Cultural appropriation and appreciation are vastly different yet often confused. Society confuses the knowledge and experience of a culture with the disrespect and misuse of one.
To understand this, one must first analyze the word culture itself. The definition of the word culture is “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group.” This means that culture is a part of a certain group of people, and they can decide if they want to share it with outsiders.
Cultural appropriation means to disrespect and misuse or represent another people’s customs, ideas and beliefs. Cultural appreciation means honoring a culture and its customs, ideas and beliefs, to respectfully represent a culture learned from its people, all the time and not just for show. To carry it with them as a sign of gratitude for having the privilege to learn their ways.
Anyone can learn from a culture and use the knowledge and skills they learn in their lives, showing others in a way that respects the cultural knowledge. There was a time when culture was believed to be shared with others because nothing truly belongs to just one group of people. The ideas come from a minority group and can be shared with others of a large society if the group desires, as a way to show how it can improve the life or spirit of the person they choose to teach.
Cultural appropriation and appreciation are not interchangeable, and an outsider must understand the difference. There are many ways to do it with respect, crediting the culture, reflecting on your time learning and how you use the knowledge. To disrespect it means that you do not credit the culture, use it as a joke or insult, and claim that you created it to help your or other’s lives. The reasons are different for everyone, but it is acceptable to properly represent a culture that has taught you new ways and things to incorporate in your life.
Cultural appropriation is unacceptable if it is for a joke or simply to misrepresent a culture, and that is what society should remember when thinking that learning a recipe or a healthcare remedy is wrong to learn if not a part of the specific culture that it originates from. To disgrace a culture by harming the knowledge coming from another group that is either dominant or not, the person is harming the customs and what its original purpose was. People display appropriation through shows/cartoons, music, and movies especially older ones that were created at a different time.
