Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
-Terence
Way back in the fall of 2015, a free yoga class at the University of Ottawa was suspended due to concern it might have been cultural appropriation. A Centre official, responding to the prompting complaint, noted that many cultures, including the culture from which yoga originated, “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy … we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practicing yoga.” To fix this, they attempted to “rebrand” the class as “mindful stretching.” Due to issues regarding a French translation, the rebranding failed and the class was suspended.
Back then, I initially assumed it was absurd satire lampooning what was then called political correctness. It was real, but still absurd. But, as absurdities sometimes do, it provided a context for discussing a serious subject—in this case cultural appropriation.
The concept of cultural appropriation is controversial, but the idea is simple. In general terms, cultural appropriation takes place when a dominant culture takes (“appropriates”) from a marginalized culture for morally problematic reasons. For example, white college students have been accused of cultural appropriation (and worse) when they have used parts of American black culture for theme parties. Some on the left (or “the woke” as they are called by their detractors) see cultural appropriation as morally wrong. Some on the right think the idea of cultural appropriation is ridiculous and that people should just get over and forget about past oppressions. For them, the important thing is to address the cruel oppression of white, straight men—such as the President, Elon Musk, various billionaires, most CEOs, and such.
While I am still no fan of what can justly be considered performative political correctness, there are moral problems arising from cultural appropriation. One common type of cultural appropriation is intended to lampoon aspects of that culture. While comedy, as Aristotle noted, is a species of the ugly, it should not enter the realm of what is hurtful. Doing so would cease to be comedic and would be insulting mockery. An excellent (or awful) example of this would be the use of blackface by people who are not black. Naturally, specific cases would need to be given due consideration—it can be aesthetically legitimate to use the shock of apparent cultural appropriation to make a point. The 2008 film Tropic Thunder does this well.
It can be objected that lampooning is exempt from moral concerns about insulting people. It could even be argued that there is nothing wrong with engaging in insults. The challenge is making a consistent case for this that would allow the same insults and mockery of one’s own culture.
Another type of cultural appropriation is misusing symbols. For example, an underwear model dancing around in a war bonnet is not intended as lampooning but is an insult to the culture that sees a war bonnet as an honor to be earned. It would be comparable to having underwear models prancing around displaying unearned honors such as the Purple Heart, a Silver Star, or the Medal of Honor. This misuse can be unintentional—people often use cultural marks of honor as “cool accessories” without any awareness of what they mean. While people should, perhaps, do some research before borrowing from other cultures, innocent ignorance is certainly forgivable.
It could be objected that such misuse is not morally problematic since there is no real harm being done when a culture is insulted by the misuse of its symbols. This, of course, would need to be held to consistently—a person making this argument to allow the misuse of the symbols of another culture would need to accept a comparable misuse of their own sacred symbols as morally tolerable. I am not addressing the legality of this matter—although cultures do often have laws protecting their own symbols, such as military medals or religious icons.
While it would be easy to run through a multitude of cases that would be considered cultural appropriation, I prefer to focus on presenting a general principle about what would be morally problematic cultural appropriation. Given the above examples and consideration of the others that can be readily found, what seems to make appropriation inappropriate is the misuse or abuse of the cultural elements. That is, there needs to be meaningful harm inflicted by the appropriation. This misuse or abuse could be intentional (which would make it morally worse) or unintentional (which might make it an innocent error).
It could be contended that any appropriation of culture is harmful by using an analogy to trademark, patent, and copyright law. A culture could be regarded as holding the moral “trademark”, “patent” or “copyright” (as appropriate) on its cultural items and thus people who are not part of that culture would be inflicting harm by appropriating these items. This would be analogous to another company appropriating, for example, Disney’s trademarks, violating the copyrights held by Random House or the patents held by Google. Culture could be thus regarded as a property owned by members of that culture and passed down as a matter of inheritance. This would seem to make any appropriation of culture by outsiders morally problematic—although a culture could give permission for such use by intentionally sharing the culture. Those who are fond of property rights should find this argument appealing.
One way to counter the ownership argument is to note that humans are born into culture by chance and any human could be raised in any culture. As such, it could be claimed that humans have an ownership stake in all human cultures and thus are entitled to adopt culture as they see fit. The culture should, of course, be shown proper respect. This would be a form of cultural communism—which those who like strict property rights might find unappealing.
A response to this is to note that humans are also born by chance to families and any human could be designated the heir of a family, yet there are strict rules governing the inheritance of property. As such, cultural inheritance could work the same way—only the true heirs can give permission to others to use the culture. This should appeal to those who favor strict protections for inherited property.
My own inclination is that humans are the inheritors of all human culture and thus we all have a right to the cultural wealth our species has produced. Naturally, individual ownership of specific works should be properly respected. However, as with any such great gift, it must be treated with respect and used appropriately—rather than misused through appropriation. So, cancelling the yoga class was absurd. But condemning misuse through appropriation is correct.
In Art of the Deal Donald Trump calls one of his rhetorical tools “truthful hyperbole.” He defends and praises it as “an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.” As a promoter, Trump used this technique. He now uses it as president.