EUGENE VOLOKH: What would Salon think of an article called, ‘Why I can’t stand Asian musicians who play Beethoven’?

From Salon comes an article called “Why I can’t stand white belly dancers,” with the subtitle “Whether they know it or not, white women who practice belly dance are engaging in appropriation.” . . .

Appropriation — the horror! People treating artistic genres as if they were great ideas that are part of the common stock of humanity, available for all humanity to use, rather than the exclusive property of some particular race or ethnic group. What atrocity will the culturally insensitive appropriators think of next? East Asian cellists? Swedish chess players? The Japanese putting on Shakespeare? . . .

Maybe telling people that they can’t work in some field because they have the wrong color or ancestry would be … rats, I don’t know what to call it. If only there were an adjective that could be used to mean “telling people that they mustn’t do something, because of their race or ethnic origin.”