Cultural "Appropriation" Is What Made America What It Is

For months now we've been hearing the plaint about “cultural appropriation” from the Social Justice Warriors as if it were a Bad ThingTM.

But if one looks at the history of the United States, one can see that our culture is made up of bits and pieces of cultures around the world, taking the best from each and adding it to our own. Yet to the SJW's this is some kind of theft, as if we are in some way offending other cultures by adding theirs to ours. This “theft” is used as justification for actions taken on behalf of the cultures the SJW's think have been offended. But to the best of my knowledge, the SJW's have never asked anyone from those cultures if they are offended by such theft. I bet if they did, those people would look at them like they were nuts.

One of the latest cultural appropriate “crises” comes from Oberlin College, the crisis being the horror of cuisine from other cultures being adapted by the staff of Bon Appétit, something some of the students at the college deemed inappropriate.

But not everyone on campus is offended.

Still, some students are not convinced that Bon Appétit’s menu qualifies as cultural appropriation. Arala Tian Yoon Teh, a College sophomore from Malaysia, said the dining service’s food selections are a reflection of cultural collision, not cultural appropriation. She added that she thought Bon Appétit was inspired by Asian cuisine and just made dishes with the available ingredients.


This is something Alexis de Tocqueville addressed in his book Democracy in America back in 1840.

Writes Carlos Lozada on the subject:

Even as you pledge allegiance to the flag, it is hard to always feel welcome in the republic for which it stands. “As Americans mingle, they assimilate,” Tocqueville assures. “Differences created by climate, origin, and institutions diminish.” But he doesn’t think those differences are all that vast; and in his time, he was right. “All the immigrants spoke the same language,” he writes, referring to English, and “all were children of the same people.” And he praises America’s homogeneity — of interests, origins, language and education — as an enabler of federalism. “I doubt that there is any nation in Europe, however small, whose various parts are not less homogeneous than the people of America.” Americans today speak of diversity with reverence, but also with the comfort of an eternal aspiration.

The differences are what make us stronger in the end.

There's no need for the SJW's to take this to the extreme, where they see any assimilation of people of different cultures into American society as some kind of crime, perhaps even genocide. Certainly de Tocqueville didn't see it that way.

He saw it as a strength, seeing such assimilation as taking the best from each and adding it to our own. That the SJW's seem to think a culture in other lands will be damaged if immigrants from those lands surrender a small part of the culture in which they were brought up to adopt that of their new land show just how ignorant they are. The cultures back where the immigrants came from will survive just fine. It isn't as if it is somehow diminished every time someone from there comes here until there will be nothing left of the original culture. You couldn't tell that from the way the SJW's overreact about cultural appropriation. It's almost as if they want to Balkanize the US in an effort to keep all of the different cultures apart as if the US were some kind of a nature preserve. They still don't get the idea that the reason we are the way we are comes from all of those from different cultures who came here to become Americans. It doesn't fit their narrative and never will, so the bitch, moan, and complain about something over which no one really has any control...unless draconian measures are taken that will dismantle this nation. Only then will they feel vindicated, that is until they become outraged about some other trivial social ill and move on and create another false crisis.

Frankly, I like that we adapt things from other cultures and make it part of our own. Otherwise many of the things that make America what it is would never have come into being and the world would likely be a much poorer and dangerous place than it is now.