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Cultural appropriation is more than just taking culture without giving credit. It affects the people whose culture is stolen from. The article "The Shifting Image of Black Women’s Hair in Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa” explores the idea of Black women’s hair being undesirable and having to be changed to be acceptable by sharing the history of Black hair. However, it challenges that idea and argues to normalize the natural beauty of Black women’s hair. Black hair is unique and needs to be worked on to fit the beauty standard. The beauty standard enforced on Black people only works for white people. This can be seen as Black people appropriating white people because Black people are changing their hair to be like white people. However, the backlash is not the same because there is no cultural meaning for straight hair. Black people feel forced to assimilate and throw away their culture so they won’t be persecuted. Therefore, it also doesn’t affect white people the same. In Matthe’s article, he mentions that the traditional meaning of cultural appropriation is colonization. While Black people are forced to fit into the beauty standards, white people can wear Black culture and still be considered beautiful. The effect of this on Black people is that they’re deprived of their culture. Their culture also loses its meaning when appropriate. Black people are oppressed to change while cultural appropriation is a free choice. Cultural appropriation takes but doesn’t give.

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Not many people know about the origins of their favorite music or trend. Malik, a writer, decided to write the article “Opinion | In Defense of Cultural Appropriation" from the New York Times to defend cultural appropriation after three editors lost their jobs for doing the same thing. He wrote about black music being named race music and was refused to be on radios for white audiences. Yet, when Elvis Presley made music using the same tunes as black music, it played all over the radio for white audiences. What is illustrated here is the silence of racism. Elvis Presley became a big star and was loved. However, there was no issue seen about the dilemma that he appropriated Black music and made it popular in the white community. Today, people began to see and become aware of this because of news articles like these. Similarly, Gertner wrote her article “The impact of cultural appropriation on destination image, tourism, and hospitality” about the danger cultural appropriation has in the areas of hospitality, destination image, and tourism. Her article explores the use of native customs and rituals exploited into tourist entertainment. Through the exploitation and the cultural appropriation of the tourist destination, indigenous groups have become a commercial purpose of entertaining visitors. Like how Malik drew the idea of racism being silenced, here it can be interpreted that indigenous people are being silenced by being portrayed as mascots. Being mascots allows people to easily appropriate them. With the Black culture, the hair and facial/body features are considered to be just beautiful and the music is just art to white people. They don’t see it as a culture like how they don’t see misusing the values of ingenious groups and using their customs as art for aesthetics is a part of indigenous culture. Through educating people on what culture is and where it comes from, allows people to be appreciative of the culture rather than appropriating it. 

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Cultural appropriation is considered as oppression when a dominant group appropriates a minority group. In Matthes’s article “Cultural appropriation and oppression”, he outlines the oppression of cultural appropriation. He also explains that oppression is the best argument to make when people defend cultural appropriation. The wrongfulness of cultural appropriation is the way they exhibit inequality. When appropriation happens between white people and Black people, there is a huge power imbalance that shows the racism in it. Black people are judged and stereotyped for how they look, dress, and what they do. However, when a white person does it, it is new or sometimes does not come across to people that they are appropriating Black culture because it is on a white person so there can’t be anything wrong. This shows how oppressive the idea of appropriating another culture is when power is in play. Matthes also gives a short idea of solving this issue. He talks about having respect for cultural autonomy. When there is respect, people will stop appropriating cultures and give groups the power to “authorize appropriate use of their cultural heritage.” This solution will end oppression in cultural appropriation. Having respect requires an understanding of the culture and giving the group power. The problem in this is the existing power imbalance between white people and Black people. Even if Black people can set boundaries for their culture to outside people, white people may still be able to find a loophole. Cultural appropriation will be tied to oppression until the power dynamic between groups disappears.

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Cultural appropriation is a social issue between a dominant group and a minority group, in this case, white people and Black people. This issue has been floating around with no solid ground until now. Today, following the BLM movement, is the uprising of cases regarding white people appropriating Black culture. Throughout history, white people have taken on Black culture for entertainment purposes without giving them credit, such as Elvis Presly making Black music a hit in the music industry or Kylie Jenner making big, plump lips a beauty trend. In shorter terms, Black culture is deemed undesirable but becomes beautiful in the hands of white people. It is seen as oppressive when white people appropriate Black culture.