If one were to rank the concepts of political correctness in terms of their capacity to drive people nuts, near the top would surely be the idea of cultural appropriation; it even drives my wife nuts, and she’s a liberal. It doesn’t make any sense, she says. People take from each others’ cultures all the time, especially in America, where there is no culture except what is appropriated. I’d dispute that, but I admit that you couldn’t find much evidence against it in the New York neighborhood where we live.
In 2017, the linguist John McWhorter looked at this issue in the case of Elvis Presley, with whom he said it began. In the early days of rock and roll, white musicians picked up black musical styles and were very nicely rewarded for doing so; far better than the black
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