America has been described as a "melting pot". A place where different people and cultures come together and blend together. Founded by immigrants, the original colonies that would become the United States of America were started, in part, to seek religious freedom - religious plurality.
Until 1882 the US was open to nearly any immigrant wanting to seek out a part of the "American Dream". As different cultures and ethnic groups came to America two interesting things happened. First, they brought their own culture and identity with them. Second, they began to assimilate to the current American culture. We started to become a culture of pluralities. Early American thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin were influenced by the Native Americans as well.
American culture is ever changing while built around some core ideals. As groups came to American bringing their own traditions and culture with them, America absorbed portions of those traditions and cultures and made them its own. This is the core of American culture - the ability to absorb and inherit other culture and tradition and create itself as a syncretic, yet unique, culture of its own.
Our version of the English language happily borrows words from other languages and incorporates them into the common vernacular. We adopt fashions, art, and music from across the world. Appropriation and adoption of other cultures is our culture. It is the American way of operating, of being.
No one owns culture, no one controls culture. Culture is not a thing to possess. It is not static. Rather it is ephemeral and mercurial as it flows into us and becomes intertwined with our current American culture. Culture arises when we humans interact with one another.
Whether the source of a cultural thread is another country, or a sub-culture in America itself, we as a people will take it and weave it into our cultural whole. It is who we are. It is not a bad thing. It is not shameful. It is the beauty of the American Spirit.
Our tapestry of a culture becomes more complex and beautiful as we weave in threads from around the world. As other people's ideas, thoughts, and beliefs are observed and incorporated into our own they become part of the American culture. It is this interwoven culture that we then also share into the world around us.
The classic Western film or television show is a good example of how America borrows and then returns to other cultures. Inspired in part by Samurai Epics from Japan, early Westerns were created with an American spin on older tales and stories. In turn, Japan borrowed from these American Westerns to shape their own retelling of the Samurai stories. This flow back and forth influenced each other culminating in modern takes on the Western such as Disney's "The Mandalorian" which wears the influence of both Samurai epics and classic American Western aesthetics proudly while blending in other tropes and genres.
This is appropriation, make no mistake. It is taking other cultural ideas, concepts, and such and mixing them with the greater American culture. It is borrowing, using, and applying the aesthetics and ethos of other cultures and putting an American spin on those ideas. This is the American way. It is the American culture.
We are a culture that appropriates other cultures. It is who we are. And we don't need to change for anyone.