Jeri, that was well meant I am sure... but most folks with a large number of Black friends are going to see it differently.

It DOES matter which race is copying which, and WHY, when there are so many inequities in place. And it's not about making anybody do anything. My posts here have been intended as information, not direction, for example. They come right out of what I teach in my field, and white resistance to the facts is typical AND well meant, if misinformed.

Cultural Appreciation is generally accepted for its intention, but Cultural APPROPRIATION actually IS a tense US issue-- wherever there is a sizeable Black (or other significantly-numbered oppressed) group rightly objecting to it-- and where the privileged white folks there care to think about it.

Halloween for example is another huge opportunity for colossal and hurtful cultural appropriation, well documented annually by people of color who (yearly) watch blonde celebrities go nappy in blackface-- while Black folks continue to die amid the national refusal to own up to its enslaving past in favor of continuing to profit unfairly from it.

The offensive message there would be: "I can play this part without fear for my safety if police show up, and I can have fun in your guise without paying the price every day that Black folks pay.And I don't care to help change Black un-safety. I can just play."

If you could do that in your neighborhood without reproach, then you live where the original economy of the area probably involved profiting off slavery; that's how we got mostly-white neighborhoods.

~Susan