i think about cultural appropriation a lot! i also have a questionably culturally appropriative tattoo myself! props to you for sharing this and starting this conversation.

i recently read a really great book that talked about this from another perspective. In it, Ta-Nehisi Coates was wondering why the Zulus hadn't created a Tolstoy, and whether this made the Zulus culturally inferior (obvs wrong and racist), or whether the Zulus have their own Tolstoy who has been ignored (which would also be shitty).

In the end, he realized that Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus-- "unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership." He points out that the fencing and the exclusivity is the basis for the whole fake concept of races to begin with.

It was a really great book-- really clear and insightful. Between the World and Me, if you haven't read it already!