Susan Scafidi, academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law, was quoted in Dharma Round Up blog regarding cultural appropriation and misuse of religious symbols from other cultures for marketing purposes.
Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University in New York and author of “Who Owns Culture?,” a book about cultural appropriation and American law, said people commonly borrow religious symbols from other cultures because they are the clearest expression of those cultures.
“People reach for things that are accessible … and don’t stop to think necessarily what those pieces of culture might mean,” Scafidi said. “It doesn’t typically come from a place of racism or hatred. It’s more thoughtlessness,” Scafidi added.