Yeah, I find narrative fiction to be a whole *hell* of a lot more powerful than real world examples because fiction can contextualize itself whereas we can make up reasons for why real-life stuff happen. Do you really not see this happening IRL though? A couple of examples right off the top of my head:
- The music industry whitewashing black music in the 50s, particularly in the form of Elvis Presley but it was a thing that happened fairly regularly (and even the black musicians who gained popularity were generally "safe" acts like Chuck Berry and Little Richard - and no offense to those guys, they were pioneers too - who sang music originally written by/for more "dangerous" acts like Bessie Smith and Big Mama Thornton). There is a very solid argument that can be made that rock and roll, particularly early, pre-British Invasion rock and roll, is black rhythm and blues sung by white people and/or for white audiences.
- The relatively recent trend of people from outside of the region of the Middle East / North Africa taking up belly dancing because they thought it was cool (not the bad part) and in doing so ignoring and not really even caring about the history and culture of it.
- College frat boys glomming onto the Dave Chappelle Show in the early 2000s and transforming what was actually a very intelligent and well thought out program (seriously... the blind black Klansman sketch is as good as anything SNL or Key and Peele ever made, as is the sketch about different music styles with John Mayer) into "WHAT DID THE FIVE FINGERS SAY TO THE FACE I'M RICK JAMES BEEEEEEEEEEEYOTCH" (which, even at that, the Charlie Murphy stories were hilarious but they were about a whole hell of a lot more than Rick James fitting into a modern Mantan role - as the Prince one elucidated as well, it's how black folks with sometimes widely disparate backgrounds and varying degrees of success were still able to find common ground and have a good time with each other based on, yes, their shared black culture).
- Selena Gomez going around wearing a bindi because it looked cool and sexy and, like, hinduism lol. I think there's a general movement towards syncretizing a lot of Indian culture into American but, well, needless to say there are casualties along the way.
- That whole shitshow around Miley Cyrus and twerking. White people can twerk, don't get me wrong, but once again, there's this whole history and culture that kind of sits around that dance style (not on the level of belly dancing, but still) and that whole "lol let's get a person with a very black butt to go out and do this while Cyrus eggs her on" was distasteful as fuuuuuuuuck.
I imagine that you'll find excuses that make all of this not really cultural appropriation or not, like, all that bad. As a white male, I know that *I* am not particularly heavily impacted by any of these things myself. However, if you'd care to listen to the minorities whose cultures are being syncretized and now and then trampled all over (for instance,
here and
here and
here*) you would see that, whether *you* are offended by some of this stuff or not, *other people* are. And no, these folks are not saying that they have some sort of right to not be offended. They are saying, generally, that they would appreciate it if their own culture was accorded with the same level of respect that white American culture is afforded.
I want to point out here too that I am a *huge* fan of syncretism and cultural exchange in the manner that The Latinist pointed out. Frankly, the cultural exchange is what makes American culture so amazing: we're kind of good at it, and whatever other issues we have with race and class, I actually think that we do an overall OK job of acknowledging, tolerating, and enjoying other cultures. A huge part of why we are so good at this relative to the rest of the world, though, is that we *do* ask these questions of ourselves, and the moment we stop doing so we turn into... something more like what we were in the 50s or what Japan sometimes is today (and don't get me wrong *there* too: sometimes they do some really interesting syncretistic shit, too, like Neon Genesis Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, but... Cowboy Bebop gets *really* racist at a couple points in ways that an Americanized version of those combined tropes wouldn't because Japan, I think, lacks that cultural awareness). We have a strong and admiral legacy of anti-racism in this country precisely because we've had to deal with race and bigotry to a much greater extent than most other First World countries have had to. The same applies to culture: we're not just naturally better at this because we're American, we're better at this because we *consider* this shit.
* That's a longer article about a lot of things, but Chappelle has said on several occasions that the Rick James sketch was a huge part of why he stopped doing the show at the height of its popularity.
