WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH GWEN STEFANI IS A VOICE OF SANITY. Gwen Stefani Is Right: Cultural Appreciation Is Not Cultural Appropriation.
An obsession with cultural appropriation also reveals the deep unseriousness of self-proclaimed “anti-racists.” The modern left, with its influence in boardrooms and newsrooms and classrooms, takes every opportunity to lecture weary Americans about the enduring evil of whiteness and of white supremacy.
While their racially charged screeds are almost always unfounded, within their rhetoric is a message that threatens to cultivate white pride where it didn’t exist before. By reinforcing the idea that cultural appreciation is cultural appropriation and therefore racist, woke warriors encourage white people to insulate themselves from the cultures and experiences of others and fully embrace tribalism wherein race is a focal point.
“Most critics of cultural appropriation, coming from the far left, also fear the rise of white supremacy,” wrote Julian Adorney here at The Federalist in 2018. “But the best way to combat white supremacy is to encourage people of all races, whites included, to borrow at will from other cultures — as drawing more lines between races and cordoning off the exploration of other cultures is wholly contradictory to the end goal of creating a harmonious, diverse, and pluralist society.”
Americans who take pride in the melting-pot nature of this grand experiment would likely agree with Adorney, as does Stefani. “If we didn’t buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn’t have so much beauty, you know?” she said. “We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other. And all these rules are just dividing us more and more.”
Take a tip from Stefani. Don’t let the race-baiters bully you into giving up cultural appreciation.
Considering Stefani made her bones incorporating Jamaican ska and reggae beats and elements of British new wave into her California-based music in the 1990s, why shouldn’t she continue to incorporate elements of other cultures into her sound and stage presentation?