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A great deal of people in America see America as a melting pot, meaning all cultures come in and melt into one culture. Others like me, view America as more of a salad bowl. Cultures come in and mix together, but they do not merge, everyone keeps their own culture. In reality, If we all are living together we are bound to influence each other's way of life. Things like our way of speaking and religious traditions are definitely going to rub off on each other. Although that wouldn't be cultural appropriation cultural appropriation has nothing to do with how familiar you are with another culture. So when does it become cultural appropriation? It becomes cultural appropriation when the culture is exploited for money, fame, praise for creativity, or self-expression. When you take other cultures dances, style of dress, music, way of speaking, food, religious symbols and use it for your personal game that is appropriation. In her article, “To the new culture cops, everything is appropriation” from The Washington Post author Cathy Young talks about the new culture cops and how they're limiting the ways in which people can express themselves artistically. In her world you can …show more content…
steal things from another culture; you can wear religious symbols from another culture on your diamond chain for your hot new music video. In her way of thinking, that complete disrespect is okay as long as you call it artistic expression. I say that's not okay and Cathy is being insensitive to other people's cultures. Appropriating someone else's culture for personal gain is exploitation, disrespectful, and ruins diversity. To begin with, Cathy Young states, “The protest have an obvious potential to chill creativity and artistic expression. But they are equally bad for diversity...” (Young). When it comes to protesting cultural appropriation, Cathy Young believes it's bad for diversity and hurts creativity along with artistic expression. However, I disagree with Cathy's opinion, I believe putting a stop to artist appropriating someone else's culture does not stifle their creativity, nor does it ruin diversity. In fact, I believe the opposite is true, if someone is utilizing aspects of another persons culture for their own personal gain then they are disrespecting that culture. Also, in order to achieve diversity it's not required of anyone to adopt someone else's culture. The point of cultural diversity is to live in a society with multiple cultures. An activist that protests Native American cultural appropriation stated: “Cultural appropriation is profitable. Objects and traditions (but not the people) of marginalized cultures are seen by the dominant culture as exotic, edgy, and desirable, which translates to profits. Capitalism works best when people are not individual people with celebrated differences, but identical workers, cogs in the machine. Once diverse cultural identities are stripped away, the only culture left to identify with is capitalist culture” (“Cultural Appreciation”). The activist points out how cultural appropriation can indeed ruin diversity by mixing all the cultures into one. If everybody starts adopting each other's cultures, then eventually there will only be one big culture. While these cultural appropriators blend all the cultures they make a profit. Furthermore, I believe there is a massive problem when an artist makes money or receives praise for being creative while stealing aspects from someone else's culture. Making money from mocking another culture seems a lot like pimping, something we all know is wrong.The textbook definition of pimping refers to prostitution. But nowadays, the word could mean making money off of something or someone in anyway without having done any of the work or created any of the ideas. Although she is not the first Katy Perry is the appropriation queen in the music industry at this point in time. She loves to steal bits and pieces from other cultures to make her videos and performances more attractive. In other words she loves pimping out other people's cultures for profit. In one of her videos titled “Dark Horse” the entire video is flooded with the appropriation of ancient Egyptian culture. In the video Katy is dressed as the Egyptian queen Cleopatra while seated on a throne made up of a sphinx behind her. Katy Perry clearly thinks its ok to use aspects of ancient Egyptian culture as props and costumes. According to ifpi.org Katy Perry's single “Dark Horse” sold 13.2 million copies; along with that, according to independent.co.uk the video had 883,659,000 plus views on Vevo. If the single sold over 13 million copies and the video was viewed over 800 million times, its safe to say Katy Perry made millions off the song or more importantly the video. According to independent.co.uk the video was the third most viewed on YouTube of all time. This proves Katy Perry capitalized off of a culture that isn't her own. She pimped out the ancient Egyptian culture and made millions of dollars off it. She doesn't stop there, she also appropriated African American culture in a couple of her videos including her video “This Is How We Do”, the title of the song is just the tip of the iceberg. In the video Perry imitates African American women while chomping on a watermelon and talking in a “blaccent”. Throughout the video, she portrays many stereotypes of African American people. She also appropriated Japanese culture in her performance at the “American Music Awards” show. She came out on stage dressed like a sexier version of a geisha wearing a low cut kimono. Cathy says, “A [artwork] can reinvent the material or even serve as tribute...”(Young). Cathy believes what Katy does is okay and she is just expressing herself while paying homage to another culture. Nevertheless, Cathy writes, “The recent anti-appropriation rhetoric has targeted creative products from art to literature to clothing. Nothing is too petty for the new culture cops...” (Young). Young says the protesters are petty and implies that she believes the protesters shouldn't target culturally inspired art, literature, or clothing. I don't think these “new culture cops”, as Young calls them are being petty at all as young believes. Young and others like her fail to see that this so called “culturally inspired” art, literature, and clothing are part of ways to oppress and dehumanize people of color. I believe mocking people's cultures can make one feel less than or, like their culture and its people are nothing but a joke. For instance, the Native American headdress is a symbol of great respect for the person wearing it. Each feather that makes up the headdress represents a great deed performed. The Native American war bonnet can be compared to something like the purple heart. The purple heart is something that's earned for performing a great deed in the army. If someone who never fought in any American war sported purple hearts as a fashion trend, American war vets would be outraged. The same is true with the Native American war bonnet. The war bonnet is sacred to the Native American people. Based off the fact that Young believes the culture cops are petty for targeting clothing and art, Young would say wearing the warbonnet is just honoring or paying homage to the Native American people. I say the war bonnet and any other Native American cultural attire, should not be worn as a fashion trend or any other form of self-expression for a non-native American person. The same goes for Native American imagery or likeness. Things like sports teams, schools, and foods use the Native American likeness as a mascot for profit. I believe that is appropriation and it is also dehumanization. Young would believe it's “...a way to breathe new life into culture” (Young). Young would wonder, what is so dehumanizing about honoring the native americans by portraying their likeness as mascots and logos? Using imagery that shows stereotypes of Native Americans on the same level as bears and lions is what's so dehumanizing. A Native American man Cannupa Hanska Luger states, “These [logos, mascots, ect.] are powerful, and can be destructive to the individual and the culture. These stereotypes dehumanize and demonize Native Americans, the ability of the non-Indian community to relate to Indians as contemporary, significant, and real humans is diminished” (Luger). Luger is referring to Native American faces drawn as mascots with a sports team name like “Savages”. Sports teams and schools use animals as mascots in the same way by drawing them in a vicious state. They use this tactic to make the team seem tough or formidable. Using a Native American's likeness the same way you would use a vicious animal's likeness is clearly dehumanization. Profiting off a cultures imagery and likeness in a demonizing and dehumanizing way is the worst form of cultural appropriation. Overall, protesting cultural appropriation does not jeopardize creativity or interfere with diversity.
Many people of color take offense to seeing their culture used as creative inspiration in stereotypical and discourteous ways. Native Americans don't appreciate insensitive Americans using their likeness in a dehumanizing fashion and referring to it as paying homage. In the future, its critical that people in America today realize how wrong it is to use someone's culture as creative inspiration. The cultures of people of color are not trends. We also need to see the dehumanization that occurs when we use the likeness of a person the same way we would use an animal's. In order for us to all get along in this diverse country, we must be compelled to learn respect for each others
culture.
Cowboys and Indians is the popular game played by many children played as a game of heroes and villains. Natives are villainized in American pop culture due to the history being told by educational institutions across the nation. There are not many positive roles popular in the media about Native Americans. Many roles are even played by white people. The costume representation is not accurate either. The disrespect towards them is especially seem on Halloween, when people dress as Natives in cute and sexy ways that they think represent their culture. War paint, beads, feathers and headdresses are ceremonial accessories that represent their culture, it not a fun costume to wear. Only if they are being criticized and ridiculed, like they have been in the past. Racism has also been a huge problem when it comes to using creative names for sports teams, like the Redskins for example. Redskin is a derogatory and offensive term towards Native Americans and many white people do not see it as wrong due to the privilege they inherited throughout history. The disrespect towards them has grown and today it seems that if Natives were not getting ridiculed, they are for the most part ignored. The concerns that King describes in his book explains how the past has wired Americans to believing everything they have once learned. White people
Lliu, K., and H. Zhang. "Self- and Counter-Representations of Native Americans: Stereotypical Images of and New Images by Native Americans in Popular Media." Ebscohost. University of Arkansas, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014
As people, like myself, who aren’t oppressed for their skin color, culture, or religion, it’s hard to sometimes understand what it feels like to have someone appropriate their livelihood, more specifically, someone who is appropriating someone else’s culture. I imagine it, on a much smaller scale, to be like doing a group project, but one is doing all the work and the others take all the credit. The result would be one not receiving any of the rewards. People would call them “creative” and “hard-working”, when in reality, they just showed up and didn’t contribute anything at all. Amy Stretten’s “Appropriating Native American Imagery Honors No One” provides a multitude of resources that go along with her main point of why appropriating the Native
The author Justin Angle says how in a study the mascots and names were shown to people unfamiliar with Native American culture and the sport teams, in the end of the study most of the participants viewed Native American’s as “war like”, which can carry negative consequences in the real world affecting the views of some future employers, creating a view that though Native American’s can be seen as strong and bold they can also have been perceived as violent and irrational. The uses of Redskins also create the belief that it is culturally appropriate for the constant use of Native American culture this has led to thousands of schools and sports teams to have questionable mascots and names. Such as the Savages from Salmon High school and the baseball team the “Indians” whose mascot was a hooked nose red skinned Indian with bucked teeth. Comparing this to the now frowned upon depiction of African American as black red lipped stereotyped popular in the 1920s advertisements does it not show similarities in a cultures becoming a caricature. While one is view as racist the other is view and honorable due to it representing one of the greatest passtimes in America,
In our current generation, the year 2016, one may think racism would be diminished but it has yet to be acknowledged. Most people would have thought discrimination ended with the time of slavery, but it continues to exist in indirect ways. When people think Native Americans, they think about how they were the true Americans and how they aided Columbus’s settlement into the Early Americas. Native Americans experience discrimination to this day, yet nothing has been said about the Indian’s existence and rights. In Kimberly Roppolo’s essay, “Symbolism, Racism, History, and Reality: The Real Problem with Indian Mascots,” constructs the reason and gives us an idea on why this type of racism still exists and why people continue to unknowingly discriminate
It appears the caricature of Native Americans remains the same as first seen from the first settler’s eyes: savage-like people. Their culture and identity has become marginalized by popular culture. This is most evident in mainstream media. There exists a dearth of Native American presence in the mainstream media. There is a lack of Native American characters in different media mediums.
Many races are unjustly victimized, but Native American cultures are more misunderstood and degraded than any other race. College and high school mascots sometimes depict images of Native Americans and have names loosely based on Native American descent, but these are often not based on actual Native American history, so instead of honoring Native Americans, they are being ridiculed. According to the article Warriors Survive Attack, by Cathy Murillo (2009) some “members of the Carpentaria community defended Native American mascot icons as honoring Chumash tradition and the spirit of American Indian Warriors in U.S. history and others claimed that the images were racist stereotypes” (Murillo, 2009). If people do not attempt to understand and respect Native American culture, then Native American stereotypes will become irreparable, discrimination will remain unresolved, and ethnocentrism will not be reprimanded.
For many years, black culture has been something that has repeatedly been looked down upon then mimicked. Cultural appropriation is defined as the act of a minority 's culture being paraded as someone else 's own without knowledge of the culture. This is not to be confused with culture appreciation, in which an individual chooses to obtain knowledge of a culture before they wear or become a part of it. The problem in this generation is that people see something they like, and simply copy it without knowing where it originated from and why. There is no attempt to learn more about it and that is the problem that most people have. Although cultural appropriation is something that can cause confusion as to why it 's offensive, most people blatantly
Have you ever taken offense when you saw someone dressed in traditional garments from your culture? In America, this happens quite often. Some people may not recognize it and some refuse to acknowledge that it even exists. Cultural appropriation is a situation in which a dominant culture steals aspects of a minority culture’s, such as hair, clothing styles, and music.
This also brings up the questions of: Can cultural appropriation be defined and can it be avoided? With the new fads of Chinese character tattoo's, Hindu god t-shirts, and the selling of such things as Native sweat lodge kits and ceremonies, does this not show that North Americans can appreciate other cultures and that western culture has become a product of a multicultural society.1 Through examples of film and art, sports, and religion, I will answer the following questions and specifically how cultural appropriation has affected North American First Nation peoples. There is much confusion when it comes to the meaning of cultural appropriation. The literal meaning begins with Culture-Anthropological: the sum total of the attainments and learned behaviour patterns of any specific period, race or people; Appropriation's meaning is to take for one's own use.[2] Most people today then know cultural appropriation then as "to take someone else's culture to use for your own purpose".2 I believe that the argument is not that appropriation is "stealing", as some people claim, but that it does matter how a person goes about putting to use the knowledge
The next reason we’ll be looking at are the stereotypical images commonly seen in literature and mascots. Mainstream media such as “Dances with Wolves”, “The Lone Ranger”, and “The Last of The Mohicans” and mascots in professional sports teams like Washington Redskins, Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, and Chicago Blackhawks all include representations of Native Americans that for some, are offensive. With this in mind, ...
Cultural appropriation should be understood that it is not the same as cultural appreciation and why it is so wrong. Taking someone else's culture and turning it to fashion or a trend is not just disrespectful but downright offensive. Cultural appropriation is defined as the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own. But then does that not mean we can not learn about other cultures other than our own? Sure we can, it is just how we decide to understand one's culture by the tradition and history.
In Donaldson’s essay, a white woman was using the cultural artifacts of Native groups and placing her own meaning on the significant cultural item. This act is disrespectful to the Natives and demonstrates ignorance on another group. While Nabhan-Warren’s essay describes the interaction between the Catholic Latina culture and the Virgin Mary symbol, it demonstrates proper interaction regarding cultural symbols. Cultural appropriation is a major issue with respect to cultural relations, therefore it is vital to recognize the proper ways in which cultural artifacts, ideas, and traditions are
In todays society there are many different cultures that individuals identify with. Culture is very important to many people and is something that helps define who we are. When different cultures are respected and appreciated it is a beautiful thing, it can bring individuals in society closer to one another. Ideally this understanding of one another’s cultures can lead to multiculturalism. If the appreciation for different cultures is not done correctly it can seem to be cultural appropriation. Any piece of a culture can be stolen, mocked, and disrespected, from music, clothing, food, etc. As a society with such a vast amount of cultures it is important to know the difference between multiculturalism
Popular culture can be defined as the general accepted culture in society. Anyone can learn about what is the generally accepted culture in America because it’s usually advertised in music, books, fashion, literature, schools and the mass media to name a few. In the book images of color, images of crime, chapter 1 shows how Indians have been negatively affected by popular culture throughout the years. However, I would say that many races have been affected by popular culture to the point in which the identity and the heritage of different culture is rapidly disappearing.