It was late at night when I skimmed through Albert's chalenge. Now that I've had some sleep I hope I can respond more fully, and you can judge from what I write whether what I should go back to bed or not. The concept of stealing from another in jazz is admittedly a curious one. Playing another musician's solo can be a form of compliment (I believe Rex Stewart in the Fletcher Henderson band did this to Bix in playing "Singin' The Blues.") And Albert is right to emphasize various kinds of relationships--players have idols, take ideas from listening to them. On the other hand, slavish copying without developing one's own style eventually is a sign of bad musicianship.
Nonetheless stealing from another musician can exist. If I write a song and publish it, and someone plays it for money, I am entitled
to compensation. In jazz, given that imitation, influence, and borrowing are considered complimentary, I take it that stealing here might have to do with taking and not acknowledging: I imitate musician A when I heard her/him in person or on record, but I deny that I did this, and I lie in doing so, and take the credit, AND I make money from my actions especially a great deal of money, whereas A does not or cannot because people believe my lie. This, I suppose, would be stealing in jazz.
Although this might happen, it did not in any particular cases we would cite, and perhaps was fairly rare. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that it was. But let us move to a more general situation. To be more neutral, let us avoid terms like "black", "white," etc. and speak in terms of musicians of type X and type Y.
Suppose there are two kinds of people, X and Y, and two types of musicians, type X and type Y. An X living in his X world only acknowledges X musicians, even when X musicians are playing what was originally musical ideas invented by Y musicians. When asked, the X musicians speak of the Y musicians with fondness and praise, freely acknowledge them as their idols. But somehow this changes nothing, the X audience does not listen to this, for certain bizarre and unjust social reasons, and they will not go to listen to the Y musicians, or buy their recordings, even though in many cases, the original Y music is better. The Y musicians live in relative poverty, and some of the X musicians make large sums of money and are successful.
Did the X musicians steal? Not directly. But an injustice has nonetheless occurred. A collective, institutional injustice has occurred, particularly given that it fits within a context of broader injustices occurring systematically. The music industry (dominated by X's) has in general profited from the work of the Y musicians; so have the X musicians, but the Y musicians have not. And whether they know it or not, the X musicians are the instruments of the injustice, otherwise the X music industry wouldn't have made the profits they did.
I think it is a kind of collective stealing in which one can try to apply definitions like the one Albert uses to claim that there has been no injustice and no stealing at all. Someone has acknowledged the Y musicians, namely the X musicians, and the X public is merely following its preferences (purely a matter of taste, over which there is no dispute). The lack of prosperity of the Y musicians is due to various market factors, and so the X society sees no stealing at all, no injustice. It is just natural that the X musicians would prosper and the Y would not. In fact, X's can claim years later that they did the Y musicians (now long dead) a service by keeping the Y music alive.
Now something like this happened in U.S. American society. That is what I am claiming.