“Big Black Good Man” was first published (as “Big, Black, Good Man”) in the November 1957 issue of Esquire. It was collected in Eight Men (1961). It is currently most readily available in Eight Men (Harper Perennial).

At a recent event at the Asian American Writers Workshop, I was delighted to see one of my former students in the audience. She is now a journalist, which is not much of a surprise given that she always had good questions. Indeed, she had one for me. She asked, “So what is up with cultural appropriation?” I am one of a select few who is asked this with fair frequency. As an instructor of creative writing, I get this question from students unsure of how to populate their short stories and novels if they can't use characters that reflect the world they live in. I get this from other writers, who want to write relevant, important books and are unsure of how to proceed if certain populations are off limits to other populations. I ask this of myself while walking the dog, in the shower, and looking in the mirror. And I always have the same response: “Cultural appropriation is like pornography. You know it when you see it.” But having a ready response does not dispense with the need for discussion.

As widely covered in the news and other venues, costumes and uniforms create unique opportunities for cultural appropriation. In the first of these examples, costumes are—quite literally—a chance to be someone else. Cinco de Mayo with its usual parade of idiots in sombreros and the furor over the white girl who chose to wear a cheongsam to prom and then posed with her hands in some sort of prayer gesture (not Chinese at all, yet still an act of cultural appropriation) no doubt inspired my desire to write this. Uniforms attempt to make everyone uniform, which most often involves a departure from self, and in some cases uniting under something as offensive as the ferociously grinning Cleveland Indians logo. And there are many interesting arguments to be made around fashion, sensitivity, celebration, representation, and race.