Culture Swap: Appropriation v Appreciation

After Friday’s discussion around the idea of there being a “line” between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, it really forced me to delve deeper into my own knowledge of, not only the two terms “cultural appropriation” and “cultural appreciation,” but also how this applies to myself. Being in an interracial relationship, it’s inherent, just like any other relationship, that you be willing to make the choice to elevate your knowledge around and appreciation for your partner’s culture and background. By having this baseline respect and desire to understand a culture outside of your own, I believe that one would then automatically fall into the category of a cultural appreciator. Where cultural appropriation, in my opinion, really comes into play is when another person or society attempts to claim another person or society’s cultural practices as their own, or without fully understanding the historical significance of those practices. For that reason, I feel as though there is always an apparent choice to either appropriate or appreciate.

Cultural appropriation, by definition, is coined as “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another people or society.” By this definition and my own thoughts on the concept itself, I definitely think that some people are too quick to label a person as culturally appropriating as a result of misunderstanding. There are undoubtedly a plethora of examples in which cultural appropriation is still extremely prevalent and offensive today, but I also am hopeful that cultural appropriation can be avoided and soon exterminated in the future. I feel that by increasing the general public’s view on the importance of awareness and understanding of different peoples and societies, we can then act in a way that is then deemed as appreciation rather than appropriation.