Appropriate Cultural Appreciation
September 5, 2013If you’ve been watching the news, watching your Twitter feed, or posts on Facebook, many people have been discussing Miley Cyrus’ recent MTV Video Music Award performance in which she attempted to “twerk” on stage and on singer Robin Thicke during their duet of his song Blurred Lines. Lately much has been discussed about the rape culture language in his song and the sexual awkwardness of their performance in general, but most of the conversation has been about whether or not her performance was an appropriation of Black culture. As I perused through the social media conversations, I noticed a common thread: not everyone knows what cultural appropriation is.
So, let’s discuss and learn – what is cultural appropriation?