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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7272395" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think that is fundamentally the only sound advice one can give.  Don't be a jerk.  Don't be intentionally malicious.  If you are drawing from real cultures, inspect your own attitude and make sure your presentation isn't coming from some inner belief of racial essentialism or attitude of racial superiority. (Not that this is easy.  Frankly I consider most cries of 'cultural appropriation' to come from a place of racism, racialism, racial essentialism, belittlement, disrespect and no small amount of racial hatred, but I also recognize that most people crying 'cultural appropriation' - and certainly those taking up the banner to virtue signal - aren't really aware just how destructive their own beliefs or how condescending their own attitudes actually are.  If they did, I think most would not push this crap.)All that said, this is a two way street.   Just as it is incumbent on you to not be a jerk, it's incumbent on others not to act out of a principle of least charity, self-righteousness, cowardice, passive aggression and so forth.   There is nothing less jerky about any of that sort of behavior than there is about the insensitive depiction of a character that might support or bolster a racialist view of the world.  A very good example for me of just how this sort of outrage goes wrong was a recent event in Portland (or some such sort of place) where a famous conductor and a famous musician were backstage making fun of each other's accents and culture.  They were quite content to do so, because each knew the other to be their friend, and they felt safe with the other.  Let's not beat around the bush, they were actually insulting each other and making fun of each other, as good friends often do.  But the conductor happened to be white, and the musician happened to be black, and so the conductor was fired - not because the musician was offended and not because someone overheard the jokes out of context and thought the black musician persecuted.   Indeed, not even because some other black musician heard the jokes out of context and thought that perhaps the conductor was creating an unsafe and discriminatory work environment and was offended.   No, the conductor got fired because a white stranger that knew neither man thought the conversation inappropriate.Now, the jerk in this story is not the white conductor making fun of a black man's accent, nor the black musician making fun of a white man's accent, but the moral-busybody and tattle-tell signaling her virtue in the most cowardly of manners.  In a good and just world, it would be the woman who was subject to opprobrium, and not two friends that by their manners had transcended any racial ill-will to the point they could make a mockery of it.  It was she, and not they, that should have known better.</blockquote>

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