They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If someone copies or emulates you, then that person is paying you their highest compliment.
America is often called a “melting pot” because we assimilate the cultures brought here by immigrants. Assimilating cultures is extremely American. It’s what we do. When someone brings a different culture to this country, we take a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B and voila! It’s now part of our culture.
But these days, more and more often you’re seeing people complaining about “cultural appropriation”. That is, the adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity.
There was no need to invent a new term because we already had one that works just fine. The term “cultural assimilation” already covered all the bases. But, the “woke Left” decided we needed a new term that was a little more divisive. Thus, the term “cultural appropriation” was coined. Examples of things that have been claimed to be “culturally appropriated” are hair styles (dreads and cornrows), wearing something you bought while on vacation and even burritos.
“Cultural Appropriation” has become similar to the word “racist”. What I mean by that is that the word “racist” has become almost meaningless because people claim that everything is racist. People also point to just about everything and claim that it is an example of cultural appropriation. But, since cultural appropriation is the same as cultural assimilation, they’re absolutely correct.
Pay attention the next time you’re out and about and you’ll see countless examples of things we’ve “appropriated” from other cultures. You’ll find examples of other cultures in our language, food, clothing and art.
In fact, even baseball, considered by many to be “America’s Pastime”, was influenced by a British game called “rounders”. I challenge you to find anything in America that you could call 100% American. Everything here was built by taking parts of other cultures and making them our own.
A white person wearing dreads or cornrows in their hair is apparently is guilty of cultural appropriation. And, according to some, that person is evil.
Americans aren’t racist, xenophobic or even particularly picky when it comes to assimilating other cultures. We’ll do it to anyone. We’ll take a food, hair style, word or fashion from anyone and anyplace and “appropriate” it to make it our own. I’d go so far as to say that there are few things that could be considered more “American” than cultural assimilation.
But, cultural assimilation isn’t unique to Americans. Every culture does it. Cultural assimilation is a back-and-forth process and has been going on since the beginning of civilization. Consider the pizza. While most people would consider it to be an Italian food, Egyptians, Romans and Greeks actually ate flatbread with toppings thousands of years ago. These days, American pizzeria chains such as Domino’s and Pizza Hut are in more than 60 countries.
I say we call it what it is. Borrowing things from other cultures is simply cultural assimilation and is something healthy countries and societies do. Adopting parts of other cultures is one of the things that makes America strong. Cultural assimilation is a process that unifies us as a country.
Those that claim that Americans are guilty of “cultural appropriation” are merely inventing yet another way to divide us.
