white people, black music & liberation

Tag: cultural appropriation

  • is drawing attention to cultural appropriation causing harm?

    Description

    in this episode, erich responds to a question that arises often in conversations about cultural appropriation: is the narrative itself harmful, or is it naming harm that already exists?

    this conversation is especially oriented toward white and white passing listeners engaging with black, indigenous, and diasporic music and traditions, and who sense that responsibility, reciprocity, and liberation are part of the work.

    through personal reflection, lived experience, and spiritual framing, this transmission explores cultural appropriation as a product of deeper systems that center whiteness and make extraction invisible.

    rather than avoiding discomfort, this episode invites listeners to examine cause and effect, power dynamics, and the role of guilt and shame as signals of imbalance rather than moral failure.

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    Transcript


    welcome to white people black music and liberation.
    i’m erich, and i’m here on the journey with you.
    this is a transmission at the intersection of race, music, and spirituality.
    it’s about moving past the programming and into liberation.

    naming the question
    today i want to go a little deeper into cultural appropriation.
    specifically, into recognizing harm, acknowledging impact, and taking responsibility.
    this conversation began with an email i sent to the orchestra gold newsletter about cultural appropriation. that email echoed themes from a previous episode here on the podcast.
    in response, i received a long message from someone on that email list. in it, they shared that the narrative around cultural appropriation itself was harmful, and that all people should be able to play music without feeling guilt or shame.
    i’ve held similar thoughts at earlier stages of my own journey, and it raised an important question for me:
    is the conversation around cultural appropriation harmful?
    or is it calling attention to harm that already exists?

    cause and effect
    at the core of this question is an assumption that if we simply didn’t talk about cultural appropriation, there wouldn’t be a problem.
    and i have to be honest, to me that feels backwards.
    we live in a system that centers whiteness. a system shaped by supremacy. and that system creates unequal access to resources, opportunities, platforms, safety, and even to being heard.
    those imbalances show up in music too.
    so what happens when someone who’s been given a lot of access because of the color of their skin takes music, imagery, or traditions from another culture, and uses them in ways that are disconnected from their source?
    that isn’t neutral.
    it can cause real harm.
    and it’s also not the same as when someone without institutional access takes something from people who already hold power. there isn’t the same momentum behind it.

    harm and invisibility
    this harm becomes especially pronounced when the music or traditions being taken come from contexts born of struggle, oppression, or survival.
    because of power dynamics and cultural conditioning, many of us fail to see that harm at all.
    for me, it was a shock when that harm was finally reflected back. i had lived for a long time without seeing the impact of my actions.
    i’ve been there.
    i’ve done that.
    shelly tochluk talks about this in the context of native and indigenous practices. she describes how people will take a small piece of a culture they barely know, build a business around it, and unknowingly reproduce a long history of extraction and theft.
    so when people say that the conversation about appropriation is what’s harmful, that feels like a confusion of cause and effect.
    the harm isn’t the discomfort we feel when appropriation is named.
    the harm is the system that makes appropriation easy and invisible in the first place.

    guilt and shame as teachers
    this brings us to guilt and shame, which came up in that response and which i have a lot of experience with.
    when i was unconscious, when i couldn’t see how i was complicit in these systems, i carried a lot of guilt and shame. and i tried to avoid those feelings.
    over time, as i brought more awareness to what was actually happening, i became more willing to learn and more willing to acknowledge harm. and those feelings began to soften.
    this wasn’t just intellectual. it wasn’t just about education.
    it was a spiritual transformation.
    it was a movement from fragmentation into wholeness.
    the fragmentation was not being able to see the harm i was causing, and not being able to acknowledge it. this process didn’t happen overnight. it’s taken years to unfold.
    and once i was able to acknowledge harm, i could begin taking steps to reduce it and to generate something life giving on the other side.

    restoring balance
    i don’t think guilt and shame are random. i think they’re often signals of unconsciousness.
    in my life, they were signs that something was out of balance. that i was out of reciprocity. that i was taking more than i was giving, or causing more harm than i was repairing.
    when i began to see the harm clearly, i could allow guilt and shame to become teachers rather than enemies.

    closing
    so to bring this home, the conversation about cultural appropriation is not the problem. and avoiding the conversation doesn’t serve us.
    we’ve had a long history in this country of avoiding hard conversations.
    what’s actually causing harm is the deeper system that centers whiteness and renders extraction and appropriation invisible.
    that’s enough for today.
    wishing you all many blessings.
    thank you so much for listening.
    take care.
    to a world where liberation is for everyone.

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  • am i doing cultural appropriation?

    Description

    this episode asks a hard question: am i doing cultural appropriation? drawing from personal experience, spiritual community conversations, and the work of shelly tochluk, i explore why defensiveness often blocks discernment, how harm can exist even with good intentions, and why the more important question may be whether harm is being caused at all. from there, the conversation turns toward accountability, repair, and liberation as a way forward.

    Transcript


    Welcome to White People, Black Music, and Liberation.
    I’m Erich, and I’m here on the journey with you.
    This is a transmission at the intersection of race, music, and spirituality
    It’s about moving past programming and into liberation.

    CULTURAL APPROPRIATION AND DISCERNMENT
    Cultural appropriation is an area where discernment feels especially important right now. At the same time, many of us have been deeply programmed around race, and that programming has created a lot of unconsciousness.
    When we talk about discernment, it’s easy to use it as a way to push away discomfort. But often, those defensive reactions are actually guideposts. They point to places where we still have work to do.
    Cultural appropriation tends to bring up a lot of defensiveness. One of the most helpful discussions I’ve encountered comes from Shelly Tochluk’s book Living in the Tension. Her work focuses on spiritual communities and how the deep human need for belonging can lead people, especially white people, to adopt practices from marginalized cultures.
    Often this happens with good intentions, and yet it can still disrespect those practices or strip them from their origins.

    BOTH-AND THINKING
    One thing I deeply appreciate about Shelly’s work is her emphasis on both-and thinking. She asks how someone can feel connection and belonging without crossing into appropriation.
    She also talks about the importance of white people developing positive racial identities. Not identities rooted in shame or guilt, but identities that include accountability and deprogramming the biases we’ve inherited.
    Some questions she encourages us to ask include:

    Am I honoring this practice or co-opting it?

    Do I know who this practice belongs to?

    Who historically had access to it, and who was punished or marginalized for using it?
    These questions are just as relevant in music as they are in spiritual practice.


    HISTORY, HARM, AND MUSIC
    If you’re engaging with a tradition that was historically suppressed, especially by your own group, you may be entering appropriation territory.
    Consent matters. Relationship matters.
    Am I connected to the community this comes from?
    Am I turning this into something I sell, brand, or profit from?
    Am I extracting it from its cultural or historical context?
    Even if I mean well, what harm might this be causing?

    MOVING PAST THE DEBATE
    It’s easy to get pulled into endless debates about what is or isn’t cultural appropriation. For me, that’s not the most useful question.
    The more important question is: am I causing harm?
    Because we live in an unjust society, it’s possible that simply playing Black music as a non-Black person can cause harm. That harm comes from a long history of exploitation.
    When I play Black music, I’m stepping into that history. If someone feels harmed by that, their feelings are valid.

    MY OWN RECKONING
    For many years, I avoided this question entirely. I minimized it. I dismissed the harm.
    Liberation began when I stopped doing that. When I acknowledged that harm exists and that I may be participating in it.
    Because without that acknowledgment, I can’t ask the next question:
    What am I going to do to repair it?

    REPAIR AND RESPONSIBILITY
    This isn’t a guidebook. It’s an invitation to ask the first, most honest question: am I causing harm?
    And not to be afraid of answering yes.
    That’s where the real conversation begins.
    I’m Erich, and this has been White People, Black Music, and Liberation.

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