THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TO PLAY: Cultural Appropriation — You Sure You Wanna Play That Game?

Christian Allaire is upset. As Senior Fashion and Style Writer at Vogue magazine and self-described “champion” of Indigenous stories and artists, he laments the sight of his Native culture being “reduced to a kind of gimmick” and “reduced to caricature” in the fashion world. He calls this “appropriation.”

Per his online biography, Allaire hails from the Nipissing First Nation in Ontario, Canada, from which he derives his Ojibwe heritage. You would never know it from the pictures, which betray a whiter-than-white effeminate marshmallow who looks less like a proud Indigenous “champion” of anything and more like a backup dancer. If Elizabeth Warren and Ward Churchill had a love child…

Allaire isn’t alone in his outrage. Jeremy Helligar at Reader’s Digest is in a tizzy because Bo Derek wore her hair in cornrows. In 1979. And he’s upset that the crows in the cartoon Dumbo had caricatured black voices. In 1941.

Read the whole thing.