When Non-Black Minorities Adopt Black Style, Is It Still Appropriation?

We’ve seen a wealth of celebrities including Miley Cyrus and the Kardashians appropriating Black culture, plus countless fashion designers sending white models down their runways wearing locs, braids and baby hairs. People embrace the hip or popular elements of Black culture, but not Black Americans.” Instead, “non-Black minorities should be natural allies,” said Lindsey Day, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of CRWN Magazine. “They are playing dress-up in something that we’ve fought to regenerate after having centuries of cultural disruption and suppression.” And yet, time and time again, we’ve seen this narrative play out, such as when mainstream publications dubbed acrylic nails “manicure sculptures,” erasing the history of Black trendsetters like Olympic champion Flo-Jo, who wore acrylic nails for decades before they were deemed acceptable by white editorial standards. Every time the cultural appropriation debate sparks on online platforms like Instagram and Twitter, many Black commenters simply say, “Credit is all we want.” So in a case like Dragun’s, in which she intentionally wrote a lengthy caption detailing the origin of box braids, is this appreciation or appropriation? Legislation such as the CROWN Act is “imperative to add to the appropriation conversation because it continues to send a clear message that Black culture perpetuated by Blacks themselves is still not accepted in deemed places of ‘professionalism,’” Tiffany Packer, an assistant professor at Florida A&M University, told HuffPost in an email.