It’s getting tougher for pop stars
to be politically correct these days, since the range of acceptable behavior
keeps shrinking. White girls like Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry can’t even twerk
or do a geisha-inspired performance without self-appointed critics
with too much time on their hands crying Racism!
Cultural appropriation!
Perry has been suspected
of racism also for her tour featuring dancing Egyptian mummies with exaggerated
curves, which she claims had nothing to do with race: “I based it on plastic
surgery,” Perry explained in the August 2014 Rolling Stone. “It’s actually a representation of our culture wanting
to be plastic, and that’s why there’s bandages and it’s mummies.” As for accusations
of cultural appropriation, Perry grumbled, “I guess I’ll just stick to baseball
and hot dogs, and that’s it… [C]an’t you appreciate a culture? I guess, like,
everybody has to stay in their lane?”
Lauren Duca at Huffington Post thinks so. She asserts
that there is “no room for argument” that Perry’s performance was a
“definitive” example of cultural appropriation and arguably racist.
What is cultural appropriation,
anyway? According to Duca, it refers to “picking and choosing elements of a
culture by a member of another culture without permission. This includes
traditional knowledge, religious symbols, artifacts or any other unauthorized
use of cultural practice or ideation.”
The obvious question that leaps to
mind is: who is “authorized” to give this cultural “permission”? Obviously
there is no one who speaks for an entire culture, and never has been. “The only
time it is OK,” Duca reiterates, “is with permission or authorization by the
origin culture.” How does one get permission from an entire “culture”? The very
concept is inane and illiberal. Should the Chinese cellist Yo-Yo Ma have sought
permission to play Bach? Should the Mississippi-born Leontyne Price have sought
permission to sing Verdi?
Duca continues: “In that it belittles a culture while using it for personal gain, cultural appropriation
indirectly expresses racial superiority.” [Emphasis added] It is most problematic,
she says, when someone “from a position of privilege” borrows from the culture
of an exploited or oppressed minority group for that person’s “benefit.”
Her assumption seems to be that
this so-called appropriation can never be an homage to, or a sincere affinity
for, that cultural expression; it can only be exploitation. Even as playful
kitsch, like Perry’s geisha outfit, is it really so offensive that she must be accused
of “thoughtlessly Othering and objectifying” Asian culture, as a Jezebel writer
phrased
it? (I have no idea why “Othering” is capitalized, but I suppose it doesn’t
matter since it isn’t even a word). Our obsession today with labeling such
innocuous actions as racist and exploitative accomplishes nothing except to
aggravate already raw race relations and to trivialize actual racism.
In a previous life I was a musician
in San Francisco, where for years I was a percussionist in the thriving, local
Afro-Brazilian dance scene. As a white man born and raised in Arkansas, my
cultural origins couldn’t have been farther from those out of which that music
bloomed, but so what? I learned to play it so well that I taught it to others,
even to Brazilians. I was passionate about the music – an Africanized drumming
tradition called samba-reggae – and even ultimately led an award-winning group
of performers. That pursuit had nothing to do with belittling, exploiting, or “Othering”
anything; it stemmed from my genuine appreciation of a musical form that I felt
in my soul, regardless of the color of my skin.
The ironic problem with the theory
behind cultural appropriation is that “borrowing” is actually one of the
significant means by which cultures develop and assimilate; it breaks down
barriers. But the divisive grievance-mongering behind the theory of cultural
appropriation only perpetuates racial resentment and cultural barriers. It
states that you are not allowed to step outside of your skin color or cultural
heritage. You aren’t allowed to be an individual with a passion for cultural expressions
and ideas that do not happen to stem from your background. We aren’t allowed to
participate in our own human variety, embrace it, and find our shared humanity
at the heart of it.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 8/1/14)
