For years now The United States has developed as one of the most diverse and accepting nations in the world. Infamously known as the country with no official language due to our variety of foreign tongues, America proudly boasts their acceptance of a variety of cultures. However, this seems to be all but true for those who live among most Americans and see the way society can thievishly steal cultures from groups giving little to no credit to them at all. This idea of cultural appropriation started hundreds of years ago when America was "re-founded" by Italian expeditioner, Christopher Columbus. Upon his arrival the natives that were established were not only oppressed by the incoming Italiansthere food and ways of hunting, cooking, and surviving were stripped from them and claimed as the European's  own.  Now, nearly 600 years later, not much has changed in our societies way of giving credit where it's due. This intrigues me because we are still allowing this kind of behavior to go on and not much has been done to stop it. Every now and then music artist will shed light on the issue, but it almost seems as if people are afraid of starting a race war. All throughout school I was taught that plagiarism was wrong, you cannot take someone else's work and say it is yours, I do not see much of a difference here. The definition still holds true, especially if they are an oppressed race of people. Today in any in Pop Culture women are treated as a new trend, such as the way we dress, our hairstyles, our accessories, even our bodies. It seems as if everyone wants to be black, but will not acknowledge the problems that come with the culture. I feel I can write a first hand account of what this is like, because I see it happen everyday to the people around me. Right now the industry loves our culture, it is what's "in" right now. It is great that America is open to the idea of loving black people, the problem is their love stops at only the idea. So my question is, why can't America love black people as much as black culture?

It is no secret that America is run by white people. This is how it has been for the last 600 years, until 2008 when America elected its first black president. Even then, the ratio of white to any other race has always been an outstandingly large sum. It is no secret that with making up nearly 80% of the population, white people are and remain America's dominant race. It also is no secret that blacks and many other minorities in America have been oppressed by whites in the past. As previously stated the Pop Industry has taken in black culture and so has society. Since these are all run 80% by white people, they have been taking many aspects from black culture and making them their own. This is specifically where cultural appropriation occurs. The problem with this is that white people can take the same thing that countless black people have that is significant to their culture, and make it theirs just like that (Abdul-Jabbar). The next problem is that when our culture is taken it is not treated with the same respect the opressed culture holds it to. With dominance in the marketplace as well, they can sell these items and make more off of them than a minority would (Abdul-Jabbar). I feel Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is fit to discuss this argument. His article has little bias, and being an NBA star experiencing the pop culture industry first hand (Times).

Color-blindness has been a recent trend among the youth of today. To act as if you are color-blind in every situation to prevent hurting someone's feelings. This in my honest opinion is very unnecessary. Contrary to what Morgan Freeman once said, the answer to acceptance is not pretending to be oblivious to those who are different from us. The more reasonable approach is to educate and accept. In the hip-hop world of today, many people of dominant races have chosen color-blindness as a way of easing their way into black culture (Rodriquez 646). They have used this as a means of being blind to reality and do it to such an unnatural extreme that it seems they face an identity disorder (Rodriquez). This article goes on to explain how being blind to reality is now being taught in schools, but you cannot whisper acceptance while society is screaming the rest of society is screaming their privilege. The author of this article is a research doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusets-Amherst. I feel working on such a degree in cultural sociology and racial ideology gives him profound credibility on this topic.

My last source was by a Race Relations Expert, Nadra Kareem Nittle. She does not have strong credibility as the previous authors, but I am only using her article to define what cultural appropriation is, as it has a pretty consistent definition across most platforms. Nittle defines cultural appropriation as:

Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else's culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It's most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects. (Nittle).

I took a direct quote because this is the information I need for the rest of the article and it is the only information I wanted from the article. The major values of the essay center around what the true meaning of cultural appropriation is.

My research question is arguable in the sense that it requires the exploration of what cultural appropriation is, and requires you to understand the concept and agree with me. I think that I could tweak my arugment in the future to avoid forcing the reader to side with me. Not starting it off with "Why can't.." and instead starting it with "Can..". I'm not sure if I should leave it as is, I guess the rest of my paper will answer that. Between the article I found that they stood on the same side of the issuefuture.

