hey all,
For the pleasure essay, I am planning on writing about my love for listening to/participating in hip-hop music. But, to some extent, I believe that hip-hop for me is cultural appropriation (I am asian), which is also part of the reason I haven’t pursued it more in depth. do you think that I would be better off writing about something else?
Thanks
Cultural appropriation requires that you take some valuable cultural asset and render it a mockery.
You sound like you honestly like hip-hop, and if you participate respectfully then you’re certainly not appropriating.
I’m fairly certain that particular degree of scrutiny won’t be applied to your application, anyway! If you love it, why not give it a shot?
What? Liking hip hop is the furthest thing from cultural appropriation. Making parodies full of slurs and other disrespectful slights about hip hop artists would be, but by your definition, you liking european classical music would also be cultural appropriation as an Asian. Additionally, hip hop is a rather multicultural and multiracial genre of music these days, so I don’t know why you’d even think it’s cultural appropriation at all. Don’t overthink this. If it’s what you enjoy, then write engagingly about it.
I appreciate you erring on the side of checking your privilege. ‘Cultural appropriation’ has many meanings in many contexts (cf http://jezebel.com/5959698/a-much-needed-primer-on-cultural-appropriation). In this context, I think it’s a fine topic, and certainly one we commonly see.
Thanks everyone for the advice!
@MITChris
That’s a great article! We’ve had a lot of discussions at my school regarding what constitutes cultural appropriation, and the “3 S” rule lays out a pretty good general guideline. I was just thinking about how the topic would be received. For example, a lot of hip-hop has a common theme of overcoming hardships of many sorts, and coming from a privileged background where I have had little significant challenges, it might come across as insensitive for me to speak in the same realm as people discussing racism, sexism, poverty, etc. (Just one example, I know hip-hop contains much diversity in its topics). But it depends on how you approach it I guess. Anyway, thanks again for the help!
God forbid if you want to cook a pot of spaghetti…
If you enjoy it, then don’t shy away from writing about it.