God doesn't need to know what time it is.

@mahgister I agree that leveling a charge such as cultural appropriation is not to be taken lightly, or tossed around willy-nilly.  For instance, is Eminem culturally-appropriative, or just exceptionally good at what he does?  I think these are good, interesting debates to have.  
However, such a charge may have merit in Clapton’s case when his music’s progenitors received little to no recognition, in either a relative sense or a general sense, and then here comes another young British dude doing that stuff and enjoying the era’s fetishization with young white dudes playing “blues,” and thusly receiving commercial success some 100x that of the originators. 
At least in Eminem’s care, there were a dozen-or-so originators who had enjoyed a lot of commercial success for a good 15 years preceding him, whereas, again, most of the originators of the blues barely made a living and still had to hold regular jobs.

I think these are important things to look at.  History is always written by the winners, and it’s always easy to cry “foul” in the face of criticism when you are the exploiter, while the other side remains the exploited.

Your ideological revising of history is not to my liking sorry... I will not discuss that here and why...

i will not go and take out street names and statues in a systematic ideological war...

And i am too old to admire male chemically modified swimmer in a feminine pool...

And i dont like globalist and transhumanist agenda either...

Anything else?

I am not vaxx....

I dont like Biden ,Trudeau nor Trump...Nor Macron Nor Xi and neither Putin...

i Like Kennedy, De Gaulle, Eisenhower and perhaps half of Churchill....

The general i like the most is General Wrangel for his human conduct in the saving evacuation of the lost white armies against the red...

My most admired personal historical hero is Richard Burton...Not the Actor... And not a "woke" consciousness by all means but an awaken one if you dare to read his life and achievement..... Think about Freud and Levy-Strauss , superman and Indiana Jones or Lawrence of Arabia , and Shakespeare in one single individuality and it is him...He spoke 45 languages among other things and was one of the greatest swordsman of his time......And discovering the Nile source at this time in history was like going in Antartica or walking on the moon...He spoke arab so perfectly than no arab ever detected that he was an englishman the first one walking in the forbidden Timbuctu or the Mecca without being killed...Think about this feat...

i apologize for my rant....

😁😊

Lawrence of Arabia was into Brough motorcycles- he died on one.

Don't look up the cost of one of the original 100 (mph) models- you could buy a lot of stuff for one of those bikes. 

I find it ironic? that people who are into a niche hobby- at least at the high end of audio-- don't at least "get" the fact that there are other pursuits involving "gear" that seems absurdly priced (and in some cases, it is). If you told the average non-enthusiast what some of the systems here cost, there would be a revolution. :)

Have fun, keep the shiny side up as they say in motorsports. 

Clapton has always acknowledged his debt to the Blues masters whose phrases he painstakingly learned by copying one phrase at a time off records, listening, then trying to duplicate what he'd heard , then moving the needle back and listening again. There were no guitar schools or TAB books or video lessons back then!  I recall him stating in an early Guitar Player magazine interview that his style was composed of 1) these borrowed phrases and 2) lines he made up to connect the former. He said the latter comprised "his style" but that he much preferred the "BB and Freddie lines". Seems to me it's important to consider how Black Blues masters responded to Clapton-- typically with genuine respect for his dedication to learning the art and craft of Blues guitar-- before bringing up the topic of cultural appropriation. This process of "borrowing" is deeply ingrained in a tradition that, for a very long time, could only be learned by a process of listening and imitation, whatever he color of the players.  

Someone in this thread dismissed EC as a "hack", whatever that's supposed to mean, as if anyone can learn to play at EC's level. Eric can be accused of many things but not disrespect for or laziness in regards to his devotion to, the genre.

Blues is easy to play poorly and many do. It is composed of very simple building blocks, which means there is no place to hide-- the burden lies entirely upon the sophistication of the player!  I don't ever recall Clapton claiming he was the Greatest Blues player or Greatest Guitar player-- as far as I'm aware, he's been quite humble in this regard. After all, for much of his career, the masters he'd copied were still alive and playing. There was a PBS tv special that came out in conjunction with the From the Cradle album and Clapton's abiding passion as a scholar and student of the Blues is deeply apparent throughout that video. Egotistic bravado is conspicuously absent. 

I'm not a Clapton fanboy by any means (when it comes to British Blues players, I prefer Peter Green) but fair is fair. 

Here endeth my rant on this topic.