What Is Cultural Appropriation?

Chapter Two: Literature Review

Previous studies have displayed a perversion of cultural minorities in the media (Glascock & Preston Schreck, 2004). In a scrutiny on the minority characters and gender portrayal in 50 quotidian newspapers, Glascock and Preston Schreck (2004:429) affirmed that minorities represent only 3% of all roles, a worrying percentage far below the reality of about 25% of the U.S. population. Furthermore, a research on the depiction of interracial interactions in poster indicated that the minorities groups were hardly represented in the advertisements (Larson, 2002: 234).

Many academics such Nama (2003), Bang & Reece (2003), Bufkin & Long (2002), argue that in addition to this underrepresentation; non-dominate groups

According to Stato (1991), the key to understanding the problem of cultural appropriation is that often, the oppressed minorities have had their lands stolen, their society displaced and government officials actively trying to suppress Native ceremonies, language and traditional practice in an attempt to colonize and assimilate the Indian people (Vecsey, 1991), as a result, cultural appropriation becomes of a concern for power relationships between different groups of people and a threat of assimilating marginalized cultures (Rao & Ziff, 1997; Tressa, 2004). It becomes therefore no surprise that an indigenous person will find it extremely inappropriate for a member of the culture whose ancestors have struggled to keep it alive despite the oppression and sanctions to later on use these same rituals for lucrative or decorative purposes at the service of the dominant

They analyzed the portrayal of non-dominate groups in American media and arts of the past two centuries. These authors coined the concepts that will follow; racial offensive portrayals, which remained not familiar at the time of conception, as the race that is socially constructed belongs to the prevailing narrative, race is subject to alteration as well, when basically it is only socially constructed. This alteration appears slowly and at a very gradual pace, in a path, where the race reform hand in hand with the narrative pathway. Furthermore, Delgado and Stefanic (1992: 218) also state that racist representation only turn out to be obvious in retrospection, to allow people to notice the transformation between the past and the present, looking at new mechanism of media or art as obviously less racist norms and by those norms, considering the previous mechanism as more racist. The leading group, which manufactures this racist narrative, aims at sustaining its power, dominance, and superiority. Henceforth, any ideas, sights or debates that curve to contradict the dominant narrative, are