Short Essay: The Appropriation Of Culture

Ashley Marie Akins English II – Section 26 Dr.
Albert Turner 27 March 2017 Fiction Essay: The Appropriation of Cultures In the short story, Appropriation of cultures, the protagonist used resistance against racial formalities to structure a new ideal, about symbols that many found offensive or viewed as negative. For instance, the protagonist, Daniel, was asked to sing a “racist” melody. When faced with something like this, a typical African American individual can feel some sort of tension, which he did feel at first. However, instead of acting on this feeling of anxiety and intimidation, he chose to overcome the internal conflict at hand. He created his own musical influence, by ignoring the negative connotation attached to the original musical production. These actions

that were not typical for a black person went against the grain and boundaries between that of an African American to that of the typical everyday White American.
Daniel intel, becomes a sort of anti-conflict advocate by turning a symbol that is not of his originality into something that he could identify with, by appropriating it and giving it a different type of intimation.

When Daniel speaks to his friend Sarah, his told actions of resistance of the racist tendencies given by those whom feel they are of superior status to blacks, leads her to question her own daily activities, by simply contemplating about switching up the color of her nails to “. red white, and blue stripes.” These three colors are given the “all-American” connotation, for the fact that it identifies with the color of the American flag. If she were to change her nails to these colors, she would be in a way appropriating American cultural influence. However, if Sarah chooses not to view it in that type of fashion, it would not really matter what color she changed her nails to. She would be adopting the artistic idea of combining these three colors in a uniformed pattern on her nails, and making it her own style, and not that of the American influence. Daniels own reflection of his own day to day experience moved Sarah, and allowed her to think outside of the box of cultural

oppression.
By being led towards the idea of revolution by knocking down the walls of racist traits delivered towards some of the things that Daniel may possibly meet in his day to day life, he finds the courage to buy 1968 ford pickup truck with a southern confederate flag on the back of it. He chooses to keep the flag on the back of the truck, and rebuked the racist indication of the flag, and in return gave it a meaningful theory of ““Power to the people,”. ” The ironic of portion of the story is, Daniel is a rich black man, and Travis, the owner the truck was a “po white man”. I found this rather hysterical because this man was technically of no hire stature of Daniel, who was a college educated, successful black man; all which Travis was not, even though he is a white man.
This story embodies and encourages self-love and resistance of the force of a people that have intimidating actions in their nature towards black and brown people. By being a role model for other people in his racial category, Daniel helps to enforced the adoption of negatively attributed symbols that white America had tried to enforce in the southern states, and turned them into symbols of Black Power and allegiance.