RICK JENSEN

CAGLE CARTOONS SYNDICATE

If you’re a white woman selling burritos, the culture cops will shut you down for “appropriating the culture” of Mexicans who have been oppressed by the white man.

This really happened in Portland, Oregon, which is to left-wing crazies what Florida is to clueless criminals.

Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly went to Puerto Neuvo, Mexico, and picked up all the tortilla-making techniques they could from “every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did.”

Connelly thought she and her business partner were going to get a little good publicity for their pop-up food truck when she told Willamette Week that they even peeked into the windows of every kitchen they could and then came home to make their own version, going through a trial-and-error process until they got it right.

That’s when liberals at Mic.com and The Portland Mercury weekly paper went after them.

In a piece the Mercury has since removed from their website, self-described “Burritogate Provocateur” Jagger Blaec wrote that “two white women — Kali Wilgus and Liz 'LC' Connelly — decided it would be cute to open a food truck after a fateful excursion to Mexico.

“So let’s recap the story thus far: These two white women went to Mexico, ate tacos, and then decided they would just take what the locals clearly didn't want to give them,” Blaec continued. “If that wasn't bad enough, they decided to pack up all their stolen intellectual property and repackage it.”

That’s when Portland’s militant progressives could no longer tolerate their own intolerance of women whose white privilege of taking out loans, paying for licenses, insurance and equipment allowed them to physically make their own food for sale.

Outrage ensued and liberals pressured the “criminals” to shut down their business, which the owners told Williamette Week they were forced to do after two days of non-stop threats. Blaec labeled the closing of Kooks Burritos “a victory.”

Let’s think about this for a minute.

If a chef travels to Alaska and sneaks a peek at the Inuit recipe for Suaasat, a traditional soup made from seal, whale, caribou, or seabirds … wait, bad analogy. The angry Left would have an entire menu of opposition to that one.

Let’s try another …

If a chef travels to Alaska and sneaks a peek at the Inuit recipe for Akutak and fermented cod for his restaurant, should he be forced to close his restaurant and delete the restaurant’s social media accounts?

So, Mexican food is no longer white people food unless the white people buy it from the Mexican people?

Why? Because cultural appropriation covers anything a white person would like to enjoy but has its origins in another culture, especially one which was oppressed by white people anywhere in the world.

The real truth is that a lot of us white folk actually appreciate food from other cultures. It doesn’t mean we’ve appropriated the culture, it just means we like the food and we know others will, too, so we add our own twist and serve it or sell it to others.

It’s not like white people are appropriating African-American culture by claiming to be black and taking jobs as NAACP chapter presidents. Ok, there is that one in Spokane … but she’s the only one.

What happened to the concept of America as a melting pot in which many cultures are appreciated by others?

At Pitzer College, white women are being shamed into giving up hoop earrings and winged eyeliner because, as student Alegria Martinez puts it, it’s culturally offensive to the “black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings.”

Perhaps Martinez could take a class in Egyptology, where she would have learned that winged eyeliner and hoop earrings go back thousands of years. She is appropriating the culture of dead Egyptians and Mesopotamians.

I guess militant progressives should force Martinez to close all her social media accounts and send her makeup and hoops to Cairo.

Rick Jensen's column distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL.

