Post #776492 by Swanky on Wed, May 31, 2017 10:36 AM

On 2017-05-31 09:44, CosmoReverb wrote:
It certainly is a valid concern. The media loves a scandal and you are absolutely right, they won't seek out a more educated response. It also doesn't help that there most definitely is at least an element of cultural appropriation to tiki, and so any attempts, even from learned sources, to try to educate "outsiders" can always be twisted into the "apologist zone" and, to be honest, it is a fine line....

And books like BoT are really gigantic fuel for that fire of cultural appropriation. A lot of our literature is "hey, here is the complete history of white people taking Polynesian themes and making money off it. Here are mugs and bowling alleys to prove it!"

This community spent the last 2 decades being proud to spread the news of how whitey appropriated brown people's things for profit. Why we even turned their religious items into funny drinking vessels! These very things we have done to revive Tiki are now the greatest ammo against us.

There are some bits here and there that highlight the roles of other brown people in Tiki, and other non-white people. But our literature is largely damning. Everything we have been doing is largely damning.

If that magnifying glass ever really points our way, I'm not sure what the proper response can be. I have some good talking points, but we've also handed our enemies a lot of great things to hang us with.

And who wants to be out there talking to the cameras? Who wants to become the target for that criticism? Even a good argument will attract a lot of hate.