Cultural appropriation standards distinguish insider-profiting when dominant groups borrow from subordinate ones.

Evidence

As cultural leaders turned introspective, politics complicated the basic mechanics of cultural exchange. In the woke framework, not all cultural borrowing was legitimate. Cultural appropriation, as writer Ligaya Mishan defined it, involved a “member of the dominant culture—an insider—taking from a culture that has historically been and is still treated as subordinate and profiting from it at that culture’s expense.” The canonical example was mid-twentieth-century white record labels reaping fortunes from Black musical innovations like rock and roll and funk, allowing white copycats from Elvis to Average White Band to become global stars. By contrast, Afrocentric movements in reggae and hip-hop allowed Black artists to retain some creative control, enabling figures like Russell Simmons, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, and Kanye West to amass vast wealth. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 476

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives Mishan’s working definition of cultural appropriation, the key term powering a whole phase of Marx’s story.
• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘death of the sellout’ moral economy the reader is tracking across the book.