Kadia Blagrove a Cultural writer based in N.Y.C: one of my favorite bloggers and writers. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind when it comes to touchy subjects, such as cultural appropriation. Your Guide to Avoiding Cultural Appropriation by K Blagrove: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kadia-blagrove-/your-guide-to-avoiding-cu_b_8062676.html

“Cultural appropriation is when white media trivializes and adopts aspects of other cultures without proper recognition, representation and respect.” — Kadia Blagrove

There are many different ways people view cultural appropriation. In the news recently, I’m sure you have heard about Beyonce’s halftime show. Various news outlets like theguardian.com, state and firmly believe Beyonce’s halftime show had remnants of indian religion and culture that Beyonce had “no right to abuse”. Many say that it was just a musical performance and don’t believe that it could have a serious affect on America. However, when people with little knowledge on someones culture watch or listen to a show like this, they often misconstrue a false idea or opinion of another culture. So this musical performance has America questioning, is this Cultural Appropriation?

Beyonce is the star of the show and dresses up as an Indian woman. This is feeding America a false stereotype of what Indian women are like and it’s insulting to many. During the halftime show Twitter blew up with tweets arguing about this performance. Media outlets, news sources, and every day users chimed in and tweeted their opinions about this issue. “Are we gonna discuss how Beyonce dressing up as an Indian woman for the Coldplay video is cultural appropriation, or not?” -@thesalteater. “Im not really sure how I feel about the new Coldplay music video, I just don’t like that Beyonce was supposed to be an indian actress, its like white actors playing black or asian characters” -@trashliya. Sadly, all these users question the issue at hand with similar approaches, meaning theres no doubt people around the world, had the same reactions.

There are many ways to avoid cultural appropriation(refer to my previous blog). It seems that as the world becomes more socially aware via social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, the problem of cultural appropriation is more easily talked about. Thus meaning that this issue in the world is brought up often and people are always trying to find solutions on how to fix a world where cultural appropriation is so common. Upon doing more research on this topic, I found numerous amounts of websites, blogs, and activists talking about how cultural appropriation is running rampant, especially in the United States of America. Without paying proper respect to a certain culture when representing their style of fashion or anything relating to it, many people consider that to be cultural appropriation.

As I trek onward to continue this research, I find myself in a world where cultural appropriation can be so ignorantly done. As the world gets smarter about the subject, hopefully the number of cultural appropriating events — like Beyonce’s half time show — can be reduced. I personally hope to discover more findings about how cultural appropriation is getting better in the world and not worse.