Some Bobcat behaviors stem from other cultures that do not feel “honored” to have their backgrounds stolen.
The Athens Halloween Block Party is an annual playground for musical acts, colossal crowds of partygoers and what some consider distasteful, offensive costumes.
Winsome Chunnu-Brayda, associate director of the Multicultural Center at Ohio University, said she is irked when students — who may unintentionally offend others with their costume choices — get hostile after it’s explained that their outfit is in poor taste.
“Just because you have a friend who’s Mexican or black and they don’t care, it doesn’t take away from the fact that what you are doing is perpetuating a stereotype about a group of people in general,” she said.
Halloween in Athens provides an example of what’s known as cultural appropriation — taking something that’s not a part of your own culture and manipulating it to benefit you in some way, Chunnu-Brayda said.
“You’re taking one (part) of somebody that you think is valuable and not (taking into account) their humanity,” said Adrienne Green, a senior studying journalism and the president of Black Student Union.“You don’t think they are valuable; you think this one aspect of their culture … is really cool.”
Green is a previous Post reporter.
OU’s Students Teaching About Racism created a campaign — “We are a culture, not a costume” — to fight against the appropriation of cultures into costumes in 2011.
The series of posters, which depicted minority students holding up images of the offensive costumes, went viral. The posters’ images were shared across social media, and the campaign’s organizers were called by CNN for an interview.
John Brown VI, a senior studying painting and drawing and the president of Hip-Hop Congress, said music is one of the biggest examples of a culture taken by another for financial gain.
“(For me,) music started as a connection because I didn’t grow up around black people,” Brown VI said. “It was kind of like a way to my culture outside of my family.”
He believes some OU students who listen to hip-hop music at parties don't appreciate the music's cultural value.
“I’ll walk home down Mill Street and these white kids will be just drinking listening to hip-hop,” Brown VI said. “To be able to take something and use it without any knowledge of where it comes from or (what) pushed it forward to me is disrespectful.”
Local rapper Peter Vilardi, who performs under the stage name MC Freeman, said his way to ensure he, as a white person who is heavily immersed in the predominantly non-white arena of hip-hop, is not appropriating black culture is to learn as much as he can about the beginnings of the music genre.
“As a student of OU and a student of hip-hop, it is my job to make music that shows respect to where the art form came from, and to acknowledge how indebted I am to black hip-hop artists,” said Vilardi, a junior studying media arts and studies, in an email.
Vilardi said no one has ever accused him of cultural appropriation.
“However, in recent years, I have tried to be more mindful of the fact that I come from a place of privilege when I make hip-hop music,” he said. “Hip-hop is an inherently African-American art, and it is a predominant means of free expression and social protest.”
He cited Mos Def, Nas and A Tribe Called Quest as some of the many artists who taught him about hip-hop as a culture and helped him appreciate it.
“I am incredibly lucky to be in a place of privilege where I have access to learn about hip-hop, and listen to it and be moved by it without having to deal with the deep-seated institutional and cultural racism and segregation our society has perpetrated for years,” Vilardi said.
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When members of the Piscataway Indian Nation came to campus to sing and dance for Native American Heritage Month in 2013, one of the speakers explained how Native American culture is often appropriated in fashion, such as using feathers for accessories, Green said.
“You didn’t even know something that you thought was a new cultural trend is not new and so offensive to someone’s culture,” Green said.
Megan Carter, a senior studying fashion merchandising, said fashion isn’t usually offensive because designers are inspired by different cultures.
“I feel like it’s all how you promote advertising, then that’s how you can tell if it’s going to be offensive,” said Carter, president of FACES modeling club. “The way that you promote it is all on how someone will perceive it.”
The cultural appropriation of Native Americans in collegiate and professional sports teams has grabbed headlines for years. Many collegiate teams have decided to change their names to something non-offensive — Miami University changed its team name from the Redskins to the RedHawks in the late 1990s — but some professional teams such as the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians have stuck with their names despite controversy.
Brown VI said no one should be surprised when people are outraged because the name of a sports team is a term that is traditionally derogatory, citing how people reacted to the Indians mascot controversy.
“I think part of being a human being is understanding that certain things will be offensive,” he said. “You have to realize there’s more than just your experience out in the world. It’s kind of hard to do when you come from a privileged position.”
And although the teams in question claim the name is an attempt to honor the groups, those making the decisions are frequently not consulting those whom the name affects, Chunnu-Brayda said.
“They then begin to look at stuff that’s associated with the culture –– a teepee, people dancing around a fire and maybe a headpiece,” she said.
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Lines get blurry when it comes to retail and cultural appropriation; stores in uptown Athens sell items that are part of minority culture in a city that’s 91.5 percent white, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau in 2013.
“It has the potential to stereotype, and downplay the culture,” said Miguel Gomez, a junior studying astrophysics and the president of Latino and Hispanic Student Union.
Artifacts Gallery, 2 W. State St., is one of many businesses that carry handpicked items such as African art, figurines from Mexico and Indonesian puppets.
Donna Morgan, a worker at the store, said she doesn’t think the items are offensive, adding international people will come to the store to purchase decorations that remind them of home.
Gomez said to him there’s a distinct difference between decoration and disrespect.
“The only problem I have is when they’re selling costumes like the stereotypical Mexican,” Gomez said. “On one side, it looks like (people are) having fun, but it’s not fact. (That image is) made up by people.”
Although some may argue the university adds to Athens’ diversity, Gomez said there’s a long way to go before the city is truly diverse.
“Since you are not a part of that culture, maybe the best thing for you to do is listen,” Chunnu-Brayda said
He said bringing more awareness to different cultures might help decrease the amount of offensive behavior.
“Since you are not a part of that culture, maybe the best thing for you to do is listen,” Chunnu-Brayda said. “It’s bigger than that one person you know. Helping people understand that is sometimes challenging.”
People who have never been surrounded by cultures other than their own need to take steps to educate themselves and not perpetuate stereotypes, Green said.
“Cultural appropriation is one of those things that is not always intentional,” she said. “It’s kind of the invisible thing in the air that only certain people notice and other people don’t.”
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