People throw around the term ‘cultural appropriation’ a lot, and discourse about it has reared its bindi-wearing head in Oxford again recently. Lincoln publicised its ‘New Orleans’ themed ball last week, after earlier this year LMH themed a bop ‘Arabian Nights’. Pembroke put on an ‘Indian Summers’ ball last Trinity and Queens have announced their ‘A Night on the Orient Express’ ball theme. There has been criticism, much of which has been quite sympathetically heard by planning committees (even if little real action was taken in consequence), and a vast amount of confusion and angry debate over exactly what the problem is.

Let me make it clear: cultural appropriation, at its most basic level, is the use of elements created by one culture by members of another. The problem is that in some cases – especially when there’s an imbalance of power or strength between those cultures – there can be negative consequences, and it’s this that the term generally refers to nowadays.

The point I’m getting to is simple. Interaction and exchange between cultures is a beautiful, exciting, important thing. There are reliefs of the Buddha being guarded by Hercules from ancient Afghanistan; the remembrance poppy hijab is a thing and a great one, or how about ‘Bride and Prejudice’, the London-made Bollywood take on Jane Austen?

Breaking down perceived barriers between cultures is clearly a wonderful thing. More importantly, though, it could not be more necessary in today’s political climate: division is a weapon of war in the hands of only the most deluded and hate-loving groups, and benefits no one except them. Cultural division and closed-mindedness is also, unsurprisingly, one of the greatest generators of the pitiable individuals who join these blinded groups.

The problem is that interactions between cultures are not always positive and healthy; when there is an imbalance of power between societies, and when it’s assumed that one culture is somehow superior to another, they can easily cause great harm. Not all interactions between cultures generate understanding, and cultural appropriation is the opposite of friendly, respectful, curious cultural exchange. However, as the exceptionally respectful, open-minded and humble white guy who started yelling at me on the Race Matters Facebook page a few weeks ago made all too clear, coverage of this issue can have a lack of focus on exactly how cultural appropriation is destructive, how it actually causes harm.

You can break it down into two parts: repeated personal hurt, and the perpetuation or reinforcement of often invisible, awful ways of seeing the world and other humans.

The question of personal harm is easier to explain. People of colour in Europe are forced to abandon elements of their culture or cultural heritage, to assimilate, simply to survive – they can’t risk the employability bias against them being made even worse, for example, or may even be afraid of direct physical violence: ‘Go back where you came from’ attacks have not disappeared. In a climate of increasing Islamophobic attacks against Middle Eastern and South Asian people of all religions, the situation is darkening for many. Immigrant communities shame those who haven’t assimilated enough yet: the worst insult I could offer my Dad when he buys a new pair of shoes is that they make him look like a ‘freshie’ (fresh off the boat, that is).

When white people – meaning no harm – wear bindis, saris, decorate themselves with Hindu symbols, the message we hear is clear: ‘We can wear these things and enjoy them, be praised for them.’ How is that supposed to feel, when we have been forced by prejudice to abandon these things? To feel ashamed of them, and hate ourselves by proxy? Yet you can toss them on and toss them aside whenever you wish, free only because of your skin colour.

People of colour suffer a barrage of trauma, from physical violence to micro-aggressions like these. Cultural appropriation, however well-intended, however un-thought-through, can be yet another blow on vulnerable minds. I understand that no harm is meant, but this is hurting us. We are not just ‘offended’.

Cultural appropriation as a source of micro-aggressions is not all, however. It is ugly to think and difficult to accept, but it’s true: contemporary Western culture normalises whiteness and assumes European superiority. I desperately wish that wasn’t true, but the proof is everywhere. Black, Asian and minority ethnic people are wildly overrepresented in British prisons, low-income groups and practically every other marginalised group. They are equally under-represented in university and school syllabuses, high-status jobs and the media that saturates our culture.

One of the patterns of thought that sustains this is strongly linked to cultural appropriation. Non-white, non-European cultures are seen through an orientalising lens: we see them partly as a compressed, reduced stereotype of what they really are, and part of our perception of them is that they are Other, different, not normal. By homogenising and reducing the thousand cultures of a region with a population greater than Europe, comparable cultural heritage and arguably more cultural diversity to a party theme or costume, for example, we are reinforcing these outdated narratives.

What’s the problem with that, then? The charming young man from Facebook phrased it rather more strongly, but it’s an important question. Keeping stereotypes alive, continuing to see foreign cultures as exotic and mostly sources of exciting aesthetics, strengthens two things. First is the dehumanisation of people of colour – stereotypes encourage us to see people as caricatures, as essences, not as actual individuals or humans. When and if a group is already marginalised, that is toxic.

Second is the subtle perception – underlying too much Western thought even today – that non-European cultures are not as culturally rich, diverse, important as European cultures; in short, that non-white cultures – and inseparably from that, non-white people – are somehow inferior. If you cannot see how dangerous, oppressive and violent this idea is, then you have completely lost the plot, and I am afraid.

“We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem,” President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian National Authority, said on September 16^th. “This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah.”

The attacks might not have come immediately after Abbas’s words, but come they did. Since the beginning of October, Palestinians have initiated over 65 stabbings, mostly in East Jerusalem, eight shootings and eight car rammings. Over a dozen Israelis have been killed, and more than 150 wounded. The shooting dead of two Palestinians by Israeli forces, after one of them allegedly stabbed a policeman, on November 30th reflects a much broader problem.

Maybe you’ve seen some of the videos: a man mowing down civilians, then hopping out of his car to continue chopping at one with an axe; two teenagers boarding a quiet bus and stabbing an 80 year-old woman in the neck; an encouragement released by Palestinian authorities that depicts a man heroically chasing down and killing two caricatured Jews.

But probably not. Instead the media response has been subdued, and reporters have taken measures to present an equivalency between attackers and victims. Headlines especially, do not paint a representative picture. CAMERA, an organisation that focuses on pointing out biases in Middle East reporting, points to examples: CNN’s “Palestinians shot boarding kid’s bus”; BBC’s “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two”; the Wall Street Journal’s “Two Palestinian Teenagers Killed, Two Injured by Israeli Police.”

In none of these does the reader get a clear picture of what actually occurred: that armed Palestinians tried to board a bus and kill its passengers; that a man was shot after he killed two Israelis; that the teenagers, one of whom had just stabbed a 13 year-old on a bike, were killed because they were attempting themselves to kill policemen and passersby in the street.

All this serves to epitomise what is a greater bias in the media and the international community—one that castigates Israel and often glosses over or downplays Palestinian wrongs. A poorly conceived comment by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that called the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem the instigator of the Holocaust rather than just an instigator was lambasted across the globe. The fact that the Palestinian Authority, under its law of the prisoner, pays the salary of Palestinians who have committed violent acts against Israelis flies mostly under the radar outside of in Israeli journalism.

It would be folly, of course, to attribute this imbalance to anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are often assumed to be closely linked, and while it is probably true that at least some Western commentators opposed to Israel are also anti-Semitic, the large majority certainly are not. Israel is, undeniably, a flawed state and rightfully warrants censure at times.

Actions such as their expansion of the West Bank settlements and racist statements by government figures like the former Foreign Affairs Minster Avigdor Lieberman deserve all the ire they have provoked. They are indicative of a right-wing government under Netanyahu, a highly abrasive figure himself, which has worked less hard than many of its predecessors to protect the rights of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

But we also need to understand the circumstances that have brought Likud and the Jewish Home, among more conservative parties, into power. They are circumstances that should be eminently understandable to us in the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris: those of being unsafe in one’s own home, under siege, with the threat of death poisoning the air. And for Israel, such a position is augmented all the more by an existential threat—one that has existed since its conception. A slip-up, and the Israeli state has the potential to be no more.

Look, too, at how France has responded to one terrorist attack: with the declaration of a state of emergency, a bombing campaign, and a surge in Islamophobic sentiment, towards both French natives and Syrian refugees. The doctrine of state security has superseded all others; one would not be amiss in surmising that any action that President Francois Hollande could take to secure French safety would be welcomed by most of the electorate.

It is this mood that has driven Israel to the feelings of isolation and anger that pervade the public space. This mood, but magnified by what is perceived as discriminatory international opprobrium—between 2006 and 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council published 62 condemnations of Israel, more than on the rest of the world combined—and by repeatedly spurned attempts at peace—like in the 2000 Camp David talks, where Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat an almost complete reversion to the 1967 borders just to have Arafat walk away from the table without a counteroffer.

Israel must hold itself to a higher moral standard than its enemies, and so ought the rest of the world—it does have advantages that put it in the driving seat, relative to the Palestinian Authority, and as a country with the same values as most Western democracies, it cannot forget its calling to be liberal and fair to all.

But nor can we forget that Israel has taken long and hard measures time and again to be as perfect a democracy as it possibly can, given the constraints upon it; even now, it provides hospital care to Palestinian assailants. And before we jump to criticise, we must keep in mind how the United States, or the United Kingdom or France would respond to a constant security threat—and question if we really think that Israel has done any differently than the best among us would have done.

“There will be no NHS crisis this winter.”

The Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, made this bold claim recently on Question Time. It was met with unconvinced jeers from the audience, and how can you blame them? We are regularly told about deficits, cuts, increased waiting lists, targets not being met… the list is almost endless. We hardly ever hear anything good about the NHS. The idea that there won’t be an NHS crisis this winter doesn’t seem plausible.

Why does the NHS seem to be in a constant state of paralysis? The biggest reason is that it is underfunded. The government denies all charges; their critics protest otherwise. The government uses one set of statistics justifying their record; their critics use others condemning it. Consequently, we’re all left confused and unsure who to blame.

We can get a better idea, however, if we closely compare the government’s claims with the reality. Let’s take a few of their statements in turn.

“I can today confirm the NHS will receive – in addition to the £2bn we’ve already provided this year – a further £8bn. That’s £10bn more a year in real terms by 2020” (George Osborne, 08/07/2015)

This is correct. The Stevens’ Plan called for at least £8bn of real-terms spending into the NHS every year, and this is what the government are doing. They also just agreed to frontload £3.8bn of the money, which will help alleviate the pressure this winter. So does this mean problem solved? Not exactly. Despite increased spending, new figures reveal that the NHS’s overall deficit has increased to £1.6bn, and is predicted to rise to £2.2bn by the end of the financial year. Of the total 239 NHS England trusts, 156 of them are in the red. This is the biggest deficit in the NHS’s history. While the government are telling us they are increasing spending into the NHS, the reality is that the NHS deficit is getting bigger.

“Every penny we do not save on welfare means savings we have to find in the education budget, the policing or the health budget” (David Cameron, 28/10/2015)

This is also correct – but it’s sneaky. It is true that the government are not making any direct cuts into the NHS, but this statement gives off the impression that there will be no cuts in the NHS whatsoever during the course of this parliament. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. The government are calling for the NHS to make £22bn of ‘efficiency savings’ by 2020 – just another way of saying “we’re not going to cut it, but we want you to”. A significant proportion of the NHS’s deficit is due to the cost of contracts with the private sector. Last year, for example, NHS trusts paid private agency firms £1.8bn because they didn’t have enough of their own staff – around double what they planned to pay. Considering they paid £900m more than they wanted to, and the deficit is £1.6bn, this is a significant factor. Deficits mean cuts, and cuts will hurt patients – even David Cameron is now complaining about the impact of cuts in his own constituency.

“We got rid of 20,000 bureaucrats in the NHS and put that money into 9,000 more doctors and 7,000 more nurses” (David Cameron, 02/04/2015)

We hear this line every week from David Cameron at PMQs. Yet NHS Workforce Statistics provide a slightly different picture: since 2010 there have only been 7,293 more doctors and 6,434 more nurses. Not exactly a rounding error. Also, proportionally, the number of doctors has increased by 16%, while the number of nurses has only increased by 2%. Is a 2% increase in nurses enough over 5 years? Since the NHS is increasingly relying on private agency firms for nurses, it doesn’t look like it. And since the employment of private agency staff seems to be having a negative effect on NHS finances, the lack of NHS nurses is an important part of the bigger problem. If the junior doctor debacle continues any longer, we might also have a lack of NHS doctors.

Of course, the problems facing the NHS are not all down to government policy. Britain has an ageing population: the number of over-65s is expected to increase by 12% by 2020. Increasing levels of child obesity and the rising consumption of alcohol and cigarettes are creating new problems. In addition, whereas in the past the NHS just had to cure ailments, it is now expected to provide additional services relating to mental health, social care, maternity, contraception, and much more. The crisis cuts far deeper than just government policy, and it would be naive to think otherwise.

But we should not ignore the role of government policy, because the rhetoric is not matching their actions. When the government tell us they’re increasing spending and increasing the number of doctors and nurses, they’re not really addressing the question. And when they tell us they’re protecting the NHS from cuts, they’re not really telling the truth. The “strong economy, strong NHS” sound-bite is meaningless. The NHS will not just be in a crisis this winter – it is in a crisis right now.