You'll have to forgive me if I ramble a little/am somewhat incoherent. I just got back from a run and it's not been a very good day for me mentally.

Anyway, I agree with you on some points. I personally think that partaking in another culture should be done in reverence and out of respect for that culture. What makes us different is what makes us all interesting and cool.

But I'm also going to say that this is a very hard ideal to enforce, and not only that, a bit ridiculous. Culture is incredibly fluid and transformative. It's pervades almost every aspect of life in a globalized world, so I take issue with the social justice "policing" of cultural appropriation.

Take for example Indian food's explosion in popularity in the states. Doesn't this constitute as appropriation? Shouldn't it? If white people and westerners are eating at these places without even thinking of the culture behind the food, why doesn't this count? And like I said, culture is fluid, so it comes as not surprise when we see westerners adapting Indian food to their own tastes. Currywurst, for example? I mean, on the scale of everyone, isn't adapting and adopting recipes to suit ones own culture a form of appropriation? Nobody seems to make a fuss when we reduce Ramen down to cheap and easy food. The Japanese don't seem to care when we adapt the flavors to be more "western".

We are, as people, as humans, a gigantic mess of different cultures and perspectives. In America, our law and philosophy is French, but our legal and governmental system is British. Our police dress like Germans and we wear the business attire of Italians. Our architecture is Roman and German. The Chinese and Irish helped link our country together and the Africans bore the sweat of the soil to the south. European Americans brushed across the landscape in great swaths of death with weapons first pioneered by the Chinese and the Ottomans.

The idea of cultural appropriation seems to exist only when it allows Social Justice Warriors to chide and put down others from a position of superiority. That they should act as the vanguards of that culture's components and displays of use. I mean, even as a white American, my family arrived after WW2 and we still enjoy Goulash, Austrian Rum Torte's and other delicious central European foods. Goulash has been transformed by midwestern Americans into something truly grotesque, but that's what it is. I don't really hold it over them, and I don't hold anything against the Russians that forced my family into the states. It's unproductive and useless and I am not the guardian of pseudo-slavic foods.

And I know I cite America a lot in this, but it happens the world over. I know for a fact in Japan they treat "Gaijin" (Outsiders/Foreigners) with a mild fascination and apprehension. It's not outright hate, but the homogeneity of Japanese society and culture basically excludes you FOREVER from becoming "Japanese". A buddy of mine lived there for seven years and they continued to look at him like some foreigner who had a mastery of their language and etiquette. It's just a part of their identity.

The Chinese adopted and convoluted the philosophy of the Germans (in modern history of course!), the Koreans were essentially imperialized by Japan, and I don't think I have to tell you what the USA did (culturally) to Japan and the South Pacific.

I'm sorry for ranting and rambling. Please feel free to skip/ignore this stuff.