'CULTURAL APPROPRIATION' - SAME AS INTELLECTUAL RETARDATION?

Statue of Roman Centurion at Bath, UK

For some time now, some people who, it appears, are particularly susceptible to shallow analysis of their subject matter, the concept of 'cultural appropriation' has been given prominence.
Most recently, there has been a video on Face Book, depicting the unedifying spectacle of a black student in an American university challenging a fellow white student about his choice of hair-style or culture. The white student, probably quite happily going about his business and maintaining his focus on learning, as the black student should also be doing, has had to contend with the indignity of being challenged about, of all things, his hairstyle, which, I suspect, was not on the curriculum. It seems that the black student took exception with a white student having dreadlocks. He is white and is not worthy of having this perceived badge of 'black pride.'

So, what is all this debate about 'cultural appropriation', which seems to suggest that some people is 'appropriating' aspects of the cultures of other ethnic groups, such as, eg, their hair-styles, as is being suggested in the example I have cited above? It seems to me that the advocates of 'cultural appropriation' are taking too narrow and simplistic a view of things pertaining to culture. Cultures are not things for which you can take out a patient. If you are going to argue that a white person should not have dreadlocks, or plait their hair in corn-rows, where will it all end?

Why not tell black people that they should not speak English, or eat Chinese or Indian foods? Why not tell tourists that they should not visit the Caribbean or Africa, because they will be 'appropriating' the culture of the different countries the visit? Why not tell African Americans and European-Americans that they cannot stay in America, because they are 'appropriating' or displacing the 'cultures' of the Native Americans?

Yes, all of that would be ridiculous. Culture, as it reflects a peoples' language, world-view, customs, mythology, history and way of life, is something which is organic and reacts and interacts with the changing environment and people it comes into contact with. A healthy culture is one which is changing and not one which is isolated and kept in a vacuum.

Prudent people would not want to destroy the 'good things things' about anybody's culture, and, let us face it; it is not everything that is good about any culture. Female genital torture, the torturing of boys in some African societies, while circumcising them without anaesthetic, and the mutilation and killing of Albinos people for obeah,  come to mind.

Living in contemporary multi-cultural societies requires that we all develop  better ways of communicating, understanding and sharing between people of different ethnic groups. This, logically, leads to a shared culture which is underpinned by the different parental cultures of the different ethnic groups.

Going back to the white student who has dreadlocks; a more perceptive and open-minded black student would have taken that as a potential indication that he might have been receptive to her engaging him in a philosophical erudite debate about humanity, instead of seeking to unjustifiably chastising him. That approach, in my view, demonstrates a certain amount of intellectual infantilism.

There is no benefit to anybody, in trying to 'appropriate the past', which, I suspect, some amongst the obscurantist and mainly diasporaic black intelligentsia is trying to do. The aim should always be to make the future better for everybody, irrespective of race or ethnic origins.

None of us can claim to have contributed to greatness in the distant past or, for that matter, destructiveness, however, we do have the potential to make our contribution towards making a better future for future generations. This is the challenge; looking to the future and not the past.

Evolving and living contemporary realities, at Llandudno, UK

OneWorldOneHumanRaceOneDestiny