When Appropriation Is The Culture
“White” culture in the US is based on theft and plagiarism (where other “lesser” people do all the work and white people take the benefit.)
Note: In this post, I don’t make a distinction between whiteness, white supremacy, and white culture, since they are often synonymous. I will make a distinction between “white people” and whiteness/white culture, since people who aid, abet, and adhere to white supremacy can belong to any racial category.
ap·pro·pri·a·tion — /əˌprōprēˈāSH(ə)n/
noun: the action of taking something for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission.
In common parlance this is called stealing. But there is also one crucial element left out of this definition, the use of power. Appropriation means that the cultural artifacts of others are exploited for one’s own gain, while the people who produce those artifacts (the music, the books, the dances) are derided as lazy, unintelligent, and worthless, and discriminated against by the dominant culture. Not only do their contributions to the greater culture go unacknowledged, they are often erased, and/or attributed to those with the ability to steal it.
