Five things white people should know about cultural appropriation

[kwassa]

137. Actually, you're wrong. This is not a new concept, has been around for decades.

Yes, cultures borrow from one another. There is a difference between appropriation and appreciation, which is what the article in the OP is about.

The difference is that a dominant culture borrows from an oppressed culture and then claims it as it's own creation.

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of elements of one culture by members of a different cultural group, specifically the use by cultural outsiders of a minority, oppressed culture's symbols or other cultural elements.[1][2] It differs from acculturation or assimilation in that cultural "appropriation" or "misappropriation" refers to the adoption of these cultural elements, taken from minority cultures by members of the dominant culture, and then using these elements outside of their original cultural context. This cultural property may be forms of dress or personal adornment, music or art, religion, language, intellectual property or social behavior, all of which may have deep cultural meaning to the original culture, but may be used as fashion by those from outside that culture.

In practice, cultural appropriation involves the appropriation of ideas, symbols, artifacts, image, sound, objects, forms or styles from other cultures, from art history, from popular culture or other aspects of human made visual or non visual culture.[3] Anthropologists have studied the process of cultural appropriation, or cultural borrowing (which includes art and urbanism), as part of cultural change and contact between different cultures.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation