Have you noticed that the real outrage about cultural appropriation, which diversity-loving college professors define as "the act of taking intellectual and cultural expressions from a culture that is not your own," is that it, undoubtedly by design, prevents assimilation?

Assimilation, you will recall, is one of the many things that made America an immigrant magnet for the rest of the world; E pluribus unum and all that.  However, if one may not admire and emulate any different culture (ideas that have been the mainstay of a classically liberal cultural education for centuries), then by definition, American culture, mongrel as it is, may not be something to which an immigrant may legitimately aspire or emulate.  When keeping current (home nation) traditions for immigrants is made mandatory (with the exception of acquiring the helpful Progressive tradition of dependence on the government), even though the new immigrants insist that they left their homes because the conditions and policies in the old country didn't allow them to thrive, definitions begin to unravel. 

Rather than encouraging the new prospective Americans to fit in to achieve the American dream of self-actualization, which multitudes of prior immigrants had achieved, what is required now is that America transform itself into pockets of whatever the immigrants had fled and to turn the old adage on its head: "when in Rome, force the Romans to do it your way," and call them names if they do not.  The order of the day for our political leadership is a contradictory; idiotic; self-destructive; and (it would not be too much to say) fundamentally divisive, and thus un-American, set of policies.

Whatever happened to promoting the love of diversity and celebrating "America, a land of immigrants"?  Or is this definition, like racism, only for the "white-entitled"?  Or is it an attempt to segregate everyone into belligerent Balkanized strongholds, each pathologically jealous of their trivial differences?  Will the future consist of internecine wars in which enraged enclaves fight over which can celebrate its use of green peppers, or checkered shirts, or something?  All in the name of equity and democracy.  It's madness.

For instance, taking this mindless "cultural appropriation" requirement to its logical conclusion would require everyone to produce genealogical credentials to be allowed to order a pizza or Mongolian takeout. 

And imagine how this would help the economy.  It would prevent American car manufacturers from selling their cars overseas, to avoid the insult of someone actually wanting to buy one.  Chalk up another win-win for the turn-definitions-on-their-heads hate-America-firsters. 

On the other hand, as is usual for Progressive ideas, the whole thing is hypocritical and contradictory.  Enforcing cultural purity in all things would throw a big bucket of icewater onto their dreams of globalism if no one is allowed even to look at anyone else with friendship, and would likely spawn a few more wars to boot, as outrage over hatred of stupidity (by those who refuse to play this game) explodes in their faces.  But it would require a new bureaucracy to issue the necessary genealogical papers to order that pizza or to buy that car.  How will they justify that, if a simple citizenship identification requirement for voting puts their skivvies in a twist?

Hearing these things from supposedly serious politicians, or in coverage by an allegedly serious press, is, or should be, embarrassing.  I really wish the press would end its current descent into gossip and childishness and get back to covering news.