When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else’s oppression, we’ll find our opportunities to make real change.

The problem of cultural appropriation is primarily linked to the power imbalance between the culture doing the appropriating and the culture being appropriated.

It’s the system, and our complacency in that system, that gives racism its power, not

Our police forces were born from Night Patrols, who had the principal task of controlling black and Native American populations in New England, and Slave Patrols, who had the principal task of catching escaped black slaves and sending them back to slave masters.8

Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that prefers its culture cloaked in whiteness.

That power imbalance allows the culture being appropriated to be distorted and redefined by the dominant culture and siphons any material or financial benefit of that piece of culture away to the dominant culture, while marginalized cultures are still persecuted for living in that culture.

Tone policing prioritizes the comfort of the privileged person in the situation over the oppression of the disadvantaged person.

The truth is, you don’t even have to “be racist” to be a part of the racist system.

Who writes the books and articles I’m using to help inform my opinions?