Summary: Cultural Appropriation Of African American Culture

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There is an explicit amount of cultural appropriation in the imitation of the African American culture. The concept of cultural appropriation is the wrongful borrowing of cultures’ practices and the African American community has become a victim of this trend in society. Many aspect of African Americans have been altered in American society, and Hip hop is one of them. Hip hop is a genre of music that originated through African Americans and is still being appropriated in society. Rodriquez (2014) talks about the color-blind ideology – a notion of removing the background on a concept – which contributes to appropriation of Hip hop. The oppression of the African American communities has created a barrier in preventing the appropriation from …show more content…
The rise was through the contribution of African American block parties, as well broadcasting Hip hop on television. Fryer (1998) makes an important observation of when people say they ‘discovered’ Hip hop, it is be put loosely as you can not discover a cultural practice that is already formed, rather Hip hop can be describe as introduce and ‘rediscovered’ over different periods of time to different non-African communities (Fryer, 1998). Knowing the historical context, and understanding that Hip hop was rediscovered many times, the assumption can be made cultural is not appropriated over night, rather it is a gradual process, slowly removing the context of original work and replacing it with a standard universal meaning, called Colour Blinding …show more content…
Race is a social construct that people used to defend imperialism, used to build boarders, and define people (Andreasen, 2000). This socially constructed system helped build a ‘white privilege, and to this day the effects of the privilege around the world. Hip hop is also a victim of this white privilege, as African American were playing their music for white people for decades (Nyawalo, 2013). White artist has great success through African American music, and there are those who acknowledge their privilege for example, like Eminem who addressed the privilege that comes with being white in his music (Fraley, 2006). The color-blind ideology just masks the politics of white privilege by removing the cultural context, as the music is universalized, it hides the fact that the culture is being pushed away to the back, and white people do not face any consequences. In the use of art of a culture, to depoliticize it unconsciously contributes to the racism problem that still exist in