There was an altercation recently that involved a white college student at San Francisco State University and a black woman who confronted him about his dreadlocked hair. The woman, who is reportedly a campus employee, told the student, Cory Goldstein, that he shouldn’t be sporting dreadlocks because they belonged to her culture. Goldstein responded that dreadlocks were originally Egyptian, and the woman responded by asking him if he was Egyptian. He said no, and she seemed to consider that a validation of her assertion that he shouldn’t have dreadlocks.
A very quick bit of searching reveals that dreadlocks of some form were common in many ancient cultures, including the Greeks, the Aztecs, the Islamic Dervishes and many others. In fact, it seems that styling hair into “ropes” is something that’s occurred all over the world and throughout history. Rationally considered, this undermines the black woman’s assertion that dreadlocks are part of “her” culture, and if I were the sort to engage in some political performance art (and if I still had all my hair), I might grow dreads myself and tell all challengers that I was embracing my Spartan heritage.
Cultural appropriation, in its incarnation as a component of modern political correctness run amok, isn’t really about a rational protection of cultural heritage. Two realities: that many things deemed to be of a particular culture are often paralleled in other cultures, and that every cultural component is itself built on previous cultures, take a back seat to the core reason behind accusations of cultural appropriation. These accusations are meant to control and subordinate the identity groups deemed “oppressors” to those deemed “oppressed.” Thus, a white man (oppressor) isn’t permitted to wear his hair in a style currently associated with blacks (oppressed).
Underlying this all is the deliberate undermining of individual liberty in favor of cultural authoritarianism. Power is achieved through control, and cultural appropriation is about control.
People may seek to express individuality and stand out from the crowd through attire, hairstyles, makeup, tattoos, piercings and other aspects of personal presentation. In doing so, they accomplish two seemingly dissonant things: they declare non-conformity and embrace the individual choices afforded by a free society, and they conform to the rulesets of the identity groups they identify with. The latter, born out of our innate tendencies to tribalism, is what prompts negative reaction to those who “appropriate” aspects of the rulesets. Thus, a white person who wears dreadlocks gets challenged. So might someone who goes out on the street wearing a biker gang kutte without belonging to a club, a person who tries to live the goth lifestyle by wearing a fake tattoo arm-sleeve, a white kid dressed up in hip-hop styles, or a black kid dressed in prep school clothing. Selena Gomez got in trouble for wearing a bindi, Lady Gaga for wearing a burka, Katy Perry for performing in a kimono, and Karlie Kloss for wearing a Native American headdress. Halloween has become a mine field, with countless formerly acceptable costumes now verboten and likely to draw fire from social justice warriors.
In all these cases, the message is “I feel that you are being insensitive by cavalierly using imagery that derives from my culture without my permission or approval, I am entitled to feel this way, I am entitled to tell you that I feel this way, and I am entitled to veto your use of any imagery that I can argue is part of my culture and not yours.” It’s a dominance play, an effort to impose both prior restraint and a superior spot in the grievance hierarchy. Accepting cultural appropriation as a real thing puts another tool in the toolbox of social justice warriors, class exploiters, and other statist control freaks. It creates the illusion of legitimacy for what will be an ever-greater list of transgressions, each of which is intended to cow and subordinate the transgressor into deferring to the synthetically outraged, and it’s helped along by the false erudition associated with a polysyllabic phrase. Oh, look! Cultural Appropriation! Big Words! Must be important. The big words aren’t the thing, the meat and meaning behind them is. In this case, that meat and meaning is subversive and destructive.
That’s not to say there aren’t things that one shouldn’t do. Wearing blackface is a really bad idea, for example. But, as with all such things, the existence of some genuine mockeries is used to open the door to all sorts of expanded claims. Consider the keywords used in this article about appropriation: Mocked. Othered. Struggle. Affirmed. Trivialized. Undermines. Consider, as well, the final statements:
My Blackness isn’t only skin deep, and it’s not just hair or clothes or music that make me me. It’s not as if Black folks all have one monolithic style we can claim to own. But the various ingredients of my unique Black identity are more important to me than words can even say.”
The author claims that blacks don’t have one monolithic style they can claim as their own, but then asserts that there are many styles that they do claim as their own. She asserts that cultural appropriation causes her distress even when no intent to do so exists, and that the lack of intent is irrelevant to her entitlement to feel that distress. Mens rea, defenestrated.
Accepting the historic and pervasive racism (not just against blacks, by the way) and pervasive sexism that this and other societies throughout the world have been working to overcome and eradicate is intellectually honest, and acting in a way that acknowledges this is proper. However, this exclusionary and controlling “cultural appropriation” concept isn’t that. It’s a means to assert dominance and to control thought. It doesn’t advance the goals of equality or harmony, it exacerbates the tribalism that spawned all the bigotries of the past. Cultural appropriation is an excuse to be angry. The “appropriated” get to complain about those who they perceive as members of the oppressor groups. The appropriators may act subdued and contrite, but in many cases they’ll be angry and resentful for being accused when there was no intent to insult. It certainly doesn’t advance the goal of an unbiased society when bullies are given more power to bully, even if the excuse is they were the bullied ones in the past.
As for dreadlocks? Ask the average person about their origin and you’re most likely to hear “black culture” or “jamaican culture.” This is the common perception, but as I noted before, it’s not the whole story. Non-blacks wearing dreadlocks isn’t exactly a new thing, either. We should be thankful for the fact that the aforementioned incident went viral – it does expose some of the absurdity of the “cultural appropriation” movement.
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