Discussion of Whiteness and musical instruments

I read the post you created about metal music & racism and I have a question. What instruments are appropriate for white people? Because I think I'd be wrong to grab a djembe, but like scottish people invented the bagpipes and they're also bad? And also white people can't eject racists from our culture if they're also white?

ms-demeanor answered:

So the comment about the bagpipes is because bagpipes are seen as exclusively Scottish but there’s evidence of them in the Middle East for a long time before there’s evidence of Scotts using them, which I find delightfully ironic for the horrid racists who suggest that it’s a white-invented folk instrument that is somehow more noble and pure than folk instruments from other cultures. That was purely “oh, you like using this thing because you think it’s a whites-only thing? It isn’t, and since you’re a white supremacist maybe you should be examining your life choices instead of trying to figure out what the whitest instrument is so you can learn to play it.”
But that was honestly more sarcasm than anything else. Learning an instrument is something that I tend to see as a form of cultural exchange rather than cultural appropriation, like learning a language or enjoying the food of another culture. But! Just like learning the language or eating the food of another culture I think it’s worthwhile to do some research into what instruments are okay for outsiders to play (or food to eat or words to not use). For instance you brought up the djembe - a widely distributed instrument that’s played by people from dozens of cultures and isn’t religiously significant or traditionally associated with a particular cultural practice (and “djembe” apparently means “come together in peace” and has a long history of cultural sharing). Because of the djembe’s origins and history I don’t see any immediate problems unless your end goal is to release an album of only white, American djembe players who “discovered” djembes in college and title the album “Hand-Drumming: The Heartbeat of Africa”. But I feel like it would be less okay to play a balafon because in many places it’s a religiously important instrument that has specific rituals associated with it and strict mandates on when it can be used. Playing a balafon as someone who grew up seeing it as a funky xylophone instead of a sacred instrument would feel a bit like serving communion wafers on a cheese plate at a dinner party.
Just do your research and go with your gut once you’ve done the research. If you want to learn an instrument that is specific to a particular culture buy the instrument from a someone who is a part of that culture and take classes from and with people of that culture. (And I shouldn’t even have to say this but that goes for white cultures too - learn Balalaika from a Russian and you’ll be better for it.)
Have you heard the band tee shirt analogy about cultural appropriation? Cause here it is again (metalhead version):
Imagine you’re in high school. And the incredibly preppy captain of the football team is wearing a Slayer* shirt. You know this dude doesn’t like Slayer, he griped about Judas Priest being “just noise” at the last pep rally. So what’s he doing in a Show No Mercy shirt?
“Hey, Brad, what’s with the shirt?”
“It’s because we’re going to slay our crosstown rivals - we’ll show them no mercy on the field.”
“But you know they’re a thrash band, right? You don’t like thrash.”
“I’m not sure what you’re saying but I like thrashing opposing teams. Perfect! This just keeps getting better and better!”
The next day you show up and half the cheer squad are wearing Show No Mercy shirts. Football players are chanting “Thrash them! Slay them! Thrash them! Slayers!” in the halls between classes. You see Brad.
“Hey, do you want a shirt?” he asks.
“Well I like the band so I’ll support them, I guess.”
“Cool my dad screen printed a bunch of them, so I’ve gotta move them. $20 for one shirt.”
“Wait, you didn’t even buy these from the band’s website?”
“No, of course not - the printing looked all jagged and dark. Plus we had to get rid of the pentagram.”
“But that’s ripping them off - they made this!”
“Well technically my dad made this when we reinterpreted it so that it would connect more people. Plus it’ll be good publicity - it’s way less scary and more people will like it this way. They could get a really big audience if they’d tone down the pentagrams and demons and stuff.”
“But Slayer isn’t about being liked!”
“Ew. Why wouldn’t you want to be popular? Trust me, this is going to be a good image thing for them. Anyway, I gotta run - Slay the Spartans! Thrash the Tigers! Show No Mercy!”
By the time of the pre-game pep rally Brad has sold all his knockoff shirts, the words Show No Mercy stare at you from every torso. In a final act of desperation you hold a portable stereo over your head, blasting The Antichrist from your faithful cassette copy of the album over the noise of the rally, where students are still chanting “thrash them, slay them.”
Your stereo is taken away by the principal. You are given a Saturday detention. “That kind of music isn’t appropriate on campus,” the principal says - “and especially not at an event geared around team spirit and celebration. How are we supposed to thrash the tigers when you’re scaring everyone with your threatening music?”
That’s totally different than if Brad heard Black Magic, asked you about it because he’s seen you in Slayer shirts, takes your advice on what albums to buy, sees the band in concert, and starts showing you music because if you like Slayer you might like this mixtape Brad picked up in Philly, and hey, wouldn’t it be cool to start a band that sounds like both of these things?
(Sidenote: I kind of hate making this comparison with a band because band fandom is trivial, you aren’t born into it, you can change it easily, and you can hide it if it’s ever a problem. The same is not true of race or some parts of culture. But I make this comparison because sometimes music fans with seethe at the thought of someone who has never heard of a band wearing that band’s tee shirt in a way that they never would at the thought of Linda Hunt being the only person to win an academy award for portraying an Asian character).
Research and Respect. These are your watchwords when you’re trying to participate in a cultural practice for a culture you weren’t raised in.
But I don’t understand the last part of your ask, where you said: And also white people can’t eject racists from our culture if they’re also white? 
I’m not sure how you got that at all from what I wrote or if I’m reading you wrong but what I was specifically trying to say with the other post was this:

• FELLOW WHITE PEOPLE: WE ARE SAFER THAN POC IF WE CALL OUT RACISM IN OUR SUBCULTURE AND EJECT WHITE SUPREMACISTS FROM OUR SCENE.
• LET’S MAKE SURE TO PROTECT OUR SIBLINGS OF COLOR FROM WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
• LET’S KICK THE NAZI MOTHERFUCKERS OUT AND NOT ALLOW THEM TO GET AWAY WITH BEING DOGWHISTLE WHITE SUPREMACISTS.
• BE AWARE OF THESE WHITE SUPREMACIST SYMBOLS AND BANDS SO YOU CAN PREVENT THEM FROM SHOWING UP AT FESTIVALS AND THREATENING METALHEADS OF COLOR.
• ALSO WHILE WE’RE AT IT MAYBE KNOCK IT OFF WITH LOCS AND MOHAWKS
• AND COULD WE PLEASE MAKE A POINT OF SUPPORTING BANDS WITH MEMBERS OF COLOR.

I know my brand of humor doesn’t read particularly well with no tone to contextualize things, so I feel like my bagpipe joke didn’t land because of a combination of that and assuming more people knew about the Middle East origins than was really reasonable to assume. I may be a SJW-tumblrista-snowflake but I’m not humorless and I’m not trying to tell you what to do or what instruments you can and can’t play. I’m recommending guidelines here except for one very explicit instruction: KICK WHITE SUPREMACISTS OUT OF THE SCENE. Other than that, do what you will.

*and yes, Slayer has their own history of exploiting cultural stereotypes for gain or playing metal in a tomb, these are things to point out and question but the album name/band name/genre fit elegantly into this example, which is why I used them.

EDIT -
I also just reread my original post on the matter and feel the need to note the specific phrasing I used:

I think bagpipes sound awesome but they’re a traditional instrument of white people so the fucking racists want to play those instead of something that might be tainted by a mingled cultural history (also racists I have bad news for you about all instruments, you should probably stop playing them just to be safe).

The point that I intended to convey with this is that all instruments have mixed cultural history. White supremacists who want to play whites-only instruments are out of luck. A drum is the most basic instrument in the world, everyone has developed them. Flutes are very nearly universal. Stringed instruments exist almost everywhere.
I was by no means saying that white people as a whole shouldn’t play music, just that the kind of white supremacist who’s in search of  music *untainted* by other cultures might as well give up and sit in the corner because it doesn’t exist and they aren’t wanted in the scene anyway.