Los Angeles was the perfect platform for cultural appropriation. Both conversation about the issue, and the issue itself, surrounded me and my peers constantly back home. My friends and I talked about it in classes or clubs at our high school, saw A-listers demonstrate it in news articles or on social media, and watched as the insanely diverse population of our melting-pot city often ventured into new style and aesthetic territories. This sometimes meant watching others accidentally cross cultural boundaries, and sometimes they were consciously taking symbols, words, objects, and practices which did not belong to them. In part, we chose to care, and educated ourselves on this and other issues accordingly, but I do believe it was easier for us to become aware of cultural appropriation because of the city we lived in. This past month, how wildly different Gambier, Ohio is from the place I call home has been at the forefront of my mind.
There’s a certain lack of diversity here (though, not a lack of effort) that I am constantly aware of. Similarly to my high school, Kenyon has a majority white population, though it holds a decent display and network of diversity-related organizations within it. From affinity groups to ODEI, from Unity House to classes that focus explicitly on race, gender, religion, or other identities, Kenyon does provide opportunities for its students to discuss issues such as cultural appropriation. However, it’s not hard to avoid or opt-out of these conversations. Back in LA, once we stepped off of campus and out into the world, we were flooded with examples of diversity of thought, expression, appearance, background and more, but here in rural Ohio, the surrounding cities don’t provide much food for thought. We are a small blue bubble in a very red and very white county and state. I’ve never personally lived in Knox County, but I would venture to guess that racism, sexism, and other important issues — especially nuanced and complex topics such as cultural appropriation — are not prevalent subjects of discussion. But how common are discussions of this on campus?
My interest in this question was piqued after the first all-campus party of the year. Hosted by a local sorority on campus, the theme of the party was “Hot Girl Summer.” Hot Girl Summer is a phrase that was popularized during this past summer to describe the carefree and self-loving attitude many girls hoped to adopt. It originated in a song by rapper Megan Thee Stallion, and while the song eventually became widely known among most 16-25-year-olds who weren’t living under a rock this summer, it didn’t start off this way. It was first an anthem among black women, and the phrase (sometimes without the context of the song) later became a trend referenced by people of other races, as well. When I got the flier for the party, I didn’t immediately think, This is cultural appropriation and MUST be stopped. Honestly, the first thought that popped into my head was, “Huh. I wonder how many girls in this sorority have even heard of Megan Thee Stallion.” And this was definitely on overgeneralization on my part. How would I have any idea what kind of pop culture and media these Kenyon girls had heard of? It wasn’t an accusation, in my mind, so much as an opportunity for my curiosity to roam. What kinds of instances of cultural appropriation has this campus experienced? How familiar or comfortable is Kenyon with addressing it, discussing it and learning about it? I decided that this was an investigation I could handle, and I set out to have some conversations with students and faculty about their opinions and positions. My findings are as follows:
What does Kenyon think cultural appropriation means?
Most of the responses I received to this question were similar, but none identical. Some of the people I talked to said that cultural appropriation most clearly occurs when a person is economically benefiting from an aspect of someone else’s culture, while some said failing to recognize the meaning behind a certain aspect is what makes it disrespectful. Some believed that cultural appropriation has a performative aspect to it, while others claimed it couldn’t really be called appropriation unless it was done with the intention of failing to give credit where credit is due. Overall, phrases that appeared in multiple responses were, “someone who does not belong,” and “something that doesn’t belong to them.” So I’ve combined the many definitions I heard into this one: Cultural appropriation occurs when someone who doesn’t belong to a culture adopts something from that culture as their own.
Is cultural appropriation an issue here on campus? In society?
To answer this, I consulted both students and faculty, as well as conducted research on my own. Interestingly, nobody I talked to could easily come up with a concrete example of cultural appropriation occurring at Kenyon. My sociology professor recalled some instances of cultural dishes served at Peirce that didn’t sit well with all students, while my English professor mentioned the raised probability of appropriation during Halloween. Some situations we talked about may have been problematic, we decided, but not appropriation, such as the time a group of students dressed up as ghosts or when a play featuring harmful stereotypes was almost put on. Overall, though, one moment stood out to me as perhaps needing a bit more exploration.
“I don’t remember where this was,” my classmate Jessica* told me, “and it’s not that big a deal, but someone spelled Chilito’s as Chulitos? And first of all, Chilito’s? That’s not even a fucking word.”
“If someone of color made it up, more power to you,” she continued. “But if a white person made it up? Please don’t.”
I wanted to learn more about Chilito’s’ naming. As it turns out, it was named by someone of color — its owner, José Avalos, who also owns the two Fiesta Mexicana restaurants in Mount Vernon. But the situation Jessica brought up exposed an important question nonetheless: how do we know someone’s intentions when we see something we want to label as an incident of cultural appropriation?
“I think it’s blown way out of proportion,” said one white first year, Andrew*, when I asked him if he thought cultural appropriation was a relevant issue. “I think it’s an issue. Just not that big of an issue.”
“I don’t even know if I can label it a microaggression because I don’t know if this way of someone else’s living is really doing me harm,” someone else said, but she further stated that she believed others might feel very differently about that.
“Hot Girl Summer? That’s the name of a song,” Andrew said firmly, in response to a question about his thoughts on the party’s theme. “No, no, no, that’s not cultural appropriation. If you’re naming a song, anything that’s not only low profile, but low impact, it’s not a big deal, in my eyes.”
This dilemma of intent vs. impact is an important one, and one that I explored in my next inquiry.
Can someone who doesn’t belong to a culture appreciate an aspect of it without appropriating it?
After I asked this question, I was often met with thoughtful silence. This was hard for people to answer. On the one hand, they seemed to want to see the good in people, and to be able to assume ignorance was behind someone’s disrespect for a culture. But on the other hand, some believed it was important to consider the feelings of the people within a minority group first.
“I think folks are aware of this, and they take pains to try to demonstrate, I’m going to do X, and the reason I’m adopting X is because ABC, and this justifies why I can do this,” my sociology professor said in response to the question of intent vs. impact. “If someone says that no, you can’t do this, because you can’t do A, you can’t do B, maybe we’ll concede C, then you have to really decide at an individual level, or even at an eclectic level, does the better argument win here? You can’t just keep doing something, and saying, Well, here’s my justification, and there’s never going to be any consequences, and I think this is one of the many fault lines: people just don’t care.”
My English professor seemed to agree that a sense of consideration was important when examining if someone else’s actions were disrespectful to a culture. We talked a bit about Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who posed as a black woman and even held the title of President of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, and how there’s been controversy around her level of cultural appropriation.
“I’ve heard people argue that this wasn’t actually that bad of an incident, because she wasn’t trying to make a profit, she didn’t take only the ‘good’ parts of being black, she fully immersed herself in black culture and tried to bring communities up,” I mentioned.
“Rachel Dolezal did in some ways deeply embrace her sense of belonging in a black community, but she also took the place of somebody who might have grown up in black communities, who might have [been able to do] that job,” she replied. “But then, well what is race anyway? Who gets to say what is the thing belonging to a culture?”
We then pondered the boundaries of cultures, and how labeling things as cultural appropriation forces us to define cultures and identities that may not easily fit inside a definition. “If I say, well, this thing belongs to black culture, and only black people can enjoy it, then we gotta get down to which people are black people. Is it people who have a particular phenotype, is it people who have a particular racial background, is it people who have had certain types of experiences? Is it self-identification? Because if it is [self-identification], then Rachel Dolezal would be included.”
I talked to one faculty member about cultural appropriation in the context of a specific example: students who have studied abroad and are hoping to bring back and adopt aspects of the place they lived in. “On the one hand, you can’t not be affected [by that experience],” he said. “On the other hand, what you decide to do and how you do it is the big question.”
“I think there’s something to be said about going abroad to a place that’s different from you, just to go and gawk,” he continued, “and as you adopt it, you do so in a way that makes it clear to others that you’re doing this because it’s so distinctly foreign. There’s another way in which you travel abroad, and you have something that you brought back with you, and you’re saying, Well, this is really not all that different.”
So how do we avoid appropriating/disrespecting others’ cultures?
This one is fairly straightforward — it’s all about an attitude of respect and self-examination. Throughout our conversations, many participants sprinkled in some great advice to answer this question.
“I think showing up and listening is really important,” one student said. “Go to a club meeting, or an affinity group, with a friend, and don’t talk, just listen.”
“If you make a claim in public, you have to support it, and if that means that you have to change your behavior, then you have to change it,” was someone else’s response.
“Investigate your own motives,” was another. “Try to engage as deeply and authentically as you can with people from the culture you’re interested in.”
One was more straightforward than the rest: “Don’t take other people’s shit. Make your own shit.”
And while anyone can agree or disagree with any of these statements or ideas or suggestions, I propose that it’s not so much about obedience to others’ authority on subjects you may not know much about as it is hearing their opinions, respecting them, and forming your own.
At the end of my investigation, I found that cultural appropriation was much less of an issue at Kenyon than I assumed it would be. But that definitely doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it. The most important thing I feel like I’m taking away from this experience is that everyone seems to have a different definition, position, and opinion on cultural appropriation, and we’re not doing a great job of communicating with each other. Some white students feel like it’s being blown out of proportion, but many of the POC I talked to didn’t actually feel that it was such a condemning act. The conversations I had with each person for this article are the ones I wish we had more of campus-wide, the ones where we hear perspectives we haven’t been exposed to before, the ones that help us see issues from new angles. I urge everyone reading this to find comfort in your discomfort, to take part in or create dialogue about cultural appropriation or microagressions, sexism, fatphobia, discrimination against trans people, whatever topic you find isn’t naturally easy for you to talk about. In places like Kenyon, like Gambier, like Knox County, like Ohio, areas so vastly different from where I grew up, I know it’s going to be hard to stumble upon diversity of thought or experiences organically. So I’m pledging to make the effort to find it myself, with this piece and experience being just the first step of many, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.
*Names have been changed.