Post #776463 by lunavideogames on Tue, May 30, 2017 7:08 PM

My wife saw that "Abolish" article and sent it to me. She said that the author made some good points. I said, "no she didn't, I can't even see one point she made." I sent her a link to EnchantedTikiGoth's blog post about appropriation (which I thought was very well written) and we started to discuss. First and foremost the author thinks tiki bars are about listening to Jimmy Buffett?!? She obviously has absolutely no clue about the tiki culture of today, so to write an article very ill informed, how can it be taken seriously?

So lets see, what from a tiki bar is taken from Hawaiian culture??? Drinks? Anyone who has ever been to Hawaii knows that this is not the case. Just try to find a decent cocktail in Hawaii, I dare you. Dimly lit bars? Music? Escapism? No. Tikis? Tikis are the one and only similarity I can find. Is tiki a practiced religion? Not that I know of. The most common religion in Hawaii is the one that was appropriated from that John guy from the west. Wasn't tiki appropriated to Hawaii to begin with?

Like many others have touched on is that we embrace the art and the aloha spirit it seems few are keeping alive today. We are not using tiki as a way to negatively impact anything. Redskins is obviously a derogatory term (as is Haole and Gringo) and is negative so the argument with tiki is clearly not the same. If we are playing the CA card, nearly everything can be considered and nothing can be excluded. EnchantedTikiGoth has it right when he says that there is no clear meaning of the term Cultural Appropriation.

I have noticed that the wahines in Hawaii wear shirts... This is an obvious appropriation of western culture and SHOULD NOT BE TOLERATED!