Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner ponders potential reactions from university campus activists to a key theme from President Obama’s Democratic National Convention speech.
On today’s college campuses, the notion of “cultural appropriation” is strongly condemned. Making food from other countries is cultural appropriation. Wearing your hair in dreadlocks is cultural appropriation. Praising black women on Twitter is cultural appropriation. Singing can be cultural appropriation. Dressing up for Halloween can be cultural appropriation.
Yet President Obama seemed to endorse the practice of cultural appropriation in his speech to the Democratic National Convention.
“What makes us American, what makes us patriots, is what’s in here. That’s what matters,” Obama said. “That’s why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries and blend it into something uniquely our own.”
Excuse me, what? Obama must not be talking with college students lately.
If making food from other countries is cultural appropriation, if adopting the music of other countries is cultural appropriation, if dressing up for Halloween is cultural appropriation, where is the outrage against Obama?
I won’t hold my breath for outraged social justice warriors to call him out on this. He’s a Democrat, so they probably won’t say a peep.
