system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Cultural appropriation is not a bad thing

Okay, I really want to change my mind here, because a lot of the people I generally agree with my position here.

Full disclosure, because I think it’s relevant: I am a straight white cis male, but I hope that doesn’t doesn’t deter minority voices. Don’t spare my feelings. 

I’m also American so my experience and focus is white people appropriating from non-white people, though I want to talk about the concept in general. 

Cultural appropriation, as I understand it, can generally refer to people looking at other cultures and saying “that food/music/clothes etc. is neat, I’ll incorporate it into my life”. 

Some people have said it’s wrong for the appropriating culture to use something they don’t understand. Others have said that it doesn’t matter how much the culture is understood, you can’t steal from another’s culture.

This seems like a natural evolution of culture though. A culture changes it’s customs, adding things and removing things as it wants. When the Moors invaded Spain and were eventually kicked back out, the Spanish peasants stole the Moores’ culture of bathing regularly and being more hygienic, as the story goes. 

I understand the big difference of power struggle here. The Moors were the invaders, and the Spanish were being colonized. However, I don’t see this argument amounting to anything more than a distaste for white culture. 

I also see the fetishization of minorities in America. A lot of white people look at black people as “the ones who make the cool music and talk all cool!” as if they’re not people the way white people are. This plays into the power struggle argument, but I don’t see why white people should be barred from appropriating.
gpt
Cultural appropriation is usually meant to describe one of two things: when members of a dominant culture adopt another culture's practice or icon without fully understanding it, and when members of a dominant culture are able to profit off of another culture's practice or icon while people of that other culture have a much harder time.

Do you disagree these things are bad?  Just trying to get a lay of the land here.