An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

status, and influence, it is possible they might not ever be “canceled.”
Although on an uneven plane of power, we are all capable of doing
something we should not. As Ibram Kendi notes in his award-winning book
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in
America (2016), “Racist ideas are ideas. Anyone can produce them or
consume them.” 2 It is a simple but profound statement. I would add to this
that anyone can reproduce a settler-colonial idea as well. Further, the
reproduction of racism and settler colonialism is about power, that is, who
can create some negative outcome for those most vulnerable. We can all
perpetuate stereotypes about Indigenous peoples, and, of course, Indigenous
peoples can engage in stereotypes about themselves. I recall hearing older
members of my family, Black and Indigenous, recount that when they went
to see those racist John Wayne cowboy movies, they rooted for his ass! If I
take anything from this lesson, we can all uncritically accept narratives
rooted in popular culture. It should not be surprising, then, within a settlercolonial
society, that even Black folks can slip up and reproduce harmful
imagery of distorted Indigenous cultures or straight-up culturally
appropriate them.
Still, there seems to be some basic disagreements over what cultural
appropriation is, who can do it, and what the impacts are. Again, anyone
can reproduce racist or colonial ideas. However, there is also a thin line
between cultural appropriation and appreciation. In this chapter, I will
analyze cultural appropriation, the discourses of solidarity, and how this all
plays out within the realm of Black and Indigenous public cultural spheres.
I want to do this by analyzing particular examples within the Black and
Indigenous popular cultural realms.
CULTURAL APPROPRIATION VS. CULTURAL APPRECIATION
It is becoming almost cliché to use the term “cultural appropriation.”
Everyone uses it. White people appropriate hip-hop culture, understood as
Black culture. White people wear headdresses at Coachella. Actually,
everyone wears headdresses—Black, white, green—just hang around a
college campus on Halloween. (Those same people will also wear costumes
that are disrespectful to my Latinx and Asian homies.)
Europeans go to places like Oaxaca, Mexico, learn how to make mezcal,
and then bring it to California and act like it is brand new. They take artistic