American entertainment has always been integrated, even if by theft and parody

Evidence

The historian Ann Douglas writes in Terrible Honesty, her history of popular culture in the 1920s, that “American entertainment, whatever the state of American society, has always been integrated, if only by theft and parody.” What we’ve been dealing with ever since is more than a catchall word like “appropriation” can approximate. The truth is more bounteous and more spiritual than that, more confused. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1139