I'm always interested in dialogue. Maybe the sections of the New Yorker article you quoted weren't representative of the author's larger thesis, but they struck me as complete non sequiturs.

I read the NYTimes piece. That one was definitely better. But there were still lines I would read and think, an editor should have had her clarify this point. Sorry if what follows is long and disjointed, but these were my thoughts as I read it:

The initial example of Linda and his song Mbube seems a strange way to introduce the topic. I do think he had a strong case for copyright infringement, even if he was inspired by traditional Zulu melodies. His version was transformative, in legal speak. His case iillustrates that the real problem is not some amorphous concept of "cultural appropriation," but rather racial apartheid and extreme economic inequality, both of which conspired to prevent Mr. Linda from realizing the fruits of his labors. It's easier to blame individuals and shame them on Twitter, but the real culprits here are systems of oppression that need to be dismantled or at least reformed.

"Embedded in it is the notion of adapting something so it is particular to oneself, so that it no longer belongs to or is true to the character of the original source — is no longer other but self."

The author returns to this idea again and again throughout the piece, and each time I was shaking my head. Just because I adapt something to myself, doesn't mean the original ceases to exist. Of course it does, and others adapt it to themselves. In fact, if you understand how this process works, you begin to realize that there is no such thing as "the original," because everyone is always working with someone else's adaptation.

"profiting from it at that culture’s expense."

Profit is one thing. That's easy to show. But at the other's expense? How so? If that's the case,. sounds to me like a legally cognizable harm. But if not, why worry about it?

"(In 2017, Dior produced an embroidered sheepskin waistcoat that was almost identical to a Romanian folk costume; protests by Romanians, whose country is among the poorest in Europe, went ignored but, happily, artisans specializing in the original costume saw a boost in sales after news of the appropriation circulated online.)"

See what I mean?

"Racial plagiarism, [Pham] writes, “is never just about being inspired by but rather improving on an unrefined, unsophisticated, incomplete and, most crucially, unfashionable racialized form,” reinforcing a system of value in which the originating culture continues to be seen as “unrefined.”"

Is it though? Where's the evidence of that? And for a writer who says she wants to focus more on tangible harms than on people's feelings, it sounds an awful lot like she's making people's feelings about whether they are being caricatured the benchmark here.

"For hundreds of years, the West learned of other cultures through the reports of its own emissaries, and the market for “exotic” goods still presupposes that there is comfort, for many, in having a white person translate another culture — to make it less threatening, or to play up its supposed strangeness for a thrill. "

I would much rather be introduced to a culture by the locals, but that's me. But if someone else wants someone they know and trust to introduce them to it, is that such a bad thing? Isn't it better than foregoing the experience entirely?

"There is fear, too, that the appropriated form of a culture may supplant the original and become the only version people outside that culture know."

This is highly unlikely in the Information Age, and the author's examples are actually counterexamples that show how the truth very quickly comes to light. Also, see above my point about the nonexistence of "originals".

"The harm in appropriation comes when a culture is shrunk in possibility, reduced to a set of disembodied gestures — style without substance, which can verge on blasphemy, as when a non-Indigenous person speaks of having a spirit animal."

Here is where the author comes closest to having an actual thesis, and tellingly, it's a mess. What does it mean for a culture to be "shrunk in possibility" or "reduced to a set of disembodied gestures"? I guarantee the people of that culture will not see themselves that way, nor will people intimately familiar with it.

The only people who might be said to have such a myopic view of said culture are people who otherwise probably wouldn't have had any conception of it at all. Which is worse?

"Of course, boundarylessness is a privilege for those who don’t have to contend with real boundaries. "

Ugh. Then work to eliminate boundaries, not erect more of them out of spite. Who does that serve?

I want to close this reply with a quote from a different source, one of my favorite writers, Oscar Wilde:

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

I don't care if an author or artist or musician wants to experiment with inhabiting the lives or imagery or soundscapes of people of another culture. I do care they what they say is true to those experiences. And thankfully, if they fail in that endeavor there will be no shortage of people ready and willing to tell me as much.