If you’re thinking about opening a bar or a restaurant in Oregon, you’d better get a DNA test to make sure you’re not appropriating anybody else’s culture. We already know it’s racist for white Oregonians to make burritos, and now it’s racist for them to open tiki bars.
Kyle Odegard, Corvallis Gazette-Times:
A Corvallis restaurant owner is apologizing a week after opening up a Tiki bar downtown and being accused of cultural appropriation and insensitivity.
“I unintentionally made a mistake and I’m very sorry,” said Cloud Davidson, in an interview on Friday.
The Hapuna Kahuna Tiki Bar & Kitchen — until recently, the location was Cloud & Kelly’s Public House, an Irish pub — will close Sunday…
Davidson said that residents of Polynesian ancestry, including those with the Oregon State University Asian and Pacific Cultural Center, complained about a combination of factors such as the use of a Hawaiian name, traditional iconography displayed in a cartoonish way, and how plastic leis were handed off to customers.
In other words, people were having fun. And that just won’t do. That isn’t socially just. So now the guy is closing the place down and taking out all the horribly offensive stuff that wasn’t hurting anybody.
I mean, this guy’s name is literally Cloud. How much more harmless can you get?
Until recently, the place was an Irish pub. It doesn’t matter if an Irish pub is run by Irish people, because all white folks are alike. That’s how it works, and you’d better shut up about it if you don’t want to be branded a racist.
(Hat tip: Michael Dorstewitz)