I wanted to restate the last sentence.
It's not a thing that's easy to define, but it really boils down to this: treat other cultures with respect. If you are interested in participating in a certain culture, you should pay attention to how you are participating and make an effort to know whether your participation is respectful or not. That burden is on you. Also, don't take ownership of it, or expect that you are automatically invited and/or entitled to be warmly welcomed and educated.
And I don't agree that we need an invite to participate in expressions which originate from other cultures, but that's why this is such a good topic for discussion.
I agree with you that it really does boil down to trying not to be a jerk--it's just that what consists of acting like a jerk varies widely by individual ethics and philosophy.
Maybe not in all cases. But, for example, wearing traditional clothing. If you get invited to an Indian wedding, it's okay to wear a sari and henna or other traditional clothing. If you aren't Indian, it's not okay to walk around wearing a sari and henna or a bindi just because you think it's pretty.
Interesting that you use that example. I'd be curious to know what you think of the real life example I gave of this in post #607.
To summarize, my aunt is white but has been married to an Indian man for 30 years and wears Indian clothing occasionally. Her daughter looks white and does the same but actually is part Indian.
I kind of did answer it. I'm half Indian but I look white. I sometimes wear Indian clothing if I'm going to a family party that involves the members of my family who are more connected the Indian culture that wears traditional clothing. Incidentally some of my relatives come from a part of India that was conquered AND religiously converted and so they wore western apparel even when they grew up in India as people who were ethnically Indian- not people of European ancestry born there. I love Indian clothing and I own some, but I don't wear it around alone because I feel extremely conscious of the fact that I look like a white person trying to dress like an Indian person, even though I'm as Indian as I am white. As far as my family/friends here and in India are concerned, I'm aware of a sensitivity about appropriation- I'm aware of white people using Indian clothing (which sometimes gets incorrectly mixed with middle eastern culture- similar to how Katy Perry mixed up Chinese and Japanese in her Geisha video) as costume or bindis as decoration and aware of the fact that it kind of bothers my Indian peeps in contexts where it's people just doing it without being invited to a wedding because they often do it wrong or in the wrong context or mix it with other cultures in a way that comes off as uninformed and it feels kind of irritating to see. I am also aware of the fact Indians have different social issues here in the US as one of the "model minorities," but who still are subject to all kinds of other types of implicit bias and that there is a really strong pressure to assimilate. The strongest pressure to assimilate is in accents. The Indian accent is horrifically portrayed (see Apu from the Simpsons) in western pop culture, and there are a lot of other things that go along with that that are subtle but also deeply problemmatic- Indian men are seen as the butt of jokes and unattractive: you almost never see an Indian male lead in something, they are usually the sidekick or comedic relief (see Rajesh Koothrapali from big bang theory). Wearing Sikh dastaar (turbans) have become a bit of a joke and people wear them and there are a zillion jokes about turbans and how they look silly and or like what terrorists wear... even though it's an Indian thing and not a thing in the middle east. Younger Indian women are more often portrayed as mysterious or exotic, and clothing elements that go along with that add to the mystical Eastern stereotype that gets built up, and white women have (especially in the 90s) worn bindis combined with makeup that builds into this, there was an attempt to achieve an exotic look. Part of the model minority thing is that Indians are also generally known for less muckraking and quiet assimilation, but trust me when I say that bristling over white folks wearing Indian clothing happens when such conversations are safe to have.
This white woman who married an Indian man and had a half-Indian daughter likely understands her husband's culture and is then part of that Indian family and probably has a respectful way of going about wearing Indian clothing. That said, I would hope that she would understand- the way I understand, that if you do it in a certain context, people won't necessarily realize that you are (in my case) Indian (and in her case deeply tied by family), and it may come off as appropriation. White-passing people (& white people marrying) in families of color is an extremely complicated issue by itself.