As far as I understand it, here's how you tell if a thing is cultural appropriation:
- Are you from a dominant culture?
- Are you using something from another culture?
- Will your experience of using it be very different to that of the people whose culture that thing originated from? (i.e. will it be easier for you, because you are of the dominant culture?)
- Are you or another person from your dominant culture profiting from you acquiring this thing?
- Would there be a better way to go about this thing?
Two of the 'easier' things to deal with are dreds/locs and yoga. I'm white, so say I wanted dredlocks, let's go through that list:
- Yes, I am.
- Yes, despite allegedly having Viking heritage (who doesn't - those guys were prolific!), dreds are not significant to my culture in the way that they are to black culture.
- Yes. People might think me 'cool' or they might think I smell BUT how I wear my hair is not closely linked to my culture. Locs, for me, do not represent freedom and identity. Plenty of people for whom this is the case, get told to cut their hair because it looks dirty, unprofessional or, 'Like they smell of weed'. (Nice!) Fewer - far fewer - people will assume this about me and my dreds. Also, I am not, repeat NOT going to have a deeper understanding of the oppression suffered by this other culture, because of my dreds.
- Depends who did my hair, I guess.
- Yes, I could pick a different hairdo.
Yoga's even easier: are you a white person running a yoga course, thus profiting from something that's not your culture? Are you and your group saying, 'Namaste,' like doing so makes you cool and woke? The easiest way around this is to say, 'I go to a yoga-based exercise class.' Obviously, if you want to get into proper yoga and you consult someone from the relevant culture, who's up for teaching you, then go right ahead - it's just this middle ground of, 'Oh, I do yoga, Namaste!' which is problematic because, really, you're doing a class of stretching and relaxation exercises.
Eating poppadum is not an act of cultural appropriation, unless you sell them and undercut the person running a restaurant selling them. Obviously if you bang on about eating them because you want everyone to know how 'woke' you are, well you're just a bit of a tit. You probably also say, 'Namaste,' a lot to the white people who buy your poppadum.
If you are a white person with dreds or you do yoga, I do not judge you. I'm just saying that's how I decide if a thing is OK for me or will simply make me look like an offensive tit.