Appropriation and Us

As a white creative, insights from friends and colleagues on the trauma and gaslighting in our white centric-system, have attuned me to the hurt that people of colour and indigenous races experience daily.

More of us are signing up to take the learning forward courtesy of FACE and its campaigns.

Using privilege and power where we can, white academics are now actively tackling the malpractice of appropriation. This happens in our art schools and on our catwalks because of sense of entitlement by those centered within Dominant Culture (white creatives) to take without thought. Examples abound

From the Cambridge Dictionary...

Appropriation:

The act of taking something such as an idea, custom, or style from a group or culture that you are not a member of and using it yourself

Exploring cultural aesthetics and identities as part of our research is a vital learning journey, but in this learning journey we will uncover power and political inequality. This must shape our growing knowledge of racism and race inequality in particular.

When the originator is not credited, centered and remunerated then it must be seen as straight theft. I wrote about this in relation to Stella McCartney and Marc Jacobs in 2018. But is it ever alright for a white person to wear something that does not belong to them culturally?

The account of the First People of Canada is something every fashion student and every academic should know and the fuller account is also written in the blog on Stella.

The magnificent First People of Canada with special thanks the McCord Museum in Quebec.

A simple basic approach to appropriation would be for white creatives to begin their own ethical journey. Starting with an understanding that as white dominant culture practitioners, adopting styles of disadvantaged humans, is to ignore the way white people have historically stolen – with horrifying violence and brutality - land, people and resources from indigenous people and people of colour.

And when we learn of the injustice and cruelty meted out to humans without power, by those in power, appropriation takes on another level doesn't it.

And in decimating other cultures, we created an unequal, unstable economic and political world where we benefit in a multitude of ways.

Appropriation is repeat trauma as we take something that is not ours and use it without knowledge of our historical inhumanity.