Going to class rarely makes me feel tense, but this time—sitting in an upper-level writing ethics course—I was scared to speak up.

My class was discussing cultural appropriation: whether it was right for majority-race authors to take on minority-race perspectives in their work. My classmates were almost universally against the idea, saying that a person from one culture couldn’t as effectively express another person’s experience.

I raised my hand. “Sorry, I think I might be a little lost here…” I told the professor. “Why is this true of race but not other areas?”

The whole discussion reminded me of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel following a 70-year-old pastor named John Ames, who was married late in life. It is one of my favorite books, and it more than lives up to its critical acclaim.

There’s a problem, though: If we were to keep my classmates’ claims logically consistent, Robinson should not have written Gilead. After all, wasn’t Robinson a 60-year-old woman? How could she write about a 70-year-old man—a pastor, no less! Couldn’t we say that she was “appropriating” his experience?

Most likely, claiming such appropriation in the writing world would be met with laughter or criticism, and rightly so. The writing process requires authors to enter their characters’ minds, exploring a world that may not entirely match their own. This is because good writing doesn’t depend on whether or not a person speaks only of their own experience; rather, good art grounds itself in attentiveness, avoidance of sentimentality, and good technique (among other things). Thus, though Robinson is not a 70-year-old minister, her skillful writing and deep attentiveness to John Ames’ mind yielded a remarkable book—despite Robinson’s and Ames’ differences.

Because of this, it’s unreasonable in the creative writing world to limit authors to speaking only about their own experiences. If authors can write about different vocations, age groups, or social classes, why can’t they write about a different race? And—if we are sympathetic to dealing with other aspects of our humanity but not with race (as my classmates were)—might it be the case that our values have been more formed by what is “stylish” than by what is true?

I’m reminded of a video I watched a few days ago, in which a white man walked around a college campus in traditional Chinese garb. Occasionally, he’d stop a student and try to get the student’s opinion on what he was wearing.

On the college campus, the man received almost universal pushback. Students of all races accused him of cultural appropriation; others all but ignored his questions, pausing only long enough to cuss at him.

After visiting the university, the man went into an actual Chinese market (full of older Chinese people) and asked them what they thought of his outfit. The response was again almost uniform, but in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of deriding him for wearing the outfit, the older Chinese praised the clothes, assuring the man that they were not at all offended by what he was wearing.

The question seems inevitable: Why the differing reactions? Or, more specifically, why were Gen Z Americans so opposed to behavior they viewed as “cultural appropriation,” while older members of the supposedly appropriated culture had no issue with the same behavior?

It’s difficult to give a definitive answer, but I have a good guess: Today’s young college students have been inculcated—in all kinds of ways, with all kinds of methods—to the superiority and importance of race. It’s no surprise that they would have strong emotional reactions to perceived “appropriation”—after all, they’ve spent years surrounded by the idea that race, more than anything else, defines people and sets them apart.

To quote another Intellectual Takeout contributor, Walker Larson:

Part of the irony [in DEI discussions] is how shallow our fashionable vision of diversity really is, for it can only understand identities based on mere externals or accidental qualities, such as skin color or gender, as though those things were the most important, most fundamental aspect of a person. In reality, there are many other and much more profound forms of identity. For instance, though I am one of those dreaded ‘straight white males,’ I can relate much better to a black woman who shares my religious views than I can to another white male who has different beliefs. What one believes and values is a much deeper, more important form of identity.

Our “fashionable” views don’t account for the complexity of the world, or of people, and we ought to be careful not to esteem race too highly. Truth trumps style, and—whether inside the classroom or in independent thinking—we ought to beware of embracing what might be merely a cultural fad.

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