Sainsbury’s attempt at a Persian inspired dish has been described as ‘casual racism’, and Jamie Oliver has been accused of cultural appropriation over his "Jerk rice". This has set up some interesting questions…
For example, can a Lebanese restaurant serve shawarma which originated in Turkey as döner kebab? And how many of us have eaten Swedish meatballs not realising they too originated in Turkey? This thoughtless appropriation can also be applied to spag bol, which, by this token, should cause outrage amongst Italians. The list is endless…
In a recent radio broadcast, a caller was upset because she thought that the native patois of Caribbean people was being appropriated. Taken to its logical conclusion learning a foreign language is cultural appropriation. Will the French now object to people not from France saying "Au revoir" and should we castigate people who say "Ciao" instead of "Goodbye" if they are not Italian?
What is absurd is that the very people who get hysterical about cultural appropriation are the ones who claim that we must have integration. It might help if they looked up what the word means. Allowing this idealogical madness to continue will just lead us into a sterile world where individual thought is outlawed and, even worse, a place where humour will be forbidden on the basis that virtually all humour is at someone’s expense.
