Posted October 22, Reviewed by Abigail Fagan. My favorite young country singer, Kacey Musgraves, has been criticized for wearing a traditional Vietnamese dress. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized profusely after old pictures surfaced showing him wearing blackface and brownface, the latter as part of an Aladdin costume. The clearest cases where cultural appropriation is immoral is when it is used to disparage or humiliate members of another culture.
Blackface began in the nineteenth century as part of minstrel shows where white performers wore it to portray African Americans as lazy, cowardly, superstitious, and hypersexual. Blackface is so strongly associated with racist attitudes and behaviors that it is clearly immoral. Other examples of cultural denigration include sports mascots based on indigenous peoples, including the baseball Cleveland Indians, the American football Washington Redskins, and the Canadian football Edmonton Eskimos.
Until , the logo of the Cleveland Indians was a cartoon of Chief Wahoo that suggests a negative stereotype that prompts racism. Sports mascots based on negative stereotypes should therefore be abandoned as culturally harmful. However, there are many other kinds of cultural borrowings that are based on respectful appreciation rather than denigration.
I am learning Tai Chi as a kind of meditative dance with well-evidenced health benefits. My fellow students are gaining from our skilled instructor, originally from Hong Kong, a genuine appreciation of the skill and beauty associated with an ancient Chinese cultural practice.
Similarly, it may be unfair to find something wrong with my love of Indian food, African-American blues, and moccasin slippers. Cultural borrowings are often the source of creative inventions. The wonderful PBS documentary on country music describes how it grew with contributions from the British Isles folk songs and fiddles , Africa banjos and rhythms , and continental Europe guitars and yodeling.
