5/9 Maira

         The trans-nationalized culture of mehndi from India to Henna in the United States displays the issue of epistemic privilege that westerners have over minorities. What happened was that the cultural aspect of mehndi was lost in the process of “cultural borrowing”, which spiked the notion that crossing culture borders is a taboo. An example of this is how Indians and middle-eastern women who strive to become modernized, look down upon mehndi as some form of primitive ritual, when in reality it was only a joyous form of art to promote positivity such as beauty. This is a prime example demonstrating the binary of Spiritual East/Materialistic West, and how Western society diminishes the cultural values of Eastern culture. More explicitly, however, I believe that this is a form of epistemic privilege, where the notion of becoming modernized privileges people to think that native cultures are inferior to western culture. This concept also relates to the three pillars of white supremacy from Andrea Smith, where one of the pillars discussed orientalism as a form of dominance that white supremacists impose their culture as superior to native cultures. Thus, drawing these concepts, we can see how “modernized” Indians were misled to believe that mehndi was an inferior form of art culture.