Cultural appropriation refers to the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the cultural practices of one people by members of another, usually, more dominant people. Though the term has existed since the 1940s it remained relatively obscure until the late 2000s when it slowly began to gain mainstream attention alongside several other progressive concepts such as microaggressions. As the 2010s progressed, the notion that it was inappropriate to adopt the cultural practices of other communities began to grow increasingly mainstream, though not without fierce debate, with some flashpoints growing large enough to garner international attention.
On April 22, 2018, Keziah Daum, an 18-year-old White-American woman from Woods Cross, Utah posted prom night photos to her Twitter of her wearing a qipao, a traditional Chinese gown. Daum has stated she, “was immediately drawn to the beautiful red gown and was thrilled to find a dress with a modest neckline”. A few days later though, 20-year-old, Jeremy Lam, a Chinese-American student enrolled at the University of Utah quoted the tweet with the caption, “My culture is NOT your goddamn prom dress”.
The tweet went viral and garnered 50,000 retweets and generated a tremendous amount of discussion. Many Asian-American users, particularly women belonging to the Millennial generation, argued that Daum was engaging in cultural appropriation. They argued that it was inappropriate to wear the traditional clothing of other cultures. Some also claimed that it was unfair that a White woman could wear a qipao and be deemed stylish or beautiful for doing so, while an Asian woman doing the same risked racism or teasing. Users also condemned Daum for not taking the time to learn about Chinese culture.
The debate eventually grew so loud that it gained the attention of Chinese netizens. The overwhelming majority of whom found the responses of Asian-Americans to be baffling. Many argued that a White-American woman wearing a qipao to a major event, like prom, was a source of pride for the Chinese people. Many also pointed out that though the qipao is widely associated with Chinese culture in the West, due to its popularity with early 20th century Chinese starlets, it’s not considered to be traditional Han Chinese clothing. This is because it originated within the Manchu ethnic minority quite recently in the 1920s. Most Chinese view the hanfu as the quintessential Chinese traditional outfit with many Chinese netizens suggesting Asian-Americans, like Jeremy Lam, were the ones who were ignorant of Chinese culture. Many also wondered if Chinese people adopting Western celebrations like Halloween constituted cultural appropriation.
The debate came to a sudden halt when Jeremy Lam deleted his original tweet after users began to dig up some of his old tweets where he had used racially insensitive language and the prom dress controversy slowly fizzled out.
Looking back at it, it’s hard to ignore the stark contrast in opinions. Cultural appropriation is not something people in Asia seem particularly concerned about. In many cases, rather than finding it offensive they view instances of cultural appropriation as a source of pride. Chinese netizens were actually proud to learn that an American woman found their cultural clothing appealing enough to wear to such a special occasion. The main advocates against cultural appropriation, among Asians, exist exclusively within the Western diaspora. But as we shall see in the next example even within the Western diaspora community, cultural appropriation is a hotly contested topic.
In 2015, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) hosted an exhibition of the painting La Japonaise by Claude Monet, which was of a White woman posing in a kimono while holding a Japanese fan. Attempting to capitalize on the trend of Instagram worthy photos, the MFA created a promotional event where patrons could pose in front of the painting wearing replicas of the kimono and fan.
This sparked a protest led by Asian-American Millennial activists, who accused the MFA of cultural appropriation and yellow-face. One protestor, Aparna Das, even went as far as to compare the exhibit to the human zoos of the past when European patrons paid money to gawk at African captives who were kept in literal cages. I personally find this comparison too ridiculous and tone deaf to even entertain.
It seems I wasn’t alone. Shortly after the cultural appropriation protests began the MFA announced they would no longer allow patrons to pose in the kimono. Once this was announced a second Asian-American protest, in favour of the kimono exhibit, sprung up leading to some heated debate between the two groups. Once again, I cannot help but notice that the ‘yes, it’s cultural appropriation’ crowd comprised of younger Asian-American Millennials while the ‘no, it’s not cultural appropriation’ crowd comprised of older Asian-Americans, likely immigrants.
Asian-American activists against cultural appropriation prefer to ignore this internal divide. When pressed on it, we hear one of two claims. The first being that Asian immigrants and those back in Asia have not been adequately educated on why cultural appropriation is wrong and the second being that just because some people are okay with doesn’t mean that the offense demonstrated by others is any less valid. I find neither of these arguments, convincing. The idea that people need to be educated on why they should find something offensive strikes me as bizarre. The second argument makes significantly more sense. The only issue I have is when it comes to defining social norms on what is or isn’t okay, do the voices of an offended and vocal minority take precedence over those of an apathetic, silent majority? According to Nassim Taleb, the answer seems to be yes.
So why exactly do so many young Asian Millennials, born and raised in the West, find cultural appropriation so objectionable? What is different in their experience or mindset that led them to stake out such a bold, yet fringe, outlook on the matter.
Asian-Americans are Culturally Western
Asian-Americans are culturally Western, whether they realize it or not. The progressive minded (woke) ones may be the most culturally Westernized of them all, in spite of the culturally inspired tattoos they sport on their arms. This statement is controversial, I’ve had real life discussions and arguments with people who didn’t agree with my claim so let me break it down.
I discuss a lot of seemingly unrelated topics on this blog, but there is an overarching theme which is that culture goes far deeper than most of us realize. The cultural iceberg (see above) is an illustration that’s often used to help people grasp the true scope of cultural differences. In this diagram the visible tip of the iceberg represents cultural aspects most recognizable to outsiders, aka. surface culture. Things like clothing, cuisine, festivals, artwork, music etc. These are the sorts of differences most recognizable to outsiders.
Head beneath the water and we see the more invisible aspects of culture, aka. deep culture. Things like our beliefs pertaining to relationships, family, money, work, education, patriotism, entertainment, health, religion, beauty etc. Of course, these vary from individual to individual, but differences still do exist at the national level. The existence of Atheist Pakistanis and devout Swedes doesn’t change the fact that Pakistanis, as a whole, are far more religious, than the Swedes.
Head even deeper to the bottom of the iceberg and you’ll find aspects of culture you likely didn’t even know counted as culture. Introverted vs. extroverted tendencies, conceptions of the self, and biological responses to external stimuli. For example, anthropologists have noted that introverted dispositions are almost non-existent in many non-Western cultures with many adults belonging to this culture finding it impossible to even sleep by themselves. By Western standards this would constitute an attachment disorder warranting professional mental health support but in places like India it is totally normal.
I argue that Asian-Americans are defined by an adherence to Western deep culture even when they are strong adherent of Asian surface culture. A Chinese-American youth may love Chinese food and attend Chinese New Year celebrations but also adhere to set of values (on things like money, family, sex etc.) that put him more in line with his White neighbors than Chinese immigrant parents.
This is one reason why the generational divide between immigrant parents and native-born children is such a fixture in the Asian-American cultural landscape. The cultural gap is frequently discussed in diaspora. Message boards and subreddits are dominated by parental conflicts, triggered by a conflict of values pertaining to things like marriage, sex, career, finances, or family obligations. And there are countless films and books that speak to this generational clash of cultures caused by parents and children adhering to two conflicting sets of deep culture.
This cultural divide is also why Western born members of the Asian diaspora view recent immigrants as being so different from themselves. Fobs (fresh of the boat), freshies, refs, the slang varies but anyone who grew up in a neighborhood with a large Asian-American population will quickly learn that there is a strong social and cultural gap between Western born Asians and the more recent immigrant arrivals. Growing up in Toronto’s ethnoburbs I observed that Canadian born Asian youth and recent newcomers socialized in separate circles for the most part. In many cases, it was more common for Chinese-Canadian youth to befriend White or Indian kids than it was to befriend Chinese immigrant youth. This was despite the fact that most of these Chinese-Canadian youth were proud of their ethnic origin, loved Asian food and pop-culture and spoke Chinese (though they nearly always preferred English outside of family settings).
It is also because of this invisible cultural divide that many Western raised Asians find themselves feeling uncomfortable in their homeland where they find themselves surrounded by people who look like them but think very differently. Films like The Farewell and West is West explore this idea in depth. Ultimately Western born Asians are most comfortable not in Asia with their own people, but in the West surrounded by other Asian-Americans who at the point could constitute a distinct ethnic group. You could argue that they even constitute a distinct ethnicity.
So What’s this Got to Do with Cultural Appropriation?
Okay, so we’ve established that culture goes deep. And we’ve established that Asian-Americans are culturally Western, even if they do love Asian food and music. But what’s this got to do with cultural appropriation?
Well as diluted as the Asian-ness of Asian-American identity may be, most Asian-Americans still desire a connection to their heritage and identity. However, since they are mostly averse to the deeper aspects of their Asian heritage (values, psychology, norms) they’re only attachment lay in the superficial. I’m Chinese because I love Chinese food not because I adhere to Confucian norms about family life. I’m Indian because I wore a sari to a wedding and performed a desi dance routine, not because I adhere to Hindu religious orthodoxy pertaining to the roles of women.
Asian immigrants often feel they’re preserving their culture if they can live by those traditional values and pass (or push) them on to their children. It’s the cause of so much generational strife, as we’ve discussed before. Asian-American youth never really adhered to those beliefs in the first place so the preservation of their cultural identity rests entirely on these more superficial aspects.
Desi pop art, which is commonly hung up in the homes of trendy South Asian Millennials, is a great example of this. A quick search on Etsy reveals paintings were brown skinned women in saris and Indian jewelry counting US dollars and sipping wine. This is the perfect representation of Asian-American cultural identity. Culturally Western, Aesthetically Asian. A young artist from an agricultural village in the Indian interior would never make something like this, nor would she identify with it. A young Indian-American woman, born and raised in California, would though.
So, if a White woman decides to start posing in a sari and Indian jewelry it elicits anxiety among Asian-Americans that their culture is at risk of assimilation and de ethnicization. If your entire cultural identity revolves around food and clothing and you discover everyone is starting to eat your food and wear your clothes then what are you left with? Nothing. People back in Asia don’t have this same fear. Their cultural identity goes beyond the superficial, extending into values and psychology. This is not say that Asians in Asia never feel culturally threatened by the West. Just in different ways. The same anxieties immigrant parents face when they feel their children are acting too American are experienced on a national level across Asia. Indian politicians’ rail against Western holidays like Valentines Day for corrupting youth, for example. Here the threat is not Western people copying Asian culture, but Asian people copying Western culture.
I also want to say, there’s nothing wrong with Asian-American culture. As I said culture is dynamic and shifting and the rise of Asian diaspora communities in the West led to the creation of a new distinct culture, and I argue, ethnic group. In fact, Asian-Americans may become more secure in their identity if they did define themselves as a distinct group. Whether this culture and ethnicity will continue to exist and distinguish itself or find its self assimilating further into the Western mainstream as the generations go by is anyone’s guess. But I lean to the second.
Conclusion
My two biggest gripes with cultural appropriation, as most commonly understood among progressives, is its tendency to view cultures as distinct, static entities instead of overlapping, dynamic, heterogenous ones and its over reliance on connecting modern day instances of cultural appropriation to past historical atrocities and grievances even when the connection is questionable.
That being said I cannot fully discard the idea either as there have been a few incidents in the past that definitely do seem irresponsible. The near duplication of an Inuit shaman’s parka without so much as a nod of acknowledgment towards the originator of the pattern struck me as a disrespectful move. Taking inspiration from a culture is one thing, claiming to have invented it is another. But then what would the downstream consequences of this be. If it’s left up to the voice of the people we may continue to find the debate over cultural appropriation dominated by the most easily offended voices, even when they’re in the minority. Leave it up the legal system and we may enter a bizarre new world of cultural intellectual property.
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter too, so let me know in the comments.
