This thread is really interesting, but I confess I'm surprised that we're
all talking around the question of appropriation. This isn't the same thing
as interpretation and information, is it? There are some powerful impulses
to reserving cultural heritage for those to whom it is thought to belong,
never mind academic qualifications, oral history, cultural memory, or any
other interpretive strategy. I recall a National Public Radio piece in the
recent past on the excavations of the African burial ground in Lower Manhattan.
Aside from the initial issue (whether to excavate and/or preserve the area,
or go full speed ahead with a Federal office bldg.) scholars who were engaged
in studying the human remains (at Howard, I think) were saying that only
African Americans should be doing this work. It turned out that at least
one student involved was of Asian background: apparently, the objection was
really to whites.
While this might be a defensible position, I was troubled that the reason
given was the the remains were of the ancestors of those doing the research,
and whites were the descendants of their oppressors. This is just not true:
not all white Americans are descended from slave-owners, any more than all
persons of African origins are all descended from slaves. This situation
has a lot of parallels with the Native American issue, seems to me.
 
Carla Antonaccio
Department of Classical Studies
Wesleyan University