Tag: Cultural Appropriation

Drumming and Jack-o-Lanterns

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race2 Comments

pumpkinBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

Late at night, I would sneak into our living room, lie on the floor, and put my ear to the ground. I could hear the drumming and catch the tune to the chants that had for years drifted me into dreams. If I really pushed my ear close, I could make out my mom’s voice as she joined with the circle of women monthly sharing song, dreams, and summer vision quests deep in the woods.

My family was deeply Christian. My mom loved incense and the sacraments. But she was also starved for a spirituality that rooted itself on the ground- in the trees and the hawks and the snow. She longed for rituals that connected her body to the waves and the changing moon. She clung to the tension of multiple traditions knowing that she needed them both. Continue reading “Drumming and Jack-o-Lanterns” →

Cultural Appropriation: Of Dreadlocks, Cell Blocks, and Stolen Rocks (like Plymouth)

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

columbusBy James W. Perkinson, September 29, 2015

Invited by a friend to respond to the recent blog of philosophy professor, Crispin Sartwell, “Should Miley Cyrus Wear Dreadlocks?” I would throw this into the mix. Yes, it is cultural appropriation “all the way down,” but as with ingesting spoiled food, some things come back up. The culture wars rage on, as globalization’s surface sign that something deeper is afoot. The question of taking someone else’s style cannot really be judged except in consideration of the entire regime of planetary “taking” writ large.
Continue reading “Cultural Appropriation: Of Dreadlocks, Cell Blocks, and Stolen Rocks (like Plymouth)” →