“Appropriation” starts from dynamics of “subaltern” politics between black and indigenous labor. The triangulation of the “other” is a forum of Eurocentric logistics that is part and parcel with the commodification of “culture” to satisfy the “tokenization” of white audiences.

The Cambridge Dictionary (n.d.) defines cultural appropriation as “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.” There are three main elements that need to be highlighted here. First, this definition implies that the “appropriator” is not part of the group to which the cultural element itself belongs. Second, this concept implies the act of “taking or using” cultural elements, meaning that whoever is engaging in this process can engage with the culture on their own term, thus indicating that power dynamics are at play. Third, and perhaps most important, the cultural element is taken out of its context in a way that either does not credit its origins or is disrespectful to its meaning.

A good example to illustrate this definition is the wearing of “native headdresses” by nonindigenous folks at events like Coachella. In North America, indigenous people have been made subalterns through settler colonialism and white supremacy (Mann, 2000; Razack, 2002). As a result, there exists at both the macro- and micro-social level a power dynamic between indigenous people and non-indigenous people who live on these lands. In State of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century, Razack et al. (2010) describe those power differentials in the Canadian context as follows:

The racial and gendered politics of the state were organized through a complex triangulation of relations, with Indigenous peoples marked for physical and cultural extinction, European settlers for integration, and people of colour for perpetual outsider status as “immigrants” and “newcomers.” (pp. 4–5)

Here, we see that indigenous peoples’ positioning is different to that of nonindigenous peoples, and is specifically subservient to that of Europeans, in a way that threatens their culture and continued existence. As a result, there is an inherent power differential that is enacted when someone who is not indigenous decides to take headdresses out of their context to wear them as fashion accessories. In addition, the significance of headdresses in indigenous communities, while varied, is generally associated with status and achievements. By wearing one without having the necessary qualifications, a nonindigenous person is removing it from its original context in a way that disrespects the traditions of the community.

Young and Brunk (2009) identify two main ways in which cultural appropriation can create harm. First, cultural appropriation could imply infringement of legal property rights. For example, both Khloe Kardashian and her sister Kylie Jenner were accused of stealing designs made by Black creator Destiny Bleu and Black-owned brand Plugged NYC (Lawrence, 2017). In these cases, the Kardashian–Jenner sisters took cultural items that were both inspired African American fashion from the 1990s and created by Black designers. In doing so, and without crediting the creators of the clothes nor paying them to use the designs, their appropriation of elements of Black culture simultaneously infringed on intellectual property rights owned by Destiny Bleu and Plugged NYC.

The other potential harm identified by Young and Brunk (2009) is “an attack on the viability or identity of cultures or their members” (p. 5) The authors go on to write:

Appropriation that undermines a culture in these ways would certainly cause devastating and clearly wrongful harm to members of the culture. If appropriation threatens a culture with assimilation, the same moral issues are raised. Other acts of appropriation potentially leave members of a culture exposed to discrimination, poverty, and lack of opportunity. (p. 5)

They in essence present the argument that the symbolic harm caused by appropriation as an enactment of power dynamics causes concrete consequences for the culture of origin and its people. Their legitimacy in society and the meanings they ascribe to their own symbol are negated in favor of those who are appropriating. In addition, cultural appropriation leads to benefits for those doing the taking, whether financial or social, and prevents the original peoples from accessing those same gains. When Kylie and Khloe launched products based on stolen designs, they not only financially benefited from the sales, but also prevented less known Black designers from earning profits on their creation. The mechanics of cultural appropriation thus maintain racial and ethnic hierarchies that effectively disempower communities that are already marginalized.

Commodification of Black Culture

This leads us to a discussion on how the appropriation and commodification of Black culture have served to enact white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy as interlocking systems of oppression. In the introduction of The Black Culture Industry, Ellis Cashmore (1997) writes the following:

Any residual menace still lurking in African American practices and pursuits has been domesticated, leaving a black culture capable of being adapted, refined, mass-produced, and marketed. Whites not only appreciate black culture: they buy it. A great many blacks have become rich on the back of it. An even greater number of whites have prospered. (p. 1)

The integration of Black culture in contemporary capitalist frameworks has served to “domesticate” the stereotype of the dangerous African American, but only insofar as it can be consumed. This consumption, Cashmore is pointing out, is not universal. Black culture is intentionally being made palatable to a White audience, with the goal of making a profit. This is neither an accidental development nor the natural progression of anti-racist activism. It was a planned transformation orchestrated by capitalists who saw an economic opportunity.

In the text, Cashmore emphasizes the dangers of forgetting this fact, as he states,

. . . inflating the significance of black culture may work against tangible enhancements to the lives of African Americans. The most significant value of black culture may be in providing whites with proof of the end of racism while keeping the racial hierarchy essentially intact. (Cashmore, 1997, p. 2)

Rather than being a successful integration of Black people into the public sphere, the commodification of Black culture is a superficial show of tokenized representation that serves to obscure the ways in which this process has not only failed to create deep social changes but has effectively enacted existing power dynamics.

This becomes particularly evident once questions of intellectual property and ownership are brought into play. A recent example is the difference in popular discourses regarding Taylor Swift’s decision to remove her content from streaming services versus that of Jay-Z to do the same and launch his own streaming platform named Tidal. In 2015, Swift, supported by her label, announced the decision to remove her works from Apple Music following the company’s decision not to pay royalties to artists during new users’ 3-month free trial (Tiffany, 2017). The singer argued it would detrimentally affect less known artists (Tiffany, 2017). Her published statement received an outpouring of support from artists, labels, and fans, and media outlets framed this as her standing up against big corporations on behalf of small creators (BBC Staff, 2015). That same year, Jay-Z launched the streaming platform Tidal with 15 fellow Artist Shareholders1 with the goal of ensuring that artist be paid fairly for their work (Flanagan & Hampp, 2015). From its announcement onward, both business experts and the general public predicted that it would fail, and Jay-Z was mocked incessantly (Kosoff, 2017; Willens, 2015). Both Taylor Swift and Jay-Z were making the same argument: Companies that made enormous profits should respect artist’s work and pay them properly. Yet, while Taylor Swift, a White woman, was praised, Jay-Z, a Black man, was ridiculed. In the end, while Apple Music agreed to change their policy regarding free trials in response to Swift’s critique (BBC Staff, 2015), Jay-Z sold Tidal to telecommunication company Sprint (Rys, 2017). The discrepancy in support that was provided to Taylor Swift and Jay-Z reflects Cashmore’s argument because it reveals how racial dynamics affect the ability of Black artists to defend their intellectual property the way White artists can.

This inequality is also demonstrated through the consumption of Black culture by White audiences. In “Not My Sister’s Keeper,” Natasha Howard (2014) states that the increasing popularity of hip-hop and rap music among White youths is a form of voyeurism that allows them to peek at the lived reality of the racial other. This voyeuristic engagement with blackness through the consumption of its commercialized culture is rooted in historical and ongoing processes of racialization (Cashmore, 1997; Howard, 2014; Railton & Watson, 2011) and is particularly evident in the way Black womanhood is represented and consumed (Holmes, 2016; Hooks, 1992; Railton & Watson, 2011).