Dear Vegan White Woman,
I shared my opinion (via an article) on how it’s disrespectful for people to casually appropriate other cultures. For example, by wearing ritual headdresses, bindis, dreads and cornrows. You responded by asking me if I was the police now for whether or not you could date a person of color or still shop at your favorite sari shop. (You said a few other things, but those are the only two things I remember.) I did not respond to your comment. In fact, no one in the thread responded, because clearly no one was policing anyone. It was a discussion.
Because of this I believed that you think because you have access and the ability to purchase things that are from another culture, that it’s yours to take, use and wear. What I have now learned from this, is that it’s complicated. It’s true that you have access to select and purchase these items, but that doesn’t mean that it’s respectful to wear or use them.
I now realize that it’s confusing for people to have access to things and not understand why they can’t enjoy them. Perhaps someone might think, “but they sold it to me”. Well, it may have been a corporation’s choice to massively appropriate a culture. Like fashion magazines that call cornrows, “a new fashion braid” for the Summer. It may have been a mom and pop Indian shop that sold you your bindis, because they assumed you were using them correctly. You may have bought your faux ritual headdress online. However it was that you gained the privilege to attain these items, even as a gift, access does not equate respect.
It’s disrespectful for white people to wear cornrows, braids and similar hairstyles because it sends a message of entitlement and disregard to those who can’t. Yes, in 2017. Here is an article documenting on how it’s happening right now in our own backyard: Black students at Massachusetts charter school served detention, suspended from sports teams for wearing hair in braids. So white people might think they look cute in cornrows and dreads, but they might as well wear a tattoo across their forehead that says “Fuck all you Black folx that get punished for wearing your hair like this. I can, so I will.”
This experience has enabled me to examine my own experience of appropriation. I have worn a bindi and sari before in my life. (What?!) Yes, but it wasn’t as a costume. I’m not saying that when you wear saris it is as a costume, but I am just sharing how I came about to wear several saris and Punjabi suits.
One of my best friends in high school was Gujrati. She and I meditated a lot together and so I spent a lot of time eating after school snacks with her, in her mother’s kitchen. Around that time, I started to study Hinduism seriously and so she and her family would invite me to ritual chanting events at her temple and bangla dances. So they would dress me up in saris and Punjabi suits, a million matching bangles and pick out bindis for me. It was on their terms, specifically for the purpose of attending their culture’s ritual events. I have never worn a sari or Punjabi suit, outside of this context. I didn’t end up converting to Hinduism.
That said, I may own some things that are ritual objects or appropriative clothes that I don’t know about. I don’t think I do. I could be wrong. I have forgiven you for your comments on my discussion thread. After all, you deleted them. I’m so glad I didn’t have to. I forgive myself for not reaching out to you about it. Instead I just boiled inside making assumptions about you. Maybe you’re Hindu and you also only wear your saris to temple? Maybe you’ve struggled with dating people of other cultures and you felt like I was saying you can’t? I don’t know you outside of a few animal rights campaigns. I acknowledge myself for being curious about your defensiveness. I really don’t want to be mad at you. I am grateful for your deleting your comment. I commit to keeping the discussion open. I hope we’ll have it one day.
May we heal the illusion of separation.
Blissful wishes,
Bee