A Personal Perspective on Cultural Appropriation & Racism in the Orthodox Jewish Community
Recently, the popular Disney actress and singer Zendaya sat down with Nylon magazine and brought up the subject of cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation. She cautioned: “You have to be very careful. Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them. In order to appreciate something, you have to know about it and understand it.”
Reading her interview brought to mind the events of the infamous Oscars incident earlier this year, where Zendaya’s red carpet elegance was sullied when E!’s Fashion Police host Giuliana Rancic ignorantly declared that the singer’s dreadlocks “probably smell like weed.” The outcry from Hollywood was abundant and publicly opened the discussion of double standards of beauty and racism within the fashion world, directly leading to actress Amandla Sternberg’s groundbreaking presentation “