This reminds me of a paper I wrote for a sociology class in college. Argue for or against assimilation. Like it or not, there is evidence that immigrants who assimilate better into American culture do better economically. Cultural appropriation is not wrong, it makes assimilation easier. Keeping cultures separate, and raising an uproar when whites (in most cases) take an aspect they like from a culture and use it, is counterproductive to assimilation. Since I prioritise economic prosperity, I had to argue for assimilation. It does follow that stopping cultural appropriation leaves de facto segregation in place.

The melting pot is better when everyone melts into it.

I made a poor choice of words, as realize I could be conveying the the opposite of what I meant. I've re-written the line to better present that my thought that the drive to avoid cultural appropriation can look a lot like cultural segregation.

This is a false dichotomy.

I was disappointed that the article seemed to enforce this dichotomy as well, by bringing up the possibility of asking the people in question:

> But it has never been easier to proceed with good faith and Google, to seek out and respect context[...]

and then seemingly striking it down with the Shamsie essay:

> The moment you say, a male American writer can’t write about a female Pakistani, you are saying, Don’t tell those stories.

but leaving out the part immediately preceding the quote:

> But it should be clear that the response to this is for writers to write differently, to write better, to critique the power structures rather than propping them up, to move beyond stereotype—which you need to do for purely technical reasons, because the novel doesn’t much like stereotypes.

which doesn't at all preclude discussion.

Wrong. This is a lazy reverse-racism argument.