John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Jamie Oliver has been inspired by Jamaican culture without having any respect for its history – that's why it's cultural appropriation”
"Cultural appropriation" is a pejorative term with no meaning beyond the empty notion that you have borrowed a concept from someone and included it in your own creation, but it comes with strong negative racial overtones because it seems invariably used by blacks about what someone who is not black has done.
In the rich stew of a culture as we have in modern Europe, with copying, adaptation, and blending from everywhere, I find it bizarre for anyone to be using this term as though it meant something. I never heard anyone condemn, say, Asian-fusion cooking as “cultural appropriation.”
Its use reflects more on the speaker than the person being spoken of.
