Following Vogue ? s release of the first installment of its diversity-themed March issue , supermodel Karlie Kloss apologized on Twitter for agreeing to a photoshoot in which she was styled as a Japanese geisha . She is garbed in a traditional patterned robe and black wig , posing alongside a sumo wrestler . The photographs are fabulous . The 24-yeard-old American-Danish-German model probably thought so too until she was bullied on social media for allegedly being ? racially insensitive .?
? Cultural appropriation !? the critics howled .
Kloss , of course , wasn ? t the first celebrity to have been accused of this supposed cultural crime . Madonna was bashed for using Latin America as a backdrop in a music video . Gwen Stefani faced criticism for her fixation on Harajuku culture from Japan . One of the Kardashians was lambasted for wearing a do-rag . The list goes on . The social media is unrelenting .
I may be no fan of these celebs , but I have low tolerance for trolls contriving cultural postures to euphemize their disdain for the celebrities ? ostentatious behavior . Can ? t we just call it what it is ?
But the power of ? trending ? is like a virus that zombifies our culture and intellect . The ones who don ? t think critically get infected easily .
The charge of cultural appropriation gets jumbled up with ? racism ,? and celebrities are not only the target of denouncing stones . It creeps into the education system and becomes institutionalized ideas . Last year , several American universities banned cowboy and Indian costumes ? and other ? racially insensitive ? and offensive Halloween costumes . What qualifies as insensitive and offensive depends on the whim of the culture police . Pocahontas , offensive ; sexy French maid , not ; dreadlocks , offensive ; gypsy , not .
In 2012 , a Portland school banned the mention of ? peanut butter and jelly sandwich ,? which the school ? s principal categorized as ? an example of a subtle form of racism .? Hence the unmentionable popular item in the students ? lunch bags has lost its name . The reason , according to the school principal , is that Latinos don ? t eat the unmentionable ; they only eat tacos and torta . Click the laughing emoji .
Zombie culture
sentiments has been legitimized into academic and legal discourses . Susan Scafidi , a law professor at Fordham University and author of ? Who Owns Culture ? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Culture ,? defines ? cultural appropriation ? as , ? Taking intellectual property , traditional knowledge , cultural expressions , or artifacts from someone else ' s culture without permission . This can include unauthorized use of another culture ' s dance , dress , music , language , folklore , cuisine , traditional medicine , religious symbols , etc .?
This definition would qualify ? and condemn ? a lot of well-meaning people as ? cultural appropriators ,? including linguists who speak different languages , fusion chefs who take pride in their culinary innovations , God-seekers who explore different religions and Western hippies who promote natural methods of healing .
Who hatched up ? cultural appropriation ?? When did it start sneaking into our vocabulary ? I certainly never heard of this phrase when I was studying sociology in graduate school .
In grade school , I always looked forward to Oct . 24 , the United Nations Day , when every class was assigned to wear the costume of a certain country as a way to celebrate all cultures of the world . I was an Indian , an Indonesian , a French , an Irish , a Polish and Hungarian . At cultural events in school , I was an Igorot , a Manobo , an Aeta , a Muslim ? dressed in costumes worn by these Philippine tribal minorities . Part of wearing the costume was learning about the culture .
When did cultural celebration become theft ? What is the point of cultural exchange programs nowadays ?
In an addendum to her definition of ? cultural appropriation ,? Scafidi said , ? It ' s most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive , e . g . sacred objects .?
Why is cultural appreciation ? harmful ?? Determining harmful intention requires us to look inside someone ? s mind and assesses the motivation . But we can always rely on zealots to plant malice in the mind of the innocent and distort their view of the world .
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Eventually this monster of censorship and complex
Hashtag : cultural regression .
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