"Rhapsody In Blue" at 100

This post isn't so much about "Rhapsody", which everybody knows is unimpeachably great, but about the NYT's risible semi-takedown of the piece.

The comments section is full of debates about the intentions of the piece.  A small minority of commenters claim that it's a glowing tribute to Gershwin that most of us aren't enlightened enough to understand.  Whatever.  For me, the piece falls between harsh accusations of cultural appropriation (Gershwin stole from other cultures, prevented those more deserving of getting their proper credit for developing this style of music, and the largely white classical music industry has been reaping the concert revenue for the past century) and damning with faint praise (with a few reservations, "Rhapsody" is wonderful and Gershwin was a cultural unifier, but he should have known better and we've all failed artists of colour since).  

I shudder to think what the NYT has in store for the 100th anniversary of "Porgy and Bess".  And it should go without saying that Gershwin was not white, despite that descriptor being used multiple times in the piece.  Because naturally, Jews are not white.  Not in colour or in stature.  To anyone living in the 1920's and 1930's, the idea of applying "white privilege" to any Jewish artist in the performing arts would get you laughed out of any uppercrust supperclub or country club in the US or Canada.  It saddens me to read such shlock about Gershwin, who was both a pioneer and a populist, who lended credibility to genres that many "serious" composers wouldn't dare to touch, getting smeared as a two-bit cultural huckster by revisionist cultural crypto-critics with their own personal socio-political axe to grind.