Cultural Appropriation, Part One

            For many years I have been disturbed by the term “politically correct,” which in modern use simply means “more sensitive than I am to an issue of justice, civility, or inequality.”  Today however, I’m finding a new irritant – “cultural appropriation.”  In each of these two cases, the modifier distorts the meaning of the word it modifies.  Political correctness tries to dismiss ideas as not “correct” – read “true” or “accurate” -- by making them the idiosyncrasy of an opponent.  However “cultural” modifies “appropriation” in a different way – changing its meaning three times in order to make a false analogy.  First it changes the simple definition of appropriate, second it redefines the class of entities from which things can be appropriated, and third it redefines the things that can be appropriated.

            Let me explain.  To appropriate means to take something that belongs to another.  There are many forms of appropriation, some of which have their own name:

·      Governments appropriate private property.

·      Embezzlers appropriate organizational funds.

·      Armies appropriate (“requisition”) civilian property.

·      Thieves appropriate (“steal”) things that are not theirs.

·      Plagiarists take (”plagiarize”) the intellectual content of others, in verbal, musical, or visual form, in order to gain what belonged to their original creators.

What do all these things have in common?  They’re a zero-sum game.  What A rightfully had, B now has – and A no longer does.  Further, they involve taking from a definable and clearly understood entity, whether a person or a collective of persons.

            However, cultural appropriation distorts this meaning in several ways, making a false analogy between cultural phenomena and other kinds of object, and between cultures, and other kinds of entity.  When the Beat Generation adopted berets, the Basques and the French were not materially affected; their own berets, and the cultural meaning of the beret, were still theirs.  This is true both of any individual Basque or Frenchman, and for the Basques as a people or France as a country.  On the country, when German invaded France and took over its government, the French people no longer had something they once had, and that rightfully belonged to them. 

            In what sense, for example, is a white artist taking anything from someone by painting Emmett Till in his coffin.  She hasn’t taken anything from Emmett Till, or from his family, or from the coffin currently at the Museum of African American History.  Nor from any other depiction of Till.

            As in the case of the beret, someone who wears another culture’s clothing style doesn’t take anything from the originators: It’s ironic that some Japanese have complained about western women wearing kimonos, while all Japanese businessmen wear western suits, for which they even borrowed a name – sebiro (from the English Saville Row). 

            There have been cases of cultural appropriation in a more narrow sense: western archaeologists and others taking artifacts illegally from other cultures, white producers taking songs composed by African Americans for pittances and making money from them with cover artists.  But these kinds of appropriation are also defined as theft, plagiarism, or at a minimum an unjust taking, by might or economic and social power.  And in these cases, the original owner has lost either the object or the economic value thereof.

            To summarize: real appropriation means an unlawful (or perhaps immoral) taking of something of direct or indirect material value, by persons acting alone or in concert, as, for example an army, a government, or a business, from an individual or individuals who rightfully possessed that something, in such a way as to leave the victim materially harmed. 

Tune in for a further discussion.