Jumping Through Hoops

Ancient Minoan fresco

It is, I am informed, no longer okay for “white” people to wear hoop earrings. This is cultural appropriation.

Students recently spray-painted “White Girl, Take OFF Your Hoops!!!” on a campus wall at Pitzer College dedicated to free speech. Alegria Martinez writes, in The Claremont Independent, “Why should white girls be able to take part in this culture?”

Another Minoan fresco.

Problem: the first hoop earrings of which we have record were in Sumeria and Minoan Crete. Both, for what it is worth, “white” cultures. By this logic, it is black girls who must now take off their hoops. Along with their jeans, blouses, shoes, glasses, and any plastic or metal. And stop using English, for heavens sake!

Is this what Martin Luther King was about? Segregation did not work well last time. And, frankly, cultural appropriation has tended, historically, to work mostly one way.

Sumerian jewellery.