Comic: We don’t want to learn about our own cultural practices from white people

By JeCorey Holder

Is it just me or is it super fucking weird that white people insist on teaching whole classes on cultural practices that aren’t theirs?

Yoga, African dance, Black/PoC Spirituality…

White people will make their daily coffee money off of someone else’s entire closed practices while still pretending TO YOUR FACE not to understand what cultural appropriation means.

It’s weird that so many of them have the faux-Guru audacity to not only profit from it, but claim an annoyingly smug expertise on the subjects. Sacred practices from foreign cultures can now apparently be taught by anyone with stretchy pants and a YouTube account.

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I mean, I’m glad that there is so much information available that actually came from people who are part of these cultures. But far too many colonizers will take it, run with it, water it down, and sell it for $50 per session.

We can easily pull up the same Wikipedia article you used as certification too, sis.

I, too, studied in the Self-Help section of Barnes & Noble’s hallowed halls. That doesn’t mean I’m in a hurry to bun my hair and take on students.

And what makes this so bad is that it further opens the door for other white people to claim an annoying mantle of expertise on people that were most likely colonized by their ancestors.

No matter how deeply you understand the cultural history and significance of certain foreign practices, the fact that white people are still profiting from teaching them just doesn’t sit right with me.

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Gamer, geek, and social activist. JeCorey Holder has been weaving tapestries of shade and fury since the early 2000’s. Pro-LGBTQ, pro-black, and pro intersectional feminism, he is full of feelings and opinions that try to call out and tear down the oppressive status quo