Last month, Jessica Krug, a white George Washington University professor who masqueraded as black for years, outed herself on Medium. Of interest here is not necessarily what she did; we've seen this behavior before from the likes of Rachel Dolezal. What is extraordinary is Krug's Medium post, in which she refers to her act of cultural appropriation as "anti-black violence." But is cultural appropriation "violence"? I was skeptical.
I went in search of the answer to this question, and I found many references to cultural appropriation as violence—such as frequent use of the phrase "the violence of cultural appropriation"—but I wasn't able to find any explanation of how or why it is considered violent.
This, for instance, is from Krug's Medium post: "I have not only claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so—when doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures."[1]
This would suggest a rather simple explanation; namely, that cultural appropriation is a form of theft, and theft is violent. But framing it in legal terms is problematic; anyone who has had the misfortune of studying torts knows that theft—especially theft of intellectual property—is not necessarily a violent crime. Every legal definition of violence refers to "physical force."
And the World Health Organization, in its World Report on Violence and Health, defines "violence" as:
"the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."[2]
But let's put the dictionary definitions aside; after all, the dictionary doesn't always account for common parlance, and there's no question that cultural appropriation as violence has become common parlance. So let's get more abstract and say that cultural appropriation is part of a lineage of violence by a dominant group against a marginalized group. This seems to be what Krug is referring to.
In this case, Jessica Krug's act of cultural appropriation must be seen within the context of generations of genuinely violent cultural theft and erasure, going back to slavery. It is part of a legacy of white people "having their way," so to speak, with black culture. It is violent because it is inseparable from violence.
I can see how you could make this case, but why would you? Equating harmless acts of cultural appropriation to violence is problematic because it trivializes actual violence against marginalized groups—a very real problem, as we've seen in the case of George Floyd and so many others.
Which is not to say that all cultural appropriation is harmless. In 2017, the New York Times published an op-ed by Kenan Malik entitled "In Defense of Cultural Appropriation," in which Malik attempted to differentiate harmful acts of cultural appropriation from harmless cultural exchange, or "cultural engagement."[3]
"Appropriation suggests theft, and a process analogous to the seizure of land or artifacts," Malik writes, "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."
But K. Tempest Bradford wrote a riposte for NPR titled "Cultural Appropriation Is, In Fact, Indefensible," in which she points out that framing cultural appropriation as an exchange is problematic because "there's no power imbalance involved in an exchange," but there is a power imbalance inherent to cultural appropriation.[4]
In the art world, certainly, cultural appropriation can be harmful, because the appropriator profits from the culture of another, a theft of sorts from artists who are more representative of that culture. But harmful doesn't necessarily mean violent.
"I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken," Krug—in a compromised state of mind, in my opinion—wrote in her Medium post. But it is hard for me to see how her lie is violent. Posing as a person of color may have harmed an actual POC's employment prospects in George Washington University's African-American Studies Department, where Krug occupied a job as a professor. But surely it wasn't violent.
We must be careful with words like "violence"—it is perhaps the gravest thing that a person can be accused of. I would not go so far as to say, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," because words can incite violence. But harm and violence are not the same thing. Cultural appropriation may be harmful. It may be disrespectful and offensive. But seldom is it violent, and we should not compare genuine acts of violence to Adele sporting Bantu knots, or whatever the latest celebrity cultural appropriation "controversy" may be.
[1] https://medium.com/@jessakrug/the-truth-and-the-anti-black-violence-of-my-lies-9a9621401f85
[2] https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/en/
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/opinion/in-defense-of-cultural-appropriation.html
[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/06/28/533818685/cultural-appropriation-is-in-fact-indefensible