There are genuinely troubling forms of cultural appropriation. Yes, I said it.
Don't believe me? If I were to try to speak colloquial African-American English, I would make a lot of enemies really really quickly. So would you. This isn't about the wholly unproblematic borrowing of democracy from the Greeks, or chess from the Persians by way of Spain, or numbers from the Arabs. It's about people in positions of power appearing to mock or belittle people in positions of weakness by imitating them. Sometimes imitation has trouble differentiating itself from ridicule. In those cases, avoid it.
Which - again - is not to say that all imitation is ridicule. Leave it to the culture wars to squash flat a complex and delicate issue, one calling for nuance and dialogue.
