March 4, 2026
Img via Becca Williams – Start By Talking
March 16-20 will be Moreau’s annual Culture Week! Where Mariners get to show off their cultural pride and heritage through cultural clothing, dances, and even food, and enjoy events like the Interfaith Service and Culture Fest. Due to the diverse nature of our school, this is a time many Mariners appreciate, serving as a means for self-expression and education about the different ethnic cultures worldwide that are represented here at Moreau.
Leading up to this festive week, it should be noted that the sharing of culture can fall into a dangerous territory when it is misrepresented, or worse, belittled by stereotypes and those outside of the culture. There are very fine differences between cultural appreciation and appropriation. This article aims to explain how and why to avoid the latter in order to better educate oneself and not be offensive to others.
Cultural appropriation can be defined as the act of taking cultural aspects like clothing, food, and language, and adopting them inappropriately or without credit to the original culture. Appropriating culture can look like wearing a Native American costume for Halloween or rebranding jambalaya as ‘spicy rice’. In short, it’s picking apart a culture and misrepresenting it in a way that is insulting, inaccurate, or discriminatory.
Inversely, cultural appreciation is exactly what it sounds like: the uplifting of cultural customs and practices in an accurate, respectful manner! When others are kind enough to share bits of their ethnic background, we should embrace their cultural expression with an open mind! Cultural appreciation can include things like attending a friends’ quinceanera, or learning ASL to communicate with deaf individuals.
Not all acts of cultural appropriation are innately malicious; in most cases it stems from a lack of understanding or the normalization of stereotypes in households and media. As a result, the best way to avoid cultural appropriation is through education–which is an important value presented during culture week!
Here are some tips on how NOT to culturally appropriate:
- Research! I know you students might hate it, but you do have to LEARN and EDUCATE yourselves about other cultures–shocker. If a cultural garb or practice is unfamiliar to you, do a quick google search or even look up a video on tiktok. Exposure starts with curiosity, not ridicule!
- Diversify: meet other people outside of your central culture, whether that be making peers of a different race, religion, nationality, ability, etc. Meeting other people of a different cloth than you will expand your radius of understanding.
- Be Humble: be willing to accept that your preconceptions can be false! Misinformation is easy to stumble upon or internalize, so keeping an open mind that’s willing to learn and adapt is a good way to combat culture shock.
- Lastly, ask if participation in a certain cultural practice is okay, ask if you’re wearing cultural garb correctly, ask if you’re pronouncing the language correctly–making clarification and distinctions is important to understanding and representing cultures accurately. If something sounds funny or seems too intimate, it’s okay to not be included in certain closed practices. Just as long as you respect and understand the importance of that custom.
As always, Culture Week is a time of celebration and education. So, remember to keep an open mind and enjoy the display of the many identities that make up our diverse student body!
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