Cultural Appropriation in the Fantasy Genre

Alright, what is cultural appropriation? A lot of people define it as stealing elements of a minority's culture and using them without respect or knowledge of their significance. This is a mostly accurate and understandable definition, although I feel like the term and idea has been extremely watered down and overused in today's society. Now, cultural appropriation can definitely be a bad thing. A clear example of that is Logan Paul's vlog in Japan. Dear god. If you've seen it you know what I'm talking about. It's an obvious example of a lack of respect for someone else's culture. We should always respect a differing culture, especially if we want them to respect ours. Jesus gives the best and most simple advice in Luke 6:31, saying, "Do to others as you would have them do to you." It's the Golden Rule and it certainly applies to the use of cultures. However, I do think cultural appropriation is widely misused and misunderstood. At its core, cultural appropriation is just interaction and engagement between cultures. Every culture has appropriated another throughout history, and it's often how cultures merge, people unite, and society progresses. The Roman Empire is a great example of this. They appropriated the hell out of the Greek culture and it led to some incredible cultural advancements in art, architecture, and many other areas. They even appropriated elements from Germanic and Scandinavian cultures. Pants were culturally appropriated. Of course it's good to respect differing cultures and we all should, but restricting people's rights to certain things based on their skin color or culture seems wrong, and keeping humanity divided into each of their own respective cultures just seems regressive. I think that in today's society, the problem with cultural appropriation is the lack of respect. If you take something from another person's culture that deserves respect and you mock it or make a cheap version of it, then that is an issue. And that is a common trope in Euro-centric fantasy. The disrespectful appropriation of Eastern cultures has been seen in A Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, and many other popular and critically acclaimed fantasy stories. Fantasy writers often carelessly take things from foreign cultures and throw them into their writing with their own perspective, not taking into account the perspective of the people belonging to the culture. Two examples of this are the Dothraki and the Easterlings. The Dothraki are a combination of the Mongols, Huns, and other Eastern tribes. The problem with how they are depicted is that they are written through the naturally biased and culturally ignorant Western lens. Now, we shouldn't blame George RR Martin for being a Western man. Obviously he is a part of a different culture so obviously he would have a certain perspective. But the problem with the Dothraki is that they are written without much respect to the actual, historical source. And that's where these fantasy writers go wrong. They're writing Euro-centric fantasy, and when it comes to Eastern culture, they really don't care enough to really look at how Eastern culture is/was and use it respectfully. With the growing diversity of the fantasy audience, it is becoming very important for this disrespectful use of non-Western cultures to stop. Diversity of culture is great and we should celebrate the great things about all cultures, but instead of policing the use of culture, we should all just be a little more respectful of our fellow humans.