Michael Barone · May 5, 2017
“Cultural appropriation” has become the latest evil denounced by soi-disant social justice warriors, on campus and off. Examples:
“I was taught that white people shouldn’t listen to rap music because it’s cultural appropriation and could be offensive to my classmates,” writes Pomona College student Steven Glick in The Washington Post.
Young women wearing bindis (Hindu forehead adornments) and feathered headdresses at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival should be ashamed, declares Teen Vogue, because that’s cultural appropriation.
Yoga, as you may be relieved to learn from The Huffington Post, is not necessarily cultural appropriation. “But it’s complicated,” the writer adds. “It is really important to honor and appreciate where a practice comes from, or we risk appropriating it.” Got that? Really important.
Sometimes individuals take it into their own hands to punish cultural appropriation — for example, when a Hampshire College student interrupted a women’s basketball game to insist that a Central Maine Community College player remove the braids from her hair.
Another transgressive bit of cultural appropriation, according to a Pitzer College assistant professor of Chicano-Latino studies: white students (presumably female) wearing hoop earrings.
A reasonably sane, decent adult might be puzzled by all this. But consult Google and you find 2.67 million hits for “cultural appropriation.” That’s not (to risk committing an offense) chopped liver. It’s defined by Wikipedia as “the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture.”
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/48908
