I must admit that I was surprised, and yes, even a little dismayed, when I first realised that cultural appropriation was a thing. I always thought of humans as a species, evolving towards something greater and better than we are today. In my shallow little so-called “whitecentric” mind, we shared with, and shared from, other cultures.
Hence, in summer, I still like to wear my sarong on the verandah.
I started out with reggae, but expanded my appropriation to include a whole gamut of “world” music.
I eat sushi, goulash, pizza, enchiladas, steak/egg/chips, Thai, Chinese (including regional foods), and on and on.
The Hindu concept of Brahman has become a part of who I am, but I admire some of Gautama’s teachings, as well as those from K’ung-fu-tzu.
I wear clothes of (mostly) Italian design.
If I had hair, I would have worn dreads at some time of my life.
I love the inukshuk, but haven’t constructed one because I know I could not do it justice.
I have been trying to shed the skin of religious conditioning that my childhood, country, and culture, has lathered on me over the years.
My childhood was close to being destitute, but wasn’t quite, but I didn’t look at the kids from Nob Hill and want what they had (unless, in the late 50s, it was the white bucks that all the cool rich kids had).
I used to play cowboys and indians as a child and would play either role without feeling that I was subtracting anything from a cowboy’s life, or from the valour of a First Nations Warrior.
And I am now in a position where I feel that I have to apologise to all of the cultures of the world for admiring, and emulating, much of their ways of life, thinking, eating. It was never my intention to piss off an entire culture! It was never my intention to denigrate through my adoption of whatever from their culture.
I simply thought, naively it now seems, that we were all one species and, if I had something good, tasty, or cool, that anyone wanted to duplicate for their own purposes, hey! that is what a species does.
No slight. No bigotry. No taking advantage of various cultures.
My ancestors were Irish, preceded by Norman. We immigrated to British Nova Scotia in the mid to late 1700s, and (I suspect) had to pretend to be Protestant to get jobs. As economic refugees, my family moved to Timmins in the 1940s to better our lives.
Things change: people adapt.
If you see me eating ethnic food, wearing ethnic clothes, singing ethnic music, I am not mocking you, or trying to take anything away from the culture that produced you. I am simply saying, “Hey, fellow traveller! I really enjoy your food/clothes/music/thought/whatever, and I think it worthy of emulation.”
So if all of the above makes me a bad person, a cultural stalker, please tell me what alternative I have, other than living alone, in a closet.
Sometimes I get puzzled by shit: this is one of those times.
