Cultural appropriation is a heat topic in the public debate, there are the ones that consider cultural appropriation a aggression and a form of imperialism and those who believe that it is a good thing and that we should always try to incorporate what is best in others cultures in our culture.
There are two points that I consider valid topics of discussion among those who oppose cultural appropriation, the first is that sometimes we incorporate thing from others cultures with out give credit to them, and the second is that sometimes we devalue others cultures that we have culturally appropriate.
Regarding the problem of proper credit for other cultures, although I thing it is important to be aware of the origins of things like our language, customs, traditions and so on, I don't think that we need to be reminded all the time that something have African origins for example, that would be tiresome and unproductive. Regarding the problem of devaluation we should keep in mind that is almost impossible to compare two cultures and define with one is the best, we can only affirm that a culture is better than other in a specific aspect and base on a specific standard, we can for example say that regarding the defense of human rights the Western culture have been showing better results than the Eastern culture.
There is a book that have been published recently in Brazil called
Culturas Shakespearianas (Shakespearean Cultures), written by the professor of Comparative Literature João Cezar de Castro Rocha, this book is about the hegemonic culture (the culture that we envy) and the Shakespearean Culture, the culture that appropriate the best aspects of the hegemonic culture in order to become the hegemonic culture. That is what happened when the Roman culture replace the Greek culture, not only appropriating the Greek culture, but also devouring it. All the evidence leads to the conclusion that the process of appropriation of the hegemonic culture by the Shakespearean Culture is a never ending process.
To sum up, in order to compete with what we consider to be the best we must appropriate what makes it the best, and even devour it.