big-gadje-world:

mybygonevexations:

big-gadje-world: badass-bharat-deafmuslim-artista: Whether they know it or not, white women who practice belly dance are engaging in appropriation Good article. This also has the history of belly dance, so please for the love of Dev’l please stop calling belly dance “gypsy” and Romani because it’s not. Basically, people (even PoC from cultures that have belly-dancing histories) can reassure me time and time again that it would be ok to learn belly dancing.



But then I go back and read something like this and I just really can’t bring myself to do that (I’m just talking about myself, personally). Maybe in the future our cultural relations will be at less of an imbalance, but until then…

I think learning is one thing. I’ve been asked these questions about Romani dances & while I can only speak for myself, I do think that simply learning a type of dance is not the same as performing, whether it is for profit or not & just because you learned a dance from another culture doesn’t make it okay to appropriate clothing, hairstyles, jewelry, etc.. If someone offers to teach you a dance from their culture, that is fine, but showing up trying to look “the part” isn’t.