The problem with talking about cultural appropriation

Even if what gets called "cultural appropriation" is often bad, calling it "cultural appropriation" doesn't explain what's bad about it. On the contrary, labeling something "cultural appropriation" distracts from any other criticism that might have been made of that thing, because once the attention-getting phrase "cultural appropriation" is invoked, all the attention turns to debating whether cultural appropriation is inherently bad. And the idea that it's inherently bad is pretty easily refuted, so the object of criticism gets off easy. Meanwhile, the kinds of people who are drawn to the "cultural appropriation" critique have spent their time and energy on what will ultimately be a losing argument (because the consequences of consistently rejecting cultural appropriation would never be accepted). They could've spent that time and energy putting forward a more powerful critique, but they didn't, and now that time and energy — finite resources — are lost.