Cultural AppropriationIn the current environment of race sensitivity, I think it is necessary to ask certain questions. I think the best way to move forward as a nation is to have a dialoged. With Halloween approaching I am reminded of a situation last year where children were criticized for dressing up as characters not of their race. In a time when we are pushing for equality and inclusiveness, at what point do we cross a line into racism? In the past Disney has been accused of racism by making most of their characters white and in recent years has done their best to create a diverse cast of heroes and princesses. In our efforts to diversify, what happens if a little girl loves a character like Moana and wants to dress as her for Halloween? In some ways this should be celebrated as the type of color blindness we want to teach our children, but in other ways this is being seen as racism and cultural appropriation. Historically speaking this is actually not new. We have seen examples of this over the past decade, but also from a tumultuous decade a long time ago.In 2011, Touchstone released the movie The Help based on the very popular novel of the same name. The movie and the book were both massive hits; the book spent over 100 weeks on the best seller list. The story is set during the 1960s in the south and both the book and movie were praised for bringing to light the difficult subject of racism and the treatment of black domestic help. Yet it also showed the strength of the three leading women, two black and one white, as they in their own ways fought against this negative treatment. However, jump forward to the present and the same book and movie are now under scrutiny.A similar thing happened last year when Oprah Winfrey announced the book American Dirt as her book club pick. Winfrey’s book club is possibly the most famous book club in history and her choices are normally celebrated. Winfrey claimed this book captured her attention from the very beginning and it was a story needing to be told. It is about a middle-class Mexican woman and her son fleeing from a drug lord that recently took over their Mexican town. This incredibly violent story details enduring hardships and the struggle many migrants must go ...
