Racism And Cultural Appropriation: The Alchemist

Racism and Cultural Appropriation are two recurrent themes throughout The Alchemist. Discrimination and prejudice of the Romani population, Antiziganism (Antizigansim), can easily be found just by looking at Santiago’s thoughts while being around the Roma. Cultural Appropriation, defined by the Oxford encyclopedia, is when a major race adopts or uses ideas that were originally from minority culture (“Cultural Appropriation”). The problem with using parts of minorities’ culture is that they are not getting support or respect from the users. In the cultural appropriation movement, one of the biggest issues is with people, the majority of them populating music festivals, using Native American headdresses as part of their outfits. The problem is …show more content…
He decides that his best option is to meet with a Romanian dream teller, so while in Tafaria he seeks the service of one. The first quote refers to what society has conditioned people to think about the Romanians. “The boy had already had experience on the road with Gypsies; they also traveled, but they had no flocks of sheep. People said that Gypsies spent their lives tricking others. It was also said that they had a pact with the devil, and that they kidnapped children and, taking them away to their mysterious camps, made them their slaves.” (Coelho, web) By looking at this direct quote from The Alchemist, readers can tell what the opinions are of Romanians. The problem with this phrase is it characterizes all of the people within this culture. By grouping the few that participate in this derogatory behavior with the remaining upstanding population creates a negative association of the group. The United States has had quite a few school shootings, but just because a few committed this murderous crime, no one classifies this whole country as murderous criminals. Every culture, every country, every group has a fault, but at this point only a few of these cultures are strictly known by their …show more content…
If Santiago was so afraid of the Roma, he should not have taken advantage of their culture’s services. Again, an example of cultural appropriation. Appropriating a culture’s idea, but not giving the culture respect. Antiziganism (Antiziganism) perfectly illustrated Santiago’s actions and thoughts in the quotation. Before anyone uses another culture, religion, etc. to their advantage, they have to respect the culture or religion’s ideals. In Santiago’s case, he needed to let go of the hate and prejudice he had toward the Roma. The first step to stopping hate and harsh judgements is to release, then take a step back and examine where the hate is coming from. Santiago needed to realize that the hate he was experiencing was not toward this one person, but with the culture, he was dealing with. He also had never experienced the crimes that he was fearing, but he had heard about them (Kochmer). At this point, he had no reason to not trust the dream teller. Sometimes there is a point in which a person needs to stop following their instincts because it is