{"id":994,"date":"2022-10-13T09:46:11","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T09:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/?p=994"},"modified":"2022-10-13T09:46:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T09:46:11","slug":"what-is-cultural-appropriation-and-why-is-it-so-harmful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/index.php\/what-is-cultural-appropriation-and-why-is-it-so-harmful\/","title":{"rendered":"What is cultural appropriation and why is it so\u00a0harmful?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Haupt<\/a>, University of Cape Town<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Die Antwoord is a South African band that uses hip-hop music to create a style it calls \u201czef\u201d. Since it first appeared in 2009, Die Antwoord has been criticised for cultural appropriation<\/a> (using cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative way). It\u2019s accused of copying the lyrics and styles of Cape Town artists rapping in South Africa\u2019s Kaaps language<\/a>, and of mimicking the visual styles of Cape Flats gang members<\/a>. Adam Haupt has researched and written extensively on hip-hop and identity. He discusses cultural appropriation and the role of power in interactions between dominant and marginalised subjects in a case like Die Antwoord\u2019s.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What is cultural appropriation?<\/h2>\n

In an article on cultural appropriation, visual culture scholar Rina Arya writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Integral to the definition of cultural appropriation is an asymmetry of power between two cultures that involves the majority\/dominant culture taking from the marginalised culture. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, it\u2019s more productive to think about cultural appropriation in terms of relations of power. For example, in South Africa, Afrikaner nationalists appropriated the local Kaaps language to produce the Afrikaans<\/a> language, a version that stripped Kaaps<\/a> of its creolised Khoi San, Arabic and south-east Asian roots to favour its Dutch origins because it could do so.<\/p>\n

Cultural appropriation is both enabled by power and is an expression of power.<\/p>\n

How is Die Antwoord a good example of this?<\/h2>\n

Die Antwoord means \u201cthe answer\u201d in Afrikaans, the language associated with the dominant white minority rulers of apartheid South Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The band has two members, Ninja and Yolandi. They created a hip hop outfit using Kaaps as a basis for their lyrics and styling Ninja as a Cape Town gangster. So, a privileged white man, Waddy Jones, created Ninja after previously crafting other hip hop personas<\/a> such as Max Normal. Jones is neither \u201cblack\u201d\/\u201ccoloured\u201d nor \u201cwhite\u201d working-class. He is not a gangster either. <\/p>\n

Stereotypically, speakers of Kaaps have been presented as \u201cmixed race\u201d or \u201ccoloured\u201d people. They were segregated from other categories of black South Africans in the service of apartheid ideology. Speakers of Kaaps have also been denigrated as speakers of \u201cslang\u201d, as if Kaaps were not a language in its own right<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To become known, Die Antwoord employed social media alongside performances at music festivals. The cartoonish violence and phallic imagery in its first video<\/a>, Enter the Ninja, was designed to go viral. Once it did, the band was soon able to perform extensively in Europe and the US, thanks to a record deal. <\/p>\n

In my book Static<\/a>: Race and Representation in Post-Apartheid Music and Media, I argue that Die Antwoord\u2019s success is thanks in part to racialised class inequality in South Africa and the fact that systemic racism has yet to be dismantled nearly three decades after democracy. The band used class privilege, social capital and networks to ensure that it succeeded \u2013 often at the expense<\/a> of marginalised communities. <\/p>\n

How did the cultural appropriation work?<\/h2>\n

Die Antwoord \u201cborrows\u201d heavily from Kaaps<\/a> (also known as Afrikaaps) and from Afrikaans hip-hop. It draws on words and cultural expressions associated with black\/coloured and white working-class multilingual speech communities. So it piggybacked off work done by black artists who established the cool of \u201crapping in the vernac\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n