The United States today has a larger immigrant population than any other country in the world. Immigrants and their U.S. born children make up 28% of the overall U.S. population according to the 2018 Current Population Survey (CPS) and this number is only trending upwards for the next decade.

It’s just a dress, just a skirt, just clothes. I could talk about what the qipao/cheongsam means to our culture, I could talk about the importance of our silk. You could argue that it’s just a piece of clothing, that it’s made from a synthetic fabric inspired by Chinese silk, and that you just thought it was pretty. It has nothing to do with cultural appropriation. But it’s more than that.