Culture has no exclusive owners
Several years ago, some time in the mid-1980s, I was at a dinner party with about 20 friends.
I seem to recall that most of us were journalists, with a couple of human rights lawyers and a couple of thespians.
It was a testing time.
The national state of emergency had been declared and we were all on edge.
At some point in the evening the conversation turned to race, ethnicity and culture.
Almost all of us were, at the time, in some state of delirium (not only because of the tannins aged in wood barrels, or grain and hops) and deluded by notions of non-racialism.
I was a firm believer in the black consciousness ideology and remain a true believer to this day, never mind the fact that there really is no such thing as black unity or black solidarity.
I have been thinking about those romantic idealistic times recently and how things have changed.
I have been especially intrigued by the retreat, of sorts, into ethnic identities around the world, the spread of ethnonationalism, the search for ethnic or racial purity, and the overall nastiness that is often part of this.
People can, of course, claim whatever ethnicity, heritage or race they wish, on any basis.
It is nobody else’s business, until it becomes someone else’s business, that is.
In other words, people can be proud of their Xhosa, Jewish or Indian heritage, as long as it does not violate the rights of others.
I often claim, obviously facetiously, that I am baca.
This is a nod to the woman who taught me isiXhosa when I was a child.
I also claim to be baca because I have so much respect for Oliver Tambo and have a deep affinity for the Eastern Cape. It is obvious that I am not baca.
This brings me to the conversation we had in the mid‘80s, the issue of culture and, especially, of cultural appropriation.
During that early conversation one or two friends spoke with some pride of their Jewish heritage, another of her Zulu heritage and another of her Xhosa heritage.
One person was proud of his grandmother’s role in the Liverpool workers’ strike in 1911.
He was proud of his Scouser heritage.
As a coloured – and having abandoned racial, ethnic or religious identity – I had no acquired and handed-down “heritage” to speak of.
Parenthetically, I remember, now, an incident in 2012, while standing in line at an ATM in Pretoria, a young man was surprised that I was not white.
“You are not white, you are not black, you are just nothing,” he said.
In 2014, another fellow said coloured people were “confused” as some of them looked white and others looked African.
It is all a rather sad state of affairs.
What, then, is my cultural heritage?
Well, this is for another discussion.
For now, let me ask who owns a particular culture and what is this thing called cultural appropriation?
Culture is whatever people want it to be.
Culture does not run in blood, nor is it in anyone’s DNA.
Culture is learnt, and spread by individuals, families and communities, and then presented as things that separate us from each other, that define us and make us “different”.
Culture is also not “owned” by anyone.
Sure, there are senses of origins or belonging, but culture is, by nature, not fixed.
It changes over time and place.
Traditions associated with cultures are often imported and sometimes even invented.
One of the trends that have emerged with the rise of ethnonationalism and types of fascism around the world has been the bizarre concept of cultural appropriation as some kind of cardinal sin.
A person who is not Xhosa or Jewish or Irish or indigenous American cannot wear the traditional clothing, perform the dances or even tie their hair the way that Xhosa, Jewish, Irish or indigenous Americans do.
It is all rather retrogressive. It reduces each one of us to a cultural stereotype, and prevents cultural exchange and appreciation.
This ossification feeds into offensive policies of supremacy and exclusion.
We know that there was a time when a black person could not marry a white person.
We know, also, that there are people who would imagine their own culture – whether it is Afrikaner, Jewish, Zulu or Pakistani – should not be “diluted”.
Today, 30 years after so many of us believed in a nonracial future, we are faced with a belief that people should marry or reproduce only “among their own”, and we are all, once again, coloured, Indian, black and white.
The liberals, as is their wont, will tell us we should just “accept our diversity” and the ethno-nationalists will tell us we should preserve our own culture (and not mix).
It’s all rather tedious, but no less ominous.
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