Black Creatives: exploring our genius

“The issue here, though, as the African American poet and critic Amiri Baraka has pointed out, is not that of cultural appropriation at all. ‘If the Beatles tell me that they learned everything they know from the blues singer Blind Willie Johnson,’ he said in a radio discussion, ‘I want to know why Blind Willie is still running an elevator in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s that kind of inequality that is abusive, not the actual appropriation of culture because that’s normal.’ Conflating racism and cultural appropriation does little to challenge racism but much to rob culture of subtlety and depth.”

The Guardian, February 18, 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/18/century-on-from-rhapsody-in-blue-debates-about-cultural-theft-rage-still-gershwin