Cultural Appropriation Essay

Do you like halloween? Do you wish it happens more than once a year? Well, fear not my friend, that’s why costume parties exist! So go ahead and dress up like a robot, alien or even better, a black person… Oh, what’s that? You got beaten up because black people can’t take a joke? You dressed like a robot with no robots batting an eye, so why can’t they be good sports like them?
I think you need to know about two things: Microwaves aren’t humans, and cultural appropriation. We’ll focus on the latter for now.

Cultural appropriation (usually) happens when members of a dominant culture adopt some cultural elements of an oppressed culture. To put it simply: it’s the act of embodying a cultural stereotype while not belonging to that certain culture.

More often than not when partaking a cultural style you represent an exaggerated or a negative version of a certain stereotype. Historically, stereotypes have been used to justify racism and discrimination against subordinated groups. For example, a couple hundred years ago black men and black women were considered dumb, subservient, brutal, and likened to children needing guidance in order to justify slavery. By dehumanizing them, people were able to justify oppressing them.

Hair has always been an essential component in black culture, black hair requires upkeep in order for it to grow and remain healthy, so black women has always done their hair, it’s just a part of their identity, braids, locks, twists, cornrows and so on.

Corn rows are a very functional way of keeping black textured hair unknotted and neat, while still having style. So you can see why hair is such a big part of hip-hop and rap culture, two styles of music which african-american communities created in order to affirm their identity and their voices.

In the early 2000’s we saw many R&B stars wearing cornrows, like Alicia Keys, Beyonce, R Kelly & many more. As hip-hop became more and more popular and integrated into pop culture, black culture did as