Summary

Have you ever celebrated St. Patrick’s Day--even just a bit? Do you know of anyone else who has? I don’t mean only things like marching in a St. Patrick’s parade, drinking a bathtub full of green beer, or running around with a sign saying “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” I mean wearing a tiny piece of green to school because you were afraid that people would have a license to pinch you if you didn’t. Or planning on having corned beef and cabbage for dinner. Or maybe faking your best Irish accent as you said “Top o’ the mornin’” instead of “Hi” to your friends and coworkers.

If you or anyone you know did anyone of these, was that cultural appropriation? If so, why? If not, why not?  

For the next 10 minutes, we will talk about the answers to these two questions.

Transcript

Have you ever celebrated St. Patrick’s Day--even just a bit? Do you know of anyone else who has? I don’t mean only things like marching in a St. Patrick’s parade, drinking a bathtub full of green beer, or running around with a sign saying “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” I mean wearing a tiny piece of green to school because you were afraid that people would have a license to pinch you if you didn’t. Or planning on having corned beef and cabbage for dinner. Or maybe faking your best Irish accent as you said “Top o’ the mornin’” instead of “Hi” to your friends and coworkers.  

If you or anyone you know did anyone of these, was that cultural appropriation? If so, why? If not, why not?  

For the next 10 minutes, we will talk about the answers to these two questions.

Let’s start with a definition of appropriate from Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people. “1: to take exclusive possession of: 2: to set apart for or assign to a particular purpose or use 3: to take or make use of without authority or right.” Wow. To appropriate something is pretty serious. Words in the definition like “exclusive use” and “set apart” are pretty descriptive.

So let’s immediately answer the question of whether or not participating in celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is cultural appropriation. No. Of course not. Look back at the definition and see if any part of what we read from Messrs Merriam and Webster applies. Nope. Not a word. Not a single word.

So, is wearing a sombrero and a serape on Halloween cultural appropriation? No. Just apply the definition again. How about wearing lederhosen and a Tyrollean hat during Oktoberfest? Or going to a Japanese restaurant and trying to order in Japnese? No. None of these comes close to qualifying. BTW, I once tried out my hotel, taxi and restaurant Japanese in a Japanese restaurant. After a few tries and no response, a sushi chef leaned over and said. “Sir, we are Korean.” Oh. Turns out they owned a Korean restaurant as well.

Okay, Will, what about wearing blackface as part of a costume? Or goosestepping and throwing Nazi salutes? Both are clearly wrong. Forgetting cultural appropriation, actions like these are just wrong. Dead wrong. And we don’t need a dictionary to know this.

Question: Why are we seeing and hearing what seems to be a lot of conversation about how almost any kind of costume or imitation is cultural appropriation and much to be avoided? And if not avoided, then criticized to the point of scorn.

Answer: This is yet another example of agenda over integrity. The agenda in this case is to promote the identity group politics of victimization in order to gain personal and political advantage. Assigning certain identity groups other groups to ally with, and, worse, make yet other groups the enemies of the allied groups, is at the heart of identity group intersectionality. Yes, our nation is dangerously divided and getting more so. And this terribly harmful division is being fueled by identity group intersectionality.