joe was the very first artist I asked to visit when I started on my studio-visit process for the W.B.," Grabner told Observer in advance of the show. ​"I invited both Joe and Donelle. Joe turned my invitation down, but Donelle agreed to participate."

Out of all the identities in the world, Scanlan chose a black woman, a person who, if real, would be as discounted by the world as he himself is overvalued. Head and shoulders above artists who happen to be black women, who struggle for a fraction of recognition from sentinels of the art world who look like him, Scanlan crouched down and plucked from them what he sees as their only worthwhile feature. Not their history, not their culture, not their community. Scanlan played identity politics and won.

The disparity in power between white and black in America is severe. According to a 2018 report by the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, ​"A white household living near the poverty line typically has about $18,000 in wealth, while black households in similar economic straits typically have a median wealth near zero. This means that many black families have a negative net worth" (emphasis in original). Contrary to myths that say if only black folks did right -saved money, went to college, got married, started a business - nothing is as predictive of success in America as being born white. In fact, as the report concludes, ​"There are no actions that black Americans can take unilaterally that will have much of an effect on reducing the racial wealth gap."

The enormity of this wealth gap is exacerbated by the gap between who is allowed to thrive off intellectual property and who is prevented from doing so by this nation's hysterical, driving compulsion to own and regulate all things black. When it's time to pay the piper, however - that is, give credit where it's due - somehow the accolades land in the lap of somebody white, or at least someone who is not black. The contradiction is what's meant by the adage made famous by Paul Mooney: ​"Everybody wanna be a nigga, but don't nobody wanna be a nigga," an ambivalent turn of phrase. Everybody wants the insurgence of blackness with the wealth of whiteness. Everybody wants to be cool without fearing for their lives. They want blackness only as a suggestion, want to remain nonblack, keep centuries of subjection and violence at bay. When culture is embraced and its people discarded, it's too easy to trick the country into believing somebody white started it all.

To those who been knew, may you revel in the wonder of what people like us have made out of this dull, dull world.

**

White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue... And Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation by Lauren Michele Jackson (Beacon Press, 2019). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

Lauren Michele Jackson teaches in the departments of English and African American studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of the forthcoming book White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation.

The word ​"appropriation" gets a bad rap. Centuries old, it denotes an act of transport - some item or motif or a bit of property changing hands. An artist might appropriate an ancient symbol in a painting or a government might appropriate monies through taxes to fund public education. Taking only the root of the word, the meaning seems clear. To make something appropriate for another context. In some circles, the word is still used this way. But colloquially? Not so much.

The debate over cultural appropriation rages on. It was not too many years ago that former Disney star Miley Cyrus, suited in unicorn pajamas, rattled her waist in an online video that went viral, prompting America to find language and meaning for what exactly was happening, the language with which to encounter this white girl who so loved black dance.

I recall a similar anxiety emanating from the pop music takeover of Eminem. At the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), the rapper, sporting close-cut bleached-blond hair, entered the theater in a white ​"wifebeater" (offensive, if not inaccurate) and loose gray sweatpants, trailed by dozens of white close-cut bleached-blond lookalikes. At the time, Eminem appeared to be the portent of hip-hop's future - artists, critics and other protectors of the genre worried about the next coming of Elvis, worried that Eminem might catalyze a transformation of rap similar to what long ago happened to rock ​'n' roll, and to jazz before that. They weren't so wrong. Thirteen years later, the VMA for Best Hip-Hop Video was awarded to a white anti-hip-hop rap duo from Seattle named Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Those same 2013 VMAs invited Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus to jerk and jive to the riff of a song that would later incur payment of court-ordered royalties to Marvin Gaye's estate for borrowing without permission.

From Halloween costumes to Cinco de Mayo parties to the Washington Redskins to decorative bindis and other music festival fashion, an avowedly more conscious generation of people is tasked with taking seriously all kinds of cultural masquerade. Yet the more popular - and accusatory - the word ​"appropriation" has become, the fewer people seem willing to understand the meaning behind it. Where it briefly seemed obvious that dressing up as a person of another race to the point of stereotype is not okay, as I write this, the country is in the midst of forgiving and actively forgetting the surfaced photograph of a state governor costumed in either blackface or Klan robes. (The governor refuses to disclose which partygoer in the photo he is.) After years of being chastised for wearing sombreros and Native-like headdresses, white people feel indignant. They are paranoid that people of color see appropriation in everything.

Appropriation is everywhere, and is also inevitable. So long as peoples interact with other peoples, by choice or by force, cultures will intersect and mingle and graft onto each other. We call hip-hop a black thing and it is, indeed, a black thing, that also emerged in neighborhoods where black and brown people homegrown and from the South, from the islands, melded together to produce the music of their experiences in shared poverty and community. Early rap was itself an appropriation of another generation's sound- funk, soul, disco - repurposed for something different and new. The idea that any artistic or cultural practice is closed off to outsiders at any point in time is ridiculous, especially in the age of the internet.

Most everyday acts of appropriation, done unconsciously, escape our notice: the word that works itself into your speech because your best friend sprinkles every other phrase with it and where they got it from they don't even know; the yoga pose you sink into after a workout; the way you shimmy when your favorite song comes on. Said the eminent cultural theorist Homi K. Bhabha, ​"We can never quite control these acts and their signification. They exceed intention."

So, if appropriation is everywhere and everyone appropriates all the time, why does any of this matter?

The answer, in a word: power.

Leading discussions about appropriation have been limited to debates about freedom and choice, when everyone should be talking about power. The act of cultural transport is not in itself an ethical dilemma. Appropriation can often be a means of social and political repair. Examples include cakewalking on the old plantation, poetic verse mastered and improved upon by the descendants of those beaten or worse for the crime of literacy. Ask any book of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar or Gwendolyn Brooks or Terrance Hayes how insurgently wonderful literature can be when black poets experiment with the forms at their disposal, even the ones that come from Europe. When the oppressed appropriate from the powerful, it can be very special indeed.
And yet.
When the powerful appropriate from the oppressed, society's imbalances are exacerbated and inequalities prolonged. In America, white people hoard power like Hungry Hungry Hippos. In the history of problematic appropriation in America, we could start with the land and crops commandeered from Native peoples along with the mass expropriation of the labor of the enslaved. The tradition lives on. The things black people make with their hands and minds, for pay and for the hell of it, are exploited by companies and individuals who offer next to nothing in return. White people are not penalized for flaunting black culture - they are rewarded for doing so, financially, artistically, socially and intellectually. For a white person, seeing, citing and compensating black people, however, has no such reward.

Take, for example, the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Since 1932, the exalted Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan has hosted exhibitions boasting whom it considers the most cutting-edge artists on offer. The Biennial is a shortcut to the heart of the art world and therefore to the art world's race problem. In 2014, the museum promised a show that would ​"suggest the profoundly diverse and hybrid cultural identity of America today." What its curators, Stuart Comer, Anthony Elms, and Michelle Grabner- all white - failed to mention was the scarcity of artists of color with work on display.

The exhibition included paintings by a so-called Donelle Woolford. Donelle Woolford is not the name of an artist, nor even of a real person, but the comic avatar of artist Joe Scanlan. Scanlan, a professor of visual arts at Princeton, is a white man. Donelle Woolford is a black woman - sort of. She is a deceit. Her black womanhood relies on how much credence one lends to a name that denotes a concept. Her name was ​"appropriated," in his own words, ​"from a professional football player I admired" (a former Chicago Bears cornerback, Donnelle - two n's - Woolford).

Included this way, Donelle was one of nine black artists out of 103 artists in total, or 11% of the black artists chosen for the Biennial. ​"Joe was the very first artist I asked to visit when I started on my studio-visit process for the W.B.," Grabner told Observer in advance of the show. ​"I invited both Joe and Donelle. Joe turned my invitation down, but Donelle agreed to participate."

Out of all the identities in the world, Scanlan chose a black woman, a person who, if real, would be as discounted by the world as he himself is overvalued. Head and shoulders above artists who happen to be black women, who struggle for a fraction of recognition from sentinels of the art world who look like him, Scanlan crouched down and plucked from them what he sees as their only worthwhile feature. Not their history, not their culture, not their community. Scanlan played identity politics and won.

The disparity in power between white and black in America is severe. According to a 2018 report by the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, ​"A white household living near the poverty line typically has about $18,000 in wealth, while black households in similar economic straits typically have a median wealth near zero. This means that many black families have a negative net worth" (emphasis in original). Contrary to myths that say if only black folks did right -saved money, went to college, got married, started a business - nothing is as predictive of success in America as being born white. In fact, as the report concludes, ​"There are no actions that black Americans can take unilaterally that will have much of an effect on reducing the racial wealth gap."

The enormity of this wealth gap is exacerbated by the gap between who is allowed to thrive off intellectual property and who is prevented from doing so by this nation's hysterical, driving compulsion to own and regulate all things black. When it's time to pay the piper, however - that is, give credit where it's due - somehow the accolades land in the lap of somebody white, or at least someone who is not black. The contradiction is what's meant by the adage made famous by Paul Mooney: ​"Everybody wanna be a nigga, but don't nobody wanna be a nigga," an ambivalent turn of phrase. Everybody wants the insurgence of blackness with the wealth of whiteness. Everybody wants to be cool without fearing for their lives. They want blackness only as a suggestion, want to remain nonblack, keep centuries of subjection and violence at bay. When culture is embraced and its people discarded, it's too easy to trick the country into believing somebody white started it all.

To those who been knew, may you revel in the wonder of what people like us have made out of this dull, dull world.

**

White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue... And Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation by Lauren Michele Jackson (Beacon Press, 2019). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

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When We Talk About Cultural Appropriation, We Should Be Talking About Power

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When the powerful appropriate from the oppressed, inequality is exacerbated. The word ​"appropriation" gets a bad rap. Centuries old, it denotes an act of transport - some item or motif or a bit of property changing hands. An artist might appropriate an ancient symbol in a painting or a government might appropriate monies through taxes to fund public education.

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Code: 87 15 07 7

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the politics of hair is fast becoming another issue that exacerbates the racial divide

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era in which mixing, matching and borrowing are fundamental elements of fashion worldwide, an era in which we are trying to emphasise our common humanity

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feminist matters: building walls between us

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feminist matters: building walls between us

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debate about hairstyles seems to be playing right into the chauvinist narrative of a woman being defined by how she looks and what she wears --> all that will do is to undermine the self-confidence of some women and build walls between us

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Wearing an item of a culture that is not your own can be demeaning

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Wearing an item of a culture that is not your own can be demeaning

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it is often just dressing up

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takes music away from its roots

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"playing at blackness without being burdened by the reality of it.. But blackness is not a piece of jewelry you can slip on when you want a condifence booster or a cool look"

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cultural elements that should be linked to the music are lost when the music is shared because its always filtered through a (white) perspective

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Ponder your privilege
"Privilege isn't about what you've gone through; it's about what you haven't had to go through."

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- Kim Kardashian renaming cornrows as „Bo Derek Braids“
-Miley Cyrus acting after a black stereotype
-Sarah Jessica Parker wearing a turban in the series