Cultural Appropriation Of John Henry's Story

Cultural appropriation involves the adoption of another culture’s practices in a manner that undermines the practices’ significance and reduces it to something that would be prevalent throughout history. The problem lies not in borrowing aspects of a culture; it lies in the fact that most people who borrow aspects of a culture skew the original version. John Henry's ballads have been transformed, transcribed and flipped around for generations. Most of these ballads have been seen as cultural appropriation and have changed the legacy behind his story. The John Henry story has changed to fit different cultural backgrounds and different situations. White Southern millworkers, listening to country recordings of the ballads that never mentioned

"While the Communist Party's version of John Henry endured, sustained in the Popular Front, in comics, and on the Burl Ives record in our Sunday school, competing interpretations of and stories about John Henry remained, particularly among African Americans" (Scott Nelson 166). African Americans uses John Henry's story during this time to teach young boys to grow up to be strong black men. Organizations are named after John Henry and is relied on as a source of empowering African Americans to be proud of themselves. The ballad of John Henry is stripped of its racial and cultural significance. The story John Henry Irons is an example of this. In the story, John Henry Irons' parents dies when he is at a young age and he later went to Yale on a sports scholarship. He later acquired a job as a steelworker under the name Henry Johnson. Later on, the story goes to mention how a building collapsed leaving "Henry" under it but he arises from the ashes and begins to start his journey of saving the day. The ballad of John Henry is completely transformed and made mockery of by the authors of this comic book, whome of which are two Caucasian