Cultural appropriation is a hot button issue facing the social justice community, largely because no one seems to know what the hell it is.
While the finer details of the definition vary depending on who you ask, it can basically be summed up as partaking in aspects of another culture that are not your own in a way that can be considered demeaning or offensive. I feel like this should seriously be a common sense call, but people, particularly those who don't belong to the cultures in question, want to nitpick fallacies to death and instead of trying to understand why it's offensive, list reasons they feel it isn't to fit their own personal agendas.
Cultural appropriation seems to come up the most around Halloween, because something about the holidays makes people extra stupid and willing to ignore cultural insensitivity for the sake of their celebration. I've seen it, you've probably seen it, you might have even partaken in the joy that is the "ethnic" halloween costume. Dressing as anything from the Pocahontas princess, to day of the dead, even going as far as wearing "refugee costumes" or black/yellow/red face.
I'm sure for every geisha girl or sexy Indian we've seen, we've heard the same ignorant remark: it's just a costume!
The thing that most people overlook is that turning something into a costume has an implied level of farce to it. Sure, there are exceptions, like those who engage in performance art for the sake of satire or social commentary. But you're never going to convince me that every idiot with a Party City gift card and some cheap face paint has greater, more intelligent intentions.
No. They're doing it because it's cute or funny to them. And the twisted thing is, this somehow makes it okay.
Do I mean that it's actually okay? No, because of course it's not. But in the context of Halloween, or any other equivalent, it becomes acceptable. Girls smear on the face paint and stick a feather in their head, shove themselves into a short dress and BAM: sexy princess costume.
You speak up against it? Suddenly you're the PC police out there to ruin someone's good time. Can we stop and think about this for a minute: a cheap piece of fabric is suddenly more important than the respect of a culture. At this point, I don't even flinch at this statement. We already know how the majority views other cultures, after all.
This isn't even just centered to racism: the practice of costuming cultures also centers on anti-semitism, anti-Islam, and xenophobia.
Somewhere, in someone's twisted mind, they got the idea that dressing up as another culture for a holiday was totally respectful and full of honor. Maybe I could understand that, if it were the truth.
Never mind the very important and obvious fact that people who have collectively, historically speaking, oppressed the groups that they now want to dress up as, diminished their cultures, and erased their hardships now are suddenly entitled to dress up like them. But the farcical element comes into play big time. The costumes are cheaply made, almost never accurate, and based around stereotypes that are extremely harmful.
Hate to be this person...you know what? No, I don't.
These stereotypes are harmful, and most people don't even seem to understand why. "Oh, but dressing like a terrorist is so funny!" Yeah, and anti-Islamic sentiments can turn violent and deadly. "Day of the dead make-up is so cute!" That's a holiday meant to honor the dead. It's very sacred and important, why are you dehumanizing that? "But I LOVE the sexy Indian princess costumes!" Actually the idea of the "sexy" Native girl comes from the stereotype that Native women are sexual objects, which makes a Native girl 3x more likely to be sexually assaulted than the average woman.
"But it's just a holiday! It's just a costume! Do you want to ruin someone's fun with stressful race stuff?" See, okay, this here is the problem. You know those posters: "you wear the costume for a night? I wear the stigma for life?" It's the truth. I don't know how to make people understand this. We don't get to go home after the frat party, take off the make-up and go back to our sweet, innocent life where these horrible stereotypes don't follow us everywhere.
That may be depressing but it's the honest to God's truth. If you want to partake and appreciate someone's culture so d*mn bad, then take a class and educate yourself. Go visit a reservation or a temple or read a book and interact with people. Don't go to some bar dressed up as a gypsy woman, for example, just because you thought it was cute.
"Why do people make a big deal out of this?" Because it is a big deal. Because it's another circumstance in which the voices of persons of color, Jewish or Islamic, and any other group I did not mention are silenced just so anybody and their brother can parade around in someone's livelihood like it's a Spongebob suit or a Disney princess dress.
As I said, the issue of cultural appropriation is complex. Maybe it's the US-centric idea of racial entitlement that a lot of people seem to have, maybe it's the fact that nobody wants to listen. All I know is that no matter how much talking people do, there will always be a geisha girl, Indian princess, gypsy woman, or f*ck boys running around in black face like it's some kind of joke.
Because it's not like some of these groups have faced years of oppression, genocide, or violence. It's not as if our society is incredibly biased against the minority, and people get a free pass to do what they want with aspects of said culture and re-write its history to fit their agenda. And hey, intention totally matters, especially when the same things happen year after year after year.
Don't worry, we get the message. It's a holiday. You don't mean it. And of course it's not racist anymore. Why? Because you said so.
