Cultural Appropriation, Appreciation, and Denigration

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. When is it morally wrong to engage in aspects of other people’s cultures?

Cultural Denigration

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. Curiously, the word “denigrate” comes from a Latin word meaning to blacken.

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 2018, the logo of the Cleveland Indians was a cartoon of Chief Wahoo that suggests a negative stereotype that prompts racism. The term “redskin” is a derogatory slang term for indigenous people. Similarly, the Inuit of northern Canada reject the term “Eskimo” as inaccurate and offensive. Sports mascots based on negative stereotypes should therefore be abandoned as culturally harmful.

Cultural Appreciation

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). Similarly, jazz blended African-American blues and ragtime with European band instruments such as clarinets and trumpets. The delicious Vietnamese sandwich banh mi combines traditional local ingredients such as coriander and pork sausage with French baguettes and mayonnaise. It would be a pity if future cultural creativity was blocked by blanket accusations of cultural appropriation that fail to distinguish between cultural denigration and cultural appreciation.

Kacey Musgraves and Justin Trudeau

Kasey Musgraves has made acute cultural observations in her songs such as “Pageant Material,” so my first reaction to the accusations against her was that she was just wearing a dress, which would amount to appreciation rather than denigration. But pictures show that she wore the dress with long slits up the sides and without the flowing pants that usually accompany the dress. The result was sexually provocative in line with Asian female stereotypes such as Geisha girls and prostitutes. So my personal opinion is that her dress came closer to cultural denigration than appreciation.

Similarly, Trudeau’s use of brownface was wrong. Blackface is obviously denigration, but someone might argue that dressing up as Aladdin was ok because Aladdin is a positive character in Disney moves and the original Arabian Nights. However, attention to the broader cultural context shows the problem with a white man portraying himself as brown. Canada’s New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh describes growing up with taunts of being a “Paki” and a “terrorist” because of his brown skin and Sikh turban. The history of such discrimination shows that brownface is analogous to blackface and therefore should be avoided. For similar reasons, adoption by white people of indigenous garb such as feathered headdresses is offensive in the context of centuries of colonial mistreatment.

We can enjoy cultural appreciation and creativity while avoiding behaviors that come at all close to denigration.