Examples Of Cultural Appropriation

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The United States is made up of many different people from many different cultures. Nearly the entire population of the USA arrived within the past few hundred years, so we are all still very different and there is no true American culture because we all bring our own experiences and meld them with others. Cultural appropriation is not only not a problem, it is non-existent. To understand why cultural appropriation is not a real thing, it is necessary to discuss examples, when taking another culture’s elements becomes racism, and how using elements of another culture shows admiration. There are many hairstyles that a few people will argue is cultural appropriation. This includes dreadlocks, cornrows and, braids. With dreadlocks, it is often …show more content…
Blackface is an example of this. Blackface is putting on black face paint and often drawing on extremely large lips then acting ridiculously. This is just racism because it is stereotyping a large group of extremely diverse people and saying they are all unintelligent. There are many other ways that groups can be stereotyped such as saying all women can’t drive or British people have bad teeth, however, when it comes to an entire race or culture it is on a completely different level because it is essentially separates …show more content…
Taking things from another culture and not being very informed is just being rude, not necessarily racist. By saying one person cannot use something from another culture at all they “make harmonious ethnic relations less likely to occur,” according to Taleed J. Brown, a content intern at the Foundation for Economic Education. Today many people have become overly sensitive and look to get upset at anything they can. The only people who truly care about most of these things are other like-minded people, not anybody of different backgrounds. These same people say cultural appropriation is a major issue today and that racism is still very much alive through it. While the latter is true, it is not necessarily because of cultural appropriation, but rather denial of reverse racism and practice thereof, institutional racism in the court system or by police, and keeping African Americans in a vicious cycle of poverty. Keeping people from using aspects of other cultures is nearly as bad as saying white people should stay with white people, black people with blacks, hispanics with hispanics, and everyone else to themselves, which is a very inhuman way of treating each other. Admittedly, saying cultural appropriation does not exist and comparing it to white nationalist ideals is a very bold statement, and there are ways that people do steal and bring down another culture.
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