Being a person who spends most of her time on the internet and sometimes checks out a few tumblr blogs, there was no way I could have avoided reading about cultural appropriation somewhere.
What is Cultural Appropriation? Quoting from Wikipedia
Cultural appropriation is the adoption of an oppressed people’s cultural elements by members of the dominant culture, or by members of any culture that has historically oppressed the people of the originating culture.[3] Appropriation may eventually lead to the appropriating group being seen as the new face of said cultural practices. As oppressed people’s’ cultures are mimicked by the dominant culture, observers may begin to falsely associate certain cultural practices with the mimickers, and not with the people who originated them. This is often seen in the use by cultural outsiders of a minority, oppressed culture’s symbols or other cultural elements, such as music, dance, spiritual ceremonies, modes of dress, speech and social behaviour, among other cultural expressions.
That lead me to a few questions. First: what is a dominant culture? Am I part of a dominant culture because of my being white or am I excused because Italy is, traditionally, a “loser Country” and has a long history of invasions, not to mention the great amount of stereotypes against Italians? Second: when we talk about oppressed people, do we mean the ones oppressed by a certain other Country or any people who has ever been oppressed? Third: is cultural appropriation only perpetrated by the people who once/still dominated against the once/still oppressed people? For example, China suffered from Japan’s domination after WW2, but was never an Italian colony*, does it mean that I can wear a qipao but a japanese girl can’t? Or by dominant we only mean culturally dominant (white?) Fourth: How are immigrants in a once/still oppressed country supposed to behave? Is it cultural appropriation if someone coming from a dominant culture (supposing that we defined which cultures are dominant) simply tries to fit in among once/still oppressed people by following their traditions?
This doubts I have come from the fact that while living in China I did all I could to become “as Chinese as possible”, not just because I had a sincere interest in Chinese culture, but because I was immersed in the culture, and there was no way I could completely avoid being touched by it. I was basically assimilated to the point where I subconsciously started laughing like a Chinese girl and counting on my fingers like a Chinese, and some of those things stuck with me. Was I being offensive? Am I offensive now, with my Chinese name written on my notebooks, writing calligraphy? Am I a wannabe or I can be excused because I lived with a Chinese family for such a long time? Or even because my boyfriend’s culture is different from mine?
It bothers me not to know where to draw a line between cultural appropriation and enjoying other people’s culture/ fit in other people’s culture.
So I will ask you, since I know most of my followers have to deal with multiculturalism, what is cultural appropriation? Where are we to draw a line?
*big mistake, apparently for some time there was a small territory in northern China called tiantsin concession that was under Italy ‘s control for a while.
Dreaming of Taipei 