Cultural Appropriation, by Nayara Paudyal

The day of the carnival had finally arrived. Me and friends were super excited to dress up and go to Cadiz for the Carnaval. Our plan was very last minute so I decided to put on some face paint and dress as a giraffe. Once we reached Cadiz, I was really excited to see the streets filled with people dressed up in all sorts of creative costumes. They were dressed up as movie characters, animals, superheroes and more. I was loving all the fun and creative costumes until I saw a group of people with black paint on their faces. As the day went by I saw more and more people dressed up as a black person or an asian person. Me and friends were really surprised and uncomfortable and we immediately thought of these people as being insensitive and racist.

As I came back home from the carnival, this incident still bothered me. I decided to talk to my host family as I wanted to know how they felt about this. When I shared my feelings about the incident, my host mom told me that the Carnaval was all about dressing up and having fun. She did not believe that dressing up as an ethnicity or race is any different from dressing up as a fictional character. Furthermore, she believed that a custom should not be taken so seriously. Although I could understand where she was coming from, I still believe that people’s identity should not be a costume.

This incident made me realise how certains things can be perceived so differently in different cultures. If the same thing had happened in the US, it would have been considered really racist and a lot of people would be offended. However, I felt like this was not the case in Spain. Furthermore, this experience also gave me an opportunity to talk about culture and world views with my host family.