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“...others ignore the cultural aspect and make it about black identity.”

Those two threads are wound together fairly closely.
I personally think there’s been intentional effort to blur the distinction.

For example, is Jheri Curl a part of “black culture” or is it part of black identity? Well, I know enough to know not every black person is or was into it, so that says it was only a part of some peoples’ identity. But was it ever a “thing” OUTSIDE the black community? If not, does that make it a black cultural element? Is it BOTH; part of the identity of some black people, AND part of their broader culture?

And how often do we hear some lib tell it: your culture is an integral part of your identity. So “culture” becomes perceived as a thing that feeds INTO identity, as if a group with a shared set of identifying aspects isn’t what creates culture.

This getting it backward creates a sense of inevitability about what a person will become; they feel subject to — not master over — the culture they grow up around.

Young black men feel they have to be and act certain ways because those things are impressed upon them as “black culture.” See, even the label — “black culture” — seems definitive; as if white people or Hispanic people, or Pacific Islanders could never do the same things, or dress the same way.

Then, for example, when we suddenly see rappers coming from across racial lines, oh well, that’s not “black culture” anymore, now it’s “rap culture.”

Why isn’t it just “rapper identity”? Individuals who enjoy, and create rap? What “culture” is there? And if it was “black culture” before, aren’t these rappers of other ethnicities “embracing black culture”? Are they “appropriating” it?

There are constructs that define cultural aspects apart from race. Confusingly, we’re told we’re not to “appropriate” anyone’s culture. I have tortillas in my fridge; am I “appropriating” someone’s culture if I eat them? Did THEY appropriate them form some preceding culture??
Is eating tortillas a defining act that affects my identity?

The language surrounding culture and identity has been made INTENTIONALLY confusing so as to permit fusion of the two concepts in the unsuspecting mind. One second the talk is about culture, and the next we’re talking identity, and in my estimation it’s all on purpose to maintain a sense of tribalism that perpetuates societal divisions.