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Cultural Appropriation In America

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Obviously there are numerous examples of cultural appropriation that the United States has taken from other countries, such as white people in the U.S. winning awards for best hip-hop videos over African Americans, but there is no better example of this than the practice of yoga in America. What used to be/still is a common religious practice in the Hindu community, has simply been stolen by westerners, modified slightly, and coined as America’s own. The class reading describing how yoga is a religious Hindu practice didn’t quite give me the history I was looking for, because this reading was the first time I had ever learned that Yoga was a Hindu practice before it came to America. In an online article in the Huffington Post titled “Yoga …show more content…
Although it is law that there are no religious practices allowed in the public school system, it is pretty clear that the religious part of yoga has been removed in the United States. In one of the video links attached in the reading, it shows there are no forms of prayer or meditation involved when the kids are doing yoga. I feel like yoga would be a great addition to schools all over the country because it provides kids with a low-impact exercise that all students can participate in, which in turn can potentially contribute to lowering the overall obesity levels of children in the United States. One question that someone might ask is “How would people of the Hindu faith feel about the integration of yoga in schools across America?” An article linked in the reading points out that Hindus rarely even associate the western style of yoga with the yoga that they practice. Therefore, it’s safe to conclude that the Hindu culture isn’t very offended at the acquisition of yoga in the western world. On the other hand, I would start to get annoyed if I were Hindu and I saw American corporations trying to patent and trademark certain aspects of yoga that have been around for thousands of years. In my opinion, I think the migration of yoga to the western world is a good thing, as long as people are educated in why/how yoga came about in the first place, in order to show some respect for the Hindu culture. In the reading, it mentioned how in 2010, the Hindu American Foundation launched a “Take Back Yoga” campaign in order to reach out and educate people about the origins of yoga. I think that campaign was a good idea as long as they did not try to literally “take back yoga,” because that seems like an impossible task. Now that yoga has received so much publicity and turned into a 6 billion dollar industry, it is safe to say that

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