Susan Scafidi was quoted in a Vox article about cultural appropriation.
What do Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Awkwafina, and a Utah high school student have in common? In 2018, they all faced accusations of cultural appropriation, signaling how a term unfamiliar to most Americans even a decade ago has become pervasive today.
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To put the cultural appropriation debate into perspective, I reached out to professor Susan Scafidi, the founder and academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School and the author of Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law. That book came out in 2005, several years before the term “cultural appropriation” branched out of academia and into the mainstream.I spoke to Scafidi about whether the term’s meaning has shifted over the years and why some of the most egregious examples of cultural appropriation continue to happen. Our conversation, lightly edited for length and style, follows.
