From the cultural appropriation dept: Kelly Slater (and non-Hawaiian pals) quit the shaka!

#haoleshaka

You could never fail the eleven-timer on his progressive bona-fides. From his one-man war against flat-earthers to various leftist agendas, Kelly Slater is a man who ain’t afraid to comb the velour of society to reveal its dirty brown underbelly.

Today, it’s the hang-loose sign, a friendly hand gesture popularised by Hawaiian actor David “Lippy” Espinada, the “king of pidgin” who also added the “Shaka, brah” to the greeting.

Kelly told his one million followers on Instagram, “My friends and I have decided to stop shaka-ing cause there are too many #Haoleshakas out there. Send this to someone who Shakas too much.”

Notable was the response of his fans, seventy-one percent who disagreed, a shock loss for the Champ.

Does the issue of cultural appropriation excite you as it doesn’t me?

Read more about “Surf Culture’s Continued Appropriation of the Shaka” here.

Erin Monahan is a writer who “focusses on detaching from the commitment to the construct of Whiteness” and in this story gives hell to white devils for throwing shakas.

Excerpts:

“Cultural appropriation happens specifically when the dominant culture (in our country White europeans), takes aspects of a non-dominant culture completely out of context and uses these symbols for their own benefit. There is no exchange or mutual benefit when this happens. It is a demonstration of an imbalance of power that still exists between the colonizers and the colonized

…It is not enough that White privilege allows us to have access to oceans and lands all over the world.

…When White people consider if their actions are appropriative, it is important for us to not center our own selfish, and ultimately, harmful and violent, desires. We really need to examine this question of what is our culture? Because the bargain that our settler ancestors made, which has been passed down to us in 2018, is that in order to be considered “White” we had to trade our cultures of origin for the culture of White supremacist patriarchy – a culture of entitlement, force, and domination.

And so on.