As a Lindy teacher, I started to ask myself my own questions. I don\u00b4t want to be spreading this art form in a inadequate way, nor acting or saying things that could be offensive to people from the African-American community. Recently I saw that a show performed by a famous teacher dressed up as a black person, and also a representation of Frankie Manning<\/a> as a \u201ccabezudo<\/a>\u201d in a Spanish town, have been intensely criticised. Are these critics proportional? Am I doing my best to prevent these situations happening again?\u00a0First of all I looked on the internet. What does cultural appropriation mean?<\/p>\n Cultural appropriation<\/a> is the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society<\/p>\n Rosal\u00eda mixes flamenco elements with rap music and current trends. Her fans believe she does it from a deep knowledge of gypsy culture. This isn\u00b4t just a modern topic, at the beginning of the 20th Century, the Spanish poet Garc\u00eda Lorca<\/a> became one of the most popular performers and ambassadors for gypsy culture. However, he was not gypsy. Lorca compared gypsies with African Americans: two races without privileges that suffered a lot in the past and they are still in some ways marginalised. It is not possible to compare the particular circumstances around gypsies in Spain with African Americans, but it helped me to emphasise better with the situation in the United States, because in Spain we don\u00b4t have the same racial situation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca in New York City<\/p><\/div>\n I tried to read as much as I could about the situation in the African American community over the last two centuries. Jazz, Blues and Swing appeared at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. At that time, the African Americans were coming from a period where they were literally considered to be not much more than animals and were enslaved by the white people in the South of the USA. Even during the 30s and 40s, decades after slavery abolition, being black meant you were banned from many places, including restaurants, theatres and hotels. They even had to sit at the back of the bus and use separate toilets from white people, and of course, opportunities were much more limited than those of white citizens. African Americans were second or third class. Segregation was ensured with the Jim Crow laws<\/a> until the mid 60s and practically until the 70s. Even today, you can still notice that African Americans still don’t have the same opportunities.\u00a0The level of social exclusion, poverty and crime rates are higher than white people\u2018s and police brutality against black people in the United States is frequently in the news. As a human being, I feel deeply ashamed.<\/p>\n Regarding Jazz and Swing music, since the end of the 19th Century, lots of African American dancers and musicians dressed up as primitive people or animals for shows that were created for the entertainment of white people. These were the Minstrel Shows<\/a> and black people were used to make fun of the black stereotype, a minority that was fighting to recover their rights after centuries of slavery. The Cakewalk <\/em><\/a>dance became trendy around the 1910 and during the slavery there were competitions between the plantations. The slaves danced imitating the white people\u00b4s movements. The prize for the winners was a cake for the owner. If the slaves were lucky they might even receive a piece of the cake. On the other hand, shows with white people with their faces painted black (blackface<\/a>) and imitating pejoratively African American people were really common, even in films during the first part of the 20th Century.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bigkick.es\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/lorca-esta-en-nueva-york.jpg\")
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