Best Cultural Appropriation Quotes

"Mindfulness, originally a Buddhist concept, has been co-opted by Western cultures in a way that's changed how it works, arguably beyond all recognition."

"And though their legacy has been appropriated in ways ranging from dubious to flat-out dangerous, the Viking Age proves that history only gets cooler the more we learn about it."

"If you're gonna appropriate my culture, you better do it right."

"We've been rocking braids, we've been having small waistlines, we've been having nice round butts, we've been having full lips. So why is it so amazing and outstanding when you see that on someone other than black?"

"Cultural appropriation is when you try to be something that you're not by hiding behind someone else's culture."

"Everybody wants to be black until the police show up."

"Everybody wants to be a black girl, and black woman and now nobody can say that I'm crazy or paranoid or arrogant because people are literally cosplaying black womanhood out here."

"Japanese kimono manufacturers in Kyoto were legitimately extremely excited about the fact that cultural appropriation was happening because it revitalized the entire industry."

"What makes America wonderful is cultural appropriation; it's taking awesome things from other cultures and then integrating them into your regular life."

"The Native American princess costume is especially gross considering the mass genocide of indigenous Americans."

"Cultural appropriation is theft... Members of a dominant group borrow elements from a marginalized group while actively erasing the people of that culture and diminishing the meanings of what we practice."

"Culture is important and shouldn't be used as a costume."

"She's wearing a wolf skin on her head, and has some like paint under the chin, that seems to be stealing a lot from Indigenous North American and Maori stuff."

"The Blues means people being oppressed, white folks please stay away from our goddamn music."

"White people always act as though they have discovered a new trend when people of color have been doing it for virtually years."

"The answer to cultural appropriation is first respect the culture, understand the context of what you're adopting, give appropriate recognition, and please actively be anti-racist."

"The colonization of black culture and black music is nothing new."

"You're not gonna deny a culture when it's convenient for you and then embrace it when you want some [ __ ]."

"To me culture vulture's the lowest of the low."

"I think people are kind of coming around to this cultural appropriation thing being BS."

"It's the worst form of appropriation because you're appropriating somebody's struggle and using real struggles to get support for your rich problems."

"You can't start this with our stuff and then take it over here."

"Why is it so important for our brothers and sisters from Africa to make foundational black Americans African when it's convenient?"

"Appropriation is only negative if you're financially exploitative or doing it in bad... everybody should be encouraging everybody to do that's awesome."

"She was appropriating the struggles of a lot of women of color in the United States and using it to market and further her own brand for profit."

"The term cultural vulture is literally one of the most Sinister things that anyone can be called... it implies that you're eating uh a culture that's in Peril."

"Stop stealing from black people, stop stealing specifically from young black creative, stop it stop it stop it."

"Time you tell me about cultural appropriation right there."

"Odonists ignore actual Norse history to save the supposed white race."

"Welcome to the cultural appropriation about this week number four."

"Friendly reminder that you don't get to celebrate Lunar New Year unless you're literally for it."

"Keith, I don't love how straight culture has now decided that they can talk about tops and bottoms."

"That whole tethering of our culture, man, that's a major thing."

"The western world wants to take their fashion aesthetic bodies and methods of communication, but societally black women still suffer for participating in the culture that they put out on a day-to-day basis."

"I've saved three lives, but I've never delivered a baby."

"White people stole witchcraft from African beliefs."

"Oppression has shaped our cultures but that doesn't mean we let our oppressors take what we've made and use it as their own."

"Rock ain't nothing but a white version of rhythm and blues mf'er you know I met Paul McCartney when he was 21."

"Fashion definitely takes from the ballroom scene."

"Rachel Dolezal did more than lie about being black."

"She got famous because she embraced getting big lips but imitating our women looks."

"You can't black appropriate our [expletive] and then not respect us."

"America has to be the great synthesizer, stealing ideas from wherever we can."

"That's tough, is my slang I made it big it's not yours anymore."

"I'm so over these major brands stealing from black designers."

"Mind Life Institute is just a project of mining, processing Buddhism into a field of mind sciences for the West."

"You know who else got called out for blackfishing? Rita Ora."

"Maybe when we notice that everyone is guzzling beer and punching each other today on Saint Patty's Day and no one's going to talk about cultural appropriation maybe we can realize the rest of it is BS too."

"One minute people say all black Americans don't have a culture the next minute they're stealing everything like it just doesn't make sense."

"White girls did not start the trend of oversized hoop earrings and yet they're the ones being praised for donning the edgy style."

"Ignoring the fact that dreadlocks are by no means an artifact exclusively belonging to black culture."

"Drake has been accused of being a culture vulture for utilizing accents and phraseology from other heritages."

"You don't get to misappropriate all our culture... you're misappropriating punk rock culture."

"It's not about color, it's about the continuous culture appropriation and falsification of history."

"I just want to end this by saying with all that I said, don't you be [] coming in our culture all right and taking our bits and pieces you []."

"People want those benefits that there are economic benefits that come with stealing blackness."

"Elvis started to do questionable things regarding racism... he had stolen music from black people... it was very clear... but in response to that Elvis claimed that he had always given black people their props..."

"White people should not be using the term 'woke' unless they actually know what the [expletive] it means."

"Considering it's Black History Month, I thought it was a perfect time to talk about just a few of the times that black music has been taken and whitewashed."

"Exp edition was met with heavy criticism, accused of cultural appropriation."

"Only a white girl could steal native culture for 20 years and then still manage to make herself the victim."

"The history of African-American culture is white people steal it do a less good version of it and make a hundred times the money."

"It's winding back so it is okay if the British lady makes an Italian cookbook despite not being Italian but it's not okay if the British lady makes the Chinese cookbook but is not Chinese."

"I think the ways in which is I've seen it weaponized a lot of the times like I saw a white dude have dreads and like this black girl reamed him out in public."

"Stop allowing intersectionality to leech off your entire civil rights history."

"The least they can do while they profit off our culture every day is give us basic human respect."

"It would have felt totally disingenuous for me to adopt their wound as if it was my own."

"Some people call this white people matcha and gentrified matcha."

"Using my ancestors to change policies, to me, that's extremely offensive."

"Are you saying that the whole story of the bearded, pale-skinned Quetzalcoatl was a Spanish invention?"

"I think that if you're a non-black hairstylist that's taking techniques, lingo, personalities from black people, I think if you're going to take, you need to bring them with you too."

"Hollywood Jews may have wanted to marry into White America, but when it came to music, Jewish composers looked to Black America."

"You use different cultures and religions, you get hate for appropriating them. You don't use different cultures and religions, and you're a racist. It's like damned if you do, damned if you don't."

"You can't be mad at any of the Kardashians without being upset at the black men who gave them access to the culture and told them that that's how they preferred them, right?"

"...even if what op is doing is considered to be cultural appropriation, then I will fight to the death for op and everyone else's right to culturally appropriate as much as they want to..."

"The hebrew bible is essentially plagiarizing earlier traditions from other cultures."

"I'm telling you, it's certain [ __ ], and that was the thing that I was looking at Drake like, [ __ ], you sure you want to do that? That's what I'm saying, you want to do that? You culture vulture. Yeah, to me, like, that's some [ __ ] white people do."

"Black people are the reason all the toys you're playing with are the ones we created."

"Yet in some ways, these images are simply window dressing, lip service to ancient Egyptian traditions in order to claim a greater prize."

"American Ayahuasca, yeah. And now the whole Ayahuasca thing is being turned into like a corporate machine by Americans. It's like, it's what we do best, man. God damn it, man. It's like the thing to do."

"Drake is the Thanos of adopting culture. He goes around to different cultures and he [__] puts them in his fist."

"They trying to steal our bloodline. Of course they're going to do that. They stole our symbols, right? They stole our colors, and they misappropriated, they infiltrated us at every level."

"Should Black Culture be a free-for-all for anyone to benefit from at the demise of the very people who have no choice but to be of this culture?"

"Blackness cannot be replicated or recreated by non-black people, period."

"Cosmetic blackface... It's like white people and non-black people are praised for the same thing that we are demonized for."

"White women finding fame, fortune, clout, notoriety, and taking styles from black and Latina communities."

"The Hebrew Israelites have to give them their story because white people stole it and it's not based on science but a vision that someone essentially claimed to have."

"You cannot claim to respect, advocate for, or try to empower indigenous people while also traveling to Hawaii."

"Native Hawaiians continue to be overly commodified, misconstrued, and exoticized."

"There's a couple of rules of thumb: look at the culture that you are using and determine how consistently has that culture been harmed by misappropriation in the past."

"We can't be free until they stop selling us. They make so much money and profit off of our culture."

"There is a long sad history of culture theft, particularly from the African-American community."

"My Mom will take whatever's cultural and then she'll like Zoom it out."

"It's a white woman thing too... they love to do that... I'm going to champion something that I have nothing, I have never experienced in my life but it feels like I should be saying this."

"Maybe it's fitting that Sriracha is a sauce that's now been claimed by Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and the United States."

"Pythagoras didn't come up with that, he got it from Africa."

"As a white person from Hawaii, I feel I can speak for the Hawaiian people when I say what they love most is a 40-something white lady from the mainland coming over during a pandemic and declaring herself to be their sacred goddess Pele."

"My culture is not your costume, but I like the bit you're trying to pull off."

"I wouldn't care if you wore braids as a white person or a non-black person if I was treated the same as you for the style that is a part of my culture."

"If I were a Native American, I would feel deeply insulted and offended by a holiday called Columbus Day."

"...ultimately your insecurity doesn't justify the appropriation and fetishization of other races and cultures."

"I'm not your Indian mascot anymore."

"What gives you the right to come into black culture?"

"That's the first meme that like I remember had like Christmas ornaments of harambe and I was like this is just like I felt like this is my is this what cultural appropriation feels like you know like what the [ __ ] is this."

"I hate that I know what every individual element of 'cancelled for culturally appropriating Groverhaus' is, and I blame Alice for all of it."

"It's different when it's less popular black characters and someone whitewashes them."

"The Persian king has taken unto himself the millennium old image of heroes fighting lions."

"You want our music, you want to dance to it, you want to recite it, you want to say the n-word, but you don't want us in your establishment as we are, as our culture, as what hip hop is. That's just funny."

"Anti-racism activists have called for a ban on the use of blackface in Spain's traditional Epiphany celebrations."

"Back in 2001, Lego decided to 'borrow' words from the Maori culture to name various Bionicle characters and locations."

"But even more so, some feel like taking the chopped cheese out of its natural environment is swagger-jacking at its worst."

"The Bible is available now. If we want him to change, we have to give him a book. The white man gave him a church and a separate book. We also gave a separate church and a book."

"There's no life story when black people invoke Black Culture. You're just dressing yourself up in culture."

"Over and over, we see them borrowing Christian symbols."

"This is something that no white people should be involved in the creative process of this at all."

"It's so profoundly racist to be like uh yeah, yeah Native Americans, we've got your story here."

"Sayonara, Baudelaires," he said mockingly. "Sayonara is the Japanese word for goodbye, and I'm sure that each and every one of the millions of people who live in Japan would be ashamed to hear their language used by such a revolting person."

"This is the time of year where we make another orbit around the Sun and we call it the solstice and then the Christians hijacked it and turned it into an orgy of hyper capitalism."

"Don't you think it's pretty racist to just culturally appropriate another people's food?"

"White people got no business play in the Blues ever at all under any circumstances ever ever ever."

"How you gonna take to equip in the blood rag, wrap it around each other and try to make it your own flag?"

"No one talks about having Cherokee in their blood more than someone who is three or more generations removed..."

"...the label start investing in it they start watering it down make it more mainstream and all the people all the white people and not start listening to it..."

"Yule wasn't stolen by Christians. In fact, it may be more fair to say that Yule stole Christmas."

"Cultural appropriation is wrong. It's a timeless, eternal, immutable bad. It's a truth."

"Maybe true equality is everyone culturally appropriating each other."

"I don't know how to tell you this but you need to become a Korean woman like fast you don't have a choice card dude was like this guy looks like a [ __ ] bird watcher."

"The girls have concept, [expletive], so I'm gonna be doing an African Moon Bather."

"Spirit Bay is immensely sympathetic with how First Nations history and culture is taken and sold by a predominantly white world."

"The theft of indigenous knowledge is a real thing, a thing that it would be wrong to deny the reality of."

"He would raid other capitals when he was fighting and take all the artwork and bring it back to France."

"You want to dance like me, but you don't like me; you want to dress like me, but you hate me."

"For generations, people of color had to pass for survival. Now white people are wearing the experiences of racialized people like a costume."

"When a person or a whole culture is reduced to just a costume that we can put on and take off without us really understanding the meaning behind it, it can feel hurtful to them."

"When a culture that has power over another culture through a history of colonization, imperialism, settler colonialism, that culture in power stealing aspects of a culture that they have power over, that's where a lot of people have issues."

"How have y'all spent the last two decades co-opting black radical imagery, wording, icons, and y'all have never engaged with the actual work of black radicals? How is that possible?"

"Stealing our hairstyles, our food, our culture is a continuation of that erasure because we still aren't being fully credited for things we championed."

"Christianity hijacks Christmas; pagan traditions and stories created the foundation of Christmas."

"Museums are strange, like you just steal people's stuff and put it in there."

"Cultural appropriation isn't inherently good or bad; it's what happens when members of one culture adopt elements from another culture."

"We assimilate into a culture that is constantly appropriating ours."

"Don't swipe other culture's stuff as if it were your own."

"Billy's culture is not your costume."

"I believe in some cases it's definitely cultural appropriation because the respect is not given."

"The exploitation and appropriation of Ayurvedic practices by the whitewashed wellness community has been so horrifying."

"It just means hello. What higher level of vibration do you think you're reaching by clasping your hands together and mispronouncing 'hello'?"

"Almost paradoxically, as they were working to push living indigenous people to the city's margins, Seattle's whites were adopting indigenous art and iconography as symbols of the city."

"What I'm criticizing as dark or perhaps morally reprehensible is this process of appropriation and then weaponization."