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Professor Lauren Michele Jackson, who has written extensively about the white appropriation of Black culture, cites the late scholar bell hooks when she explains this phenomenon in her book White Negroes: “‘Ethnicity,’ in this case blackness by way of hip-hop culture, ‘becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.'”īut eventually – not unlike the appropriation of hip-hop – white artists, managers, and record label owners realized they could market these new “race records” (which is what any Blues and Jazz record was called at the time) to a much larger white audience. This is a prime example of cultural appropriation in the service of profit and public image. There are many reasons why they do it, but the bottom line is simple: white artists can use the language, sounds, and style of hip-hop and R&B, which are primarily Black art forms, to change their public perception in a way that’s often beneficial to their careers. Music managers and executives have followed this pattern for years, using it to transform their artists and keep them relevant. The common thread is that for many of them, these experiments of appropriation allowed them to gain money and publicity by livening up their performances with elements from a culture that wasn’t authentically theirs. And of course, she was not the first.Ĭhristina Aguilera, P!nk, Britney Spears, Iggy Azalea – the list of white female musicians who have worked with hip-hop artists and producers or explicitly appropriated elements of Black culture runs long. Miley was attempting to shed her public image as innocent Hannah Montana and recast herself as a fully grown woman – in part by consciously borrowing the musical and aesthetic languages of hip hop. These comments came at a time that Cryus was experimenting with elements of hip-hop culture in her music, videos, and overall public image. You shouldn’t not want to know that.” – Nicki Minaj ( 2015 ) If you want to enjoy our culture and our lifestyle, bond with us, dance with us, have fun with us, twerk with us, rap with us, then you should also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us, what we feel is unfair to us. She wrote on Twitter: “Come on you can’t want the good without the bad. Let’s use one example of profit in an industry heavily associated with cultural appropriation: music and entertainment.Ī few years ago, Nicki Minaj called Miley Cyrus out at the MTV Video Music Awards for appropriating elements of hip-hop culture without truly engaging with Black issues. And it’s most problematic when that appropriation occurs for reasons of power or profit. That is, they appropriate a culture that is not their own. Indigenous peoples – and use them for themselves. It occurs when members of a dominant culture – for example, white Americans or white Australians – take elements from the culture of an ethnicity or racial group they have typically oppressed – e.g. The type of cultural appropriation we need to be vigilant about is fairly simple.