There is a history of racism in westernised wellness culture

The argument

Supporters of this position argue that the industry's problem is historical rather than incidental. Racism, on their account, has been prevalent across the wellness industry for a number of years, and the primary evidence is testimonial: many BIPOC wellness practitioners and teachers have spoken openly about being tokenised, brought into a brand or a programme as a visible sign of inclusion rather than as a full participant, and about facing open racism within the wellness community. Proponents treat the consistency of those accounts as significant, since they come from people working inside the sector rather than from outside critics. A large part of the problem, on this view, stems from cultural appropriation within the industry. The mechanism proponents describe is one of extraction: a practice developed within a particular culture is taken up, detached from the community and the meaning that produced it, and sold on to a different market. Yoga is offered as the clearest example. Supporters of the position argue that there is a deep misunderstanding of what is an ancient spiritual practice, which in its westernised form has been commercialised for western consumers and has come to be associated with white, thin, able-bodied, middle class women. As a result, much of its cultural meaning has been stripped away. The two strands are held to reinforce one another. An industry that profits from a practice of non-western origin while tokenising practitioners who belong to the tradition it draws on is, proponents argue, taking the culture and excluding the people, and doing so as a matter of long-standing habit rather than isolated incident. On this reasoning the history of racism in westernised wellness culture is not a set of regrettable episodes the industry has left behind, but a description of how it has come to work, which is why supporters of the position hold that the wellness industry is racist.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The evidence offered establishes that racism occurs within the wellness sector; the position requires that the sector as such is racist, and the gap between those claims is where the argument is weakest. Testimony from practitioners about tokenism and mistreatment is serious and documents real conduct by particular employers, studios and brands. It does not by itself show a structural feature of an industry, and the same standard applied to almost any Western sector would return the same verdict, which drains the claim of the specificity it is trying to assert. The appropriation case is also narrower than it looks. Commercial wellness has commodified a great many traditions — Nordic bathing, Japanese forest practice, European folk herbalism, Indigenous ceremony — which suggests an industry that flattens whatever it markets rather than one animated by racial hierarchy specifically. The history of yoga's global spread complicates the framing further: its international transmission was actively promoted from India by teachers who sought Western students, and the modern postural forms now sold in Western studios were themselves shaped in that exchange. Critics of the appropriation frame argue that describing this as theft understates the agency of the Indian teachers who exported it. None of this defends tokenism. It distinguishes documented racism within an industry from the stronger claim that the industry is racist.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Testimony of tokenism and mistreatment documents conduct by particular employers and brands; establishing that racism occurs within a sector is not the same as establishing that the sector is racist. [Rejecting P2] Commercial wellness commodifies traditions of many origins, which points to indiscriminate marketing rather than racial hierarchy, and yoga's global transmission was actively promoted by Indian teachers seeking Western students.