Ellison died in 1994, but his 1970 essay “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” argued that since its founding America has been a flowing river of appropriation of other cultures and traditions—and that it is impossible and foolish to reduce such richness to politics. One of those cultural realities is the way that African-American language and idioms have always been part of America, even before the very founding of the country.
Let Us Now Praise Cultural Appropriation
It was Ralph Ellison who offered the most cogent response to claims of “cultural appropriation,” the recent academic bogeyman of the punitive left. Based on and fed by resentment, cultural appropriation is the act of using language, tropes, or notes from another social group without the proper obeisance, guilt, and virtue-signaling.
Ellison died in 1994, but his 1970 essay “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” argued that since its founding America has been a flowing river of appropriation of other cultures and traditions—and that it is impossible and foolish to reduce such richness to politics. One of those cultural realities is the way that African-American language and idioms have always been part of America, even before the very founding of the country.
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Ellison died in 1994, but his 1970 essay “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” argued that since its founding America has been a flowing river of appropriation of other cultures and traditions—and that it is impossible and foolish to reduce such richness to politics. One of those cultural realities is the way that African-American language and idioms have always been part of America, even before the very founding of the country.
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