Source A
The Washington Post
By Chris Richards, JULY 2, 2018
Is cultural appropriation ever okay?
I was recently hanging out with a rock band, discussing our shared love for a particular R&B
album. They said they’d love to cover the album track for track, but would never. A band of
white indie-rockers performing the songs of a black R&B singer? No way. It would be seen as
cultural appropriation, and their reverence for that music was probably better expressed
through conversations like the one we were having that night anyway. As badly as I wanted to
hear their covers, they were right.
When is cultural appropriation — the act of making art that reaches for new ideas across lines
of race and class — ever acceptable in pop music? Finding an answer requires us to clarify the
difference between theft and influence, or more specifically, taking and making.
When Justin Timberlake beatboxes, or Taylor Swift raps, or Miley Cyrus twerks to a trap beat, it
feels like taking. Nothing is being invented other than a superficial juxtaposition. On the flip
side, when the Talking Heads echo African pop rhythms, or the Wu-Tang Clan channels the
spirituality of kung-fu cinema, or Beyoncé writes a country song, it feels more like making. The
borrowed elements become an essential, integrated part of a new, previously unheard thing.
We think we know this difference when we hear it, but sometimes we don’t — so there are
more questions to ask, and many of them point toward an imbalance of power. Is the
appropriating artist profiting off a culture that remains marginalized? Does the appropriator
seem to understand the complexity of their own relationship to the culture they’re cribbing
from? Will their appropriated music steer attention toward its source? Or will it divert potential
attention away from it?
White rappers are by far the most flagrant appropriators on today’s pop charts, and many of
them flunk these questions. Yet scores of mediocre white rappers — from Iggy Azalea to G-Eazy
to Post Malone to Bhad Bhabie — continue to climb far higher in the marketplace than they
would if they were black. This falls on the audience and the industry. For these artists, it’s not
that their whiteness automatically makes them bad rappers; it’s that their whiteness
automatically sets them up to become successful rappers.
Here’s one last question that might be helpful to ask of white rappers, or any musician who
appropriates: Are they travelers, or are they tourists? Travelers move through the world in
order to participate. Tourists simply look around, have some fun, take what they want and
bring it back home.
Which brings us back to the indie-rockers in love with the R&B album. They knew they weren’t
going to perform these songs at next summer’s Essence Festival. Their covers wouldn’t
transcend tourism. So they stayed home.
Source B
The Women “Blackfishing” on Instagram Aren’t Exactly Trying to Be Black
They’re engaging in something more insidious.
By LAUREN MICHELE JACKSON, NOV 29, 2018
Every Instagram influencer is only as good as her brand, and Emma Hallberg’s trademark is her glow.
Though the looks change and seldom, if ever, repeat, every photo spotlights a certain shine found on
Hallberg’s cheeks, nose, chin, and brow. That glow, or “highlight” as it’s known to the makeup world, is
one of Hallberg’s specialties, garnering features at Allure and Teen Vogue as well as a product
collaboration with the cosmetics company Make Up Store. Hallberg has leaned into it, training her
audience to expect to see her deep tan catching the light with such carefully placed dustings of gold.
That same tan now makes Hallberg and others like her conspicuous. By “others like her,” I don’t mean
influencers at large, but a much—but not too much—narrower coterie of online personalities who’ve
recently been collected under the term blackfishing (a play on catfishing). Earlier this month on Twitter,
Toronto writer Wanna Thompson initiated a crowdsourced list of “the white girls cosplaying as black
women on Instagram.” Contributors to the thread posted compilations of newer and older photos of
various Instagram users with high (sometimes 100,000-plus) follower counts, letting the contrasts speak
for themselves: In the “before,” a pale, mousy brunette; in the “after,” brown skin, 3c curls (or
dreadlocks or box braids or Bantu knots or a wet and wavy wig), and hood fashions to match. Though
Hallberg was far from the only user named, she has become the face of what the media has more
palatably called “blackfishing.” Hallberg’s “before” image shows her smiling at the camera in a white top
and black jacket, tan but not bronze, her face slightly ruddy in the sun. In the “after” photo, she appears
tanner, with large gold hoop earrings, wavier hair, and a thick coat of gloss accentuating her lips.
The juxtaposition recalls another viral sensation who was similarly exposed by a photo from her past:
Rachel Dolezal. But unlike Dolezal, whose fumbled response (not her wig) paved her path to infamy,
Hallberg does not deny her whiteness when asked. Though she hasn’t seemed to care much about
clearing up assumptions in the past—even when accounts dedicated to black beauty have reposted her
images—she now states herself clearly. “I do not see myself as anything else than white,” she told
BuzzFeed earlier this month. “I get a deep tan naturally from the sun.” Wednesday, on Good Morning
America, she reiterated the message, saying, “I haven’t done anything to make myself look darker.” Her
Instagram page features an Insta story called “LET ME EXPLAIN,” a more elaborate defense of her online
appearance. In one image, Hallberg annotates the viral “before & after” diptych. The left, she writes,
“was taken 2 years ago right before summer with barely any makeup and my hair straightened,” while
the right was captured “in July right after I came home from a vacation, with makeup.” Another diptych
shows photos of her father and brother who “as you can see,” says Hallberg, “also tan very easily.” Their
smiling faces, indeed, look tan, but only in the way that many white people look tan. Unlike Rachel
Dolezal, whose fumbled response paved her path to infamy, Hallberg does not deny whiteness when
asked.
In Thompson’s own analysis of Hallberg for Paper, building on her thread, she notes that this particular
Instagram personality is not unique, deeming the platform “a breeding ground for white women who
wish to capitalize off of impersonating racially ambiguous/Black women for monetary and social gain.”
The word hood not only applies to America’s vast, regionally diverse collection of black and brown
enclaves but, sadly, to a commercialized tone that is as “formulaic as it is strategic.” Thompson herself
has written before in praise of the “gaudy beauty practices” that exhibited the artistic ingenuity of
where she came from, mourning the ways “the ghetto has been repackaged and curated to appeal to
the masses whilst replacing black femmes and dark skinned women with those who look racially
ambiguous.”
Source C
Teenager’s Prom Dress Stirs Furor in U.S. — but Not in China
By Amy Qin
May 2, 2018
TAIPEI, Taiwan — When Keziah Daum wore a Chinese-style dress to her high school prom in Utah, it set
off an uproar — but not because of its tight fit or thigh-high slit.
After Ms. Daum, 18, shared pictures on social media of her prom night, a Twitter user named Jeremy
Lam hotly responded in a post that has been retweeted nearly 42,000 times.
“My culture is NOT” your prom dress, he wrote, adding profanity for effect.
“I’m proud of my culture,” he wrote in another post. “For it to simply be subject to American
consumerism and cater to a white audience, is parallel to colonial ideology.”
Some Twitter users who described themselves as Asian-American seized on Ms. Daum’s dress — a formfitting red cheongsam (also known as a qipao) with black and gold ornamental designs — as an example
of cultural appropriation, a sign of disrespect and exploitation. Other Asian-Americans said the criticism
was silly.
“This isn’t ok,” wrote someone with the user name Jeannie. “I wouldn’t wear traditional Korean,
Japanese or any other traditional dress and I’m Asian. I wouldn’t wear traditional Irish or Swedish or
Greek dress either. There’s a lot of history behind these clothes. Sad.”
When the furor reached Asia, though, many seemed to be scratching their heads. Far from being critical
of Ms. Daum, who is not Chinese, many people in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan proclaimed
her choice of the traditional high-necked dress as a victory for Chinese culture.
“I am very proud to have our culture recognized by people in other countries,” said someone called
Snail Trail, commenting on a post of the Utah episode by a popular account on WeChat, the messaging
and social media platform, that had been read more than 100,000 times.
“It’s ridiculous to criticize this as cultural appropriation,” Zhou Yijun, a Hong Kong-based cultural
commentator, said in a telephone interview. “From the perspective of a Chinese person, if a foreign
woman wears a qipao and thinks she looks pretty, then why shouldn’t she wear it?”
If anything, the uproar surrounding Ms. Daum’s dress prompted many Chinese to reflect on examples of
cultural appropriation in their own country. “So does that mean when we celebrate Christmas and
Halloween it’s also cultural appropriation?” asked one WeChat user, Larissa.
These days, it is rare to see Chinese women wearing qipaos in the street. Western “fast fashion” has
taken over, though the qipao has made something of a comeback among some official figures, like the
country’s first lady, Peng Liyuan. “To Chinese, it’s not sacred and it’s not that meaningful,” said Hung
Huang, a Beijing-based writer and fashion blogger, in an interview. “Nowadays, if you see a woman
wearing a qipao, she’s probably a waitress in a restaurant or a bride.
“To everyone who says I’m ignorant, I fully understand everyone’s concerns and views on my dress,”
she wrote on Twitter. “I mean no harm. I am in no way being discriminative or racist. I’m tired of all the
backlash and hate when my only intent was to show my love.”
Source D
The Dos and Don’ts of Cultural Appropriation
Borrowing from other cultures isn’t just inevitable, it’s potentially positive.
JENNI AVINSQUARTZ, OCT 20, 2015
Sometime during the early 2000s, big, gold, “door-knocker” hoop earrings started to appeal to me, after
I’d admired them on girls at school. It didn’t faze me that most of the girls who wore these earrings at
my high school in St. Louis were black, unlike me. And while it certainly may have occurred to me that
I—a semi-preppy dresser—couldn’t pull them off, it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t.
This was before the term “cultural appropriation” jumped from academia into the realm of Internet
outrage and oversensitivity. Self-appointed guardians of culture have proclaimed that Miley Cyrus
shouldn’t twerk, white girls shouldn’t wear cornrows, and Selena Gomez should take off that bindi.
Personally, I could happily live without ever seeing Cyrus twerk again, but I still find many of these
accusations alarming.
At my house, getting dressed is a daily act of cultural appropriation, and I’m not the least bit sorry about
it. I step out of the shower in the morning and pull on a vintage cotton kimono. After moisturizing my
face, I smear Lucas Papaw ointment—a tip from an Australian makeup artist—onto my lips before I
make coffee with a Bialetti stovetop espresso maker a girlfriend brought back from Italy. Depending on
the weather, I may pull on an embroidered floral blouse I bought at a roadside shop in Mexico or a
stripey marinière-style shirt—originally inspired by the French, but mine from the surplus store was a
standard-issue Russian telnyashka—or my favorite purple pajama pants, a souvenir from a friend’s trip
to India. I may wear Spanish straw-soled espadrilles (though I’m not from Spain) or Bahian leather
sandals (I’m not Brazilian either) and top it off with a favorite piece of jewelry, perhaps a Navajo
turquoise ring (also not my heritage).
As I dress in the morning, I deeply appreciate the craftsmanship and design behind these items, as well
as the adventures and people they recall. And while I hope I don’t offend anyone, I find the alternative—
the idea that I ought to stay in the cultural lane I was born into—outrageous. No matter how much I love
cable-knit sweaters and Gruyere cheese, I don’t want to live in a world where the only cultural
inspiration I’m entitled to comes from my roots in Ireland, Switzerland, and Eastern Europe.
There are legitimate reasons to step carefully when dressing ourselves with the clothing, arts, artifacts,
or ideas of other cultures. But please, let’s banish the idea that appropriating elements from one
another’s cultures is in itself problematic.
Such borrowing is how we got treasures such as New York pizza and Japanese denim—not to mention
how the West got democratic discourse, mathematics, and the calendar. Yet as wave upon wave of shrill
accusations of cultural appropriation make their way through the Internet outrage cycle, the rhetoric
ranges from earnest indignation to patronizing disrespect.
And as we watch artists and celebrities being pilloried and called racist, it’s hard not to fear the reach of
the cultural-appropriation police, who jealously track who “owns” what and instantly jump on
transgressors.
In the 21st century, cultural appropriation—like globalization—isn’t just inevitable; it’s potentially
positive. We have to stop guarding cultures and subcultures in efforts to preserve them. It’s naïve,
paternalistic, and counterproductive. Plus, it’s just not how culture or creativity work. The exchange of
ideas, styles, and traditions is one of the tenets and joys of a modern, multicultural society.
So how do we move past the finger pointing, and co-exist in a way that’s both creatively open and
culturally sensitive? In a word, carefully.
1. Blackface Is Never Okay
This is painfully obvious. Don’t dress up as an ethnic stereotype. Someone else’s culture or race—or an
offensive idea of it—should never be a costume or the butt of a joke.
You probably don’t need an example, but U.S. fraternity parties are rife with them. Sports teams such as
the Washington Redskins, and their fanbases, continue to fight to keep bigoted names and images as
mascots—perpetuating negative stereotypes and pouring salt into old wounds. Time to move on.
2. It’s Important to Pay Homage to Artistry and Ideas, and Acknowledge Their Origins
Cultural appropriation was at the heart of this year’s Costume Institute exhibition, “China: Through the
Looking Glass,” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was a great deal of hand-wringing in
advance of the gala celebrating the exhibit’s opening—a glitzy event for the fashion industry which
many expected to be a minefield for accidental racism (and a goldmine for the cultural-appropriation
police).
Instead, the red carpet showcased some splendid examples of cultural appropriation done right. Among
the evening’s best-dressed was Rihanna, who navigated the theme with aplomb in a fur-trimmed robe
by Guo Pei, a Beijing-based Chinese couturier whose work was also part of the Met’s exhibition.
Rihanna’s gown was “imperial yellow,” a shade reserved for the emperors of ancient Chinese dynasties,
and perfectly appropriate for pop stars in the 21st century. Rihanna could have worn a Western
interpretation, like this stunning Yves Saint Laurent dress Tom Ford designed for the label in 2004, but
she won the night by rightfully shining the spotlight on a design from China.
3. Don’t Adopt Sacred Artifacts as Accessories
Karlie Kloss in a headdress at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show (Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images)
When Victoria’s Secret sent Karlie Kloss down the runway in a fringed suede bikini, turquoise jewelry,
and a feathered head dress—essentially a “sexy Indian” costume—many called out the underwear
company for insensitivity to native Americans, and they were right.
Adding insult to injury, a war bonnet like the one Kloss wore has spiritual and ceremonial significance,
with only certain members of the tribe having earned the right to wear feathers through honor-worthy
achievements and acts of bravery.
“This is analogous to casually wearing a Purple Heart or Medal of Honor that was not earned,” Simon
Moya-Smith, a journalist of the Oglala Lakota Nation, told MTV.
For this reason, some music festival organizers have prohibited feather headdresses. As The Guardian
points out, it’s anyone’s right to dress like an idiot at a festival, but someone else’s sacred object
shouldn’t be a casual accessory. (Urban Outfitters, take note.)
4. Remember That Culture Is Fluid
“It’s not fair to ask any culture to freeze itself in time and live as though they were a museum diorama,”
says Susan Scafidi, a lawyer and the author of Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in
American Law. “Cultural appropriation can sometimes be the savior of a cultural product that has faded
away.”
Today, for example, the most popular blue jeans in the U.S.—arguably the cultural home, if not the
origin of the blue jean—are made of stretchy, synthetic-based fabrics that the inventor Levi Strauss (an
immigrant from Bavaria) wouldn’t recognize. Meanwhile, Japanese designers have preserved “heritage”
American workwear and Ivy League style, by using original creations as a jumping-off point for their own
interpretations, as W. David Marx writes in Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style:
America may have provided the raw forms for Japan’s fashion explosion, but these items soon became
decoupled from their origin …More importantly, the Japanese built new and profound layers of meaning
on top of American style—and in the process, protected and strengthened the original for the benefit of
all. As we will see, Japanese fashion is no longer a simple copy of American clothing, but a nuanced,
culturally rich tradition of its own.
5. Don’t Forget That Appropriation Is No Substitute for Diversity
At Paris Fashion Week earlier this month, the Valentino designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo
Piccioli sent out a collection they acknowledged was heavily influenced by Africa.
“The real problem was the hair,” wrote Alyssa Vingan at Fashionista, pointing out that the white models
wore cornrows, a style more common for those with African hair, “thereby appropriating African
culture.”
In a recent video that went viral, the African American actress Amandla Stenberg’s offered an eloquent
discourse on the complex cultural context of cornrows. But the real problem at Valentino was not the
hair; it was the conspicuous absence of women of color on the runway. Lack of diversity is an issue for
the entire industry, but the problem was particularly visible at Valentino, where the designers talked the
talk of multicultural acceptance:
“The message is tolerance,” Piccioli told Vogue, “and the beauty that comes out of cross-cultural
expression.”
If that’s the point, the faces on the catwalk—regardless of their hairstyle—should reflect it.
6. Engage With Other Cultures on More Than an Aesthetic Level
“What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?” asks Stenberg
in the aforementioned video, a particularly salient point in an America coming to terms with an
epidemic of police violence against young black men.
The rapper and TV personality Nicki Minaj echoed the message in The New York Times Magazine, in
reference to Miley Cyrus, who criticized Minaj’s comments about being overlooked for the Video Music
Awards because of her race.
‘‘Come on, you can’t want the good without the bad,” said Minaj. “If you want to enjoy our culture and
our lifestyle, bond with us, dance with us, have fun with us, twerk with us, rap with us, then you should
also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us, what we feel is unfair to us. You shouldn’t not
want to know that.’’
Cherry-picking cultural elements, whether dance moves or print designs, without engaging with their
creators or the cultures that gave rise to them not only creates the potential for misappropriation; it
also misses an opportunity for art to perpetuate real, world-changing progress.
Source E
https://moneyinc.com/greatest-white-rappers-of-all-time/
SOURCE F - White US professor Jessica Krug
admits she has pretended to be Black for
years
Jessica Krug, an activist who teaches African American history, writes
Medium post apologizing for false identity
Poppy Noor
Thu 3 Sep 2020
A seasoned activist and professor of African American history at George Washington
University has been pretending to be Black for years, despite actually being a white
woman from Kansas City.
In a case eerily reminiscent to Rachel Dolezal, Jessica A Krug took financial support
from cultural institutions such as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture for a book she wrote about fugitive resistance to the transatlantic slave trade.
But according to a Medium post allegedly written by Krug herself, her career was rooted
in a “toxic soil of lies”.
“To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have eschewed my lived experience as a
white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a
Blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted
Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness,” she wrote.
In Krug’s book Fugitive Modernities, published before her confession, she writes in her
acknowledgments: “My ancestors, unknown, unnamed, who bled life into a future they
had no reason to believe could or should exist. My brother, the fastest, the smartest, the
most charming of us all. Those whose names I cannot say for their own safety, whether
in my barrio, in Angola, or in Brazil.”
Krug went by the name Jessica La Bombalera in activist circles and could be seen
speaking in a New York City public hearing on police brutality in June.
Krug alludes in her Medium post to a traumatic childhood and mental health issues, but
says she does not believe they can be used to excuse her behavior.
“To say that I clearly have been battling some unaddressed mental health demons for
my entire life, as both an adult and child, is obvious. Mental health issues likely explain
why I assumed a false identity initially, as a youth, and why I continued and developed it
for so long.
“But mental health issues can never, will never, neither explain nor justify, neither
condone nor excuse, that, in spite of knowing and regularly critiquing any and every
non-Black person who appropriates from Black people, my false identity was crafted
entirely from the fabric of Black lives,” she wrote.
Prompt – How do you define cultural appropriation?
Thesis – Cultural appropriation should be defined as using a culture to get more
famous and cosplaying as other races, however others may say pretending to be
another race entirely even with some’s cherry picking of cultural elements.
Reason/Main Idea 1 – Using a culture as a “wave” to grow one’s fame
Evidence – SA, P6
Reason/Main Idea 2 – Cosplaying as other phenotypes/races
Evidence – SB, P2
Counterclaim – Pretending to be another race
Counterclaim Evidence – SF, P8
Rebuttal – Cherry picking cultural elements
Rebuttal Evidence – SD, P28