“It’s disheartening to continually see white women capitalize on Blackness by manufacturing an aesthetic that can be applied and discarded.”— Jameelah Nasheed, thecut.com
“If you do it for a couple years, it's an interest; for five years, it's a hobby. But when you do something for 20 years, it becomes a part of your life and you become a part of it.”— Tom Sachs, gq.com
“Cultural appropriation is the act of adopting certain aspects of a culture in a manner that disrespects the cultural significance and inaccurately represents a community.”— Ixty Quintanilla, everydayfeminism.com
“You may not guess it by the hordes of women (and some men) sporting Lululemon and toting designer yoga mats, but yoga is a 5000 + year Hindu practice that is just part of a larger system of beliefs (jnana, bhakti, and karma yoga) that includes an adherence to nonviolence, meditation, chanting, devot…”— Rachel Khona, thoughtcatalog.com
“A deeper understanding of cultural appropriation also refers to a particular power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group.”— Maisha Z. Johnson, everydayfeminism.com
“Beauty has been stolen from the people and is being sold back to them under the concept of luxury!”— Kanye West, youtube.com
“I'm sympathetic insofar as I think the 'cultural appropriation' critique has often gone too far. But what needs to be known is that African-American artists have created incredible, magical intellectual property -- only to have it monetized by white people, while the black artist gets nothing. That'…”— PieChart Guy, nytimes.com
“[Cultural] appropriation suggests theft, and a process analogous to the seizure of land or artifacts. In the case of culture, however, what is called appropriation is not theft but messy interaction. Writers and artists necessarily engage with the experiences of others. Nobody owns a culture, but ev…”— Kenan Malik, nytimes.com
“I had this dumb, Western idea. Like, I’m going to go to India and it’s gonna be so transcendent that I’m not gonna be afraid of death anymore, and I’m going to lay down so many of my Western anxieties and embrace a new kind of knowingness and bring it back to the U.S.”— Lena Dunham, theaerogram.com