Tanya Cushman Reviewer:"David DeRuwe' and someone else a dancer. What do you think I said at four years old? Either a teacher or a preacher. Now a preacher is an interesting one because at the time we did not go to church so I have no idea where that came from. However, I eventually decided and became a teacher. I had fulfilled my dreams. I was supposed to be happy but after eight years of teaching I left because I was unfulfilled. When the pandemic hit, I, like many others, found myself working from home and we found ourselves with some newfound freedom, didn't we? So what did some of us millennials do with this spare time? Media apps. Some of us had some Bitcoin and crypto going on over here. Can anyone testify? Some of us had Bumble for the lockdown bubble over here. I see you guys. And some of us had a short-lived fling with the house party app. I found myself... on TikTok. Now I know what you're thinking. TikTok, that place for Gen Z and some TikTok dancing. And I thought that too, but started content creating nonetheless with a specialism in UK black history and cultural commentary. And guess what? It took off. Within a year, I was able to quit my full-time job. You can woo. Nice. I was able to quit my full-time job. I was featured on TikTok's nationwide billboard campaign. and today I'm here at TEDxHolt London. Hey! Get in there, my son, my mum would say. She's not here, but hi, mum watching online. I had repurposed my unimaginative, unfulfilling, realistic childhood dream and started teaching and content creating online, reaching an audience far greater than that of my classroom and its four walls. Today, I'm going to share from my own curriculum, the curriculum... of UK black culture, something that is growing, emerging, very influential and often used and abused in a number of ways, mainly, and today we're going to address cultural appropriation. So by a show of hands, who has not heard of the term cultural appropriation? Okay, brilliant. So for the sake of that person and for the sake of clarity, cultural appropriation, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is the unacknowledged, inappropriate adoption of... customs, practices, ideas from one culture by members of another culture. Interestingly, recently, I feel like cancel culture and cultural appropriation has strangely been put together. And as a result, I find this very dangerous because there's no safe space to ask the question. There's no go-to help guide online. And a lot of the dialogue online, let's be honest, is either divisive and subjective rather than being educational and informative. So today I'm going to share with you my survival toolkit. If you ever have a question, you can refer to this. And it's called the three P's of cultural appropriation. And if you are a kinesthetic learner, I have highlighted the three P's in a traffic light system so it's easy to remember. And even if you don't remember that, appropriation has three P's in it, so hopefully it's super easy to remember. Now, my theory, like all theories, is not a universal truth. Not all black people think or feel the same. We aren't monoliths, we know that. However, my hope is that by the end of this, you'll be able to identify what cultural appropriation is and when it's inappropriate. Number two, my hope is you'll be able to distinguish what is cultural appropriation, what is appreciation, what is assimilation, and what is acculturation. Don't worry if you don't know what those words mean, we'll come to it. And third and finally, through using my free P network... You'll be best prepared for conversations around diversity, inclusion, cultural appropriation, etc. when you go out into your businesses, your schools, your workplaces, etc. So let's put this into practice. We're going to play a quick game of word associations. So an example would be if I said Mo Farah, you may say long distance runner, you may say gold medal, and you at the back may say I'm a celebrity, the program that he was featured on. What comes to your mind and shout out as quickly as you can. What comes to your mind when I say the term dreadlocks? Go. Rasta, anyone else? And Jamaica, Bob Marley, fantastic. And guess what? You guys said the three top answers that I'd expected you to say. And that brings me nicely to my first P, which is cultural property. And cultural property is defined as the essential elements that you expect to see from a culture that help it to be identified and determined. Now, an essential... Now, sorry. Now, a present-day political and religious movement where dreadlocks is an essential part of the culture... is like someone said the Russa or the Russafarian movement birthed out of Jamaica. So someone also said Bomali, but bringing it to the UK, think of Benjamin Zephaniah, the author and poet, or think of the TV chef Levi Ruch. You're probably all hungry now. Truth is, depictions of matted hair have been found historically throughout the whole of time. However, when we're referring to the term dreadlocks, it is specifically referring to the matted hairstyle of Africans. And that's because in the 19th century, during colonialism, the British were then fighting the Kenyan warriors. They came across their locks, their dreadlocks, and they fought them to be dreadful, thus coining the term dreadlocks. So although there's a lot of discourse online about the origins of dreadlocks, be it Vikings, because people have watched too much Netflix, or be it ancient Egyptians or Grecians, retrospectively applying the 19th century racially charged term, to 11th century Vikings or even earlier is respectfully out of context. And the reason being is because they didn't have the term, the term wasn't used to describe them, and the term wasn't used by them to describe themselves. In order to have a progressive conversation about the ramifications, the racial ramifications of dreadlocks, we need to be able to distinguish between the differences of matted hair, a matted braid, and dreadlocks. And we need to be able to distinguish between the different time periods and eras, and we need to stop with the whataboutisms because it is a deflection. It's important to note that when discussing cultural property, it's not about ownership, it's not about origins, and it's not about history. It's about having an awareness that in the UK, for some black people, it is an essential part of their culture, both culturally... and spiritually. So for example, some people wear dreadlocks as a sign of biblical devotion, as described by the Nazarite in the biblical book of Numbers. So essentially what I'm saying is for some it's more than a hairstyle. Moving on to the second P, by a show of hands, who here has seen any of the Spider-Man film? Brilliant, and I thought it would be the majority of you. So I'm going to test you now. Please finish this saying for me. With great power, Yay! Look at you lot. Brilliant. However, this P, unlike Peter Parker, the power here isn't radioactive. The power here is something that's a little bit more sinister. It's got its roots in colonialism, it's got its roots in the transatlantic slave trade, and it's got its roots in imperialism. The power here is privilege. Now, what often happens when you talk about privilege, people say, well, I'm not rich. Or they say, well, I had to work hard for what I have, and that may be right. However, when we're discussing privilege, cultural appropriation and privilege, it's not discussing those things. It's discussing the pre-existing societal things that have been put in place in order to serve and benefit the dominant culture. Coming back to the definition of cultural appropriation, remember it's the unacknowledged, inappropriate adoptions of customs, practices, ideas from one culture by members of another, typically the more dominant or the more privileged culture in society. Coming back to Spider-Man, this is my Uncle Ben moment. And I say onto you guys, from the dominant culture sitting here and online today, with great power and privilege comes great responsibility. Now with that, you have two choices. Like Peter Parker in the Peter Parker saga, you can choose to not accept your privilege and power and wait for the societal issues to come to you. Or later on in the franchise, you can accept your power and your privilege and go and face the societal issues before they confront you. I know what I personally would prefer you all to do. If I had to pinpoint a time where cultural appropriation and privilege is the most prevalent, that would be the 31st of October. Yes, Halloween. It seems like every year someone is using the black aesthetic to inappropriately dress up for Halloween. Most recently, you may have seen it in England, sports player dressed up as the African-American rapper Tupac. Why, please? Bringing back to cultural appropriation, remember, cultural appropriation is the things that you expect to see in order to identify what a culture is. And he did all of that, all of the iconography. He had the red bandana, he had the white, white beater top. He had a gold chain, he was making rapper-like hand gestures, all very problematic. However, the icing on the cancelled cake was that he darkened and blackened his skin. This is known as blackface, and it's the most overt and easily identifiable form of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation 101, if you will, using your privilege to act, mock and degrade people from the black culture. Anything that includes blackface is inappropriate. I'll say that one more time. Anything that includes blackface is inappropriate. And that's because of the legacy and the history that it carries. As a preventative, I would advise, because Halloween is at the end of UK Black History Month, I would advise sending out an inclusion reminder to people in your workplaces and institutions. Something along the lines of, blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used by performers of non-African descent. to create a caricature of dark-skinned people of African descent. The practice picked up steam in the 19th century and was responsible for spreading racial stereotypes such as the Coon and the Minstrel Show. Well, Cain, that was in the past. Forget about it, I hear you say at the back. Well, BBC, their version of the Minstrel Show, the black and white Minstrel Show, only ended in 1978. So it's not that long ago. Essentially, the sportsman in question was wrong because what he was doing is he was dragging those racial stereotypes. He was dragging all of this into modern day age. But Kane, I hear you say, can't I dress up as my favourite black icon? Of course you can. Culturally appreciate them. If you want to dress up as Michael Jackson and wear the black shoes and the white socks and the silver glove and scream, go for it. However, what you do not do is darken your skin. Chances are if you wear the gloves and the shoes, people are already going to know. And similarly, I would advise not to wear fake afros or fake dreadlocks. Recently, you will find many celebrities from the dominant culture, Lady Gaga, Zac Efron, Justin Bieber, Christina Aguilera, Pink, the list goes on, wearing fake or faux locks and temporarily matting their hair. But Kane, it's just a hairstyle. And you're right, it is just a hairstyle. And to address the elephant in the room, of course a white person can have dreads. It's just a hairstyle. However, we cannot ignore the rich ethno-history that comes with it. And we cannot ignore the privileges. So some of these celebrities, for example, they'll be seen as cool. They'll maybe be seen as a rebel. They'll maybe get some backlash. And then what do they do? Simply remove the hairstyle and carry on with their careers. And what that does is it creates a narrative in the mainstream that everybody can do that. That it's just merely a hairstyle. That it's just merely a fashion. And thus diminishing... the cultural property aspect because for some black people as i explained it's cultural it's political and it can be religious case in point if you look online and you type in black students and dreadlocks you will find a lot of discourse of students that have had their hair forcibly cut their dreadlocks cut by teachers before a sporting match you will see students that have been expelled from school through having dreadlocks if you want to look into this you can google deandre arnold Or you can Google Andrew Johnson, both in the US. And often the narrative is that, oh, the UK is different, the UK is innocent. However, I want to introduce you to 12-year-old Chickasay Flanders. It was his first day at Year 7. Could you imagine how excited he must have been? And he arrived to school on the first day, his dreads were neatly tied up, and guess what happened? He was put in isolation because his hairstyle did not fit the uniform policy. Imagine that being your child's first day of school. How traumatising. The mum campaigned and said, for us, you know, it's not a fashion, it's a belief. We all have dreads, we're Rastafarians. And they simply said it did not fit their school policy and he was taught in isolation and subsequently had to leave for a neighbouring school. Furthermore, did you know that there are no laws to protect black people against Afro-Hair discrimination? And yet, black people experience Afro-Hair discrimination via the workplaces and microaggressions, via the wider society and via, as I explained... Archaic school policies. Microaggressions such as your hair looks like an alpaca was directed on UK morning TV to a black female doctor. How ridiculous is that? And what's interesting is that this is not just a one-off incident. Research by Dove found that 37% of UK black adults have experienced afro hair discrimination at their workplaces. How high is that, 37%? This may lead to some culturally assimilating. which is the idea of trying to fit in. So what they may do is straighten their hair in order to be deemed more professional and to fit the Eurocentric beauty standard. but not always. Essentially, what the majority of UK black people want is cultural acculturation, which is where they progress and incorporate into the prevalent culture, but still bring with them original traditions and values. Coming back to the superhero theme, I want you guys to think of yourself as the Thanos of the workplace, fighting all forms of injustice. Some of us already have the yellow privilege stone. But in order for it to be most effective, we also need to have the green cultural property stone. That's not saying that you have to educate yourself overnight. However, what that is saying is that you have to make sure that you dedicate your time to making sure that the marginalized groups, that their voices are heard equally just as much as yours. A powerful adage is that privilege is power, but an even more powerful adage is that knowledge is power. Both are needed. in order to have a progressive conversation in regards to cultural appropriation. So for my visual learners, you've got your yellow and you've got your greenstone, or you've got your two Ps. Now we're going to move on to the third and final P, and the third and final P is in red, and it is profit, i.e. people who make money off cultural appropriation. And this one is in red because it needs to stop. An example would be some of you guys'favourite fashion brand, Louis Vuitton. Yes, they're going to get dragged today. They created a £995 jumper, crazy amount of money, and they said that it was dedicated to the official Jamaican flag. However, when the jumper came out, guess what? It was the wrong colours. How does that happen? It seems like it was inspired by the Rastafarian flag, so the jumper itself was red, yellow and green, but the official flag of Jamaica was green, yellow, or is green, yellow and black. In any case, it's important that diversity... is implemented as a value and not as a fashion-making symbol. Because the truth of the matter is Louis Vuitton aren't alone. There are many examples of the Russafarian slash Jamaican culture being used inappropriately. You will see hats, bags, clothes, shoes, smoking paraphernalia, European music festivals, etc., all benefiting off the Russa or Jamaican culture, and yet none of the money goes back to those communities. So you're sitting there and you're thinking, Cain, what can I do? I'm just one person. Well, don't worry, I've got a remedy. You can visit Black Pound Day. And Black Pound Day is an online marketplace that promotes 1,500 UK-led black businesses. Now, Cain, why just black, I hear you say? Because it's time to address the historical and economic privileges. It's time to get conscious about how and where we spend our money. It's time to empower... and enable, thus creating a better society for all. Now, you have your three infinity stones, red, yellow and green, or your three P's, cultural property, privilege and profit. Use it as a tool to distinguish what cultural appropriation is and when it's inappropriate, and use it to make the place, our society, a more equal, diverse and inclusive space for all. Lastly, I will leave you with this, with great power, And privilege becomes great responsibility. Please use it wisely. Thank you.