Dear God Please Lets Talk About: Cultural Appropriation...

And how it's not a thing. Well at least not in the way hyper sensitive and often 2nd generation immigrants think it is anyway.

 My grandma beams with excitement and enthusiasm whenever she is able to share her West Indian heritage with people, the food she enjoys cooking, the music she once danced to as a youth "back home" and all that enthusiasm clashes so harshly with the concept of 'cultural appropriation'. As though an openness and willingness to invite other people from other cultures into your own is some kind of abuse. That they by entering into it, ready to soak up the beauty, are invaders bursting through the locked gates, rather than welcomed guests. It's so odd.

 Odder still is that whenever I see the phrase used, it's seldom by immigrants or natives of the culture but instead their spoiled 2/3nd etc generation kin. And as an aforementioned grandchild of immigrants, I wonder if it's a disease of my generation that we're constantly looking for something to fight against, an injustice to march for, an itch to scratch... but we have nothing and so we nitpick.

 One moment it's who can wear braids in their hair, the next it's rewriting the age old definition of racism to mean power + privilege. The similarity between all these 'issues' is that they pail in comparison to the fight our parents and grandparents had as unfamiliars in a new country, dealing with the insults and the whispers and the mistrust. Now we walk down those same streets that we've likely grown up on and think nothing of looking differently than the person who passes us by. I'm not suggesting we live in some post-racial paradise but we're a hell of a lot closer than our grandparents were and it's because of them. Does it ever occur to the champions and gatekeepers of 'other cultures' that perhaps our grandparents and the natives of the countries they moved to, used the act of sharing and learning about cultures other than their own to integrate into communities that transcended cultural differences? No of course not.

My family's ability to be so open to everyone they meet regardless is perhaps why I have such a 'relaxed' view on culture and who can have what. I just don't think it matter whether a little girl on holiday in Jamaica wears braids in her hair or if a high school student goes to prom in Chinese attire. You know why I don't think it matters? Because I don't automatically assume that either are doing so with any malicious intent, curiosity isn't ignorance and it isn't a crime. I also am not so arrogant as to assume that the things within 'my culture' belong solely to or  originated from said culture. These people don't even bother to do any research before they attempt to snatch the chopsticks from your hand. They never seem to know all that much about their precious and protected cultures. It's like mate your culture is x-box and kebabs, chill out. Maybe they cling to their parent's culture so hard because they are further removed from it, they have grown up eating different food, speaking a different language alongside eating their parent's traditional food, speaking their parent's native tongue etc. Either way, if you act like you are the only one who can enjoy your culture guilt free, you're a dick.

 I find people who act as guard dog to their grandparent's culture and think of themselves as some sort of defenders of a homeland they've probably never been to more than once, pathetic. What makes you think that if the people who left their home countries so that their future family (YOU,) could have better opportunities are un-bothered and actually excited by questions about their culture, interest in clothing and food, that you should be? What makes you so fucking special? Stop being so precious because chances are, you're not doing it because you actually give a monkeys about 'your culture' but because you enjoy punishing people and engaging in tribalism and calling it progressive. You just end up looking like a total arsehole. Why are you trying to discourage people from taking an interest in other cultures? Surely you're aware of all the awful events that have happened over the course of history because people were insensitive to other cultures, after all you do love to spout on about the oppression in YOUR history.


Rant over, hopefully we all learned something.


Stop being a culture hog, they are (most of them,) are beautiful and worth learning about.


Love,

The Girl in Blue
xoxo