Why Your Appropriation Isn't Casual or Acceptable

By Max Berman on October 30, 2015

I had never written an article showcasing my opinions towards cultural appropriation, as I don’t want to come off as preachy and redundant. Yet, when I walked into my 8 AM yesterday morning and saw a white, blonde girl dressed as an “indigenous person”, I knew I had to say something. I actually couldn’t believe it when I saw her stroll through the door, sporting the traditional headdress, war paint, and oversized brown leather belt paired with some hideous light wash jeans. When someone inquired what she was supposed to be portraying, she snickered and quoted: “I’m an indigenous person”, which drew the laughter from many. I know this seems lighthearted and I’m just a huge, overly politically correct asshole, but it just really proved how truly out of touch we are with racism, and how insensitivity and the perpetuation of these stereotypes are damaging society as a whole.

By portraying an “indigenous person”, you’re mocking an entire race of people who were nearly completely exterminated by biological warfare and european conquest, their women were raped and tortured, and entire cultures were erased and lost forever. These people were removed from their land and are experiencing an almost modern day apartheid, confined to reservations where alcoholism and poor education systems keep them stuck in a cycle of poverty and self-destruction. “Well, Indians are rich because we let them set up casinos on their reservations”. The BIA reports that there are 562 tribes in the United States, of this only 223 have casinos, and of that, only 73 give payouts to the residents. There seems to be a myth permeating our society, that our past critical misdeeds can be forgiven with the allotment of miniscule, rural plots of land and the right to gamble on their own property.

You wouldn’t come to school in blackface and say you were representing an “indigenous african”, so why should racism and cultural appropriation be treated any differently when applied towards other races? Our move as a collective into a post-racial “colorblind” society has been a severe detriment, a deterrent from actual progress towards equality. If you’re going to take from an oppressed culture, you don’t get to pick and choose. It’s not a mockery that thousands of indians were slaughtered and misplaced, and it’s not funny that the poverty rate of Native Americans is 28.4%, while the American average for poverty is 15.2 %. If you’re going to be bold enough to sport their heritage, you have to take with you the good and the bad, the part of the culture that’s not cute or entertaining, and that’s what is truly offensive. Coming from a eurocentric background myself, I have not personally been the victim of racism, but I refuse to diminish the importance and meaning of someone else’s heritage in order to amuse people for one night. Your costume may have been an innocent thought, but the visual rhetoric we present to others shapes the way we perceive the world, and that needs to be preserved and not brought backwards by the mocking of other cultures that don’t necessarily match up to the western ideal.

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