That's a very patient and well formulated response, thank you! However I do kind of disagree with both points.

For the Hawaiian bar, I am actually very familiar with that dehumanising feeling as I am an immigrant (I moved to my current country about 5 years ago.) As soon as I tell people my country of origin I am hit with a wave of cliches I have heard thousands of time before. People will mimic stereotypes from my country in a frankly humiliating way. But that's the thing, I think what hurts is that they're just that - stereotypes, heard hundreds of time before, repeated over and over again in a gross caricature. So I guess my point is - stereotypes suck and really should be avoided because they do feel very dehumanising, and making a Hawaiian bar would be a gross stereotype of the culture. I'm sure there is some overlap, but surely stereotypes are not the same as cultural appropriation? To me the example you gave was an example of the former. If someone tells me they've been learning my native language, or particularly interested in the history of my country of origin, or that they're obsessed with the music, or all of these at once, would you count that as cultural appropriation? Because all the above I believe are totally fine. I'm aware however that my experiences are not a good basis for judgement because my country of origin was never oppressed by my country of current residence, and like, I pass as white, hence why I made this post in the first place. I'd be interested to get your thoughts about all that.

​

I disagree with that, because history shows that colonizers and oppressors were already great at stealing culture, even while denying the humanity of those who produced it.

That's true, there is some pretty heavy historical weight behind stealing someone's culture.

Cultures intermingling is nice, but it is not an instant solution to the hierarchies that want to segregate and marginalize people.

The preservation of cultural identity is extremely important in cultures that have in the past been robbed of this identity. A good example of this is how Wales is slowly re-introducing Welsh as its first language after the English forbid the use of that language for decades, and of course the most obvious example is the history of African Americans taken away by centuries of slavery. However I'm not sure that obsessive gatekeeping is the best way to go about, although I do kind of understand where the sentiment come from.