Last night, Newsnight did a piece on cultural appropriation. It would seem Justin Bieber has grown dreadlocks, leading some to accuse the nauseating, talentless canadian of stealing from black culture. That made me wonder, why? What’s wrong with mixing it up culturally in this postmodern age? I still like, from time to time, to dress in women’s clothes while still defining myself as a man: is that appropriating women’s culture, or playing with gender denominators? The argument goes that there is a long history of white people appropriating black culture and taking ownership of it; for instance Rock and Roll, now widely attributed to Elvis Presley, was actually a black peoples’ creation apparently. I’m not sure how true that is, but I get the gist: there is certainly a long history of dominant cultures assimilating subservient ones and taking the iconography as their own. On the other hand, it seems to me that the only way to draw cultures and thus peoples together, to make people realise that all cultures are equal and one, is for them to borrow from one another. Mixing things up is the best way for things to evolve, for new hybrids to emerge. It can often be fascinating, and I see no harm in it.