Cavalock and The Coffee Cultural Appropriation

Having recently discovered The Coffee Academics' "globally inspired coffees" on their menu, we have been spending quite a few lazy afternoons hanging out there. So far I have tried and absolutely enjoyed the Okinawa and Manuka. The former is coffee with dark brown sugar from the Japanese island of the same name and the latter is nicely doused with pure honey from New Zealand. If you like them sweet, this is something worth checking out.

So I been reading bout "cultural appropriation" for awhile now and although there's a lot about it that I don't agree with, it got me thinking. And from thinking comes questions.

Cultural appropriation is the adoption or theft of icons, rituals, aesthetic standards, and behavior from one culture or subculture by another. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture.

So is a local Asian guy with dreadlocks and Samoan tattoos guilty of cultural appropriation? Cos gawd knows, I seen a lot of them lately. How bout all them white hosts wearing local native costumes on them travel documentaries? Local kids, from one-room HDB flats, rapping like black inner city kids from Chicago? Then is our very own Matthew and the Mandarins guilty of cultural appropriation too? Is Racial Harmony Day in our schools politically correct? Are my Hawaiian shirts screaming cultural appropriation?

Perhaps the most important question of all, am I guilty here of cultural appropriation?!?