Someone please explain to me why acting with sensitivity is wrong. At this point someone is going to come with a story about a teenager being dragged for, say, wearing a feathered headdress. Which is also wrong. It would be far better to speak to that person in private and explain how given our history, you may be rubbing on an open wound, and do you really want to to do that? Something like what I did when, while I was still working, one of the toolmakers told a crude homophobic joke in my hearing. I caught up with guy later and said that I didn’t like the joke and that I had not said anything to anyone else, that I was just speaking “as one human being to another.” If they persist then all bets are off. If that same toolmaker had done it again I would have taken it up with HR.

The trouble with our current situation is that we live in the age of instant mobs, who can easily be swayed to carry praise or blame to far, in the words of Robert Frost. Too far means when you end up being more of an asshole than the one doing the appropriating in the first place.

If I put on blackface and hung a noose around my neck then went out trick or treating, would I not have been a total asshole? If I did that and it got out there would be many fun things I do now that I would no longer be able to show my face at, but I would have deserved it for being a jerk, an asshole, and a dumb stupid idiot. But it is not necessary to go as far as blackface + noose on neck to be wrong. Marginalized people are demanding more respect these days. Is that wrong? The question is do you want to be a person who respects other people or do you want to be a jerk?