A Canadian university that banned a yoga class because it constituted “cultural appropriation” has allowed the class to return now that the long-time white instructor has been replaced with an Indian.
Jen Scharf taught a free yoga class at the University of Ottawa’s (UO) Centre for Students with Disabilities for seven years, until she was ordered to stop last November because of “cultural issues.” UO’s student government worried that the class amounted to cultural appropriation because the meditative exercises origination in India, a country that had “experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy.”
Now the class is being allowed back, but Scharf has been unceremoniously pushed aside. Instead, the class is being taught by Priya Shah, who has the advantage of being of Indian descent.
Shah herself noted that her qualifications as an Indian are limited, since she is a native Canadian, and she said she hasn’t been ordered to teach the class any differently. Apparently, simply not being white is enough.
“When I read [about it], I was kind of thinking ‘Did they hire me because I’m Indian?” Shah told CBC News. “I was born in Calgary, I grew up in Canada but my background is Indian and I’ve been there once before. I was there for about five months.”
In contrast to the experienced Scharf, Shah has only been certified as a yoga instructor for a few months. She said she saw no reason why she would be a better instructor simply because she was Indian.
Scharf has posted a rather bitter blog post bashing the university for how it approached the matter.
“Maybe since I called my foes ‘SJWs’ [Social Justice Warriors] and then refused to speak the word ‘intersectionality’ with people who don’t even have a cursory understanding of the term, the student centre has decided to hire a teacher of South Indian descent,” Scharf said. She criticized UO’s student center for not telling Shah about the controversy she would be stepping into before hiring her.
“I guess that’s what happens when your ideology uses people as peons,” she said.
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