Your argument is good, and I agree completely that some of these attacks are misguided and especially agree that there are bigger issues we must deal with. However, it seems you are missing one dimension of cultural appropriation (CA), which surprises me.

I've been in the music industry since 1997, focusing on world and world fusion music. I've been in contact with many musicians from many countries. Most of them fully understand the difference between being inspired by music from other cultures and the theft that is CA. The difference is between the respect of interpersonal recognition and the disrespect of impersonal exploitation.

You hint at this when you wrote, "Focus your energy on the multi-billion dollar corporations that are appropriating the resources of developing countries." In the music industry, the music labels are the corporations who are committing the theft of CA, which is a theft if intellectual property.

A Euro-American musician who studies African drumming, or creates with Latinx artists is not committing CA. But a corporate record label that uses samples of African or Latin rhythms in the recordings of their pre-fab pop stars IS committing CA. This isn't me pointing the finger, and it isn't white kids whining on social media about restaurants. This is indigenous artists justifiably upset that their intellectual property has been stolen and the theft is protected by the multi-billion dollar corporations that appropriated it.

So, I urge you to expand your horizons in this issue. Thanks for reading.