I MAKE MY CULTURE

In an age where cultural appropriation is on the rise, choose non-conformity.

Cancel culture reeks of insecurity and belongs to a culture that believes individuality is the product of isolation. Without noticing, or through a distorted subconscious, people who claim they’re all for diversity secretly create cultural barriers and call it appropriation. With a false ideology of “I am my ancestors,” as if we did not all come from the same ones. In a false effort to be inclusive, most people have begun to categorize everyone under labels that are fabricated fables.

Claiming to be all for one, one for all, but the moment someone who isn’t in your immediate bloodline decides to wear a kimono even though they’re from West Africa, your red juice boils because you feel entitled to copyright a clothing piece you didn’t create.

As much as you want to believe that you have the right to know how a fabric is tailored because your late, late, late grandfather was the twenty-third person first to wear it, I must remind you of this: the cotton came from India, and the seamstress travelled to China to learn her craft. The colors were inspired by the Ottoman Empire, and forgive me for my lack of extensive citations, I believe being here and analyzing through my eyesight has more credibility than an article edited by the same group of people that you claim to be biased, but hey, that citation weighs more than the weight of your suitcase, bag lady. Bag lady, or lad, you carry so much anger on your back.

It is quite the paradox, we claim to be one, but draw lines that are worse than travel restrictions from a third-world country to a first-world one. I guess inclusivity is all well and okay until someone threatens your lack of individuality by wearing a silk thread bangle that looks like your aunt's. “That’s my culture,” as if you’ve written the rules and housed the silkworms that produced its materials. We cling very tightly to this imaginary idea that culture belongs to one people, forgetting that the formulation of ideologies was the product of exchange.

The Silk Road is a perfect example of this, trade across Asia and Europe. A time where appropriation meant appreciation. Without getting too technical, the baseline is here: people did not gatekeep culture; they spread ideas in an effort to connect and enlighten. In a philosophical sense, nothing belongs to anyone anyway.

A change of genre: Ideas are energy transmitted through exchange; nothing belongs to us, so everything is open. If you discover that the color pink exists, it belongs to you as much as it does to the first person to discover it. Newton did not gatekeep light; he didn’t create it. It was a discovery, and so is culture. The formulation of ideas is an accumulation of perspectives that were crafted through intercultural exchange, through analysis of nature, and through human experience. Nothing belongs to you, so everything is open to experience.

From a theological perspective, if all is created already, is what we find our creation, or our discovery?

This is the premise of my entire philosophy. I create my own culture, because by create, I mean I curate. I curate the discoveries made by myself through different media. Culture is not a country; it is an expression of consciousness that belongs to no one but can be experienced by all. You don’t need a passport to know that the Earth doesn’t belong to a president. You don’t need a skin color to bleed red.

I create my own culture. I design the life I live, whether it's through wearing a kimono or a thobe. I believe it is time to break out of the cultural barriers and categorization tropes that we impose on ourselves for whatever lack-minded reason. I create my own culture, that is a perspective shift, not treason. I create my own perspective.

I create my own culture because I am free.

I would like to end the first part of this series here: I am a sapien before I am Sudanese.