How a cancelled yoga class stretches the point on cultural appropriation

Good piece by Jonathan Gatehouse who puts the yoga and other political correctness stories into context:

But the hyper-sensitivity of a few undergraduate activists shouldn’t be mistaken for a mass movement. Debates over cultural appropriation remain mostly the stuff of little-followed Tumblr accounts and right-wing websites that are in perpetual need of examples of encroaching political correctness. (They are sometimes enabled and abetted by mainstream media inquiries into burning questions like the appropriateness of Valentino’s African-inspired collection for spring/summer 2016.)

When they do get traction, it’s often for good reason. Society evolves and standards change. Calling your football team “the Redskins” might well be a tradition, but it’s a racist one. Blackface went out with Al Jolson. Getting really drunk and dancing around in a feathered native headdress at a music festival is a tribute only to your own stupidity.

Culture is elastic and acquisitive. We adopt all sorts of stuff from all sorts of people. Pasta came from China. (Long before Marco Polo.) Waffles were once Belgian. Jazz, rock and hip-hop were originally African-American art forms and have endured in spite of Kenny G, The Carpenters and Vanilla Ice.

Mostly that process happens without much thought or trouble. Everyone in university residence buys a futon. Thai restaurants and sushi bars edge out the delis and pizza parlours on Main Street. White actors stop getting cast as Othello.

However, that all shouldn’t obscure the fact that our collective thirst for the new and different isn’t always benign. Symbols do get misappropriated. Meanings are lost. And even long-accepted practices can be offensive.

On the odd occasion when concerns and objections are raised, we lose nothing in listening—even if it’s just some student government busybody, stretching the point.

Yoga practitioners aren’t debasing anyone’s culture. But neither are the lunatics now running the asylum.

Now, everybody take a deep breath, and relax.

Source: How a cancelled yoga class stretches the point on cultural appropriation – Macleans.ca